What do you get when you buy loot boxes for $100 in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4? Apparently not much, as a tester has now found out.
Since their introduction, loot boxes in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 have been regularly controversial. Some fans condemn them as a rip-off, while others accept or defend them as purely optional cosmetic content, leading to ongoing debates on Reddit and other discussion platforms.
After Treyarch recently made adjustments to the loot boxes, the US site Charlie Intel conducted an experiment. They wanted to see for themselves if the $100 on the black market was really worth it and stocked up on plenty of loot boxes.
The loot box experiment went as follows: Tester Jeffrey Mizrahi, an author for Charlie Intel, acquired virtual currency “Call of Duty” points worth $100.
For a total of 13,000 points (including bonuses for the purchased amount), he was able to purchase 65 so-called reserve crates. These are the purchasable version of the loot boxes, which can each contain three reserve cases, meaning three different cosmetic items and weapons as well as specialists from past seasons.
Alternatively, these loot boxes can be earned in the form of individual reserve cases through Blackout and the regular multiplayer. Even there, you get one item from a case.
Loot Boxes for $100 – What’s Inside
This is what the tester got from the crates: By opening these reserve crates, Mizrahi received a total of 195 items.
What particularly frustrated him: 62 of them were duplicates – items he had already obtained.
Since every third duplicate is rolled into an item he does not yet possess, he ended up with 41 items remaining as duplicates. Thus, ultimately 21% of the $100 were a waste for him personally, according to Mizrahi. He actually started the shopping spree with two duplicates.
But even the content of the reserve crates shocked the tester, according to his own words. Almost 80% of all received items were common or rare. The majority consisted of outfits for the specialists.
Items with the rarest and most coveted quality level, Ultra, came to him with a probability of about 0.1%. Yet these are the ones most buyers are after.
Among the coveted signature weapons, special cosmetic variations of common firearms, he received only one single one – and that with 195 items.
So if you manage to pull an Ultra item from the crates, you can consider yourself very lucky, according to the author.
This is the tester’s conclusion: The conclusion of the experiment is disappointing. The biggest problem the tester had with the contents of the loot boxes: most of it is simply useless.
He understands that there must also be items of lower quality, so that the rarer items feel special and desired. But with numerous cosmetics, he simply feels cheated.
For example, with many epic weapon skins, where the same paint job is simply unlocked for other weapons. This means you get some skins for weapons you never use.
The same applies to many specialist outfits. Numerous “different” outfits for the individual characters look so similar that they could almost pass for duplicates.
However, the biggest realization of the experiment is that $100 will definitely not unlock everything the reserves have to offer – not even close.
This applies especially to the rarest and most coveted items. Even if some crates were worth their money – most simply feel like a pure waste of money. Such a high investment is therefore not really worthwhile – even if the results may vary individually.
What do you think? Would you have expected more rewards of the highest quality level with such an investment?
