Gambling boxes circumvent gambling laws while retaining all the salient qualities which made gambling regulated in the first place. They destroy the consumer-producer power dynamic, obfuscate real price signalling, and rob clients of agency in what had previously been a pretty standard business transaction of choosing what you wanted to buy and buying it.
If you don't like them don't buy them. No one is forcing you to buy them.
Carbonised wrote: »The whole random gambling with crates has been shady since their conception, but the radiant apex mounts that are otherwise not obtainable, and HAVE to be gambled for - at an extremely low droprate - are especially predatory.
In this day and age with more and more consumers, gaming journalists and even politicians and lawmakers noticing and speaking out against the predatory practices of gambling mechanics in video games, especially the infamous loot boxes, it would be prudent and responsible of Zenimax and ZOS to remove these practices from ESO, and make loot boxes, in this case crown crates, a thing of the past.
At the very least, the practise of "radiant apex" mounts, and the aggressive advertising of these mounts that ZOS does with every new crate season, comes across as greedy, unethical and exceedingly tone deaf to the current political climate regarding loot boxes. The other rewards you can at least eventually buy with leftover gems, which doesn't make it "great", but at least it's "better" than the gaudy radiant mounts that you have no other option than to gamble for, at a droprate that's somewhere below 1 %, and probably closer to 0 %.
The many threads we have had in the ESO forums of people mentioning that they have wasted hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of dollars and euros chasing specific radiant mounts, and often not getting them, should be testimony enough just how predatory and unethical these "radiant" gambling mounts really are.
ManwithBeard9 wrote: »I'm gonna buy an extra crate for myself for all the people complaining about "gambling"
Visual guide (Russian text):
https://elderscrolls.net/tes-online/crown-crates/new-moon-crates/
Visual guide (Russian text):
https://elderscrolls.net/tes-online/crown-crates/new-moon-crates/
Once UESP updates it will probably be at:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:New_Moon_Crate
I started this game in June of 2018. I currently have 4099 hours played. NOT ONCE have I felt in anyway I NEEDED, HAD TO, OR WAS REQUIRED in anyway to buy anything from the Crown Store, because there is nothing sold on the Crown Store you NEED, only items you MIGHT want (dang you cute pets!)
Comparing Battlefront II's Loot Boxes to ESO's Loot Boxes is laughable, it shows a complete misunderstanding of how these two games utilize Loot Boxes and/or its a direct attempt to mislead the community. Battlefront II's loot boxes were DIRECTLY TIED to game progression, ESO's Loot Boxes do no such thing.
Loot Boxes can trigger someone who has a gambling problem, as well as the million of other things on the Internet and pretty much every single "mobile" game on your phone just search for "slot machine" THEN tell me how ESO is the problem. Yes it can be an issue for some people and If you feel you might have a gambling problem, please seek help at https://gam-anon.org.
Yes, I have paid for the game. Yes, I pay a subscription. However, no one can, in any reasonable way, make a case that items in the Crown Store are required to play ESO, my 4000+ hours playing the game pretty much proves that to me.
When they said that Battlefront boxes were directly tied to game progression, they referred to the quote of the OP regarding them that said "When you buy a triple A title like “Battlefront,” it will set you back about $60. That ain’t cheap. Then gaming companies want you to spend additional money just to play the game you deserve from the start.", and postulating that could also be said about ESO. Which is wrong. Because while the Battlefront boxes may have had cosmetics as well, they seem to have had elements that were actually tied into game mechanics (probably better equipment or whatnot). ESO is playable in all aspects without crown crate stuff.Not quite, they also had cosmetics and other items in there, especially a few months later when massive backlash hit. Nice attempt to push a problem you don't care for but others have issue with out of the way.
Also, you could put in effort and earn boxes. Not very many, especially not at the start, but you could EARN them to make use of them.
While I'm sure that members of these communities will find some very fine stuff offered in Crates, most of the time they don't really need them to play their way. You can get lots of houses, styles, costumes, cosmetics, mounts, pets and furniture, even many emotes, from the crown store (some even from gameplay !). So the "must have that one specific thing from Crate" is indeed only a want, not a need to play your way, whatever way that may be. The crown store involves real money, yes, but the thing criticised here was gambling, not selling things for cash.Clearly you are not an RP player, or a person of any housing/lore/aesthetic community.
Again, not all pets, items, skins etc. are locked behind that mechanic. (And were there even ever houses in crown crates ? But that's not the point.) Most of them are not. Some of those that are you could still buy with gems you gathered from free crates.ZoS constantly makes use of knowing the casual, endgame, aesthetic and RP communities all are fond of getting pets, items, skins, houses, emotes, styles and furnishings and puts them locked behind a mechanic that is unequivocally gambling, with no means of earning them, acquiring them or winning them aside from paying for them.
This also does not include the predatory tactics of using people's panic reflex to sell high-valued items for only a few days at a time (with large print that shows how little time left you have to purchase), to which they would not be available afterwards for months. Some items not even appearing for years at a time, afterwards (Tessellated Guar, for example). Tactics used by casinos, old television advertisements (to which there are laws against in many areas now), and home shopping networks used to fleece people of their money.
I'm not entirely sure ZOS is targeting any specific communities here. I think the majority of people is susceptible to being tempted by pretty (if useless) stuff, so offering a wide variety of said stuff will tempt most people at one point or the other. Even some hardcore leaderboard players that only care about number crunching might see a "cool mount" and be tempted by it on occasion. For people who put value in aesthetics that will probably happen more often.But maybe learn a different viewpoint or learn some facts before you go to town and put down communities of people who find certain practices targeted at certain groups or players (that often get little to no support in-game by ZoS should a problem arise) and is generally considered quite knowingly exploitative of them.
If you don't like them don't buy them. No one is forcing you to buy them.
Carbonised wrote: »UK only stuff
zidders_ESO wrote: »While all this new stuff looks fantastic crates as a rule are terrible. https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/17/paid-loot-crates-bad-gamers-ea-knows/ This article refers to Star Wars:Battlefront but could easily apply to ESO.
"When you buy a triple A title like “Battlefront,” it will set you back about $60. That ain’t cheap. Then gaming companies want you to spend additional money just to play the game you deserve from the start. That’s not fair, and although it may seem like a good way to boost the bottom line of a game, it’s bad for gamers, and EA knows it, that’s why they bent to public pressure and temporarily pulled the payment feature."
Players have paid the price of the game already. Many are paying an additional subscription. The idea of microtransactions in a non-free to play game where people have spent money on it already is problematic. Also loot crates have a gambling aspect to them that is problematic. To quote this post:Gambling boxes circumvent gambling laws while retaining all the salient qualities which made gambling regulated in the first place. They destroy the consumer-producer power dynamic, obfuscate real price signalling, and rob clients of agency in what had previously been a pretty standard business transaction of choosing what you wanted to buy and buying it.
Crates are a bad practice and anti-consumer.
Carbonised wrote: »The whole random gambling with crates has been shady since their conception, but the radiant apex mounts that are otherwise not obtainable, and HAVE to be gambled for - at an extremely low droprate - are especially predatory.
In this day and age with more and more consumers, gaming journalists and even politicians and lawmakers noticing and speaking out against the predatory practices of gambling mechanics in video games, especially the infamous loot boxes, it would be prudent and responsible of Zenimax and ZOS to remove these practices from ESO, and make loot boxes, in this case crown crates, a thing of the past.
At the very least, the practise of "radiant apex" mounts, and the aggressive advertising of these mounts that ZOS does with every new crate season, comes across as greedy, unethical and exceedingly tone deaf to the current political climate regarding loot boxes. The other rewards you can at least eventually buy with leftover gems, which doesn't make it "great", but at least it's "better" than the gaudy radiant mounts that you have no other option than to gamble for, at a droprate that's somewhere below 1 %, and probably closer to 0 %.
The many threads we have had in the ESO forums of people mentioning that they have wasted hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of dollars and euros chasing specific radiant mounts, and often not getting them, should be testimony enough just how predatory and unethical these "radiant" gambling mounts really are.
To those who are about to spend 1000's of dollars on a radiant apex mount:
If it's recognition from other players you're after, please consider that I couldn't care less about whatever mount you'll be showing off at Belkarth wayshrine. In fact I probably won't even notice you.
And no, I'm not envious. I've been riding discreet yet elegant black horses and wolves for years because I don't like gaudy, overdressed lore-breaking mounts.
Carbonised wrote: »The whole random gambling with crates has been shady since their conception, but the radiant apex mounts that are otherwise not obtainable, and HAVE to be gambled for - at an extremely low droprate - are especially predatory.
In this day and age with more and more consumers, gaming journalists and even politicians and lawmakers noticing and speaking out against the predatory practices of gambling mechanics in video games, especially the infamous loot boxes, it would be prudent and responsible of Zenimax and ZOS to remove these practices from ESO, and make loot boxes, in this case crown crates, a thing of the past.
At the very least, the practise of "radiant apex" mounts, and the aggressive advertising of these mounts that ZOS does with every new crate season, comes across as greedy, unethical and exceedingly tone deaf to the current political climate regarding loot boxes. The other rewards you can at least eventually buy with leftover gems, which doesn't make it "great", but at least it's "better" than the gaudy radiant mounts that you have no other option than to gamble for, at a droprate that's somewhere below 1 %, and probably closer to 0 %.
The many threads we have had in the ESO forums of people mentioning that they have wasted hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of dollars and euros chasing specific radiant mounts, and often not getting them, should be testimony enough just how predatory and unethical these "radiant" gambling mounts really are.
To those who are about to spend 1000's of dollars on a radiant apex mount:
If it's recognition from other players you're after, please consider that I couldn't care less about whatever mount you'll be showing off at Belkarth wayshrine. In fact I probably won't even notice you.
And no, I'm not envious. I've been riding discreet yet elegant black horses and wolves for years because I don't like gaudy, overdressed lore-breaking mounts.
^^^^
As CP1K+ I've been riding the brown horse you get at lvl 10 on my PvE main since... level 10. My mount is probably more noteworthy than any of the radiants.
VaranisArano wrote: »Ghost chickens?!
Haven't I suffered enough for killing that one chicken in Riverwood? First the villagers attacked me, and now its haunting me from beyond the grave!