Free to Play Cast: TERA's Ninjas, Dreadnought, and F2P Whales Ep 179

QotW:
I loathe free to play style lockboxes. By their nature they're exploitative and try to latch on to all the worst elements of addiction. They don't publish the odds of getting the main prize, so it could be as low as 0.001% (as estimated in Neverwinter's ones). They're designed to get people to gamble real cash frivolously, which itself is usually obfuscated by in-game currencies to make you think you're spending less than you are. Studios exploit further by focussing on lockboxes, then selling subs that give you keys each day to open one -- creating an illusion that the sub is great value.

Gender locked to the pedo's favorite race.

For the question of the week... I have bought lockboxes for both Rift and SWTOR, I quickly stopped buying them for Rift since the chance of getting the "shiny" seemed next to nothing, and SWTOR's contained items I deem "useless" such as exp boosts and rep items for rep you could -only- gain via lockboxes (bleh). So though I have purchased some, I have felt in one way or another they are always a bit of a rip off. I get their appeal, it's the same thing as opening a brand new pack of trading cards. When I first got into Magi Nation (a card game), my third pack ever contained a rare that my friend had to buy individually to get. He was mad at me forever but it was a fun feeling, and it's kind of the same idea with lockboxes. However, I think you should be able to "build" your lockbox. For example you give it 4 "slots" a mount or a costume might take up 2 slots whereas a boost or a pet would only take up one. You still wouldn't get to pick exactly what you get, but at least you could get the type of things you wanted with still having a randomization.

Just as an aside... would have been better if you'd had popcorn Magicman, just sayin'.

Dabomb to Dreadnought for inspiring me to expand my comfort zone with my games, I'm looking forward to trying it out when it comes out despite the bad taste in my mouth left over from Star Conflict.