What are crown crates? And why all the fuss, are they P2W?

Mojmir · November 2016

Crown crates,they're on their way!!!!

Kolache · November 2016

GW2 has "black lion chests" or whatever, (their crown crates). When their first halloween rolled around I couldn't resist buying $50 bucks worth to see which cool halloween weapon/armor skins I would get. $50 worth of chests later and I had nothing but consumables.

I went to their forum and advised other people not to get them because their drop rate appeared horrible. I went about playing GW2, buying other things from their cash shop, and simply never buying another black lion chest again.

IMO, I'll roll my eyes if ZoS releases crates as is without publishing the drop rates, but that's about it. Thankfully other players will likely continue to share their experiences as they have with testing. I do sympathize with the people that won't be aware of their odds, but not with people that will be.

Assuming you are selling cosmetic stuff in your MMO (been that way for a while), and you create something over-the-top for the shop (like a lightning wolf), and you don't want everyone in the game riding around on it, and you don't want to simply charge $200 for it, how exactly do you go about releasing it without some sort of a lottery ticket?

If you're mad that they even created it, I don't blame you but it's done--they're not going to simply trash it. If you're mad that you don't have a low chance to get it in game, this isn't a first. If you're mad that the drop rates, gem conversion rates, and/or gem costs are crazy... they don't want everyone to have these things. What else is there to do?

People flipped out when a glowing senche started running around the game--you expect everyone having an atronach version of their horse/wolf/whatever to go over well? Come up with a better idea for making their new crown store item rare from a crown store perspective, (I sure can't).

Other leading MMOs are basically or out-right selling their own gold, (WoW, GW2, SWTOR). This isn't even that. IMO, there's more of a legitimate beef with things like the crown-only motifs as you can turn those into an edge on the market in-game. Really cool looking mount skins though? I can't even call it a first-world MMO problem.

Uriel_Nocturne · November 2016

BuddyAces wrote: »

Blackbird71 wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

I also found some threads on SWtOR and its hypercrates, I would assume this is what the crown crates are being compared to? probably against the forum rules to post links to the forums, but I googled SWtOR gambling crates and almost all the posts I found were either indifferent or excited about those crates, I could not find the same negativity that seems to be here.

As for user base, I googled "SWtOR user levels dropping?" and I found positive reviews, and the fact it added 2,000,000 more users to the game when it went F2P and used the crates to create revenue and still scored an 8.3 out of 10 on the review.

This is also an excellent read as per Five Lessons Learned as SWtOR surrenders
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/08/01/five-lessons-learned-as-swtor-surrenders/#214a827b368e
there is no mention of the gambling crates however, but there is mention of the natural drop off in an MMO as per earlier

I am just not seeing the doom that you have pointed out as of yet.

As someone who came to ESO after having left SWtOR, I can state that what you seem to have found is definitely not representative of the game/playerbase as a whole (or at least was not at the time I left last year). At that time, SWtOR was releasing monthly "chapters", but there was a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of these mini-content packs, as well as the quality of the overall game. With each month's release, new bugs and other issues were introduced. Meanwhile, old bugs were going unaddressed, with game-killing issues still a problem a year or more after they were first encountered and reported. Each month, the game would plow ahead with a new release, with little to no apparent QA, and the bugs would roll out and add on to the pile. Every once in a while you would hear about a token bugfix for some minor issue or another, but the vast bulk just grew and grew.

Meanwhile, there were the random loot crates - all the time the quality of the game was in decline, more and more useful/desirable items were being put into the loot crates. Then, the rarity of these items was increased dramatically. Also, the structure of the loot crates (in terms of what they contained and could drop) was adjusted so that there was even less of a chance to get items belonging to that particular crate's theme, in exchange for recycling old items from past crates.

I can't offer evidence to support it, but there was a general feeling among the players that Bioware/EA had been pulling people off of content development/bugfixing and putting them onto item development for the loot crates. Since it shouldn't take nearly as many developers to generate loot crate content, it is conceivable that they may have also downsized the development staff in order to cut costs. Again, there was no hard evidence of this, but these were the general suppositions made by the players in response to observations on the continual decline in quality of the game and corresponding focus on and restructuring of random loot crates.

It was this overall decline and blatant cash grab that finally drove me away from SWtOR. I was MMO-less for a time, until a relative pointed me towards ESO. I came here and enjoyed it for some time, but now that I see ESO is going in a similar direction as SWtOR, I am quite apprehensive about the future of this game. As they say, "once bitten, twice shy".

As another piece of trivia, around the same time that the SWtOR loot crate changes reached their peak of awfulness, and the overall game decline was at its sharpest, they also implemented a game-wide level scaling system "to make old content relevant again". It could be a coincidence, or it could be another sign of a game trying to capitalize on its resources with minimal investment. I'm not saying that in and of itself is a bad thing, but it taken in context of everything else it could be one more indicator of a game desperate to increase revenue and cut costs.

Here are a few links turned up in a quick search (hint: when looking for info on SWtOR, use "cartel packs" in place of "loot crates" or "RNG boxes"):

http://massivelyop.com/2016/02/23/hyperspace-beacon-an-open-letter-to-the-creators-of-the-swtor-cartel-packs/

https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/4qak8m/psa_new_packs_contain_less_and_cost_more/

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=890511

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=870240

Ty for that post. People who haven't seen this crap added just don't understand it. They want links and proof. How do you prove that while the game you were playing took a massive nose dive in player base and content quality? You just had to be there to witness it. You watch entire guilds disappear in a month. Your friends list diminish to nothing in no time. Yes, we all know, people come and go with MMOs. We're talking about a noticeable difference in game while it's happening.

Take for instance this game. Let's say crates are added today and in a years time the game has lost half of it's player base or better. Half of the half that is left aren't even subscribers. Content is released way less than it is now and the quality of it is half as good as it use to be. This is why people leave in droves after it happens.

Now take in a year or 2 after this fact and we're all playing a new MMO that comes and decides some time later that it wants to add crates. You were here, you seen it happen, heard all your friends and guildies cry about the crates and watch them leave because content sucks and crates are good yadda yadda yadda. So now you're on a new MMO forum trying to warn people what will happen and someone wants proof....

So much this.

I've tried warning people like the rest of you have, but both of these posts are well put and to the point.

shadoza · November 2016

Abeille wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

....You say you are not inexperienced in MMOs, but your posts show the opposite.

Because I do not agree with you?

No, because of the arguments use you have been using to disagree with me and your selective replies that avoid the explanations people give you. Have you ever been through a f2p transition in a MMO at all?

I do not agree that your explanations are valid.
Yes. I have played many MMOs; most have gone free to play at some point.

Abeille · November 2016

shadoza wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

....You say you are not inexperienced in MMOs, but your posts show the opposite.

Because I do not agree with you?

No, because of the arguments use you have been using to disagree with me and your selective replies that avoid the explanations people give you. Have you ever been through a f2p transition in a MMO at all?

I do not agree that your explanations are valid.
Yes. I have played many MMOs; most have gone free to play at some point.

Okay, thank you very much.

Kendaric · November 2016

Uriel_Nocturne wrote: »

So much this.

I've tried warning people like the rest of you have, but both of these posts are well put and to the point.

At least we can look forward to saying "Told you so" when people complain about how they wasted $100+ and got still no mount

And I fully expect these threads to come within hours of the scam crates' release.