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Chance or choice?
Phantasmagoria
Member Posts: 63
In almost all games, there’s a wheel of fortune, or if not, lucky boxes where you get random items—some are probably just junk and the others are cash shop items that are unique. Would you rather try your luck on these random things or would you rather top up and buy the item straight from the cash shop? Where do you usually end up spending more?
Comments
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
oooooh. yeah,, well that makes things complicated. since you know that you [EDIT: I mean "they"] are making money from the luck boxes, so does that mean that you prefer buying the item straight from the mall rather than gamble?
EDIT: given that the items give additional exp and drop rate.. say, 30%
I would always like the option to buy anything in the game from a cash shop. However, the psychology behind random rewards works just as well on humans as it does on rats. It would be hard to go against that kind of research, as a game developer.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
What if the items in the box are all fashion items that give you a certain increase in experience when you use a certain number of pieces from the whole set?
This for example:
Say, 100pts per spin in the Lucky Spin and you get one piece of three different costumes available... the whole set costs around 3000pts. so which would you choose?
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I prefer a mix of both. DDO is the best example. You have the various Dungeon completion rewards that reward you with a specific selection of items, which you can choose one. In most cases, your item will probably be there. If it isn't, just rerun the arc again.
Then there are the items that drop in chests. These keep you coming back until you get the item.
Devs must balance between giving the players want they want and keeping them in-game. If you could get all the gear you wanted quickly, why continue playing?
Raquelis in various games
Played: Everything
Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6
Wants: The World
Anticipating: Everquest Next Crowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring
That's relevant to dungeon drops, where someone is going to press the rat lever several times anyway, and you want them to keep doing it. It's perhaps less relevant to item mall random boxes, where the large majority of your players will never press the rat lever the first time.
What's more relevant, I think, is the sunk cost fallacy. People don't like to admit that they made a mistake. Rather, people will try to justify previous decisions, sometimes making further and more damaging mistakes to try to justify the first one.
If there's one item in a random box that you really want, then as soon as you get that item, you probably stop buying the random box. It's a lot less tempting if the only good item in it is something that you already have. That's very different from dungeon loot, where if you get good loot, then you're more likely to want to do a dungeon again--possibly a different one with loot that you don't yet have.
However, if you buy one random box, get some random junk item, and stop, then buying that random box feels like a mistake. If you were to buy another random box and get the item you wanted, then buying the first one feels justified. So if the first box doesn't have what you want, then maybe you buy another. And another. And another. Justification for the whole string of mistakes always feels like it could be just one more random box away. This sometimes leads people to spend $200 to get an item that they wouldn't have paid $20 for if it were a fixed price--and sometimes not even realize that they spent $200 until the credit card bill arrives.
Even so, what works in the short term doesn't necessarily work in the long term. The person who spent $200 to get some item is likely to feel scammed when he realizes that he spent $200. Someone who spends a fair bit of money and stops short of getting the item is also likely to feel scammed. Making your customers hate you isn't always good for business--especially if you could have gotten them to give you a good bit of money and feel like they got a good deal for it.
That's why people may eagerly anticipate the next big game from NC Soft or SOE or Blizzard or Trion or Turbine. But how many people eagerly look forward to what Aeria or Gpotato are going to launch next? Companies that aggressively push a semi-scammy free to play/item mall model have to try a lot harder to get anyone to pick up their game in the first place.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The Weekly Wizardry blog
I would love to see game titles that are not pay-to-win