Darth Hater

I have an issue with the stupid tax because they hide it behind an alternate currency.  It's "honest" for Blizzard to sell you a mount for $20.  It's deceptive and potentially exploitative for EA to sell lottery boxes for "360 cartel coins."  This means that most people will not have a real solid grasp on the relative cost and are likely to spend more than they might otherwise.  As I mentioned before, the big issue is that this whole system, while seeming to move forward fairly well, reeks of poor moral fiber on the company's part.  I get that they're in it to make money, but  as was stated in the article, money can be made without resorting to such "tactics."

The problem isn't with stupid people and whether it's the corporation's job to fix stupid.  The issue is that it is kind of a grey area morally to most people who are opposed to the idea.  What I object to is the fact that the author's point is that they could have made decent money by making all the contents of these packs available through the cash shop directly.  The only reason to utilize lottery boxes for the content is to take advantage of the compulsive nature of members of the player base to encourage them to spend more money than they might otherwise.  I'm sure someone will argue that it's to keep certain items more rare, or some equally specious argument (it's specious because EA can't rely on rarity under the RNG because they can't realistically project how many will be purchased).  You could keep the cartel packs in and make them revolve around the concept of "fun gambling" rather than make them mirror the frustrating "loot system" that has become iconic of the genre, though not any more "fun."  Have the packs contain boosts and crafting mats.  You can buy the boosts, small amount for a minor, larger for a major.  Or buy a pack for a little less than a major and have a chance of getting a "super" boost.  These things would allow people to spend money on "gambling" if that is something their interested in, but would allow access to the cosmetic content for the folks who would like it.  And the end result is still profit for EA, but without the semi-sleazy "we're going to take advantage of people's inherent addiction to gambling" vibe.

Except that most people are using custom armor anyway.  As a synthweaver, I was using the stuff I made for high level to gear out alts.  I can't sell most of the gear because the stuff you can get from running dailies is better in most cases.  They'd already gutted the system, this doesn't break anything that wasn't already broken, unless you mean "keeps crafter from tricking noobs into buying substandard gear."

Quote from KingofGob »

They're giving people a few Tionese tokens.  The Tionese gear vendors were broken anyway. Most people completely skipped tionese vendor gear because of the stupid crystals.  I could honestly see a PvE system much like PvP recruit gear, where they do give you columi gear for hitting level 50.  It's not like Columi is a) hard to get or b) any good to begin with.

Totally agree!  I didn't use any Tionese right after launch, went straight into Columi because the Ops basically drowned you in it and all you needed was to put on augmentable gear and fill it out from dailies to be Tionese equivalent (whichw as way faster than farming the crystals for Tionese gear.