Gumball Gachapon/Toy Capsule machines

Whilst playing ball race, the design of the balls had reminded me of toy capsule/gumball machines, more specifically the gachapon machines, which have been implemented into various F2P FPS and MMO games.

I’ve always loved the concept of a virtual capsule machine, and have never seen them implemented in any other game, nor have i seen them implemented well, due to the current iterations of the virtual capsule machines existing solely to make money off of the player base.

My idea is to implement a Spin to Win style item dispenser, but with virtual toy capsules.
Akin to cat-sacks

there could be different levels of capsules which have different a rarity of items for each tier, each having a higher or lower chance of being dispensed based on their tiers, while also having a pool of items each tier pulls from, so its always unpredictable and exciting.

Some designs for the machines could include a more american gumball machine design, being chest high and having a smaller overall footprint, allowing for multiples of them to be placed in a given area, such as the upcoming arcade:


A smaller american design. /

A smaller japanese design./

Or possibly having a larger capsule machine, placed as a small landmark within a location, possibly on the boardwalk or even the arcade./

Items that could be dispensed would be different than that of the items in the cat sacks and Spin to Win, but some ideas include Cosmetic items, Small amounts of Unit Credits, small decorative items for the house, and many other things. Discuss your thoughts and ideas,.

I love this idea!
I think the capsules themselves should definitely contain unique plushes, cosmetics and even small sums of units so even the common items are worth keeping in some sort of collectible way.

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This actually sounds pretty neat! It would be cool if you could get different figures based off of the various gameworlds out of these Gachapon capsules.

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This sound like a perfect Ball Race-themed arcade machine! Honestly, this is fantastic.

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If we ignore the Second life flashbacks it’s giving me, I rather like this idea. And yes, SL had these. Yes, they were terrible.

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Second life had these? I’m curious, how terrible were they?

I remember these in SL, too. They were alright, they kind of sucked in SL because:

  1. You had to spend real money to have a chance of getting something that you wanted.

  2. they costed quite a bit to use, for items that would be way easier and cheaper to buy on their own, such as a tiny donut or some mini dragon wings or something.

  3. There were hundreds of different types of them, they became over-saturated because every marketplace you went to had dozens of them, and the items you got usually weren’t worth it.

  4. It was a really grimy way to milk money out of people and the sellers knew it, especially since most people who play SL will invest money in the game no matter what. There was almost always an option to buy all the variants at once which would cost a ridiculous amount of REAL money, too.

It would work better in an ecosystem such as Tower Unite, since all the currency is virtual and everything is self sustained, there is quite literally nothing to lose in playing spin to win, spending dosh at the slots, or buying 5000 canvases.
In SL you generally ended up paying more for something that you don’t value, and in a game such as SL, it was a reeeeally scummy way to make money. It’s like how if a company stopped selling products directly to the consumer, and started selling “packs” where you would get a random product each time you bought one so you would end up spending more money then you would initially intend to spend.

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Soooo basically the SL variants suffered from the same issues all loot boxes in games do? Not surprising there. Paying real money for only a CHANCE to get what you want is horse shit.

To be honest, the catsacks are going to drive some people crazy do to having only a chance for something you may want, even though they don’t cost real money.

The cat sacks were a thing in GMT and they worked pretty well, no one had any real issues with them, especially since they were entirely optional. Unlike Loot Boxes, the items you get from cat sacks and spin to win are only small things, like a bubble gun or a pile of gold. Loot Boxes in games have become the only way of getting any items in games recently, its like if TU were to add a crate that had a random chair in it, or a couch crate that would give you a random couch. Cat sacks are just small items to spice up the everyday experience and i would imagine the developers discuss what would and wouldn’t be good items to add, just so it doesn’t feel like its essential for you to open cat sacks. Like with spin to win, most of the stuff on the wheel you can just buy on your own, and the items you can only get from the wheel are just small prizes that don’t impact the game much. A bubble gun, a piggy bank, nor a pile of gold are that essential, and with cat-sacks i would imagine the items will fall in the same category of being both fun to have, but not entirely needed.

Yeah, you’re right. I remember the catsacks in GMT not having much in them usually. I’m still a bit worried about the cosmic tier though, as the devs said cosmic tier sacks will have entirely unique items, and they’ll probably be very rare.

From what I can take away from the dev stream, the cosmic cat-sacks won’t be bought with in game currency. With items as valuable as the ones that will be in the cosmic cat-sack, I feel that having them be acquired through whatever means they plan on implementing is better than having them cost $U. I personally feel that this would keep people with high amounts of currency from getting the best items faster than everyone else, which would be the same strategy they are going for with fishing, while the other cat sacks that can be bought with currency have, from what i assume, roughly the same items, along with better drop chances/a couple extra goodies for the silver and gold tiers, making the investment of higher tier cat-sacks still worthwhile, but while also giving the people who have less money a chance at getting items. Cosmic cat-sacks I would imagine are being designed to have great items whilst letting everyone have an equal chance at getting them.

So? What’s wrong with rarity and having items players genuinely desire and can brag about once they own them?

We already know the following

  • Cosmic catsack contains ONLY exclusive items contained in that sack. Currently only one item is inside which is the Wowzela, a really annoying horn. Most likely it will also contain furniture, which can be featured in the condo.
  • Catsacks can upgrade to the next tier when opened, Catsack, Silver and Gold will contain items you can buy yourself, however the tiers will determine how expensive they are.
  • Catsacks can be gained by simply playing (see playtime generator) and or fishing, using the metal detector or outright buying it from ‘The Stray’.
  • Event-based catsacks and dogbags are planned to have similar exclusive items to those redeemables.

They’re entirely optional so I don’t see the problem in having items that are genuinely rare due to exclusivity. It’s the player’s choice to play the game and open them, and chance is not a bad thing at all.

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Yeah, i’m kinda overreacting about the rarity of Catsacks, I thought you could only buy them and win them on Spin to win. I’m only worried about the cosmic sacks because it’ll probably take quite a lot of play time to get every item from them, but even then, that worry only applies to people who want to collect everything.

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It’ll probably very hard to even get some of the stuff in them.

I love these thing atleast aesthethically, japanese machines always look cool

Also

after being too late to back the indigogo and cannot get the backer items, my ocd that compulses me to get every and i mean every item hurts REAL BAD

This idea is great!!
I want to build an Arcade lobby if we get working Arcade for our condo when the actual arcade come out.
So yeah, this would be a great addition to the game. :grin:

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I really like this idea, it has a lot of potential to be more than just a gumball style machine.

Especially with the workshop on it’s way, i think it’d be pretty cool to have a monthly greenlight type system where the most popular/voted for gets added to a special ‘workshop gachapon’ where you can play for the items specifically made by the community.

I also like the ball race themed machine, or really the idea of being able to see people’s different gachapon machine designs on the work shop in general. It’d be funny if the machines themselves became collectible.

1 Like

Just thought about this.

How about many different Gumball style machines.
But they all share the same prize pool.
So lets say each month or so, they could put out different series of collectible.

One month it could be miniaturized items design with a TU theme to it ex: all the condo in a miniature format.
Or even a series on different popular meme you could collect and put on your desktop.

And even though I am not a backer. They could receive the Gumball with a special skin, but still have the same prize pool each month.

Any thoughts on that?

nah backers won’t be getting anymore stuff anyway.
i do like the idea of different series of them though