Saw a post about not bringing loot boxes back and it reminded me of an alt purchasing system for buying cosmetics I made in November. might as well post it here to see how close to a loot box it is.
Note: since this was made in Nov and im lazy on updating it, some things about the store will be outdated.
Armis Crates is an alternate way for players to gain items they want without the fluff of bundle items they do not want, as well as for players with a budget to still be able to gain items. The idea is similar to how Blueprints work in Rocket League. To put it in context, When Epic Games gained Rocket League and made it F2P, they also took out the loot crate system and replaced it with a blueprint system. This blueprint system is where players would know what they would get @ a set price.
Armis Crates are much like this with some changes
- Players would gain a subset of challenges (5-10) every weekend that would allow them to gain 1 Armis Crate (you could say you are getting parts or a certification)
- These challenges also give XP to the current season, that is 2x normal XP value than normal challenges
- Each crate allows players to pick from 10 items from a 20 item selection ranging from rarity
- Certain items such as shoulder plates are still bundled together, however they count as 2. Weapon emblems are bundled together as well. This is to not overstuff the selection with the same thing
- Helmets, however, do not bundle with their attachments when selecting. You are given the choice of what attachments you wish to take though. So if you want just the helm or only 1 attachment, you don’t get everything else
- Duplicates can happen from the items that can be selected.
- Items that can be selected are not client-side. In turn, you and your friends will have the same selection of items
- Once a crate is filled, the items would be locked in the crate, with the value of that crate is crunched based on the type of items and their rarity, with and added X% off
- Once items are locked in, they cannot be changed
- This is where everything starts to get rather complicated. In order for the Armis Crate to work, every item that you pick would have a set value. Such as if its a legendary helm, its 250 credits, or if its a epic visor, its 125 credits, and so forth. From what I’ve seen in the store, 343 did a very poor job at pricing items. An example would be taking 2 different $10 bundles with a helmet in each, but one bundle has 2 shoulders, a chest, and coating, but another would have 4 weapon emblems, another coating, and a stance. I could be wrong on number crunching, but you never get anything that’s “here’s JUST this helmet and attachments for 500 credits” or “here’s just a bundle of Rare-themed weapon mods for your AR for 250” and so forth.
- Because of this, I am gonna attempt to make a table system for everything sometime in the future. I would be basically attempting to uproot an entire game economy to make something work.
- In regards to the X%, this would have to coincide with the issue above.
- Because of the rarity system that is set, as well as possibly each cosmetic piece has a “value” (EX: you can say helmets and shoulders are more valuable compared to cloves and knees. Or vehicle mods are more valuable than weapon mods, etc.), crates unfortunately cannot be 1 set price like 15 bucks
- Like if I can be real for a sec, it would be rad if every item had no rarity, which makes everything on the same playing field. Tho again as said before items probably have an internal value to them, like as said, helmets are more valuable than gloves to the player.
- Once the player buys a key to open an Armis Crate, the items are not given right away. Items would have a challenge or set of challenges connected with them in order to unlock.
- These challenges ALSO give XP to the season.
- Xp value could be marked up, however I feel that that is borderline Pay to Win…borderline though since it’s not technically that.
- If the player chooses not to buy a key for that crate, the crate would be stored until a key is purchased with no expiration date.
- Regarding the item selection for each Armis Crate, items that can be selected are randomly generated for that week. This way players who missed out on something can get it back in a later crate.
- Once a crate is filled, the items would be locked in the crate, with the value of that crate is crunched based on the type of items and their rarity, with and added X% off
- Certain items such as shoulder plates are still bundled together, however they count as 2. Weapon emblems are bundled together as well. This is to not overstuff the selection with the same thing
Possible changes that 343 would change if they considered this
- They cut the whole challenge set aspect of it
- They reduce the amount of items for selection
- Value of crate is set to 1 value