With the recent change in Belgium law that has forced games to remove loot-box items from the game in that region, I think it’s worth discussing an alternative to them should more and more countries decide this type of “gambling” isn’t right.
Before I make my idea’s known, full disclaimer; I don’t buy loot boxes. I understand the nature of them and make an informed choice not to spend real money on them, knowing full well I can either get loads of nice items for my mains or a box full of sprays for Torb.
I think that a cash value should be added to the in game currency, something along the lines of £5 for 1250 credits. That’s probably a little expensive, but i think that the premise behind it fulfils the desires of people who want to have all the things now but also taps into the market of people who want a skin/item but don’t want to have to roll a die for it
There is a way to calculate how much a legendary Item should cost. If we find out how many lootboxes you have to open to get at least one item with a specific chance, we basically know how much money we could pay to get a legendary Item. Since they are the most “valuable” items, we use them for now.
I have tried it out on this thread but we need to tweak a few things:
First, I used the average chance that at least one of the 4 Items are legendary but someone did calculate the chance of one item being a legendary item (and other rarities) which is 2.55%.
Second, we need to define a probability to get at least one legendary Item. The higher our desired chance is, the more Items we need to get. I think 97% seems to be fair for now.
Solving the “triple at least” problem, we find out that we need to get at least 136 Items or 34 Lootboxes until we earn at least one legendary item with a chance of 97%. Holy Moly That’s basically 34€ for one legendary item!
If we use the probability of getting an epic item, we’d need to open at least 10 Lootboxes (rounded up), which is odd because legendary items are 4 times more expensive in-game than epic items, while the chance of getting an epic item is 3 times higher than getting a legendary item.
What if we choose the comfortable middleman and say that a legendary item is worth 20€? This would mean that 50 in-game-credits cost 1€, which is the same amount of credits you’d get for leveling up. (I’d even assume that you’ll get less)
Disregarding other factors like offer and demand, etc. this would be the price of a legendary item if blizzard wants to earn as much money with the new shop system as with the lootbox system.
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You’re forgetting the fact that blizzard increases your chance to get a legendary every time you open a box.
That’s odd. I’ve haven’t found any article or forum post on such a “pity timer” yet.
I remember an old post way back when the game just came out that explained that they basically just used the same rng system as hearthstone, including the pity timer. Though they most likely changed the values slightly
At a quick glance, there are some old posts on the forum and reddit regarding a pity timer but these are just speculation. There is no article or dev post that mentioned it.
Most articles regarding the loot drop rates only say that no mention to the “pity timer” has been made in relation to Overwatch.
I got 2 legs in one box yesterday is that rare?
No, no, no, no, no! Developers should learn to make money with good games nog after sales with lootboxes. First they charge €60 and then beg for more…
Brick in the face is what they deserve! I would pay for that.
In theory, we actually pay extra money for service, free servers, bugfixes, new heroes, new maps and new cosmetics. If they don’t have microtransactions (for stuff you can get for free anyway), they couldn’t do that much.
And don’t even mention that Blizzard is a multimillion company. They still are a company and aim for profit. If a project doesn’t give enough profic, that project can be discarded.
The simple way round it is to make everything purchase separately. It’s the randomness of a lootbox that makes it illegal in some areas. Just charge for each separate item at a price according to what it is.
I know that… they even use tax evasion through the Netherlands paying barely 6% tax instead of 30%.
But the argument “they need microtransactions for new …” is plain bullcrap. They need more profit for dividend.
Logically speaking, If the game provides profit, the game project gets a higher budged. A higher budged leads to more resources. More resources allows the Overwatch team to create new content.
Microtransactions is a way to provide profit. If the game relies only on game sales (no microtransactions), their budged would be lower and they can create less content.
Or they can pay it out as dividends as their annual accounts show…
Or there could just be a shop, you buy want you want without needing to play RNG with your money.
Like a normal shop, I go in to a shop, I see what I want and I buy it.
Funny thing is they actually do this with the OWL store where you can specifically buy the skin you want, and I’m not sure that it’s an actual success, those prices…
There is a reason for that. When you buy a skin for the OWL, part of the money (or everything) goes directly to the corresponding team.
While paying 5 dollars (?) for a stupid skin, you donate to the team indirectly.
Just wanted to mention that. I would still love to just buy the skin I want.
To add to this, the Atlantic and Pacific skins were to represent the divisions and not the actual teams. Also the Lúcio emote to be purchasable with tokens isn’t linked to any team, so in these cases we are just supporting Blizz (and esports in general).
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