The growing trend of games moving away from loot boxes continue. This time, Rocket League, the soccer/car crossover e-Sports title, has ditched loot boxes in its newest update, 1.70 (also known as the Blueprint Update).
Recently, governments across the world have started enacting policies against loot boxes in digital games. The Netherlands and Belgium have started investigations into loot boxes, leading game developers into disallowing players from those countries in opening loot boxes. In Asia, China has forced developers to reveal the odds of receiving each individual item.
Massive Changes to The Game's Economy
Crates, the official name of Rocket League's loot boxes, have been replaced with the titular Blueprints. These Blueprints drop after online matches and show a player a specific item that they can craft with credits.
With the update, players who previously held Crates and Keys had those items converted. Crates became unrevealed Blueprints, which are similar to the old Crates. These Blueprints need to be revealed before they can be used to craft whichever item they're displaying, or before they can be traded. Keys are converted to Credits with each Key being converted to 100–130 credits. Item trading has also had a slight revamp. Decryptors are also converted to Bonus Gift, which is free to open.
Players can trade individual items for either credits or items (credit-to-credit trading isn't allowed). After a successful trade, players will be put on a trade hold where they are unable to "trade Credits, items built from Blueprints with Credits during the trade hold, or items from Pro Tiers of Rocket Pass purchased with Credits during the trade hold."
An Item Shop as Well
The new update also brings the Item Shop to the game. For those who have played Fortnite before, the item shop will be no stranger to them. Psyonix, developers of Rocket League (which were also purchased by Epic recently), will be offering limited-time items that are available for either 24 or 48 hours only. After this, said items will be replaced with an entirely different item. The update has also removed the player's ability to buy Premium DLC from the Steam store. Those who previously purchased said DLC will still keep them. The contents of the premium DLC are expected to appear in the Item Shop in the foreseeable future.
The update also brought a new season pass and a new competitive season to the game.
An Unhappy playerbase
However, not everyone's happy with this change to the game's economic system. Over at Reddit, players are complaining about the absurd prices that the new Blueprint economy has brought. Premium DLC cars, which were once available for purchase for two dollars each, are now worth upwards of $8 each.
In a post on reddit, user famouseven compiled a list of changes that are aimed at adjusting the prices of individual prices in the new Blueprint economy. The users of the forum seem to agree with him for the most part, with the post garnering over 2300 upvotes and has been given several Reddit gildings.
SEE ALSO: Nintendo, Sony, And Microsoft Will Require Games To Reveal Odds For Loot Boxes
