With Game Update 1.5 and the F2P conversion upon us, many people have spent the last few weeks dissecting and analyzing all of BioWare’s decisions regarding how they have structured the conversion and the new Cartel Shop. Some have been received positively, others with disdain and dislike. However, there is one aspect that immediately gets my blood boiling -- Cartel Packs. Read on after the jump as I lay out just why I think these lottery boxes are possibly the worst thing to happen to The Old Republic, and MMOs in general.
For those unfamiliar with them, Cartel Packs are items purchasable from the Cartel Store. They contain a random assortment of items, some of which players can only obtain through Cartel Packs. The kicker is that they do not now know which items they will receive, and there is absolutely no guarantee that they will get something that they want. If you have ever had the experience of opening up a pile of generic item lockboxes in The Old Republic and getting nothing but undesirable greens and blues, you will have some basic idea of what trying to get something good out of a lottery box is like.
Why it is Wrong
Now, you might ask, “What’s wrong with people spending a little extra on these packs if they want to?” It is a question that inevitably surfaces in some form when the topic of Lottery Boxes comes up, and there is no single answer. First and foremost is the diversion of resources. In the past, some titles have gone to absurd lengths to bury advanced, cool and desirable things inside their lottery boxes. Look at Star Trek Online for example. The team at Cryptic have made an art form of coming up with incredibly powerful ships, desirable weapons and cosmetic items, and then burying them inside the game’s lockboxes. All the while, the title stagnated with barely any meaningful content additions. Why did this happen? Because lockboxes made Crytpic an incredible amount of money. Why spend time coming up with complicated, difficult expansions and new content when you can simply slap together a handful of items and suck the player-base dry for massive streams of revenue as they try to get said items?
That leads directly into my second major point of contention with lockboxes -- compulsive gambling. I have no intention of getting political here, but when a business model changes from “Let’s get compensated for putting out good content” to “How can we suck the maximum amount of profit from our customers with the least amount of investment” the first casualty is always going to be the player-base. This happened in Star Wars Galaxies with the addition of the Customizable Card Game addon that sold players a chance of getting their hands on swag. At the same time, they put out practically no new content out over several years (yes there was a flurry of addons near the end of the games life cycle, but that doesn’t make up for years of neglect). It is happening repeatedly in STO, as each new lockbox adds to the list of things Cryptic and PWE have buried behind a second pay wall. Even my beloved Mass Effect 3 fell into this trap with their multiplayer store, unlocking weapons, upgrades and classes not based on progression or player wants, but by the ruthless calculus of the random number generator. Unfortunately, it is about to happen in The Old Republic as well.
The final major issue I have with lottery boxes is the concept of accessibility. Perhaps I am still slightly naive (which is hard to believe after more than a decade playing MMOs), but there is something to be said for the idea that a player ought to have a fair opportunity to achieve a reward. That is not to say that I want things handed out to folks on silver platters, by all means put some challenges in the way of players. However, the idea of leaving players who refuse to gamble with their hard-earned money out in the cold simply because they do not want to pad the corporate bottom line above and beyond paying for actual content, is just flat out wrong.
How to fix them
Ironically, there is a singular, simple solution to all of the above issues that I have never seen implemented -- allow players to purchase lottery box items via the cash shop. Practically every single person I have interacted with over the years has been amenable to paying a bit more for lottery box items if they were available for direct sale. Go ahead and leave in the boxes for those who want to drop a few Cartel Coins and maybe get lucky, or who do not care what they get. Let the players who know what they want, and are willing to support the publishers and developers by spending real money to do so for a guaranteed reward. Unfortunately, this solution is unlikely to happen because I am sure it would cut into the huge payday that is the Lottery Box. And at the end of the day, that’s what these Cartel Packs are all about.
Conclusion
Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe I am overestimating the effect an easy payday will have on corporate and developer resource allocation. Maybe I am just so jaded from previous titles that the mere mention of a lottery box makes me immune to any form of rational argument about the subject. But maybe, just maybe, I’m right, and Cartel Packs are the harbinger of a focus on monetizable fluff, rather than actual digestible content.
What do you, dear reader, think? Have your say in the comments section.
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Posted 12/14/2012 9:18:42 PMThese could be much worse.
In Star Trek Online, the boxes drop when your running content and only keys are in the market to open them. The problem is they take up the so much space on the screen that they often make it hard to see what your shooting at.
Just be happy that EA/BW did not take that path.
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Posted 11/28/2012 8:24:11 AMWell, I admit that I have spent over $240 on additional cartel coins. I unlocked everything I could possibly want through legacy for my top 5 or 6 characters, bought several armor sets and items off the market, and spent the rest on these boxes. I can honestly say that I have received everything I could want and more (throne, mask, white crystals, tons of everything else). I am still sitting on 3k+ and have nothing more to spend them on until they put something else in the store that I want. Add this cost to all that I have spent since launch and it is still less than I have spent on Xbox/ ps3 game for my son in the last year, lol. I am a happy consumer
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Posted 12/14/2012 7:37:12 AMlol, ok so maybe I am starting to have a change of heart here. A mere two weeks later, they populate the store with stuff that both my son and wife would LOVE (Revan mask and hoverchair). I have now opened over 80+ boxes and got neither one. I do however have 5 cargo hold tabs full of the same crap that is either bound (known to be bugged), worthess on the GTN, or cannot vendor. I should have waited and bough these few items on the GTN with credits. I'm sure the price will come down on these before Xmas. I accept full responsibility and have gone form happy consumer to stupid consumer- Doh! :P
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Posted 12/17/2012 9:06:58 AMIf they patch this so I can at least sell all of th extra stuff, I wouldn't mind it so much. But a lot of it cannot be vendored or sold on the GTN for various reasons:
-C2-N2 customizations are perma-bound to Empire characters and I assume vice-versa to Republic with Empire Ship Droid customization.
- Advanced Cyan Blue indestructible cannot be auctioned
- Cannot vendor anything and none of the emotes/ banners/ easy to get pets are selling on gtn
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Posted 11/22/2012 3:21:09 AMI'm fine with the cartel packs as long as they continue to only contain vanity items and leveling boosts. The day they put something in them that is unbalancing to people who do not buy the boxes, even something as small as a weapon shell with 1 additional base force/tech power, is the day I find another game to play.
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Posted 11/22/2012 3:49:21 AMAgree totally t the "I'm fine with the cartel packs as long as they continue to only contain vanity items and leveling boosts.".
In my opinion cartel pack are loads of fun and some might even make a few creds by selling the rare stuff on gtn. In my opinion packs and cartel market makes the game more deeper and as mentioned, as long as the items are only vanity ones, theres not gonna be problems whatsoever.
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Posted 11/22/2012 2:03:43 AMWhile at the current state it's not yet p2w gambling boxes we have, I tend to agree with the post. I've played countless mmos with this kind of business model, and whatever anyone says, gambling boxes have one, and only one intention... milking the players as hard and fast as possible. It's not about rewarding people or something like that. It's very minimal cost to develop, and a huge income.... and as the post said, if it works, EA will think "hey, these boxes got us some big cash, so why invest in developing actual content"... and bam, 10 people fired again from the swtor team.
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Posted 11/21/2012 4:17:51 PMI think the system is fine since it is fluff. If someone wants to fork over tons of cash for the sparkle pony, let them. From what I have seen, the majority of subscribers are not going to spend a ton of cash on lottery boxes. What they will spend money on is their sub, and that sub depends on fresh content. There will still be major incentives for BW to produce more content to get those sub dollars, so the sky is not falling . . . yet.
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Posted 11/22/2012 5:28:16 AMWell I saw in an interview on Dulfy.net that the Cathar race unlock will have to be purchased via cartel coins even for subscribers, so that eagerly awaited thing is definitely not being intended as an incentive to get subscription dollars. Their way of placating subscribers was that it'll fairly cheap so subscribers can save up their monthly allowance of coins to buy them. Not cool at all. Should be enabled to all subscribers like the other races are currently under F2P.
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Posted 11/22/2012 7:09:01 AMEA just wants you to buy everything don't they? Even if I'm a subscriber, I don't think I would buy a new species after already paying each month just for the subscription to the game.
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Posted 11/22/2012 10:36:30 AMI'm sure that they do want subscribers to buy CC, but people in my guild are not spending a lot of cash on them. We all plan to stay subbed, and many of us have been subbed since day 1, so we are spending our CC on fun fluff knowing that we will also be getting 500 CC a month. We are mainly a raiding guild so it makes no sense to try and squeak by on CC.
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Posted 11/21/2012 2:02:35 PMI admit, I dont like "lottery boxes"... and I agree I would like to see the items sold seperatly, its my pet peeve in other games, especially the one in Star Trek Online.
That said... I havent had the issue with this in TOR so far, cause even though I have not bought a single Cartel Pack. I pretty much have bought all the items I wanted cheap off the GTN, including most of the pets, banners, ball, and a selection of costume pieces.
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Posted 11/21/2012 1:13:26 PMThis issue is exactly the same when we got random gear or commedations from our pvp boxes. And it shows that bioware has learned nothing and simply are using same old mechanics the community cried over for ages.
I`m suprised that our community are once again buying into such bs from bw/ea.
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Posted 11/21/2012 1:10:23 PMNothing in the packs are p2w and all can be purchased with credits. IMO, Bioware could have been greedier; several of the items that people want are purchasable. If everything was in a pack, I would be disgruntled. The mask, throne, and crystals are the only "must have" items for many hardcore fans. At this moment, the prices on all of these items (except the white crystal) are dropping on the GTN. I have purchased $120 of cartel points and have not gotten a mask, throne, or white crystal, but I had a chance each time I bought a pack. I have since purchase what I want off the network. If anything, Bioware should reconsider their RNG for the super rare items.
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Posted 11/21/2012 2:24:34 PMThose items can be sold on the gtn, right? Well that $120 gets you in game credits when you sell those items on the GTN. You might not get the best exchange rate of dollars to credits without getting those ultra rares... but if you have $120 worth of cartel items that should get you a lot of credits to buy those items if they are sold on the GTN. So its not as if all is lost with the $120.
In fact the nice thing about the cash shop is it allows people to indirectly buy credits from BW for real money, and get new items as well. Or you can look at it vice a versa... but dont forget how people sell those items to make money as well.
edit :Unless... I am misinformed... and they are not sellable on the GTN... I only know from what I read breifly is that there are rare thrones which can be traded. I am assuming its the vehicle. I am not even sure if throwns/crowns was the word, and could be something else such as rare weapons as well... which was mentioned as traded.