You know what I hate with just this insane fervor? Boxes, crates, whatever you want to call them. I mean I'm a nerd and I do rage sometime, but crates make me ooze nerdrage, because there is no reason at all to treat a consumer base to an idea that they need to gamble in order to get loot that sucks. Ugh! I can't stand it, just even writing this is making me want to throw a controller through the T.V. and take ten arrows to the knee. All this talk about H1Z1 airdrops just has me ready to go off about it, really, because I don't like that either, pay for a random box that you may or may not get, full of a random assortment of goods that some other jerk can steal because otherwise it's pay-to-win, but no matter what it's paying for a random chance, no matter how you roll it.

I almost want to form a religion around the idea that we will not accept these crates or keys or boxes or gifts and any game with them in their store should be boycotted. I mean, no one is obviously going to do that, but something has to be done about it. It's so annoying to see how microtransactions are so much about risk now than actual purchases. In Heroes of the Storm or League of Legends, if I buy a hero I keep a hero. If I buy a skin I keep a skin. I get what I purchase. In any game with a crate, I buy the crate and get a handful of guaranteed items (maybe) like XP potions and whatnot, then I have a chance at a limited rare item. 

Which would be awesome if I was trying to play heroclix and each bag had a chance of giving me a random dude that could be the one I want and if it's not, it is tradable for others. That's kinda cool. I don't like it, but it's a reasonable use of the open something and get some random bits for it. However, in any MMO or any game, including even DotA 2, that hosts a box of goodies for you to unlock, there is no reason to just not sell the rare items for whatever the effective cost would be. 

Oh, wait, maybe the effective cost is several hundred bucks? That's nice, if each box is $2.99 and there is a one in one hundred chance for your item to drop (which is good odds for some items), you're looking at $299 for the item on average (assuming you open 100 boxes). Of course, statistics will tell us you'll get the item between 1 and however many boxes, since you could still open a thousand and not see your item drop. 

What's the point in just not selling the items for their value? I mean, okay, the allure is that the boxes/crates/keys are like $2.99 on average and that's the price of a cup of coffee in the morning from whatever coffee establishment charges as much, but that's just one box. We all are not so stupid to understand that we should buy, buy, buy to get what we want. 

Just put the items in the store and let the boxes be some kind of random loot thing, not the venue in which we are required to go through for some of these skins, weapons, armor, etc. I refuse to buy these crates and keys and will maintain and continue to refuse to do so, because there is no value in gambling for me. If I want to gamble, I'll go to a casino and use my money for a real life chance to actually increase my value (although casinos are still a losing option). 

I don't have much more to say on the subject - remove the crates and keys from your games developers, give us the chance to just buy the stuff in the crate, and stop letting real life cash turn into RNG. It's stupid, it's dumb, it's borderline exploitive, and for all intents and purposes I promise people ARE willing to pay say $20 or $30 for some rare skin or rare item, far more money than you'll get from the few people who are insane and/or wealthy enough to buy, buy, buy those crates. 

Oh and while we're at it - I hate timers too and anything that requires real life cash to decrease the time to perform some inane task in a game. I refuse to play games with timers anymore. I'm sorry I'm just not going to pay you money to produce something faster. If it doesn't have an active element to it, I don't want involved. Garrisons are pretty much the highlight of me messing around with timers. 

As far as airdrops, I do want to make the quick mention that as far as this topic goes, they're something that you kind of don't really have to buy or bother buying, because when you die you lose everything anyway, so why would you walk into that? Ya know, sometimes you don't have to pay for something in the store and those that do are buying into a losing proposition.