The Mysterious BLOXcon Gifts: The Good and Bad

This year at Virtual BLOXcon 2014, ROBLOX decided to try something different and launched three different mystery gifts during the BLOXcon livestream. Each gift was a priced item (like the Halloween gifts) that were available for a limited time. Now that all three gifts have opened after the midnight sale, two of them have had positive reception while the final one hasn't.

The first gift was released right around when the livestream began. It costed 50 robux and was timed for an hour. The description reads "What's inside? I'll never tell! Maybe they'll drop some hints on the livestream!", however no hints were ever dropped on the livestream, making this gift a total mystery!!! (well not exactly a total mystery to some users). The gift opened up to be the Classy ROBLOX Bowtie, which was a nice item for a really cheap price.

The second gift was released little less than an hour after the first gift. For the first 30 seconds of the gift's creation it was 100 robux, then it went offsale. However, the gift did go back onsale hours later for 150 robux and was timed for 30 minutes. The gift opened up to be the ROBLOX R Bowler. Even though the hat is badly named, it does look great for a bowler and was well worth the 100 (or 150) robux considered how other similar bowlers have costed up to 1000 robux.

All right, and now for the bad mystery gift. The final gift was released around 2:30 PM PDT (5:30 PM EST) despite ChiefJustus saying that the gift would come at 2:00 PDT. It was priced at 500 robux and was timed for only 15 minutes. The gift opened up to be the 2104 Space Vision Glasses. Unlike the previous two gifts, what came out of this gift wasn't themed around the ROBLOX "R" and it didn't really correlate to the gift's colors. The 2104 Space Vision Glasses have been considered by the majority of the community to be not worth 500 robux, mainly for their plainness compared to the other two gift items.

So overall the BLOXcon gifts were something new that like previous gift series had good gift items and a bad gift item. Mystery gifts are a cool idea for additional content during ROBLOX events, but I feel like they would work better for sales (example: a midnight gift for the midnight sale, a bright gift for the bright sale, a USA gift for the president's sale, etc.) Also, I've noticed that theres been a lack of earnable gifts. What I mean is that so far we've had two gift events and theres still at least two more gift events to go. Both the Easter baskets and the BLOXcon gifts were pay-to-get gifts, and the Halloween gifts are bound to be like that as well. That means the only gifts that can be earned are the Christmas gifts.

I would have preferred if the BLOXcon gifts were earnable instead of buyable. For instance, what if the gifts were only obtainable by completing game challenges that were announced during the BLOXcon livestream? That would give more opportunities for users to participate in BLOXcon events besides the Hackathon and the Twitch challenges (not all users are good scripters or good Twitch streamers). Plus, it would put more of an emphasis on game playing and exploration in both site features and game features like Christmas gifts have done in the past.

~ NonstopEpic