Real world examples (Destiny)

by Earendil, Wednesday, October 05, 2016, 20:58 (2810 days ago) @ someotherguy

I actually can't fault your argument, but I feel like there's been a communication error if that's the intention, because I don't know anyone else who feels that way.

Perhaps it's the lack of real-world analogues (at least, I can't think of anything)

This is actually the way the vast majority of the freemium games work. There is some time cap that requires you to wait for something to finish, or you can pay to finish immediately. I don't know if I've ever seen pay-to-bypass-RNG in a game. Heck, even old school shareware imposed artificial startup/load times until you paid for the app.

To me at least, it's sold as a mystery box. A purchaseable random item, because random is fun and exciting. If the intention is that it's just your weekly one, but you're "skipping ahead" as it were, that's been poorly communicated.

Of course, it's functionally identical really. But there are definitely people buying them as mystery boxes regardless, and those are the people who are losing out whether by accident or design.

I'd buy into the miscommunication more of the player weren't receiving weekly and buying the exact same item. I've never looked at Eververse boxes and thought they were anything but RNG.