Who here is an actual avid player for BO4? Because I play it a lot, and I can tell you that these loot boxes doesn't change anything nor give an advantage when I play (and from what I've read). It's really simple, you can either play a lot to earn free loot boxes or you can just buy them, granted buying them gives you more at a time but it's only fair since you buy them. I personally wont buy them and I will still continue to play the heck out of it.

Also some may think that the Season Pass isnt worth it, but personally the 4 extra zombie maps always provided me with +100hrs of extra zombie game time so I find that alone makes it worth it, and the extra MP maps are just bonuses.

If buying these loot boxes gave you a huge advantage of winning then yes I'd be against that, and if anything then it'd only be for the MP mode. Zombie mode you're on a team so loot boxes wont benefit, and Black Out mode everyone starts off with nothing and have to run around find whatever random weapons you get, so also wont benefit from loot boxes.

To those that complain about this, then you might as well complain about other things like buying Yugioh/MTG packs of cards in that you may have to spend a lot to get that rare card you want to have a better deck than your competitors. Or even in like Pokemon Go where you need to buy more raid passes if you're desperately trying to raid legendary pokemons to get a shiny etc... Is there a difference between those and loot boxes in games?

There's just so many other products is this world that pretty much follows this market strategy but on a different medium yet people just need to keep complaining about this particular one. At the end of the day nobody is forcing you to buy these things.

Your example doesn't even compare :

1. Trading cards game had always the benefits of the physical value you get from the cards you buy and also the fact they can be actually sold back for money. Lootboxes on the other end no, they're just an amount of numeric data you unlock for a given amount without having the outright possession of it since you possess nothing on the digital side of thing, the compagny does however.

2. Pokémon Go is ... Free-to-play. COD is not.

Wanna imitate other free-to-play models ? You go free-to-play then. There's absolutely no excuse for them doing so then just pure scummery and greed, face it.

My brother that I share my account with bought it and I’ve played Blackout and a small amount of MP. I think per usual most of the uproar is from people who haven’t played it and have no idea about how the ecosystem works. 

Its pretty funny, for years CoD was the franchise that even in its heyday was very hesitant to adopt some of the monetization avenues other franchises had, and now they seem to support literally all of them lol.

Your example doesn't even compare :

1. Trading cards game had always the benefits of the physical value you get from the cards you buy and also the fact they can be actually sold back for money. Lootboxes on the other end no, they're just an amount of numeric data you unlock for a given amount without having the outright possession of it since you possess nothing on the digital side of thing, the compagny does however.

2. Pokémon Go is ... Free-to-play. COD is not.

Wanna imitate other free-to-play models ? You go free-to-play then. There's absolutely no excuse for them doing so then just pure scummery and greed, face it.

Also, you can buy or trade for specific cards, you can't do that with loot box items. 

Appart from the psychological tricks used to make you unable to act loggicaly and act right in the hands of what they expect you to do then, yeah you're missing the point. The need they create within you with these cool skins, equipments ,weapons and the rest is there to make you feel as if you would be missing on content by not buying it. No need to hold a gun at your head when they know the intricacies of psychological and how to prey into feable minds. 

And to answer the first question, yes, it is completly tolerable since it's the only way for the game to be sustainable financially, a game like COD sells itself with a prenium price tag upfront like any games on the market. No need for further monetization, specially for franchises that sell upon millions and millions of copies.

Plz, tell me. Why would you defend the immoral approach of greed ?

Here me out guys, I'm not stating anything about the game except the trashy economic systems it is utilizing to exploit it's customers at the maximum capacity it can, need I remind you, you already paid UPFRONT ! Nothing justifies the use of further monetization when you're using a prenium model, the rest is just immoral pure greed.

So you're saying its ok to have loot boxes as long as your game is free-to-play?

People say stuff like Activision and EA are 'greedy'.  Sure they implemented the tool to TRY and get more money out of you but who's decision is it to actually give them your money??  It's not them.

Am I missing something here?  Does loot box mean YOU MUST give them your money?  Like I said this doesn't change the game at all so how is this really affecting you or those that complain about it?  

In reality there's absolutely no excuse for anyone to complain about this period.  Nobody is putting a gun to your head to buy this lol 

But that's only with the help of other parties because you cant get specific cards from buying a pack of cards, just like you cant get a specific item from a loot box.

As for trading, well you can't do that with almost anything digital ie. digital games or movies.

The experience you get from buying a loot box is nothing new that we haven't experienced with other things in the world, so why do some people act like these loot boxes are the worst thing ever created? lol

Bold #1:  You're not missing anything if they give you free loot boxes, your chances of getting something from a free loot box is just the same as buying.  The only difference is that they gave "an option" for those that dont want to put in the time to earn the free loot boxes at a price.

Bold #2: So say like Fornite makes billions and billions of dollars simply because they started out free to play, while BO4 only makes hundreds of millions, does that mean Activision should not be allowed to try and make more money to get to Fortnite's level only because people bought the game already?

Bold #3: I'm not defending anything, I'm looking at this as a business point of view.  Is it really greed if ... 1) you still offer the same feature/items for free and 2) you provide an option to choose to buy them at a faster pace IF the consumer wants to.  If nobody is paying for these loot boxes then it's no harm, no foul.  And if Activision sees that nobody is buying then they know that nobody wants this anymore.  Another thing I'm curious to see is that Fortnite and Apex Legends are doing great as a free-to-play, makes me wonder as a business point would Activition provide their Black Out mode to be free to play in the future, or maybe their next Black Out game would be free to.  But if that happens then people would be ok for loot boxes?

Bold #4:  Yes we did pay upfront for the game.  And I was fully aware that I paid for what was said be in the game that I bought:  A MP mode with 14 maps and set of guns and skins, a zombie mode with 2 maps, a battle royale mode etc.  That is the 'premium'.  So why do some people feel entitled to receive more for free after they bought the game? Do you expect Activision to continue to spend the time and money to keep on making new maps, skins, weapons etc just to give for free?  These weren't promised and anybody that bought the game knows/should know that.

Granted just because one company may do it differently but doesn't mean all companies need to follow the same way. That's just business.

Ththing about loot boxes in games that you already pay for is that it changes the design of the game.

iYou can choose to not buy lootboxes but you cannot choose to not have them in the game. This matters because the existence of them negatively effects your gaming experience due to how the game is balanced against you to try to get you to buy lootboxes.

It's like that with all micro-transactions which is what makes them so annoying and anti consumer. For example the last gun to unlock in the tiers system would take 50+ hours to unlock without spending money. We already know this wouldn't be the case without micro-transactions and would probably take a couple hours max to unlock if you couldn't buy them.

Its just always annoying when someone says "you don't have to spend money" when it doesn't take much to realise just how much their presence alone affects the gaming experience.

It makes me miss the days when wll the cosmetic items etc you could just buy outright with money. But lootboxes make it so these things are more expensive. If theirs a new costume pack instead of selling it for £5 they can make the probability such that if someone wanted to get them all it could take up to or more than £50 to randomly get them all. It's a disgusting business practice.

(Wow the keyboard typing on this site on smartphones is broken as hell) .