By: Daniel Kendle

In a lot of multiplayer video games you’ll find 2 types of micro-transactional models: loot boxes and battle passes. They both have good qualities, but both also have negative ones as well. As someone who has experienced both, I’m here to answer the burning question: which is worse? Or, more importantly, which is better?

On that note I must say that I’m not the biggest fan of FPS shooters, in which these two models are most commonly found across gaming. I’m more of a fan of single-player games, and online battle royales aren’t really my thing, so take this article with a grain of salt.

To start, let’s give an overview of both options. Both loot boxes and battle passes involve you spending real-world currency to purchase various items that either affect gameplay or are purely cosmetic. However, how you go around receiving those items differs.

Loot Boxes are 1-use purchases that automatically give you some item or cosmetic. There are different types of boxes, with some games having a randomized system of boxes, and others not. When buying one, they usually only have 1 or 2 items, so you can expect to have differently-priced boxes for different rarities of stock.

Battle Passes are much different in that after taking your money, you don’t receive some reward immediately. Instead, you have a roadmap of unlockables that, after playing more of the game, you can unlock more for free. Many passes have free roads that have less items and lower quality in terms of looks. Also, many games have different “seasons” of battle passes, where you’ll get a new set of unlockables, sometimes themed around something different. These don’t come at any extra cost if you want the free gimmes, but if you want the road with the higher-quality items, you have to pay again.

Now that we have an idea of what each of our options look like, we can get into their upsides – and issues.

Starting with loot boxes, the one big upside they have is that they don’t take time to get. Battle passes have you play more of the game in conjunction with the pass, and therefore take a lot of time to keep progressing. Meanwhile, loot boxes are simple, automatic transaction models that either give you exactly what you want or a chance to, getting something else instead.

However, the issues stemming from these boxes are from this simplicity. One big thing is that for a lot of games you can’t necessarily get the exact item you want. This’ll be the last time I discuss this, but a bunch of loot boxes have a loot pool that the game randomly chooses from for your item, which can make your spent money either wasted or used for something you didn’t need. It’s also not that fun; a 1-1 purchase for whatever you want – or something close to that – doesn’t provide much in the way of interacting with the game more so than your wallet.

Next is battle passes. I’d say that there are 2 big pluses to these systems. The first is that having to work through the game, playing matches and whatnot, has you actually using the game. This is in contrast to loot boxes’ transactional module. The second is that you get more content for generally less-expensive prices, even if the cosmetics and items you earn aren’t able to be hand-picked.

However, there’s also a couple of problems with battle passes. For one thing, while the dull currency exchanging of loot boxes doesn’t give much in the way of game interaction, the ease can’t be understated. Imagine if a game you’re playing has you get weapons by defeating enemies, dropping only every few hundred kills. Well then, it’d be a slog to get through, and being able to simply buy the desired item is too convenient. This is the big obstacle with battle passes; playing the game over and over to work your way to nodes on a path can be monotonous and lengthy.

Nowadays we see battle passes more often used in games than loot boxes, so I’d say that the gaming industry has chosen their favored model. Personally, I’d say that both are better in different games, with loot boxes being best in games with gameplay focused more on repeatable gameplay loops, like many mobile games. Meanwhile, battle passes are seemingly best in longer campaigns, like shooters and open-world systems. Not that you can’t have a battle pass in a mobile game or loot boxes in longer campaigns, as hundreds have proven they’re perfectly viable options. However, I find that loot boxes are best in shorter experiences that can be easily picked up, and battle passes in either longer narratives or more complex systems.

If I had to pick a favorite, I’d say I prefer battle passes due to their inherent allowance of game interaction. I mean, why did you buy the pass in the first place? To play the game!

Of course, you can have instances where boxes and passes don’t work at all. A loot box in a single-player RPG would be decently-strange, and as for battle passes…

Yikes.