It's a very reasonable ask since we even have the models for the F2P diskguns already in the games assets so other diskguns must have been a plan at some point.
Realistically, the game is old enough that gatekeeping a type of playstyle behind a 10+ million crown paywall at its most accessible. Also, beyond the surface-level argument that it is something only for the end-game rich players, it should be apparent that there's a clear restriction on how many diskguns will exist, unlike pretty much every other weapon/non-reskin equip. I'm glazing over Somnambulist's because a trinket speed boost is evidently different from a unique gun line that is otherwise entirely inaccessible.

If it's not in the cards, I would like to know now whilst expectations and ambitions are high so our hopes don't get too high.

Calling the disk guns a "different playstyle" is a hilarious understatement. They're not just different, they're not even just the strongest option, they're gamebreaking. It was already mentioned enemies don't react to their projectiles the same way as other projectile weapons. And their damage output is so obscene they make the game less fun for everyone else, they trivialize gameplay by deleting health bars at long range before anyone else can meaningfully contribute.

Anyway, yeah, 100% in favor of making gameplay options available to players that don't have hundreds to thousands of dollars to burn on entertainment. I can't actually bring myself to make any real money purchases as-is, I just feel guilty at the thought because of how aggressive and predatory this game's monetization methods are. I don't support lootboxes, I don't support gambling, I don't support p2w, I don't support FOMO. I can barely bring myself to recommend SK to my friends because of how prevalent these things are, it's embarrassing

@Bopp - I'm familiar with the statistical approach that Reydann is using here, and it's not that you're wrong about the expected value, but the original poster is trying to make a value judgement explicitly clear.

My math's giving me 2321 boxes (99.7% success rate (three standard deivations about the average of all results; binomial trial p=0.0025 for X >= 1)) with 1840 giving 99.001% exactly as Reydann stated.

What that means - broadly - is "If every single player spent enough money to buy 1840 boxes, 1% would never get the item." My test is the same, except the conclusion is "...0.3% would never get the item."

If every player bought 277 boxes, only half of the players that did would get an orbitgun. If every player bought 14 lootboxes, only 3% of those players would get an orbitgun.

Temptation is to conclude that playercount exists in a discrete space not a continuous one and this assessment isn't exactly realistic because of the axioms being applied to start with, i.e. "It's not reasonable to expect EVERY PLAYER wants an orbitgun, surely."

But if it's best in slot, that's... kind of the case, yeah. Regardless, that point is moot anyway; pessimistic or not, the central criticism is that "regardless of every player wanting one, it shouldn't be impossible for every player to get one without spending a LOT of money." The point isn't what it is to you or to me, the point is that there's a fair chance - a fifty-fifty chance - of someone who REALLY WANTS ONE not getting one after spending a thousand dollars trying, by burning through 277 boxes. It's an assessment of GH's responsibility to avoiding creating a game that feeds into some exceedingly dark patterns. That responsibility to the playerbase is at the very minimum, valuable optics.

I don't want to get into the ethics questions, I don't think it's a world-endingly serious issue, but it would be nice to know that the one guy in the playerbase with no impulse control isn't at risk of emptying his bank account for something he really wants. GH cannot stop that hypothetical player doing silly things with the rest of their entertainment, but as has been raised by other posters here, they CAN avoid the marketing headache of players saying things like "just ignore the nasty parts" by assuring players that they're trying to remove the "nasty parts" altogether, whatever shape they might take.

EDIT: Also, huge, HUGE shoutouts to Reydann for making this clear at all - I hadn't actually bothered poking around with stats calculators to really explore my feelings on the game's loot system, but seeing it laid bare really does make for an exceptionally valuable discussion opportunity and I'm really glad to see it being approached with the care it deserves.

A mechanism that might curtail this overspending might be for lootboxes to come with tokens packed into them that can be traded for a guaranteed "pick" off of the item's loot table, with token count associated with intended rarity, and this can impose a hard cap on the amount of boxes a player is *expected* to buy for a rare item OR INDEED a full set, and it potentially facilitates more spending over a broader number of players with each player spending less personally because a player might get to complete their collection.

Any sort of pity system would be big for gambleboxes, yeah. Even PSO2 has something in place for that

Guaranteed UVs by any means would be massive as well; never been a fan of them being chance-only

These topics related to item rarity always seem to end up in the same place. I've never seen a diskgun, either used in the arcade or sold in the auctionhouse, so for my part, I genuinely don't know what could be so impressive about this. I have no horse in the race, but I still want to talk about the part I do understand.

When a player who owns the item talks about wanting to "retain its value," the tacit admission balled up in that is that the item has more value as a trading piece than it does in gameplay, and that's sort of a dire condemnation of the quality of the purchase. It's actually not fair on players who *have* the diskgun already, in a way - they're being asked to be okay with the fact that they had to pay a lot of money or time for something they will happily say "you don't really need one" about. Like, you had to pay this much money for something that's "only alright, I guess?"

And if it is quite fun to use, and you're not willing to part with it because it's very fun but much too expensive to blithely hand off at loss, that means the only option left is to buy one with your own money if you want to join in with that fun for prices already mentioned, or meet the demands of a reseller who very reasonably feels like they should be able to get a lot more out of the game for how much they spent. Nobody seems to be winning, here, save for maybe Grey Havens.

Either way, stating "it's a betrayal if the item is worth less now" speaks of dissatisfaction with its price, surely. "I want to get my money's worth, which partly implies one day having to give this item up to extract the remainder of its value that it, itself, didn't provide?"

Forgive me Reydann, for perhaps putting words in your mouth, but I think the statement is "The focus of this debate continues to be whether it's fair to expect anyone to put up with these demands *if* they want one, and whether we should be okay with a type of play expression being priced so high, no matter how minimal that change in play expression is. It actually doesn't matter if you're a merchant or a whale or a freeplayer - we are *all* being impacted by that cost one way or another."

It's not about the diskgun, you could switch out for literally any top-tier buy-only item here - the post is about lootbox practices, and the possible perception of a new player that they are expected to buy power. If they are any more powerful at all, then there will be a subset of players who value optimal gear who will feel as though they're being made fun of by someone. It just happens that the Mixmaster is turning out to be the posterchild of this discussion because it is, according to some, "the most differentest-est." I'll have to take everyone's word for it.

Heck, I feel bad for the merchants who will potentially have to put up with an influx of new players with no context, calling for heads on pikes because they're "price fixing" when they're just trying to keep the asking price *fair* for what it cost the merchants in the first place. We're probably going to see that kind of behaviour over something as humble as a Voltedge or Electron Vortex, never mind something like a Mixmaster.

To GH's credit, they are already making changes to the value of items that cost actual money, if only by proxy, and only starting with something comparatively quite cheap. This isn't even *close* to the asking price of the Mixmaster, but the OCH Sword and Bomb combo are now nominally free for everyone.

I feel like the most constructive thing to ask at this juncture is "what would you want in return as a Mixmaster owner, if GH told you "we are making diskguns and orbitguns craftable TOMORROW, no ifs-ands-or-buts"?" Somehow I don't think CUBE membership and a thousand slime coins will cut it. A "legacy" tag and a serial number? A unique cosmetic effect? I dunno, does it have some kind of disco sparkle effect or something that a craftable version shouldn't?

Like, we really can have both - if everyone who has a Mixmaster or whatever unanimously agrees, "yeah, we can settle for this being a very rare unique variant with a craftable non-unique entering the market." If that's not good enough, then we're left with the admission that the thing that makes it special is indeed its power, and that's just proving Reydann right. All they seem to want is a solution to the access problem and if that can be addressed without hurting anyone else, that's the ideal focus of the conversation, right?

Yes, I want mixmasters/orbitguns to be buyable for a fixed price. Offering them only twice per year is fine, as many players will take years to save up the needed crowns anyway.

I would like to see the price much lower than 10 million crowns, but maybe that's just my being a baby. I don't know what Black Kat Raiments actually sell for, but getting one requires six Margrel trips, which in my time were charged 400,000 crowns each, for a total cost of 2.4 million crowns. For comparison.

If mixmasters/orbitguns are kept rare because they are mechnically broken or unbalanced, then I'd like to see them fixed and balanced.