Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

That person makes it sound like you can't get duplicates out of the lootbox. While I don't play the game - not a big MMO person - I feel like that, in and of itself, is a huge distinguishing feature that speaks well of their implementation.

Useless duplications are the worst thing about lootboxes. The system of item rarity keeps people coming back and hitting the lever, wasting money and in-game currency alike in the hopes that maybe this time, they'll get that Super Rare they're after. This is precisely what makes it gambling: the devious cultivation of a "jackpot" mindset.

Any system that puts a finite cap on how many times a player can open the box in question is and guarantees that all items can be obtained with a minimum of attempts, while still not good, at least a far cry better than average for lootbox implementation.

edited 11th Nov '17 8:55:37 AM by TobiasDrake

Didn't Borderlands 2 have something similar to lootboxes? I know it's not the same, but the concept seems the same to me.

With Shift Keys, yes. However they wern't sold with real money which is the bad gambling part, you got them via promotions on their social media.

Free random loot if you stay active on their social media basically.

edited 11th Nov '17 10:16:17 AM by Memers

Plus, the shift keys always give you a rare/legendary.

turning players into payers

In which Jim looks back upon the past nine-plus months, the Year of the Loot Box. Consider this a summary of how much the industry's been having fun with them, what started with cosmetics-only Loot Boxes in Activision-Blizzard's Overwatch have since morphed into the practice being shoehorned into single-player games (Middle-earth: Shadow of War), normal features from past games being chopped off and sold back in pieces to accommodate the system (Destiny 2), encouraging players to watch OTHER people open loot boxes (Call of Duty: WWII), and of course the boxes being outright pay-to-win (Star Wars Battlefront II (2017).) To say nothing of non-video games trying their own hands at employing the tactics.

It's nothing Jim hasn't covered already, but it's a good review of what loot boxes look like nowadays when you sum all the individual parts up.

edited 13th Nov '17 10:52:25 AM by NesClassic

Yes i always knew OW had a hand in this. Ever since it came out Lootboxes have been EVERYWHERE.

And they aren't even that bad. I don't know if Jim knows that they have actually changed the drop rate in lootboxes so you get less duplicates, which was an awesome change the OW devs have done after the backlash they got on the anniversary event.

Other games tho, don't have such excuse.

I'm glad he mentions lootboxes getting so overdone that they're weirdly starting to appear in games that don't even f*cking have microtransactions like Horizon Zero Dawn.

I love that game to death, but its lootboxes are weird as shit. They're primarily found as drop items, and just add a pointless extra step to looting.

You found:

• 3 Wires
• 1 Sparker
• 1 Blaze
• 1 lootbox!

Open the lootbox

• 2 Wires!

What was the point of that?! I get so many lootboxes in a game session that I don't even care what's in them. I just go to my inventory periodically to spam the "Open" and "Take All" buttons without even a single f*ck given to their contents. They don't matter.

edited 13th Nov '17 12:01:32 PM by TobiasDrake

Loot boxes in games without microtransactions have been a thing from at least 2004, World Of Warcraft has literally been doing it since its inception.

Overwatch is a primary contributor to the "well, it's an otherwise good game, so..." argument, supplanted by your usual "HURR DURR COSMETIC", "HURR DURR OPTIONAL" and other nonsense.

So yeah, I would hold it accountable to spreading this gambling craze unchallenged throughout the land of videogames. But good luck making it so, because it's a good game. And its own fanbase will forgive it anything, except nerfing DPS and actually enforcing abusive chat reports. But Blizzard does neither of those anyway.

People love to latch onto excuses that let you avoid acknowleding the problem, and "otherwise good game" is one hell of an excuse.

edited 13th Nov '17 12:13:57 PM by Luminosity

It's not even that complicated.

You can like Overwatch and still think the lootbox systems they have are shitty and exploitative and demand Blizzard change them.

A full summary of what Battlefront II has been up to on the loot box front. (It's not pretty.)

At this point they're going to rename DICE into KING DICE.

edited 15th Nov '17 5:08:28 AM by Luminosity

Fittingly they are the devil's right hand man

Ctrl Alt Del had a fantastic take on this particular fiasco.

We've got a new Commentocracy, this time talking about VR, Resident Evil 7, Nintendo, whining from the "hardcores," and other general embarrassments to video game fans:

Probably the first genuinely funny strip I've read from that webcomic so far.

Funny lines in the Commentocracy, but it's a pity he screwed up his makeup that time. (Look at the right side of his face closely.)

Guess who got interviewed as part of a Washington Post article.

(facepalm) It was great right up until that last part. The Palpatine metaphor...I mean, I get what he was trying to do with it. It's a funny comparison because this was a Star Wars game that brought all of this on. But...he's not making a witty comic on the internet, he's talking to the Washington Post. That metaphor just made us all look like a bunch of self-important neckbeards patting ourselves on the back for figuring out the shaft length of the Millennial Falcon's right hyperdrive thruster.

It's always been his biggest flaw, not knowing when to set Jim Sterling's hyperbole (for lack of a better term) aside and let James Stanton do the talking. One has to wonder if he's even capable of that any more - that he's been Jim Sterling for far too long to just set aside the persona and speak directly and seriously on a subject.

On a side note, it would not terribly surprise me if mainstream news outlets like the Post think his real name is Jim Sterling.

As far as he himself is concerned, his real name is Jim Sterling. While he is still legally James Stanton he has stated that he does not actually go by that name.

News outlet almost always refer to people by their chosen name, especially if its the name the audience is familiar with. When's the last time you saw an article about Peter Gene Hernandez instead of Bruno Mars?

edited 19th Nov '17 11:23:08 AM by Ghilz

They usually will use your "showman" name, unless it isn't actually a name. Even then, very rarely you'll see Hulk Hogan addressed as Terry Gene Bollea, unless the news are covering one of his billion legal scandals.

That said, I don't see the problem with the metaphor. He's Jim Sterling, that's how Jim Sterling do. He didn't say anything offensive with that, which would have been a problem.

Yeah, I kind of had a brain fart regarding stage names there. ^note That said, unless it involves his emigrant status, I don't see a good reason for him not to just change his legal name. It's a pretty straightforward procedure (and yes, I am talking Mississippi, the state where he lives). My bad.

The point about him dropping parts of his act to speak more seriously still stands, though.