You are touching on part of why legislating against loot boxes is fairly difficult. A poorly written law could do a lot of damage to games. Some RNG is ok and even desirable in gaming. A big part of why loot boxes are bad is rates or %s. Let's take Monster Hunter (world) for example. A monster has a chance to drop various materials when slain. There are no loot boxes or ways to convert real money directly into monster materials. Rare monster drops are never less then 1% chance. Rathalos Ruby, for example, drop from wounding Rathalos back (1%), tail carve (2%), wound head (1%), body carve (1%), and a couple other more specific methods. You can take multiple chances at the drop in a single fight and the minimum % per chance is 1%. 1% is actually fairly rare but not that bad. 0.01% is totally atrocious. Further this is 1% for a specific material. Not 1% for a "rare quality item" which would be a 1% chance at a 1 in (quantity of rare quality items in the drop pool) roll for a specific item. Consider that in comparison to a 1% rate: a 2% is x2 as likely, and a 6% is x3 as likely. A 10% rate is x10 as likely. Also, 10% is terrible winning odds on a single bet using your life savings but, pretty good odds for a strong in game effect you can attempt to proc repeatedly. How often you get to attempt the chance and the opportunity cost involved both matter. So it's never as simple as just "RNG" in general terms. The underlying math and cost is very important. The thing lootboxes tends to do is cause developers to be encouraged to change regular drop rates. To push them below 1%. Far below. They also increase grind. They try to funnel you so the best way to enjoy the game is to get past the grind by making a purchase. However, with lootboxes they are making you purchase a 1/x chance at what you need! So you can get screwed and have to spend again! They'll even tilt the odds so the most desirable stuff doesn't have an even chance of dropping from your casino lever pull! TF2 has received criticism for its lootboxes since it went hat-economy. Hats are at least purely cosmetic. You can get some equipment by completing in game objectives, random drops while playing, crafting, or buying with real money from the player auction. Regular weapons from the auction are incredibly cheap. However, it's plausible to spend cents to get equipment whose performance is identical to the hundred dollar rare blinged out shiny guns. Contrast that with some other lootbox schemes where the only way to get past a certain level of competitive play is being a whale whom spends thousands of dollars on lootboxs until they finally get that crazy low chance at the equipment they need. Let's reframe it. Consider a slot machine. Go look up some info on the chances of a jackpot. It's atrocious. As in 0.0038% and slot machines adjust to a payrate so the house is always making money off them. Now what if the only way to get past a certain threshold in a competitive system is to get multiple jackpots on a $1 cost lootbox. As you need multiple of whatever the lootbox drop is to make a top tier deck/army/whatever for that game. Imagine how much money you'd need to spend just to participate past a point. How on earth can you possibly compare needing multiple 0.00XXX% drops from a real money purchase to even a 0.1% drop chance from an in game boss you can fight repeatedly for no cost?
That's a limited view. You imply an investment of money or time is needed. In my experience, enjoyment also comes from other factors. It can even be as simple as the graphics as the game. Example: installing a paper map mod on a grand strategy game feels great, makes me enjoy playing it more. Other example: LoL a few years ago. The only progression there was after level 30 was in ranked and unlocking runes and champions. There were plenty of players, friends of mine even, who had everything unlocked, did not play ranked and did not pay for skins. But they did still play. You can't really talk about it costing time/being an investment for enjoyment. Every bit of time is time enjoyed, it's not like those players had to invest time to see a result. The statement you made does not make the distinction between enjoyment from progression (I count getting new stuff, getting a higher rank, ... as progression) and other forms of enjoyment from games. For the other forms, you can't really talk of investing time the same way. Bogus. Most games don't have gambling, yet can still be addictive. Gambling isn't a requirement for addiction. Example of a game: LoL. A year ago they introduced lootboxes, but people were addicted to it long, long before. This somewhat discredits the point you're trying to make; even in an MMO, your addiction can be caused by other things than drop rates. Even if drop rates are somewhat analogous to gambling. And I say somewhat, because drop rates are a lot safer so to say than lootboxes. Due to the process. You're saying There's no difference between the two except for this aspect, so I'm not seeing the difference. As I explained earlier, the difference lies in that aspect. Not having money in the mix makes a huge difference, and time being the investment instead of money greatly changes the process. Two very important things you're just glossing over. I'm not following you here. Try to write coherently, it's difficult to follow what you're saying it times. Also, experience and items both are forms of progression so you could just replace reward by progression. Do you mean that I said, that being able to spend money to skip time is the problem? Because that makes me question if you even read what I wrote earlier. I never used the words alternative, skip, ... There's pretty large difference. I put in the effort to make a detailed comparison for you, pointing out the difference in both money and process, you just say But it's basically the same, right? Drop rates being an addictive element is a different discussion from them being gambling. There are a lot of addictive elements which aren't gambling, as I explained earlier. You cannot say drop rates are on the same level as lootboxes either. Because of money and because of the process.
RNG is not the big part why lootboxes are problematic; it's a requirement for it to be called gambling, but it's far from the only requirement. You make it seem more difficult to legislate than it really is. A) There has to be money involved. RNG without money involved, like killing a boss and having a drop rate, will never be the target of legislation. B) The process must be structured like gambling: with probabilities, the possibility of a high or low in emotion. C) The process must feel equivalent to gambling, which recently has been proven true, there was a study in the news. Just A) alone will leave a lot of room for RNG. Without A), you cannot really call it gambling like what is done in casinos, at most it's an addictive game element. Not having A) will make you spend your time; A) in the mix means you will spend both your time and your money. Legislation is really important and it will have to be done regardless, to protect children and just gamers in general.
Oh wow. There's another thread on lootboxes. Guess one thread wasn't enough. They're not. They just cost money and that makes them more dangerous to those who are addicted to games. If someone kills a monster 1000 times to get a rare item then they're just wasting their time. If someone buys 1000 loot boxes to get something rare then they're not just wasting their time but they're probably also wasting more than $1000. That's what makes them more dangerous and frowned upon.
can we agree that bad RNG is bad? Okay? Okay. Lootboxes are bad because: They are a bad RNG you pay for every(or near every, must have a gateway and dangle that carrot) use of AND they are essentially unregulated gambling AND items gained from them were already used in actual gambling AND they promote putting an even worse RNG into games containing them (so they're attractive) AND they were already used to make players pay for features that were free in previous installments of certain game series(destiny 2 for example) AND they make games without them seem less economically viable AND they're getting worse as time goes on I would also like to point out that recommendations from the Australian study weren't actually to ban them, but to just attach a warning label and only sell games with them to adults (and rate them as such), which is just fair enough (i would also expect taxing lootbox revenue as gambling proceeds and maybe requiring a license).
Loot boxes are worse than the usual drop rate since you are paying money for something that does not guarantee that you will get what you want. As a result, they can be seen as a form of online gambling since you are paying money for an uncertain possibility of getting what you want. In the worse case scenario which occurs quite frequently, many people are paying more for an item or items through this system than they would have if they brought each item individually for cash.
The problem with comparing the chances of getting something through lootboxes and through ingame grind is that the developers can intentionally make the ingame grind bad in order to get people to buy the loot boxes. Also personally I feel that lootboxes can be an immersion breaker that take me out of the game I'm supposed to be playing.
I don't think anyone's changing @Fi's mind. Might as well call this thread: "Lootboxes = Bad RNG Drops. Change my mind". via Imgflip Meme Generator
I think it's questionable whether one is worse than the other. Both loot boxes and low drop rates are bad. For me personally, I think loot boxes are a bit worse. When I play games, I want to do so for fun. If it's just low drop rates, and I don't like it, then I just quit. I've only wasted my time, and hopefully, the time that I've spent on the game was enjoyable. However, if I'm spending money on the game (for loot boxes), then I've invested myself into the game. (Please note that I have never spent money on loot boxes, so the following is theoretical.) If I want a particular item, and I don't get it the first couple loot boxes, I'm likely going to spend more money on the game. If I don't get the item, wasn't my previous investment pointless? I've spent so much money on this, so I'd better get something out of this. And then, assuming I get the item, I'm going to continue playing the game because I need to play enough that I feel that it's worth all the money I've spent on the game. If there's another item I want later on, the cycle just starts over again. I've spent some money on some mobile games (for premium currency), so I've played those for while until I'd felt that I got my money's worth of play. This is just my personal opinion. Neither is really a lot worse than the other. They're both game elements I don't like.
Because of them less people spend moneys on casino and rich people feel threat in it. I mean, $ loot boxes exist for like 10? 15? years and everything been fine.
If something has appeared some 15 years ago it doesn't mean it can't eventually evolve in something harmful.
Generally loot boxes cost a lot of money and the RNG is terrible. It's honestly not worth it, unless you really want to spend money on it. I mean, go ahead and spend $50 to not get what you want. It's entirely the person's choice if they want to spend their money on that.