I agree that cool rare things should be made from rare in-game materials. I don’t agree that this implicitly excludes loot boxes from having their own rare things.
I’m not advocating RNG - ONLY items in any way. I think that’s a terrible idea. But at the same time, I want to try and be as realistic as I can about keeping boundless funded. The best way forward for that is to ensue loot boxes are ‘worth’ buying. Of course, ‘worth’ is a subjective term here, but it could mean something ‘That is worth a lot of in-game-currency to other people’. Or it could be something that you really like. Or things you can’t get from any other means.
My reasoning is that a thing is worth more to a single player (beats me why, but psychology is what it is) if it is something that is coveted by others. At the same time, if they feel like it is beyond their means to acquire, they lose interest in having it at all. I think the best way to achieve a balance in that is to provide loot boxes with the potential to have unique things people want in them, and then a back-up that could spend a little more and get the specific thing you want.
I have been trying to figure out for months why developers today are demonized for not existing solely as a charitable organization that makes wonderful video games for everyone for free?! I agree that there are better and worse ways for developers to make money, but why would anyone in their right mind spend hundreds, sometimes thousand of man hours on a game just to give it away for free???
One other thought: you want a game that continues developing, take care of the developers.
As an additional note to what others are writing, let’s not forget that they haven’t said mystery boxes are the ONLY way to get wearables…the quote below (fully quoted since Vastar only picked the part he liked hehe) seems to imply that crafters can make some as well…
Seems like not only will wearables be craftable but they also will be somewhat cheap so if you really want a full set of X wearables, you’ll just have to spend some time playing to buy them from someone else or something. And this seems like it will be fairly easy and not restricted to only the richest or most active based on “many players”.