The randomness could be fun! For players who got hooked, though, you can see how these loot boxes could've pushed them to spend. For players like me, who stuck around the multiplayer a month or two after launch, nothing about the card packs felt insidious. You could get them out of cheaper loot packs but always needed them on-hand for missions, meaning you often needed to buy those loot packs instead of saving up for pricier ones with rarer drops.Ī perfect score on the Bronze or Silver difficulty levels would net you 17,300 or 34,375 credits, so you could at least earn the points to unlock card packs pretty quickly. Equipment and supply items were single-use consumables like medi-gel and incendiary rounds.The Reserves pack, the best way to unlock characters including two guaranteed rares, cost 99,000 credits or 240 BioWare points ($2.99).The cheapest pack to guarantee at least one rare was the Spectre pack: 60,000 credits or 160 BioWare points ($1.99).Almost all character unlocks were rares, and many stronger weapons were rares or ultra-rares, which had low drop rates (7.5% for ultra-rares, and only in the more expensive packs).ME3's card packs took all the weapons and character customization from the campaign and doled them out at random, making it genuinely exciting to unlock an Asari adept or a Krogan soldier. I played Magic the Gathering in the early 2000s, but Mass Effect 3 was the first videogame I played that took the concept of card packs and stuffed it into something that was otherwise familiar. We didn't even call them loot boxes at the time.
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People weren't mad about loot boxes in 2012. It was probably the best tacked-on multiplayer mode of the era, and it's surreal to look back on it now as ground zero for the most-hated game monetization gimmick of the decade.
![mass effect 3 multiplayer weapons mass effect 3 multiplayer weapons](https://i2.wp.com/bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/masseffect3-19.jpg)
![mass effect 3 multiplayer weapons mass effect 3 multiplayer weapons](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/masseffect/images/6/65/ME3_Saber_Assault_Rifle.png)
But Mass Effect 3's shooting was a big step forward, and it wisely stuck to co-op over PvP, recreating the fun team combinations you'd have with your AI squad in singleplayer in a mode you could play with friends. No one I know was looking forward to the multiplayer mode before release. It was also, against all odds, really good. Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was, in concept, a transparent attempt to stretch out the game's campaign and to milk players for more money after they slapped down their $60.