With OB46, Hi-Rez is testing waters by once again releasing chest exclusive skins. This needs to be nipped in the bud, before we're right back to "Exclusive" skins.


Up until this point, SMITE 2’s monetization has been largely respectable: offer a skin as a direct purchase through the Travelers system, alongside a cheaper alternative via randomized chest rolls. This applied to 99% of SMITE 2’s skins (even seasonal ones). The few unpurchasable exceptions were special milestones stuff, like Cacodemon Ymir.

However, during today's Titan Talk stream, Hi-Rez announced the return of a despised SMITE 1 tactic: **Chest Exclusive skins**.

Pumpkin Spice Discordia, along with her 3 color prisms, is being locked behind a chest containing 33 additional filler items at 1,000 Diamonds per roll. If you're a new player who owns none of the items in that chest, guaranteeing the skin will cost you up to 34,000 Diamonds, which translates to roughly **230 fucking dollars** at its cheapest. And since you can't roll any prisms prior to getting the base skin, you might have to cough up another **3,000 Diamonds** just to grab the specific prism you actually want.


To Hi-Rez's credit, they are offering a "Buy All" bundle for 2,700 Diamonds to grab all the Halloween items releasing this patch. That is roughly the price of a standard direct-purchase skin in SMITE 2.


At first glance, it's a solid deal—you can bypass the chest and buy Pumpkin Spice Discordia straight up. Problem solved, right?

But wait, what's that?


Oh dear. It's a limited time offer. And when the patch goes live on Tuesday, Oct. 20th, you get a strict two-week window to buy it before it vanishes and gets permanently locked behind the chest. Tough luck if you're out of town or a new player discovering the game later. Better cough up that whale money, I suppose.

So, seeing what I saw, I decided to ask them the following question on Titan Talk:

*"What is the logic behind moving back to chest exclusive skins, when the direct purchase approach has been widely praised? Can we expect a regression back to SMITE 1 monetization tactics?"*

And Killgoon had this to say: [https://www.twitch.tv/smitegame/clip/EncouragingAssiduousMarrowPoooound-c5ehinjWupIjDK2M](https://www.twitch.tv/smitegame/clip/EncouragingAssiduousMarrowPoooound-c5ehinjWupIjDK2M)

Let's break down everything said:

*Killgoon: "I think that this is misreading what we're doing here pretty intensily. So, a new skin that is available in a chest, that you can also get as part of a bundle at a discounted price, to me does not reek of 'we're trying to do scummy things'.*

* Yes, getting it as part of a bundle is cheaper, but bundling a skin with tons of other crap you might not want doesn't replace the freedom to just buy the exact item you want. Granted, travelers usually cost 2,400 Diamonds, so 2,700 isn't a massive stretch given the amount of free Diamonds you get in this game. **The real issue is the time limit.** Every other seasonal skin remains purchasable year-round; nothing makes this skin special enough to justify treating it like artificial scarcity.

*Killgoon: "Some people like getting Chests, right? Because Chests give you a lot of random content that is at a discounted price versus the Direct Purchase."*

* I don't doubt for a second that there are people that enjoy Chests. Of course there are, otherwise they wouldn't exist. Chests aren't inherently a bad concept, for those who do not care what they get. The issue is that this argument is completely pointless, cause there is absolutely no reason you couldn't have this chest, while also offering a truly Direct Purchase for the skin. That's what you did with the end of SMITE 1, and that's what has been done throughout the entire lifespan of SMITE 2 up until this point.

*Killgoon: "And we do make our Chests, I believe, the fairest in the business, cause you don't roll duplicates, there's no odds to anything, so everything is equal drop chance."*

* I wonder how this could be said nicely... * Just because your pile of shit isn't as stinky as the other guys' pile of shit, doesn't mean that it isn't still a pile of shit.

*Killgoon: "At some point in the future, as a Classic skin, it will be available Direct Purchase or in the Classic Skin Chest."*

* So the argument here is that if you don't like this Chest, you can either wait for the possiblity that is **might** at some point become Direct Purchase, or wait until it goes into the other Chest, that has double the amount of stuff you could roll instead of that skin? Great. * I mean, sure I'm a veteran player. I have 400k Legacy Gems, so stuff in the Classic Chest is basically free to me, but what about those who don't have the Legacy Gems, like new players for example? Seems like they are just shit out of luck. * And what happens when they start doing this to non-Classic skins, and are no longer morally obligated to put it in the Classic Chest or offer it through Direct Purchase? It isn't hard to see where this is going.

Please, folks, do not buy into this shit again. We went 10 years through it in SMITE 1, and they finally fixed it in this game. This is scummy business practice, praying on FOMO or their players, and should not be encouraged for one bit.

**Oh, and as a side note, of course you cannot use Legacy Gems to roll the new chest, or to buy the bundle half-off, why would you ask such a dumb question?**