Thanks for taking the time to reply in such a thoughtful manner!

> I determined that at the highest number of packs that you can buy (70 packs, i.e. $100), you unlock nearly every cosmetic item in the game except for the rarest ones (which you actually unlock very few of).

It is these rare items that tend to drive the addictive behavior behind loot boxes. Is there a particular reason you feel like you want to have these rare items be so hard to obtain?

If you don't mind me asking, what is your target revenue per player? $100 seems pretty high...

> By allowing direct real-money purchases of individual cosmetic items, I'd have to skew prices so heavily to make the same average revenue that I don't think players would want to purchase them. Also, there wouldn't be the fun or mystery of opening a salvage pack.

By using a randomized loot box (especially one without published odds) you are effectively tricking players into paying more than they would otherwise wanted to. This seems abusive to me.

> For any game to be monetarily viable, it needs to pull in an average of $X for each player. Any free-to-play game (including freemium but not including something like shareware) skews how that average is formed because typical free-to-play games are lucky to have 5% of their playerbase spending any amount of money.

There are monetization choices that I think do a good job of balancing that distribution. Loot boxes is not one of them, nor is any mechanism by which players are given the option to repeatedly purchase consumable items that aid progress/grinding. This can actually discourage low-value players from paying since they can't pay enough to make a real difference.

I personally think that one-time purchases for ($5-20) that give a permanent bonus to grinding (10-20% boost to rewards earned by playing) are actually more player friendly. They encourage more players to spend a little bit of money on the game while reassuring them that you will not keep raising the bar and pushing for more money to keep progressing. I will almost always buy a package like this (as long as it is reasonably priced.)

> a large portion of that is from users who already had accounts before the game even launched, likely indicating that those users wanted to support me moreso than get something in the game.

Don't under-estimate this. The desire by fans and serious players to support your game and keep you afloat can be a significant factor in the decision to spend money on your game. Predatory monetization can destroy that goodwill, which will in turn make you more dependent on your whales. When I feel like a game is pushing me to spend money, it decreases my respect for the game and the developers and reduces my desire to support them.

> It's easy to be ethical until challenged, but I'd like to think that if I found users spending ludicrous amounts of money in the game, I'd do something to curb that behavior.

An ethical approach to whales can significantly mitigate the predatory effects of monetization. However, it is also a fairly invisible monetization technique that doesn't do as much to engender goodwill across your player base.

> In short: I don't think that even if you could purchase Botcoin directly would the game be pay-to-win.

P2W comes in a couple of different flavors and doesn't really mean just one thing. There are some heavily P2W games where F2P players struggle to compete and spending money becomes necessary past a certain point of the game. (I think of these games as P2W PvP) (Good matchmaking can push a game that would otherwise fall into this category down the the one below.)

There are also a lot of P2W games that don't disadvantage F2P players directly, but just allow players to pay to progress faster. Any games that allows real money to directly convert to a fully unlocked/upgraded account falls solidly into this category. It sounds like your game is one of these. (I think of these games as P2W PvE) (Games with synchronized server starts that would otherwise fall into this category can easily fall into the above category.)

Then there is the whole spectrum of games that provide some in-game advantage, but limit some forms of progression to gample/grinding.

Finally, there are the games that are truly not at all P2W, where real money purchases can only buy cosmetic items and there is no mechanism to provide any in-game advantage to paying players.

I don't like P2W PvP games. I don't mind P2W PvE games, especially when the montization is well done and the money/grinding ratio is high ($1 to save 100hrs of grinding is unacceptable, $100 to save 1hr of grinding is great).

One of my favorite indy P2W PvE games is Hades' Star which is almost entirely unlockable by spending money, but has an extremely high money/grinding exchange. The game also offers a very reasonable permanent package that provides a 10% boost to a couple of specific things.

I hope your stint on HN gives you a boost and helps you reach a sustainable level of income from Bot Land. Good luck!