davey1107 wrote: »

But playing RNG with people's real money, and especially with kids' real money, utterly, utterly sucks.

I so agree. This is one of the most shameful things I have seen Zenimax do so far.

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Hanokihs wrote: »

davey1107 wrote: »

@Hanokihs I don't understand the screwing yourself out of a wolf. If you'd gone in and bought more gems...whatever...could you have kept drawing? Or did running out in the middle erase that draw?

I thought I was done opening crates, but when I started buying things with gems, I noticed I had too many crowns left. I had intended to use 75 crates , just in case of lucky draws, but only used 60. Naturally it's cheaper to just pull the mount you want instead of getting it the alternate way, and when I started on my last set of 15, the first mount I pulled was the wolf I had just bought. Even though I got two other things I would have purchased with gems, that wolf card was a waste of 400.

I don't understand. How could you have too many crowns left? You are saying you bought 60 (not "used") instead of 75? And then you still bought 15 more despite already buying wolf? If you just failed to use them all, that would not affect your crown balance.

I'm just peculiar about my budget; every season, I'm allowing myself 75. Buying X Crates and using them all increases my chances of pulling the items I want without exchanging gems for them; getting lucky is the cheaper value, which is why it's a gamble in the first place.

I bought the wolf before realizing that I hadn't bought/opened all the Crates I allow myself, and there were other items I'd been about to spend the gems for. Opening 15 more crates prevented me from having to exchange gems for another mount, two pets, and a Hircine statue, which was great for me, because I now have a few hundred gems left over for the next season (instead of the almost-none I would've had otherwise). It would've been even better had I noticed sooner and not spent 400 gems on the wild hunt wolf, because I pulled that card as well; but it's whatever. I'll just be more careful and double-check my budgeted money, next time.

That's the thing about these crates. If you're looking to pull specific things, you may well be pulling forever. But if you limit the number you purchase/open, and then buy what you weren't lucky enough to obtain, there's a better chance you'll come out ahead of the curve. Relatively speaking, I guess. I'm sure it's still a ripoff, but I didn't spend nearly as many crowns as I otherwise probably would have on buying each item individually.

so let me get this straight...

pay real money + enbgage in activity + random chance at value of reward = gambling.
17+ rating means children of 17 may be playing.
there fore, letting 17+ YO buy crown crates pay for a sub and use their game time to run VMA or VDSA and get the seriously problematic RNG reward at the end is bad bad bad business practice evil or whatever marketing nasty.

Right?

this is all about protecting 17+ YO children from the evils of being allowed to do crown crates VMA/VDSA?

Struck thru crown crates when i recalled they were just for fun cosmetic stuff not like the actual boon to competitive play the RNG for the arenas is.

I could maybe get behind banning those at age 17 from doing any of the RNG rewards stuff until they turn 18 but not if its just the fluffy cosmetic RNG stuff.

My main gripe with them is really cool things that I might have bought from the cash shop are now locked behind a gambling wall, and I will not waste money trying to get lucky for something I may or may not get. I don't have that kind of cash to spend just to get lucky. I would rather buy something directly from the cash shop. Also these crown crates have driven up direct cash shop purchase prices. Special mounts used to be in the 2k range, now they are in the 4k range? WTH? These changes to using the crown store have really left me feeling raw.

I would rather pay a somewhat high price for something that I know I want than spend any amount on a "grab bag" or crown crate. Why? Because I learned when I was a little kid that I never get anything I want out of those things.

Give me the opportunity to buy what I want OUTRIGHT, and you've got a customer. Make me buy "Mystery Boxes" and you will not get ONE SINGLE PENNY out of me. Sorry.

Disagree, no one is forcing you to buy these cosmetic items. I'd like to see this game add more expansions and what not and I have no problem giving them money to support a game I enjoy. Also I do not see how this is gambling for minors, you need a credit/debit card to buy these items and I doubt any minor is rocking a credit/debit.

Me when new crown crates are released.......

Its not the job of game developers/movie makers/musicians to protect children from harmful material. That is what parents are for. I am, however, 100% against gambling crates because I think game developers should simply treat their customers with more respect than that.

I love the gambling angle, as if some random kids on a videogame know more then a large company's legal department.

You guys know by law its only gambling if you can convert your winnings into the same medium as the seed right? Its only gambling in the eyes of the law if I can trade that riding lesson in for $10 bucks.

I don't have a problem with them. As mentioned the 'whales' keep things ticking over and allows ZOS to keep going.

My complaint is the shite stuff in the crownstore. I have 6,400 crowns (stopped playing but cba'd cancelling my sub) but none of the stuff is worth buying (IMO). Lets get some decent outfits and polymorphs released.

So I don't come to the forums typically, but this has been bugging me, so I'm going to say my piece, leave, and probably not check back. Throwing it here because making yet another thread about this would be more self indulgent than this is already going to be.

Let me preface this with a few things. I understand that, not a word printed here is going to mean a damn thing in this matter and I'm not here to change peoples minds. Minds are made up. Official forums are basically a very nicely designed place for people to vent and feel like they actually did something about whatever it is they're complaining about. I also understand that the people turning the screws are not the same people putting blood and sweat into the game. Business aside, I'm sure the people actually putting the work in just care about the game.

That said: I hate crown crates. I really do. Playing MMOs from their early inception, these kind of RNG box systems were something once associated with poorly translated F2P grinders shipped in from the Korean cafe environment. Sadly, over time and with the rise of f2p supplanting subscriptions in the MMO market (mostly due to over-saturation and dramatically increased competition), this system has not only found it's way into the mainstream western MMO market but also AAA gaming in general (but that's another story). It's a consumer unfriendly system at best and a deeply predatory one at worst; preying on people with low impulse control, gambling addictions, and catering to those with high levels of disposable income on the slightly more ethical end.

The common response is always the same. Every time. "But it's OPTIONAL! They're COSMETIC! You don't HAVE to buy it so it's fine!" I can understand why this comes up. I can understand why someone who only cares for stats would see something like cosmetics as something ineffectual. That people who play games extremely casually would not understand the impact these kind of business decisions have on overall game design and market direction. I can understand it, even if they are categorically wrong in every respect. The easiest things to point to are shifts in design from rewarding players for in-game achievements to rewarding them for "spending" and shifts away from more static/one-time payment models to ongoing/perpetual payment models with no upper limit. Those are the obvious ones, but the changes go deeper than that, and they will vary from company to company, implementation to implementation. But at the end of the day, to many people, going from being able to quietly enjoy your time and play the game to playing the game with an ever present open hand waiting expectantly next to you is not a welcome one.

For all of this though, I can say one thing with certainty. Crown crates are not going away. As much as any number of us may want them to, they are here to stay so long as they are legally permissible. The fact of the matter is that because of the outrageous returns they pull in, as a nominal amount of effort can result in a potentially unlimited amount of return, no amount of boycotting will be effective. A single whale, a single addict, a single Youtube/Twitch channel doing a "LETS UNBOX 25 CROWN CRATES" video (which pays for itself in ad revenue), will more than justify their existence. Even if EVERYONE stopped buying a single box today, there are two known seasons upcoming which I'm certain are already in development, which means we would see, bare minimum, 6 more months of pushing them AFTER this existing season. I'm not saying "give up, go buy some crowns and boxes I guess!", I'm saying that it takes so little action to justify them, that no amount of inaction will stop them. At best, you can continue to express your disappointment and preference for fixed/subscription payment methods, but it will likely always be in tandem with these boxes, and there will always be a disparity of items that are available. It is still worth mentioning however, as silence and acceptance is what brought these things as norms in the industry to begin with. Who knows, maybe the system might at least improve. Maybe it keeps things from getting worse.

Maybe it just gets it off your chest.