Retarded autism incoming
>>399370
South Korean companies definitely led us on this path, they had all of the mechanics we bemoan now but in the 2000's. Nexon with Maple Story, DNF, Combat Arms, other Korean-made FPS games like Soldier Front, Crossfire. All of them started with lootbox mechanics, weapon rentals, and live-service grind while people in the west were crying about Oblivion's horse armor.
>>399371
TF2 has loot boxes, which qualifies, it absolutely is gacha. If you go to a real gacha machine you're getting one of X items for your $3 attempt. It's the same. Chiwanese games like Arknights or Nikke give you plenty for free, but they often have limited events with limited characters that you will never get if you play for free unless you save all your rolls for a year. If it has a random chance or a lotto mechanic for real money, it's gacha, honestly.
I would say I don't have too much a problem with it if the game wears it on it's sleeve, so the Chaiwanese gachas. Things like Arknights or Nikke, yeah you know what you're getting into. The purpose is to try to get your most masturbatory waifu. Like all live service monetization schemes they funnel you into paying, and with gachashit specifically you might as well shred your money. $10 a roll you still typically have a very tiny chance of getting a top-rarity character (which, after playing F2P for a while, will be the only characters you haven't unlocked yet) and then it's a roll for what that character will be out of dozens or hundreds, and god forbid you get a dupe of one you already have. It sucks but the market has decided it's a viable strategy so we're inundated with it.
And what really pisses me off is all the Jap pixiv and twitter artists draw 90% gacha characters now so it feels like there's less originality there but whatever they still make nice art
But when it starts to seep into games that actual thinking humans might otherwise play, games that aren't just a "get your anime waifu's stat numbers higher" game, like FPSes or action-RPGs or co-op games, their monetization strategies get extremely tiring, because it diverts the attention away from just playing a game and turns it into a FOMO fest. I will admit I am weak, I want to look cool in games even if it offers no gameplay benefit. I don't want to look grandiose but I want at least a little bit of visual variety and to be able to be as unique as I can in the game's world and community. But they took this desire for individuality and expression and use it as a bargaining chip for getting you to pay in. Games like Apex or Gaylo Infinite will tempt you with cool ultimate cosmetics in a battlepass where 98% of the other shit in the battlepass is bonafide garbage, or a loot box where you have a 98% chance of getting the cool shit. Apex is one of the worst, every single of their skins look like stock image jpgs wrapped around the gun or character, and of course the scheme is (like nearly every monetization scheme beyond "pay money for the game and get the game") carefully balanced to keep you playing but also limit your gains of any interesting cosmetics so you feel compelled to pay, and there's several layers of events and acquisition methods that get you stuff to keep your attention.
>>399376
PoE sells microtransaction lootboxes for cosmetics. Also they have battlepass-like mechanics for their seasons (but I don't think it's paid, it's more to retain you for the whole season). Also the paid stash tabs are a frustrating practice but that's a different conversation, I think. But if they have to monetize a F2P game paid stash tabs are not too bad, but they are very expensive. I feel like you need $30-40 of stash tabs to comfortably play it long-term and not have a terrible time as your stash gets full fast. So there comes a point where you just think "why not release this game as a paid product with all the bells and whistles and no MTX." The truth is having their cosmetic shop, as well as the FOMO from seasonal supporter packs, is more lucrative than if they made PoE a priced game with possible traditional expansions like Diablo 2
>>399378
I still think Helldivers is definitely up there in non-anally-raping because you can unlock all the premium Warbonds by playing, unlocking the Warbond is still requires you to to play the game same speed as everyone to unlock the items themselves (in this sense it's just regular DLC) and it isn't a GOD-AWFUL grind that requires you make the game your full-time job like all the other live-service shit. Also Deep Rock Galactic does it well too, their DLC is purely cosmetic, reasonably priced, you get a lot for the price. They have a free-only seasonal battle-pass-like system where the items remain obtainable afterwards. And the games are fun enough to want to play to unlock stuff and the rate at which you unlock things is fairly swift. Also Halo MCC I think did it well because it's just... play game, get cosmetics. Then they fucked it up with Halo Infinite - items were limited, they had a shop, and your ability to freely gain items was absurdly slow and capped. Pay up, goy!
As long as the system is basically "play the game, unlock shit" are not bad, under the condition that it doesn't require contributing your fucking life 8 hours a day of playing a shitty game. In this reasonable systems like HD2 and DRG remind me of the Krypt in old Mortal Kombat games. Play the game and get koins, go to the Krypt and pick something to unlock with your Koins. It wasn't quite random (they were arranged on a grid so you could just get a guide that told you what was what) but generally you played and unlocked fun things but you never felt a DIRE emotional need to get everything like the worst live service offenders try to get you to feel. So in that vein HD2 and DRG feel very forgiving in their monetization and schemes to keep you playing compared to Korean or Chink shit or esports shit. They feel like real fucking video games rather than a frantic search for where the fun is. Live service games like Fortnite or Apex Legends or mobage gachashit monetize the previously perfectly normal video game concept of 'progression' and carefully craft the whole game's systems to manipulate weaker people's emotions and get them to spend money on it. The only way to really push back is to praise the games that get it right and completely deride the games that don't, but unfortunately there's too many niggers, wiggers, spics and chinks that people on our side will never interact with, and who will never give up predatory games because their squirrel brains receive serotonin from the scheme.
As for where paid lootboxes could be considered non-predatory... never, because we're built curious, and also because if it provides even the tiniest shortcut to getting content cosmetic or not, it will always have a non-zero effect on our desire to purchase it. Strangely the most tolerable lootbox system I saw was Overwatch, which ironically I think was one of the reasons lawmakers even started looking at the lootbox shit. I don't know if it's the same in OW2, but in OW1 free and paid lootboxes were exactly the same, you got lootboxes fairly regularly (like, once every 2 or 3 matches), over time you gained currency to just buy desired items outright, and there were nearly no super-exclusive cosmetics I can remember (there were one or two non-game events like the breast cancer charity skin that was never offered again but other than that, even holiday event skins came back every year). While I can't say I haven't been tempted in weakness to buying their lootboxes, I never felt like the monetization of the game pressured me into doing it, because it was easy enough to get what I wanted without paying. The kicker is OW was a $40 game, and having a paid lootbox system in an already paid game elevates OW from being kind of understandable to purely retarded. But that's pretty much where we're at, even that system feels tame to today.
As a whole one issue I always have that I never see mentioned is pricing. Most MTX things are too expensive. $10 for a single skin in a multiplayer shooter is too much. I remember there was this one Korean game I forgot the name of, but it was a beat-em-up and cosmetic items were like 5c to 10c. I had no issue paying $5, buying 40 articles of virtual clothing, and being able to deck out my character with SEVERAL outfits. (Then the game lasted like 6 months and died, so I guess that explains why more successful devs charge more, but still.)
<<1032120
It's video games, nigger.