The popular rocket-powered car football game Rocket League has removed loot boxes from the game. A reason to celebrate? Apparently not.
What’s new in Rocket League: With the new update that was released on Thursday, Rocket League has said goodbye to its own chests, or “Crates”.
These were effectively loot boxes, from which players could randomly draw new items such as paints, goal celebrations, cars, and more. Now they have disappeared and have been replaced by transparent “Blueprints.” A step that had been long announced – and was already criticized back then. Now the mood among players is indeed at its lowest – but why?
Blueprints replace Crates – will everything be different?
How it was before: To understand what the problem is, you first need to look at the old system. The boxes you received after games, for example, were initially free. However, to open them, you had to buy keys. These cost on average about one euro each – depending on how many you bought, it could get cheaper.
Before opening a crate, you could see which items could be inside. So much was revealed. However, what ultimately came out was open. Randomly, the crate would spit out an item – with luck, also one of the really rare ones. These items could also be traded with other players. Thus, a large trading market emerged in Rocket League.
This is how Rocket League looks now: This random system is now history. Rocket League now has “Blueprints” instead of crates. Players who still had crates received instead those blueprints, which clearly show which item is behind them.
To craft them, players now need to buy “Credits” instead of keys and pay with those. But here’s the catch: The prices of the objects are partly very high.
This is the problem: 100 Credits correspond to about one euro in the new system and are, like the keys, more expensive or cheaper depending on the quantity. If you pay 9.99 euros, you get 1,100 Credits. That corresponds to about 10 to 11 keys – and thus 10-11 opened crates and therefore items.
The probability of drawing something useful or at least good for trading with so many keys was quite good. Especially the market made up for a lot. What do you get now for 1,100 Credits?
The answer is: Not too much. Because the prices in the new item shop as well as for the blueprints are high. New Infinium wheels, for example, cost 1,400 Credits, the import chassis Fennec 1,200 Credits. The import chassis “Twinzer” can be crafted for 800 Credits.
How players react to the new system
This is what the community says: In the Rocket League Subreddit, the community is not enthusiastic at all. Many are put off by the high prices in the shop. The complaints have become so rampant that the moderators have temporarily created a dedicated post to keep the subreddit more organized – which was also poorly received, leading to this step being reversed.
“Don’t pay these insane prices,” demands a post that received a lot of support: “It should be clear that $20 for some item in any game is more of a joke than a Lego MMO.”
Apart from the fact that the poster “pmorgan726” was pointed out that such a game actually exists, he received a lot of support for his words: “Please don’t make excuses for them. But no one should open blueprints for more than 100 Credits before something changes.”
The frustration seems to be deep seated at the moment. Because actually, removing randomness is a good thing. But the prices compared to before, when you could even get the best items for one euro with luck, just don’t add up: “I understand that Psyonix deserves to make money with this game. But this is too much. I love this game, but it’s a shame that the company is selling itself on such a radical level.”
Does Epic play a role? The new shop reminds many players of the Fortnite system that Epic Games implemented. Epic had acquired Psyonix, which already caused concern back then. At least part of the frustration is also directed towards Epic: “People buy skins for $16 and they thought it would be the same here.” For extremely strong items, the user “huntsee” envisions high prices: “But $14 for unpainted Infiniums? Ha. They messed up big time.”
Players are also now worried about the trading system. How will the situation develop in the coming weeks?
Loot boxes are often a contentious topic for many players. This time, it was the way of removal that caused anger. However, here the situation looks almost the other way around:
