Do the loot boxes in WW2 change gameplay? Or are they simply skins for guns, etc?
WW2's progression model is beautiful, but that's to be expected given how long the series has been around.
Loot boxes basically give you a mixture of emblems, calling cards, player skins, and weapon skins.
Emblems and calling cards are the "trash loot", player skins are medium tier, and weapon skins are high tier in terms of player-perceived value--though the actual loot is graded from Common to Heroic independent of player-perceived value.
The only progression-impacting items are the weapon skins, which give the player bonus XP on kill. What's interesting is that unlike Counterstrike, the low TTK and life expectancy, combined with the lack of spectators in core game modes, means that your skins are really there for
you to see, not for everyone else. So the social value of these skins is quite low.
This is where prestiging comes in. If you've ever played a COD game, you'd know that the amount of time required to get to max level is quite short; I'd say I generally hit max around 10-15 hours of MP gameplay. Of course, the grind is in prestiging. So the gameplay value of getting 10-15% bonus XP on kill is quite low for players who don't care about prestiging, but the intrinsic social value of having high prestige levels motivates players to want to use these skins, which gives them greater value to the highly engaged players who are more likely to monetize anyway.
In addition to this, WW2's loot box system has duplicates, which award a small amount of soft currency. This soft currency is used to buy contracts which award more lootboxes (re-engages you in the progression loop) and also to directly purchase items to complete your collection. Completing a set of items awards unique awards, some of which are time-limited to seasonal events--which puts time pressure on engagement or monetization.
Mobile games have perfected the progression and retention loop, and WW2 is probably the first AAA boxed product that's not strictly a live service (e.g. MMO) that I've seen to really capitalize on a lot of these things. That's why WW2's retention numbers seem to be among the highest of recent CODs.
