> If you are old enough to remember coin operated arcades, they operated on the same principle. Just one more coin and you can beat this boss! It really hurt the game mechanic in a lot of cases, but I'm sure it improved profitability.

I beg to differ. Most of the arcade games of yore were gated on skill; you could avoid having to pop in another quarter if you played well enough, and that was where the fun came from.

Where is the skill and gameplay involved in spinning a virtual roulette wheel until a powerful enough unit or item pops out to let you advance to the next level of gameplay? And, of course, the answer is that there is none; it's merely taking advantage of those prone to gambling addiction.

They were based on skill, but you could also note that the skill requirements varied in ways that were designed to encourage even unskilled players to feel like they could advance with "just one more".

I get your point about the addition of randomness, though. Its an interesting element and it does change things relative to the arcade scenario. Personally, I think that it is largely there to make the system not feel as much like pay-to-win as it actually is.

> I beg to differ. Most of the arcade games of yore were gated on skill; you could avoid having to pop in another quarter if you played well enough, and that was where the fun came from.

Sure, but that's a rather charitable way to describe it. What you're talking about is basically breaking or mastering the system by sheer force of will. And there is fun in that. But how much did it cost you to get to the point where you were able to play longer than a few minutes?

Arcade games were specifically designed to extract as many quarters as possible from players. That was the stated goal. If a game wasn't able to extract N quarters per hour, it didn't last long.

> What you're talking about is basically breaking or mastering the system by sheer force of will. And there is fun in that. But how much did it cost you to get to the point where you were able to play longer than a few minutes?

Ah, but how is that different from, say, swimming, golf, tennis, or racing where one must rent a course or court in order to practice their skill? Yes, arcade games weren't called quarter munchers for nothing but, for the most part, they offered a reasonably fair deal.

In contrast, there's no analogy to be made between those sports and loot-box based game. One doesn't toss money into a sports equipment store until one randomly gets a drastically better golf club.

While there were arcade games gated on skill, I think there were plenty that weren't.

I'll admit that it may just be that I don't have the proficiency required, but after playing it again recently it seems that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was simply designed to quickly drain your health as soon as you got to a boss.