Top Ten Worst Loot Boxes In 2017

“Greed is Good.

Greed lets you do great things.

Greed loves all people;

Gold Coins And Puppies.

It will get you everything.”

Remember when these words were a joke to promote Wario World and wasn’t an un-ironic game design mentality? Good times.

2017 was, to me personally, the year of amazing single player games. January 25th saw the release of Yakuza Zero along with the revival of Resident Evil/Biohazard series with a 7th entry that plays like Amnesia meets ZombiU, and it only seemed to get better from there. Febuary 7th gave us Nioh – another Dark Souls style game that starts out a bit tamer and could serve as a nice, more comfortable entry into that style of gameplay. Between the 28th of the same month the the 3rd of March, gaming got the one-two punch of Horizon Zero Dawn and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – two games that manage to breath new life into their genres and platform holders. And a mere 4 days later, Nier: Automata was released to the world. Oh, and April 4th saw this insignificant little, unexpected release know as Persona Fucking* Five. That is a lot of beloved releases in a short four month time frame, and that’s not even half the amazing products that have come out this year.

*Fucking is not officially part of Persona 5’s publicly traded title.

But then, what felt like a sea of mediocre cynicism flooded the major retail market with games that decided that be charged $60 up front with $150 special editions, pre-order bonuses, seasons passes, DLC not included in season passes, Collectors Editions, Digital Deluxe Editions, “Game of the Year but didn’t actually win that award” re-releases, food and drink sponsorships and microtransactions that cause the profit margin to have literally no upper limit just weren’t enough to cover the cost of making games that no one actually asked to be so expensive in the first place. So gaming ended up joining a certain gravy train and pushing it beyond it’s limits.

And thus, the year of fantastic gaming so good that even the sad movie watchers who convinced themselves that they’re gamers over at 4chan’s /v/ board had to admit they had fun… will likey be remembered as the year of the loot box. And because of that depressing fact, this list will compile the worst loot boxes to rear their RNG head in 2017. But for the sake of being fair, allow me to detail what I’m looking for to qualify for this… “honor.”

One last thing: the quality of the game is NOT relevant to it’s inclusion on this list. If you need proof, I think Number 9 will prove that beyond any shadow of a Mordor-I MEAN DOUBT! Oops, there I go, foreshadowing again.

Okay, no more formalities. On with the list!

Number 10: Bright Engrams (Destiny 2)

All those bright engrams sure did a good job shining a light on Bungie and Activision-Blizzard’s horrendous business practices.

Confession time: I had a bit of trouble picking a number 10 slot. It was a toss up between the Bright Engrams from Destiny 2 or the Stash Drops from Lawbreakers. In the end, I went with the game that people actually played.

Well, that and how the game is constantly trying to force it’s player into buying these loot boxes. You see, Destiny being an MMO (regardless of what anyone says) already had loot-boxes in the first game. It just wasn’t refereed to as such, and most importantly the Engrams weren’t directly linked to any currency. Not until the Eververse Trading Company was introduced in an update. Now the sequel is with with this blight center available from launch and blatantly uses “Bright Engrams” as the loot box worth purchasing.

Here is the short list of what loot boxes have changed in the main game:

• Inherently devalues other engrams, by having a “premium” variant.
• Introduced “Bright Dust” as a means to circumvent the RNG factor by grind an unhealthy amount of hours in a game with quite limited content.
• Shaders, a fan favorite unlock in the first game became one-time use consumables in this game, with Activison-Blizzard and Bungie being nice enough to let you gamble for more.
• Destiny 2 was caught limiting players XP gains. This is because after reaching level 20, the player stops leveling up and gets a free loot box instead. To limit players grinding for loot boxes, the game would say you got the normal amount but would only give you anywhere from 95% to as low as 4% of the XP to make those purchasable loot boxes all the more appealing.
• After that, Bungie apologized, went on about the importance of the player having fun, claimed they were listening to fan feedback and fixed it. And also doubled the XP needed to earn a loot box without telling players. Players got mad and yelled at Bungie. After that, Bungie apologized, went on about the importance of the player having fun, claimed they were listening to fan feedback and fixed it.
• Bungie openly admits with a job listing that they want to make Destiny 2 have a Loot Box based progression system. So look forward to that.
• Destiny 2’s Christmas event (refereed to as Dawning Event in-universe) has limited-time loot boxes where it’s impossible to get everything in it for free without paying to partake in the RNG mechanic. (As you can only earn 3 of these loot boxes a week, and the event is three weeks long. At 2 items a box, that’s 18 of the 59 items. Oh, and Dawning Shaders are still a one time use.

So why is this so low? Simple – I saw this coming. As soon as I saw the first trailer and noticed that it just played fun music, told a fun joke and had some non-descript action set pieces in it… I suspected that Destiny 2 was going to just try to get as big of an audience as possible off of marketing alone and try to milk them for all it’s worth. Every other entry on this list caught me off guard with some level of it’s microgambling, but this was almost exactly what I expected.

Number 9: Time Period Chests (Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

Remember when I mentioned how quality didn’t factor into this? Well… this is my game of the year. I can’t recall that last time a game gave me such a sense of… well, adventure. Honestly, this is the first time since Dead Rising 2 has a game truly felt this “one of a kind” to me. But it’s about the loot boxes, not the game.

Now if I was to guess your initial response, it’d be along the lines of this:

Wait a minute… Breath of the Wild doesn’t feature any loot boxes. No store front for them… no mentioning of them… not even any place dedicated to opening them.

Now, everything in the second sentence is correct. But the first one couldn’t be more wrong. If you’re wonder where they come from, well…

Yep… Amiibos. You know, I actually like these things. Shame Nintendo keeps messing up their implementation. (that deserves it’s own article) Here you scan an amiibo and get some random gear. Sounds harmless, and it really is. Outside of some rare fruit that saves you a trip to a more deadly biome, there’s nothing too over powered in these. But that’s if the glorified Smash Bros Trophy isn’t Zelda themed.

If it is, it more likely than not has some exclusive 3-piece outfit and weapon tied to it. And that’s the first problem. These chests contain Iconic franchise items that only a very small number of players can access. That alone would bother me enough to mention it here if that was all, but no. Then there’s the one chest a day limit. Meaning it’ll take a bare minimum of 4 days to get what you payed for (assuming you bought an amiibo just for this game), and there’s additional stuff these chests can contain such as swords, shields, and arrows that already exist within the game; sure you can save scum until you get what you want, but there must of been a better way to handle this. Then there’s the fact that upgrading these things require Star Fragments, which are incredibly rare by only spawning once or twice a night. And then there’s the sad fact that these costume offer no special effects what so ever despite being harder to upgrade than most of the actually useful armor and are on par with the bare basic armor the game sells in the very first shop you can find. And that’s ignoring the weapons that after getting to knight and royal tier weapons in the game become kinda useless.

So, your 15 dollar purchase gets a 4 day wait for a costume the is functionally useless and takes forever to make viable which in terms makes it worse than the in-game content and a weapon that’s only useful for a limited window in the game. And yet, that’s not what cements it at the number 9 spot. It’s how this game lacks any 100% bonuses. The Hyrule Encyclopedia, Kilton’s Monster Hunt, and the Korok Seeds. Imagine getting these Iconic weapons and costume as you went through these. Hetsu giving you a piece of the Wind Waker outfit as you bring him more seeds past the needed 450 to mas out; Kilton giving pieces of the Fierce Deity costume for defeating the mini bosses of Hyrule, etc. When tackling how lame the prize crates are on top of what the game has to benefit from including these items, and it’s be unfair to everything else on this list. Game of the Year or not, it’s not beyond criticism.

Number 8: Gamescom Invitational Crate (Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds)

Grr….

Bias disclosure: I really don’t like this game. It’s unfinished, unbalanced and kinda unfair. But this viewpoint is needed to explain why the Gamescom Loot Box bothers me so much.

Now, PUGB is no stranger to loot boxes, players could get these prize crates with in game currency for a piece of costume for the player to wear. Pretty standard, harmless stuff. However, then came this little darling – the Gamescom Invitational Crate. A means to obtain cash for a prize pool at 2017 Gamescom, players can earn a chest by paying the in game fee, but will need a single use $2,50 key to actually claim what’s inside.

If you want the response this garnered, click here. Otherwise, allow me to explain what’s wrong with this: This game is in Early Access. A game in Early Access, in my eyes, does not have the right to charge additional money until it is finished. The whole point of Early Access is to receive funding to finish the game. So to then have a popular but unfinished game go on to charge players more than the Thirty Dollar Entry Fee to – not improve the game that happens to run as well as a fresh circumcised donkey – but rather hold a prize pool for your own personal contest despite having the funds to do so (Until I see proof stating otherwise, I’m gonna say they could of funded it themselves) is just plain wrong.

And then we have this Payday 2 situation where the devs said that there wouldn’t be any microtransactions until the game was finished. And yet here they are having done so. This shows that they’re willing to lie or go back on their word if it directly benefits them. If Destiny 2 gets no slack for this, PUGB shouldn’t either. And given the disastrous state of the console version (even compared to the bad PC version), the devs have done nothing to give me good faith.

And that’s what this particular crate is to me. The perfect demonstration of how, rather it’d be AAA company or D list indie, so many devs will refuse to make improvements to the game if they can make money instead. And that’s terrible.

Number 7: War Chests (Shadows Of War)

Warner Brothers Interactive might be addicted to bad PR. This might be a real problem, guys.

Of any the issues with Middle Earth: Shadows of War, it’s loot boxes are surprisingly small on that scale. In terms of gameplay, there’s not really any reason to buy them with real money since the in-game rewards, loot drops, orcs, and cash for war chests are easy to come by.

However, an observant reader may have notice how I casually tossed orcs into that list; that is the reason this loot box is on the list. This might be the one case of loot boxes that actually damages the narrative of a game. The whole point of the game is to build an Orc army out of the many tribes in the game, forming allies, rivals, betrayals, etc. Which makes the fact that this glorified slot machines can poop out death obsessed slayers kind of an issue. Orcs are now just loot; swords, hoods, armors or whatever you can think of. They are all replaceable. And sadly, this trickled to gameplay ever so slightly. Orc assets are reused a lot more than in the first game. Or perhaps the higher Orc death rate makes that so. I think the fact there are common, rare, and legendary Orcs sums it all up. As it’s sad that the relationship I formed with rare Orc Rat the Dastardly is no more complex than my relationship with my rare Katana in Dead Island – I found them in a box, and were mildly useful. Then they got out classed. And I forgot they existed.

Number 6: Supply Drops (CoD: WWII)

Because WWII isn’t depressing enough.

This is the most tasteless loot box of the year. Head to Normandy Beach to open crates in front of other players to incite them to buy more digital groceries from a franchise that was never at a risk of not making an ass load of money? No thank you.

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No, I’m done with this one. I’m not giving tumor any more attention than I have to. Look this one up yourself if you really want to know more. All I have to say is Purple Hearts in the game industry must be given out like candy now, since Rising above the Call of Duty takes practically no effort.

Number 5: Prize Crates (Forza 7)

I’m starting to miss Ridge Racer right about now.

Gonna keep this one short, as it’s a one-two punch of stupid ideas.

First of all, these prize crates give out mods. These mods used to be part of the game. Players could turn on additional challenges (playing at night, in the rain, harder turns, etc) and earn more coins for taking up the challenge. Now you have to gamble for these mods which are, of course, now limited-use consumables. Basically, like what Destiny 2 did with it’s shaders but in a game that most people play for more than 8 days before shelving it.

I’m calling it – Forza 9 will have Car Customization completely locked behind Microtransactions.

But the crowning moment of utter failure is that these prize crates are basically the only real use for currency. So you’ll use currency… to buy prize crates… to earn mods that increase currency earned… that can only be used on prize crates. So we have a progression-based system that makes the currency worthless. Can’t say I have ever seen the latter before. I can definitely say I’ve seen the former since then, however…

Star Wars Battlefront II (All of it)

Let’s be honest – the only surprise is that this is only the 4th worst of the year.

Oh boy, the big one. What to say about this one…

Seriously, this one is almost too big to keep track of. I went back to YongYea, as he kept track of all the B.S. this game got attached to. Here’s the abridged timeline of everything this game messed up with loot boxes:

1. Battlefront II Open Beta brings up concerns that the payed Loot Boxes open up pathways to free to win.
2. EA attempted to fix this, but only highlighted how bad the system is. Star Cards determined player level and abilities. Star Cards can only be earned through loot boxes. Players can craft weapons and tools, but crafting parts can only be earned through loot boxes. Allegedly, it would take ~45 Loot Boxes to unlock and max out a single weapon. And the Emotes make it very likely that you wouldn’t get much use from loot boxes.
3. Heroes are stupidly expensive to unlock (40-Hour Darth Vader) and had over powered ability cards (Boba Fett could become invincible during his missile attack). This on top of the star cards meant a player who just put $100 into the game could become unstoppable in multiplayer mode.
4. EA Imposes daily limitations on credits in arcade mode to prevent grinding to avoid paying for loot boxes, removing the one element of these kind of games that let audiences put up with it.
5. EA Removes Microtransactions, but leaves progression system alone. Star Wars Battlefront II is now left a painful grind of a game with the ability to pay to not play returning in early 2018.

That’s the short version, that’s for sure. Yes, I missed some things, I know. But that’s just it – I literally can’t keep track of this. This gives me a headache trying to type this part out. What can I say? This is the worst progression system in any First Person Shooter to date.

But… there’s still three more slots to fill…

Number 3: FIFA 2018

This is literally Star Wars Battlefront II’s progression system, except it got away with it and made EA literally millions. Why? Because people around the world love Soccer to an unhealthy extent, to the point of it being a religion to them. And so their Jesus sport and everything tied to it can either do no wrong or it’s justified spending hundreds of dollars on a game just to get some enjoyment out of it. Top that off with how sports simulators attract “Bro Gamers,” their desire to be on top by any means along with their willingness to spend ridiculous amounts of money to have a sense of accomplishment and pride in a game (EA used those words on Reddit for a reason), and you have a long-standing loot box system that would go on to infect games like Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike, Overwatch, and most of the game on this very list on top of mutating EA into that one-eyed tar monster from the second live-action Scooby Doo movie.

That’s why this outranks Battlefront II. Whereas that game ruined the game it was attached to, this has long since spoiled it’s franchise, EA as a company, and might very well be the franchise to blame for the year of the loot box. Because if FIFA didn’t make over half a billion dollars annually from microtransactions alone, Star Wars Gamble Simulator 2017 might of actually been a First Person Shooter like it was meant to be. So thanks FIFA players who spend hundreds on each game.

Thanks for ruining 2017 for many gamers. I’d say I hope your happy, but I doubt a happy gamer would be spending so much money on one game to get satisfaction out of it.

Number 2: A Literal Slot Machine (Need For Speed: Payback)

I didn’t Photoshop this one because it’s ridiculous enough on it’s own. And yes, literally your entire progression is based on this. And unlike Battlefront II or FIFA, there’s no mode free from the Loot Boxes. There’s no campaign or offline mode where you can merely play the game you paid for. No, this is an EA game, you naive little shitbag. You’re going to pay the piper to play the game. That $80 you spent on the game and season pass was just for you to own the content. You need to pay EA continuously if you want to actually interact with your media. What do you think this is, fucking video game? No, this is casino themed around cars. Pay up and eat shit.

If your wondering why I’m suddenly so bitter, Need for Speed was the game my cousin and I would play whenever we hung out in elementary, so this series matters a little to me. It’s childish. It’s petty. It’s unprofessional. But so is EA, so I feel fine with my reasoning.

Next up is Number 1, but first…

Dishonorable Mentions

• Assassins Creed: Origins – The loot boxes turn the second half of the game into a miserable grind, but that’s true for half the list. So really wasn’t enough to be here.
• Lawbreakers – Combines the unoriginality of Overwatch and mixes it with the bland art direction of Destiny to make an experience so unremarkable that most players decided they’ve played enough of it before purchasing it. And the Loot Boxes, er… supply drops come in 5 variants and are bought in bulk. So it’s gets the worst of both worlds in every sense.
• NBA 2K18 – I didn’t even know this game had loot boxes. The way this game uses Virtual Currency is so disgusting that the Loot Boxes have no real value to theme since you’ll need boat loads of VC to interact with anything in “My Career” mode. So it’s a cherry on top of the piss-flavored Sunday rather than some over-arching problem.
• Horizon Zero Dawn – Why does this game even have loot boxes? No microtransactions are in the game (thank fuck) but the creates still don’t really give anything of value that the player can’t find with ease (e.i. without grinding for them) in the main game. So what’s the point?
• Injustice 2 – The Loot boxes actually show some self restraint, shockingly enough. The two best loot boxes can’t be purchased period and can only be earned through in game means. So there’s that.
• Mass Defect Andromeda – I think the game does more damage to the loot boxes than the loot boxes do to the game.
• Bethesda Creation Club (Fallout 4 + Skyrim) – This has nothing to do with Loot Boxes, I just felt it was important to remind everyone this was the most anti-consumer act of 2017 as it tried to morph free user made content in microtransaction that they take all the money for.

So, with this, it’s…

Number 1: Rift’s Short-Lived Loot Boxes

Remember Rift from 2011? It was a nice little MMO, comfy to play – good times. It’s become a MMO that still maintains a surprisingly active community. Trion – the game’s developer/publisher seems to be aware of this. Now, given that running servers takes money and that this game is free to play, it makes sense to charge for some DLC to keep things up and running. And given how devoted the player base is, they’d probably spend it to support the devs. So, how do you mess that up?

Simple. Create a loot box that has 42 different mountable animals in it, and charge $100 per box!

You see, that’s $4200 for all 42 mounts. According to a user on the Jim Sterling Reddit, you could buy the entire Nintendo Switch E-Shop for that price. (I did the math too, ya can.) Now, these mounts could be traded, but that was just a means to justify duplicates. And finally, the loot boxes would only be available for 2 weeks – because if it works for Destiny 2, it’s work for you too. And this scheme… failed. Almost instantly, actually. A mere few days later, the backlash became loud enough to get them removed from the game. And I’ve yet to here of a single player actually buying one of these.

So, this was a 6-year update to a game with a crappy mechanic players hate, was greddy on an unprecedented level in video games by claiming this mounts have more value than a PS2 and Wii combined; adding contempt and cynicism to a community who will only spend money on the game out of good will and love for it, all the while failing to actually bring in any money. I’d say a failure on this scale justifies calling Rift’s short lived loot boxes to be the worst ones this year.

Conclusion

So yeah, loot boxes suck. But I cannot emphasize enough how much I think this was a great year for gaming. In fact, I think this is the best year of gaming since the turn of the decade. Regardless of what genre you prefer, there was at least one fantastic game released that you’d probably enjoy. I can’t think of the last time that’s happened since 2009. And for those who want to remember this as the Year of the Loot Box (Despite it not taking effect until halfway through) – the year of the loot box has a happy ending, as these glorified casinos just got a whole lot less convenient for these greedy sludge monsters who call themselves “Executives.” Thanks to EA, 2017 ended with 6 states making vows to limit the damage loot boxes can have to those with gambling addictions and children. For the first time since the online pass, an unpopular practice actually got enough backlash and did enough damage to force publishers to backpedal and rethink what to do. And personally, I can’t help but smile at that idea.

But with that, I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and I’ll see ya again in 2018.