**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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The benefit to players is transparency and consumer protection. If that isn't a benefit to you...so be it. I for one welcome that. FGMC are not a straight 1/24 or whatever number straight odds. so there is some relevance.
But that's where you're wrong it will change. Displaying the poor odds of a PHC, GMC, FMC, and other live by the hope crystals, will greatly reduce your interest in buying these crystals thus severely hurting unit sales.
That’s much too high for a 4* prob more realistic is
1% 4*
14% 3*
85% 2*
For a game like MCOC, the benefit to the players at large is not likely to be high. The fact of the matter is, however much players complain about MCOC this game is not very exploitive when it comes to crystal odds, and most of the odds are within the kinds of parameters that allow players to roughly estimate them, whether other players believe that or not.
Where Apple's policy will matter in the long run is in two areas. First of all, some games are much more exploitive and the players either don't know the odds very well or the odds are so low it isn't easy to determine them. The 5* featured crystal has about a 20% chance to drop a featured. That sort of odds can be determined to within a reasonable margin of error just by watching youtube streamers open enough crystals - there are a few hundred featured openings that were either live streamed initially or come from youtubers that show all their openings, which eliminates biases. But there are games with lootboxes with rare drops in the one in ten thousand or one in a hundred thousand range that are almost impossible to crowd source the odds for with accuracy. Knowing these can be meaningful.
In the long run, however, I believe there is a secondary benefit and that is that the need to show odds will apply some subjective amount of pressure on monetization designers to think twice about what they design. When you ask difference good publishing odds can have, it is important to remember that the monetization people tend to want to keep them secret, which means *they* believe publishing the odds changes something. Whatever bad thing they think publishing odds will do, they will now be compelled to try to design monetization systems that avoid that bad thing in a world where they will be unable to keep the details of odds secret.
Its not important if they are right or wrong. What matters is that it is likely to change behavior, because what matters is what *they* believe. And I think in the long run there will be something good that comes from that.
Also, I addressed this several times in multiple threads.
That makes three games that have taken at least some steps to publishing odds. The Simpson game, the Futurama game, and now Future Fight, for anyone keeping score.
Future Fight is significant because, of course, it is a Netmarble game. Also significant is that the odds being published are for items that seem to be comparable to (some) MCOC crystals - specifically, lootboxes purchaseable with in-game currency or cash.
Yes, I just found this on Reddit. Seems a bold move
Yes that fact that it is involves purchases with in game currency should finally silence those who say that drop rates won't be revealed because they are purchased with units and not cash.....nonsense.
I'm guessing that Netmarble has a little better ability to talk to someone in charge of app store approval than the average shmuck developer, and almost certainly asked Apple what their intent was with the new rules. I'm reasonably certain that while many app developers might have to guess, Netmarble isn't guessing what they had to do to guarantee the game wouldn't get hung up in the approval process. So I think it was probably not a bold move from their perspective, and more of a reasonable step to ensure they were well within the lines of what Apple is likely to enforce moving forward.
As I keep reminding people, the point of the guidelines is not to see where the lines are so you can get as close to them as possible. Its to see where the lines are so you can stay as far away from them as possible. You can take your chances going right up to the lines, but if your app gets rejected you've cost yourself time and money. You have to change your app to resubmit, your app meanwhile is not in the store making you money, and there isn't even much of an avenue to fight Apple. Also, something I think most non-app developers are unaware of: you cannot just keep tweaking your app in tiny ways hoping to push past the approval process. If Apple rejects your app because of a problem, and you try to trivially change that thing hoping to find a loophole, Apple will usually immediately reject your app on the grounds that it is unsufficiently different from an app version that was previously rejected. After a few iterations of this, they will stop accepting submissions of that app altogether.
This is a great point. Now that things are public, they'll get picked apart and bad ideas will surface real fast. Because dedicated players will spend time to identify any way to "game" the system.
But not only this, with open numbers, other dedicated players will often make good suggestions on how to make the system better, more fair, etc.
One of the biggest intangible benefits I see is the removal of rumors and innuendo. The whole "Kabam is biasing openings for big spenders" arguments I've actually heard from (now former) alliance members in Line chats and Reddit etc, etc. There's a particular culture that can spring up when the RNG doesn't go your way, and it's amazing how people just can't accept that no, they're just not lucky.
I doubt it. People keep saying in multiple threads that there was a deadline in December, even though there was no such thing. People keep saying that the guidelines should apply to apps already in the store, even though that's not true either. The new narrative will probably be that the odds publishing has nothing to do with the app approval guidelines because the guidelines don't require those odds to be published, so ipso facto there must be a different reason.
Any sufficiently strongly held belief will always evolve to a form that is intrinsically unfalsifiable as a self defense mechanism.
If someone has an addictive personality, or a developed Gambling Addiction, the odds aren't going to make a difference. One of the characteristics of the Disease of Addiction is the inability to stop regardless of consequences. The game is not responsible for someone's predisposition to forming habits. It's not Gambling either way. The similarity does not make it Gambling by proxy.
Yeah, main evidence of this are all the people just doing very dumb things in Vegas, particuarly on all the table games. Craps, blackjack, roulette, have had very known "odds" for years, and yet, it really hasn't slowed anyone down.
The overall point to requiring full disclosure is to ensure that players buying things are making an informed choice. It does not address the situation that many players may make poor choices for their financial situation.
This isn't the end of the conversation about loot boxes, this is the beginning. The vast overwhelming majority of people agree that full disclosure is a reasonable step to take. If the industry couldn't figure out a way to implement this on their own, that would be a strong argument for government regulation to be necessary. It might still be necessary, but at least the industry is starting to show that they aren't completely hopeless.
People are forgetting that children(whether there supposed to be or not) are playing these games and these predatory loot boxes will shape them as kids and normalise gambling for them.
This whole game is a just a dressed up marvel casino same as all the other lootbox driven games. Sooner this stuff is legislated for and dies the better and I'm glad to see governments starting to take aim at them.
I thought that buying crystals wasn't gambling?
Sorry I worded it all jumbled up, I totally agree with you and I'm happy for any disclosure to happen. Although that's up to the developer and app store to decide whether they agree.
I literally just said it's not Gambling. I was speaking on the subject of Gambling Addiction and using odds as a deterrent.
Predatory Loot Boxes? That's quite an extreme view. It's a game. Not a Casino. Not a stranger lurking around a corner. Parents are responsible for monitoring what their children do.
Actually, calling many forms of loot boxes "predatory" is not an extreme view. It is a strong view, but it is not a fringe view in the current discussion. And this is not a new discussion, it is just one that is increasingly wider in scope and participation. I've had discussions with developers about the limits of microtransactions and F2P models for over twelve years. The idea that these mechanisms could and perhaps were becoming predatory has been on the table for discussion for a very long time.
Extra credits touched on the subject two years ago when they talked about free to play regulation here:
I also have mentioned several times that the problem isn't loot boxes, and it isn't F2P in general, it is the way in which microtransactions create an environment where the explicit GOAL of the monetization guy is to figure out how to turn the right knobs and dials so that the company makes the most money. That sounds innocuous, but any net designed to catch as many fish as possible will by its very nature likely catch the most vulnerable fish. Even if you don't intend to do it, trying every possible kind of loot box to see which one makes the most money will eventually generate predatory loot boxes, because that's what predatory loot boxes are: the kind that squeeze the most money from the players by convincing them to spend as much as possible.
For the record, I don't consider MCOC to be especially predatory. It is a tiny bit predatory in a way all F2P games are, but it is not even close to being a big offender in this area. That's not to say that people haven't spent way too much on this game relative to their financial situation. That's unfortunate. But I doubt MCOC would make a top fifty list of predatory F2P games.
The extra credits video I linked to above expresses a view I happen to believe, which is that "think of the children" is actually missing the point entirely. It is incredibly difficult to exploit actual children, because actual children don't have enough money in nearly all cases to be worth exploiting. If Mommy and Daddy link an American Express gold card with a twenty thousand dollar credit limit to little Timmy's iTunes account, Mommy and Daddy are idiots. Most children can "gamble" away their allowance and then they can't get extra pepperoni at Chuck E Cheese. That's not going to end Western Civilization. Ban all children from lootbox games, and it won't change lootbox games. It will just mean children will have to stop playing microtransaction games and start subscribing to fifty different services that will spring up to replace them.
The real problem is with adults, because microtransaction games can destroy adults's lives in a way they cannot really destroy children's lives. But the problem we then have to confront is do you want ME to decide for YOU what you are allowed to do on your mobile phone with your time and your money? Prohibition has had a very spotty history in the United States. Alcohol was a mess. Marijuana is a mess. Gambling is illegal in most parts of the United States except when the government itself sponsors it and disproportionately siphons money from the least financially stable. Government intervention might become necessary, but it will almost certainly be incredibly messy if they do.
You have any idea how much money apple would lose? Lol. Not happening
Campfire might be considered predatory because it creates option for you to throw your money into fire, and some people do, doesn't mean we should make setting campfires illegal.
Additionally, look at what Kabam has done with featured crystal. There are so many champs in game now. They could just say equal chance for all, which still leads to unfavorable drop rate for champ you want.