The Big Reveal

As you might expect, the grand reveal is the most important part of any lootbox. This is where the player experiences limitless euphoria or bitter disappointment.

Ironically, there’s not too much to say about this. The boxes we’ve looked at so far are great examples of fun reveal moments; Hearthstone’s slow card-turn, FIFA’s staggered reveal of country, then position, then team, and finally the player’s name and portrait.

So, to change things up, let’s look at a few that I think are bad at this:

The infamous lootbox of Star Wars Battlefront 2

Star Wars Battlefront 2 drew so much ire in 2017 for offering powerful player upgrades in their lootboxes. They got slammed for this choice and, in turn, made some changes. It didn’t mean much though. What’s staggering is that despite this huge focus on a microtransaction model, the animation sucks. The holographic reveal has no impact, the color codes aren’t vibrant or exciting, and most packs came with intangible junk anyway. Boring.

I don’t remember this scene from Saving Private Ryan.

Call of Duty WWII had you call in ‘Supply Drops’ in a player populated hubspace between matches. This was a pretty transparent mechanism to show players who weren’t buying boxes just how much fun everyone else was having with their loot. The card flip lacks impact for me, and there’s no real drumroll beyond waiting for the cards to turn. Not great.

No Llamas were harmed in the making of Fortnite. Or so I’m told.

Aesthetically, I actually really like Fortnite’s loot-llamas. It’s also a relatively generous loot model, although it loses any possible browny points by having tangible upgrades locked behind purchasable lootboxes. Overall, it’s a creative execution that lacks any punch. The loot slows down the rarer it is, which actually feels more tedious than it does exciting.

That’s a big box for a little gun, Sergeant.

Battlefield 1’s crates are a prerendered animation followed by a static image of the weapon skin you get. It’s kind of cool the first two or three times, but once that delight wears off it feels more like an afterthought. Snore.

The Power of Choice

Something that’s come up relatively recently is giving players choices in their loot. There isn’t too many examples of this, but I did want to showcase a few games that use this technique. I think it’s a fun, pro-player way to create additional engagement in these sort of random drop systems.

Using the card backs to display rarity and type is a nice twist on a drumroll mechanic.

When you get a ‘Keg’ in Gwent, the fifth card in the pack is one you choose from a set of three. This is a great way to solve an ongoing problem with TCG games, where players rarely have the ability to purchase specific cards ad-hoc.

In Fortnite, at a certain tier of loot, the rarest item in a lootbox will be given to the player as a choice of two equally rare items. This is often between two weapon types, or two new heroes. It’s a nice way to make the loot more meaningful to the player, as they can choose something relevant to them.