Jeff Kaplan acknowledges Overwatch Anniversary Event loot box complaints - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE=Simplemac3;52283449]Neither of these are better, [I]especially[/I] free to play. Make the game free to play: Oh boy, now we have all those wonderful problems of player disparity, massive grind, and new players that don't dump asinine amounts of money into buying heroes will be straight shafted. Better still, as the game gets more and more heroes buying them individually will probably end up more expensive than buying the game for 40$ in the first place. You're complaining about exploitation while advocating for a system that offers incentive for exploiting the player at the cost of the fucking gameplay. Make the game have an upfront cost and no microtransactions: Overwatch is not an iterative installment. They want to support this game and keep it going for a long, long time, and I have no idea how you could expect them to continue supporting it with nothing but their early sales. Even [I]Valve[/I] realized that this wasn't sustainable for long-term development. "Well they're Blizzard and they have money" is not how it [I]works.[/I] Your project has to continue making money for there to be any justification in working on it, particularly if you're organizing tournaments and making new characters and gamemodes and maps and cinematics and comics and merchandise. Again, taking issue with how they go about their lootboxes - fine. There should be no micro-transactions period even cosmetic ones because of reasons - ridiculous. I am not 100% pro micro-transaction, I used to have to tell my friends I wouldn't play payday with them because they used to make you buy a DLC to use grenades - but Overwatch's are harmless in comparison to that.[/QUOTE] Why do we need to make the game P2W just because it's free to play? You don't need to lock heroes behind paywalls to make the game F2P, that's ridiculous. You can charge for cosmetics and make bo tloads of money from that, just look at something like TF2. Of all the problems with TF2 at the moment, lack of profit is NOT one of them. As for the upfront cost business, it's not like people just stop buying the game after the first week of purchases, people are still buying the game. However, from a long-term sustainability perspective, yes, I do think the F2P system is the better way to go. Continued purchases seems like a less stable source of money. But yeah, you're assuming that the only way to do F2P is to do the absolute worst form of F2P and put paywalls in front of gameplay content, and that's just baseless. DOTA doesn't do it, TF2 doesn't do it, Overwatch wouldn't need to do it either.

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52283483]Why do we need to make the game P2W just because it's free to play? You don't need to lock heroes behind paywalls to make the game F2P, that's ridiculous. You can charge for cosmetics and make bo tloads of money from that, just look at something like TF2. Of all the problems with TF2 at the moment, lack of profit is NOT one of them. As for the upfront cost business, it's not like people just stop buying the game after the first week of purchases, people are still buying the game. However, from a long-term sustainability perspective, yes, I do think the F2P system is the better way to go. Continued purchases seems like a less stable source of money. But yeah, you're assuming that the only way to do F2P is to do the absolute worst form of F2P and put paywalls in front of gameplay content, and that's just baseless. DOTA doesn't do it, TF2 doesn't do it, Overwatch wouldn't need to do it either.[/QUOTE] TF2 also has limited edition crates with virtual gambling and you can't get a lot of those cosmetics period if you don't shell out. Not even a vague chance or able to be earned through a bunch of coins, you flat-out can't. It was also utterly obtuse and lengthy to get new weapons without paying any way other than dealing with player traders, which is often an exercise in frustration where you're not playing the game as much as you are spamming in a chatroom or trying to find a bot that sells those things automatically. TF2 is [I]not[/I] as good an example of a free to play title as you think it is. DOTA 2 I can't speak as much on because I don't enjoy MOBAs, but I've definitely seen a not-small number of people complaining about how greedy and anti-consumer getting cosmetics can be in that game just the same as OW. The point of the current system is that you pay once for the whole game, you get updates for the game itself forever, and if you want to support the game further you can gamble for pointless skins. I don't think I would have expected people to care this much and have so much of an uproar over cosmetics that they suggest turning the game free to play. Edit: Also I said it [I]incentivizes [/I]that kind of exploitation, which it most assuredly does. Blizzard's other hero-centric game happens to do the exact thing I'm talking about where you either grind for heroes, get lucky for heroes, or pay for heroes.

[QUOTE=Simplemac3;52283514]DOTA 2 I can't speak as much on because I don't enjoy MOBAs, but I've definitely seen a not-small number of people complaining about how greedy and anti-consumer getting cosmetics can be in that game just the same as OW.[/QUOTE] I stopped playing it about 2 years ago, but the last time I chimed in, they actually made it so chests (lootbox equivalents) are made so that you cannot get the same item(set) twice until you've gotten them all. This doesn't include the rare/legendary items, just the common ones. Of course, you still have to pay to open these chests in the first place. So they both have their good sides and downsides. It depends on what the consumer is looking for. I still prefer the general model that those games have, because if I want a specific cosmetic, [I]most[/I] of the time I can just get it for a reasonable price that I otherwise would have to pay more to get it from a box. I don't have to worry about mountains upon mountains of complete garbage filler in each box. But, like I said, you have to pay to open those boxes. It's a coin flip.

I feel like I get more moneys worth out of paid DLC than overwatches "the crates pay for free updates". What I also find funny and this isnt just for Blizzard, but a lot of these companies say how they get more money from crates than they do if they were to make paid dlc, yet I feel like ever since a lot of companies have moved to a crate based system there has been [I]less [/I] content released than if they were using paid DLC instead.

[QUOTE=Simplemac3;52283514] The point of the current system is that you pay once for the whole game, you get updates for the game itself forever, and if you want to support the game further you can gamble for pointless skins. I don't think I would have expected people to care this much and have so much of an uproar over cosmetics that they suggest turning the game free to play. .[/QUOTE] You seem to be forgetting that this is one of the most successful games of the past few years, released by one of the mostly highly renowned developers backed by one of the biggest publishers in gaming, that has made massive amounts of money from just game sales along. You throwing more money at them doesn't "support the game" directly at all, they already have far, far more than enough money to support the game. It isn't like they're some poor developer who without that bit of extra income can't afford to pay developers to keep updating their game. Even if they were supporting updates, that still wouldn't excuse the crates being done in a way that just shows they don't care about anything other than the money, like they currently have been. Besides, the updates it has had haven't exactly been frequent, either. Most of those "updates" have been to throw more microtransctions in.

[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;52278842]Babies are upset they can't have every cosmetic in a game. Blizzard will probably give out a few free lootboxes to keep them quiet.[/QUOTE] It's a shit system. Here you have a limited timed event (again) and along with competing with all the other cosmetics in the game, it's a completely RNG system. You might not get dick from the event from the boxes, and credits are so sparse you might be able to buy one or two if you play a LOT I'd prefer a system where the unlocks are behind specific goals/achievements/milestones. Especially limited time events. It even adds a sense of accomplishment when you wear one The only reason it's RNG like it is is so they can sell boxes. That's the whole reason Diablo 3's loot was so shit, is so they could force people to use the auction house. Blizzard has a real knack for doing this

im surprised ive seen some comments here saying that people are only just "complaining now" when people have been complaining about the loot boxes since the game's launch. and blizzard only made it worse when they did the Summer Games event where all the skins were only in the boxes, and you couldn't buy any of them. of course they rectified that after, but the system is only going to get more bloated as more characters and other items are added into the game. i do remember talk about the possibility of the free leveling loot boxes being removed altogether because they didn't like that people were "saving" levels by only playing during events, but apparently that was on big misunderstanding. i didn't follow that whole thing much at all, but it's definitely not a good look. i figured the implementation of free boxes you can get from playing the arcade modes was how they were going to handle the new free box system. but again, apparently people misunderstood their intent with the leveling changes they made a while back. on one hand, the comparisons to TF2/CSGO/Dota's crates are apt. Blizzard's system is certainly better than Valve's. but the rates are terrible, in my experience. i've been playing since a bit after release but have only managed to get very, very few legendaries out of my play time and most of the time have only ever gotten blues and whites. i don't spend any extra money on the game because that's simply not an option for me. the system is definitely better than valve's, but any system still has its issues, and in this case, the issues are. 1. the cost of event items is high 2. the in game currency is uncommon 3. currency payouts from dupes is too low. for the record, the currency you get from a dupe is 1/5 of the item's base cost, so 5 for a common, 10 for a rare, 50 for an epic, 250 for a legendary. this also doesn't scale in case you get a dupe of an event item. so that item with a cost of 3000? it's still 250. after playing for so long, you'll start seeing dupes for a lot of these, but the low payout from epics and legendaries make getting those dupes really, really shitty. i've never gotten a dupe legendary, but i'd be kind of bummed out if i did. if you get an epic amount of currency from a box, that's the equivalent of a legendary dupe. if you get a legendary amount of currency from a box, that's 500. double that of what you get from a dupe. it just makes the system feel really bad, especially considering that this isn't a free to play game. League of Legends' loot box system is very similar to what Valve has, but you can get keys for free just by playing game. and the rates of getting those key fragments have been very, very generous in my experience. i've gotten skins that aren't available anymore and even a skin of the highest quality (aka very expensive) and if any of those skins aren't what i want? you have options. you can save up 3 of those to craft another skin, you can disenchant them into essence which you can use to unlock skins permanently (once you get one you want from a box of course) granted, im sure some other LoL players haven't had fun experiences with the implementation, but even so, the fact that you have options to do things with what you get from a loot box is better than this system, where you can get items and basically just have them forced on you. even TF2/CSGO/Dota's option of putting the boxes/items you get from the boxes up for sale is better than this. meanwhile, Heroes of the Storm has the same loot box system as Overwatch, but there are more methods to get those boxes. you have hero levels [I][B]and[/B][/I] player levels. you get a box every time you go up a level in either of them. HotS also has quests you can do to make getting player exp much easier. my only complaint about HotS? it has 3 different currency systems now (rare gems, gold, and regular gems) but [B]you can use the gold you get from playing the game to reroll what you get from a loot box[/B]. the cost of rerolling doubles each time you do it, but it's honestly the best implementation of the system. and that game is loaded with a lot of dumb crap items, too. which only makes the ability to reroll better, in my opinion. and this is from a free game, at that. by the same developer, no less. (but obviously, a different dev team.) considering they're only just now taking the complaints the system has gotten to heart, i honestly don't expect any meaningful changes to come out of this. at least, not until after the event has come and gone. at which point, people are just going to have to wait another year to get that item they were hoping for, or spend money on the boxes. i could never bring myself to spend money on the boxes, though. there's no guarantee whatsoever that you'll get anything great out of it. it's just too risky for people like me who just don't have the option to spend money like that.

[QUOTE=Simplemac3;52283390][I]would you rather have paid DLC? [/I][/QUOTE] I'd rather have content that's not timegated. Huge chunks of the "free" content updates have been timegated. You want to play this new gamemode but you're not around on Christmas ? Fuck you, it's gone.

I don't even bother with these events anymore due to how short they are and since I always get crap that isn't even related to the event.

You know what i find fucking retarded about the whole lootbox system, the event lootboxes still have the usual loot drops in their table, More often then not you end up opening a timed lootbox to get. vanilla cosmetics and absolutely nothing you want. Fuck their Lootbox system, Just give me some currency for each match finished.

The only legendary skin I got out of these event boxes wasn't even part of the event, until it took me getting all the weekly wins and like 2 levels to get the event Bastion skin

IMO The only acceptable form of "microtransactions" in pay to play games are little cosmetic packs you pay for upfront like what Titanfall 2 has (but even then only if it doesn't go overboard). Lootboxes I think are unacceptable in these kinds of games under any circumstances.

[QUOTE=chemo;52286210]IMO The only acceptable form of "microtransactions" in pay to play games are little cosmetic packs you pay for upfront like what Titanfall 2 has (but even then only if it doesn't go overboard). Lootboxes I think are unacceptable in these kinds of games under any circumstances.[/QUOTE] I'm afraid they're going to make Blizzard lazy just like with TF2. Why make content when you can just release skins and make 10x the amount you would get from any new players? Especially with their predatory system that makes a seedy casino look modest. I pretty much had to stop playing Hearthstone because they keep forcing out expansions and they are all ridiculously expensive to acquire things. I get that at least it's a free game to begin with, but you can drop $50 on [b]each[/b] expansion and not even be able to build a competitive deck. I've been a lifetime fan of Blizzard but ever since Diablo 3 they've really been bipolar with how they do things. I can't deny that they make solid products but theres always that little tinge of greed in all of them that makes me feel wrong. It's disgusting how much money they make and they still pull these tactics in their games.

Gotten six loot boxes since this started. gotten 18 whites and 6 blues. about 7 were things I already had. Blizzard can fuck off.

I've got 28 as free2play scum and got so far 2 legendary skins and plenty purps, of course bluepies and whites too. [editline]29th May 2017[/editline] I wonder if they try bribe people buy this game.

[QUOTE=Combine 177;52287274]I've got 28 as free2play scum and got so far 2 legendary skins and plenty purps, of course bluepies and whites too. [editline]29th May 2017[/editline] I wonder if they try bribe people buy this game.[/QUOTE] They sorta do. The first 20 levels are not only earned faster, but they also drop much better lootboxes that have considerably higher chances of giving you legendaries.