A Subjective Retrospective On The Mystery Boxes

With the livestream for 1.4 soon approaching, and with the ever prevalent discussions surrounding a particular waterborne vehicle, I thought it would be interesting to throw my thoughts into the ring of the 3 mystery boxes we have had to date. I reckon my opinions are probably gonna be on the more controversial side, but thats what discussion is for I suppose

A disclaimer before I put my opinions down there, I am 100% a heavy spender in this area. I frequently buy fons packs just to have the ability to own certain vehicles or houses, or in this case, fully clear mystery boxes. As such im gonna leave the fons out of the overall equation (except for a specific case) since personally I can't exactly relate, but for those who are f2p or low spender i'd 100% love to see your view on that!

Porsche Collab

This one is my favourite. The first mystery box really hit it out of the park with an amazing high performance car and nice skins for the MC to boot. This one set the standard for what you can find in the boxes, profile cosmetics, some extra goodies like standard pulls and bond items, even a small fons refund. It being the fastest car in the game to date has massive advantages, some hobbies rely on you using a car and it is obviously still the best car for racing by far. The only big downside I personally find with this mystery box is just how prohibitively expensive modding the car is. At least it was a good fons sync for Vehicle Mod Tycoon Level requirements lol. For those curious, the box in total costed about 19.8 Million fons, that will be important for the next one.

Neon Rift Mystery Box (Draco)

This one is where I feel like my opinions shift away from the general public. I agree for the most part that the Draco may be the most convenient because it is a bike, and they can be summoned practically anywhere with no road summoning restriction, but there are some personally VERY big issues with this box that for me, make it the worst by a large margin.

Lets start small, the fact that no one can be invited onto the bike with you. I understand the bike's design very obviously doesn't look comfortable as a two seater, but for a game where character interactions are at its core this feels like a pretty polarising omission for a limited time vehicle that you gotta sink a lotta fons into.

A bit of positivity though, I do quite like the skin! I think Male Zero had a massive win with it (It gives me Fate Gawain vibes a bit) and I think the recolours are also quite nice!

Now for the big one. The TRON style effects that personally drew me to the bike to get it in the first place are not only character locked, they are premium skin locked. Personally I find this exceptionally egregious. This means that not only if you want the full cosmetics for the Draco you have to pull a character you may not even want to, f2p players are locked out of those cosmetic options cause its a riftcrystal skin (and one of the most expensive might I add).

This seems to obviously be the monkey paw payment for the box being almost half the price of the other two at 11.7Mil, but in my opinion it is a horrible way to balance the scales and I am very glad they didnt do this for the subsequent box....speaking of which!

Lucent Tides Mystery Box (The Jetski)

This one has obviously been controversial, but in my opinion if it weren't for the fact that the Porsche is just so damn useful I would personally have this at my top spot. A super unique vehicle that lets us go places otherwise unable to be reached and some really cool skins as well, not just for the MC this time! Another core aspect of NTE I consider to be important as well as character interactions is something I call "Vibe Factor". Some more pragmatic people tend to point out that the Jetski is 'useless', but imo if you're the kind of person to dismiss the Jetski as useless because there isnt really something to do with it, I reckon you are kinda looking at the game wrong (I have a similar opinion of the Duskmoor map extension as well).

This time like mentioned we also have 3 skins, 1 for MC, 1 for Mint and 1 for Nanally. I understand the point that having a skin for a limited character can reduce the value since people may not have her, but personally I dont think they should necessarily devalue the box that much since it is better than nothing! What we trade for this is 5 standard pulls and the previous fons buybacks (which werent really that much to begin with) which tbh, I am fine with. This box costs the same as the Porsche as well, for those that wanna know.

That is all though! Feel free to shower me with votes up or down and express opinions in that comment box!