I think the agent system needs some sort of streak breaker, so that every 50 missions, 20 scenarios, 10 blue chests (lair & dungeon separately) or 5 raids you’re guaranteed to get a dossier if you got to that number without a drop. (numbers were chosen arbitrarily)
As an alternative, an increasing chance like weapons from caches would be ok.
Personally, I’m now past 100 scenarios without a drop and if I didn’t enjoy playing scenarios as much as I do, I’d be up for punching something.
Yepp. The need for a streak breaker has been conclusively proven above.
It’s perfectly obvious what psychological effect unlucky streaks will have, and if Funcom refused to account for that, it would qualify as proof positive they really don’t care about player retention beyond give us moar money!
So, coming up with a streak breaker mechanic is a big opportunity in more respects than one.
Imho they play risky game to milk certain portion of player base willing to spend larger amount of money and don’t loose other players due to fatigue by very low droprate.
We really don’t know large SWL statistics, but I am really doubtful how this stategy works for SWL in far longer horizont. It seems they definitively prefer easy money than to be more focused on retention. And I know it is difficult to find the right balance and strategy for f2p game with so limited content and too focused on story (and several years old).
There’s a fairly straight forward definition. The most important aspects have never changed, and the public perception doesn’t mean anything.
so far, at least according to the steam numbers, its brought back a few hundred people, and it does seem to have people playing longer on certain days. (http://steamcharts.com/app/215280) But yeah, in the long run not sure how many it will keep on, which is probably why they announced season 2 a few weeks after the agent system released. Once Season 2 is actually playable hopefully the number of people online will go back up to 1000 or so, at least according to steam that is. Which really makes me wonder how many people play the game not through steam?
That’s not what the SteamCharts you linked tell me. They tell me the average concurrent Steam player count in the last couple of days is only barely higher than it was in February.
Much of that could probably be accounted for by what players there still are playing longer (grinding for agents), driving up the concurrent player counts outside their normal play times.
No one I know plays through STEAM, and we’re pretty avid players.
I play off and on since TSW beta, I am on steam.
yeah, the thing is there might be plenty more people playing through the non-steam option but as far as I can tell there is no way to see how many, so the only place to go to see stats on the playerbase is steamcharts. So people see the numbers there which aren’t good for an MMO typically and they declare “dead game!”
Such boxes never contained a lump of coal. Considering how worthless green gear is already, agent boosters seem to have over 50 percent lumps of coal.
Public perception might not be leaning so heavily toward lootboxes being gambling right now if too many publishers hadn’t embraced stuffing them with coal-equivalent, mostly.
After all, the stuffing most boxes with coal-equivalent is what constitutes proof positive the intent is to give buyers as close to nothing as possible, i.e. having them draw mostly blanks while oh-honest-it’s-totally-not gambling.
I would work it backwards.
Figure out how much it costs to run a 5-man** dev shop at $100k per dev per year + other incidentals (like rent, CMs, marketing, etc). Then figure out how many paying users (recurring and one-time payments) you need. Then you can play with what percent of either total users or average daily concurrent you need to hit those numbers. So for example, say there are 10,000 users and 500 concurrent. If you need 20% of those users to be recurring or pay at least $100 per year to keep the lights on, I’d say your game is in deep trouble. You use the Steam population as the “pessimistic” value and then play with what is “realistic” and “ideal” population stats.
**In real life, it’s not really 5 devs full-time; it’s probably part-time devs and part-time of admin overhead etc etc etc but I’m lazy.
Personally, I think this traditional monetization model is broken. It only works for games that have reached a high volume of recurring paying customers. I have ideas on what they could do different; but I’m not part of Funcom nor motivated enough to get any more of their attention.
If you have read material aimed at game developers (and I assume you have), you will see the consideration for lootboxes as gambling is really quite a hot topic. The main contention is that loot boxes prey on the human tendency to spend more time and money on something when the chance of a reward is random. Of course, there is a broad spectrum of behavioral response. Some are not so affected as others, while on the other extreme are those that become addicted to the random reward endorphin boost (some with little exposure, and others with exposure over time). But this predatory tactic is what draws concern.
The other point of contention is the content of the lootbox: what is considered ‘pay to win’ (P2W). Some argue anything that allows you to ‘boost’ advancement is P2W; while others argue, like you, that it is only P2W if content in the lootbox is necessary to unlock “something required”. The problem is, what is “required” is completely arbitrary and depends on user perspective and preferences. Is making Darth Vader a playable character a core requirement in SW Battlefront? I don’t know… though many of those gamers who bought that game seem to think so. But why not other characters? Who decides what is required or not? Who should have that right?
My point is it’s a really complicated topic and personally I think all the blathering in the forums (including my post) shouldn’t be taken as gospel of “the customer is always right”. At best, it should inform game developers, academics, and government policy makers after much collation and analysis.
The game producers are not scamming people, but they’re certainly preying on the vulnerabilities of certain people.
I know of players who have literally spent tens of thousands of dollars on lootboxes, and these aren’t rich people. They’re people on very low incomes or living on welfare, but who can’t control their impulses, so they spend food and rent money on lootboxes.
I think most people would agree that slot machines are gambling.
Lootboxes are designed to prey on the same human instincts that cause some people to become addicted to slot machines.
The flashing colours and sounds when you open loot boxes and get a reward are intended to create the chemical dopamine in your brain. Certain people get addicted to the dopamine rush & cannot stop themselves from pouring money into opening lootboxes.
“Gambling” in every legal sense of the word requires that you can win something. You cannot win anything buy buying keys in SWL. Doesn’t matter what comes out of those boxes, you lost the money you put in. In no way can you “cash out” whatever you draw from the boxes. Funcom will not “pay out” the way a casino will cash out and give you cash for your chips. It is otherwise against the terms of service to sell virtual items for real world currency. You can’t even trade virtual items for real world items.
Without the ability to “win”, then there is no gambling. That is a cold, hard fact. You cannot win with lootboxes unless the game in question has a real world currency economy. There are a few games like this, but I don’t know of any that have lootboxes because not many would buy them. Most sell their goods outright in an actual marketplace. SWL is not one of these games. Paying money into the game is essentially lost in the same way that putting money into a movie ticket is lost. What you gain is an intangible amount of entertainment. It doen’t matter if the movie was bad just the same as if your lootbox had nothing worthwhile in it. It’s exactly the same situation.
There are colloquial definitions to a lot of things, but this doesn’t really man anything. Yes, someone might consider X, Y, or Z to be gambling, but that’s not actually the case. Just because something involves risk and money does not mean it involves gambling.
I personally would have preferred if Funcom stuck to the promise of their former game director when he said “No lootboxes, ever.”, but they didn’t. Do I have anything against caches as they currently exist in-game? Not specifically. I’m wholly neutral on them at this point. Should FC ever go so far as to abuse the lootbox system, my opinion will change accordingly. So far, they’ve kept the system about as benign as just about any other game with lootboxes and certainly well above board especially considering some predatory methods used by other companies in their lootbox systems. Including, but not limited to, EA and the recent happenings we all know about.
So there, in a nutshell, is why there is no gambling in SWL and why no current laws (in any country that I’m aware of) would conclude that there is gambling here. Furthermore, changing any laws to consider lootboxes to be a form of gambling would have the most dire implications for gaming in general and I would oppose any such laws with the same fervor as I’ve opposed other ill advised proposed laws such as SOPA/PIPA of recent years as well as the anti-Net Neutrality garbage that’s been happening in this past year.
Game lootboxes are designed to exploit loopholes in consumer protection law, and this is why they ask players to first buy an ingame currency. This way the game companies can argue that the money transaction with the player ended when the player purchased the virtual coins, and so regular laws against gambling no longer apply.
Ultimately, however, the top tier loot from the boxes is considered (very) valuable by players.
A Nassir agent dossier costs something like 1 million MoFs, which is not something that the average player can afford.
Other types of gambling would still be gambling if it rewards (physical) gold, or anything else that has value in the real world.
False and your insistence to the contrary won’t make it so.
It took me 20 seconds to google search “legal definition of gambling”. Further down are the list of exclusions, and internet-based exclusions that may be pertinent to lootboxes and this discussion.
Based on this U.S. legal code, I think you are wrong to consider lootboxes are not gambling. It does not specify that the reward is necessarily currency, just “something of value”.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5362
U.S. Code › Title 31 › Subtitle IV › Chapter 53 › Subchapter IV › § 5362
bet or wager
(1)The term “bet or wager”— (A) means the staking or risking by any person of something of value upon the outcome of a contest of others, a sporting event, or a game subject to chance, upon an agreement or understanding that the person or another person will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome;
Correct. Lootboxes contain nothing of value. There is no real world value to any virtual item in SWL.
Thanks for digging up that code for me. Saves me the trouble.
That’s pretty big misunderstanding of “real world value”. You think US dollars are of any value? Why? Just merchandise, made by another people who decide how many they want to release to you, poor guy, nothing more.
So to be clear. The only real value for all people on the entire world is people’s time. That’s the ultimate currency. It’s also measure of life btw. You cannot sell or buy anything else with gold, dollars, MOFs but time.
And so called “real money” are nothing else then a dept paper, a promise that because you did something for others, they will do something for you in return. The promise that can be way too easily broken, just at will. All your “real value” you think you have may loose any ability to purchase you anything in single hour, just like that.
And it’s the same within the game. You pay the value. But the value just reflects the time of other people which they spend farming it. Just like you can’t pay for food in real world. You just pay the guy(s) who spent time to make it for you.
And to that point, if you need an effort to gain it, it is something of value.
I also think you need “something of value” to be able to trade. And that if you are able to trade it, it has to be something of value. Since we actually have market, we have things of value.
The only misunderstanding is on you who choose to ignore the fact that virtual items have no real world value.
If you pull something from your cache, how much value do you declare on your taxes? I mean, if it really is gambling and those really are “prizes” then you have to declare them on your taxes.
Also, where do you live? In most countries and US States, gambling is illegal. That means if you are playing SWL then not only would FC be breaking gambling laws, so would the vast majority of people playing. Those are jailable offenses in most places.
Because the government has declared it legal tender. Perhaps a crash course in fiat currency is in order for you. Of course, not from me. I’m not your personal Google.
You can’t have this both ways. If you are considering this gambling then you must also stop playing the game immediately if gambling is illegal where you live and you must also declare each and every item you’ve ever received from a lockbox on your taxes. If you fail to do this, then you must concede that SWL’s lockboxes are not gambling. There isn’t any wiggle room in this, except where your flimsy mental gymnastics allow.
Furthermore, if you’ve ever played a game with a monthly subscription, like World of Warcraft, then you must also consider that every boss in every dungeon and raid is also just a walking lootbox and therefore gambling because you must pay to have access to that boss (along with the rest of the game). Since those bosses have randomized loot, then just owning a WoW subscription is gambling.