Finally, the trend for randomized loot boxes in games is dying as publishers move away from the unpopular mechanic. As announced in today's update notes, Rocket League has changed its approach to cosmetic items to be less chance-based.

Loot box-like Crates have been replaced by Blueprints, which drop after select online matches and which show potential items that a player could create using their credits. There is still an element of randomization with the dropping of Blueprints, but players can decide if they want a given item before spending their money on it. The Blueprints can also be traded with other players.

The new Item Shop offers items from the now-retired crates as well as newly introduced items on a 24 and 48-hour cycle. But the bad news started immediately with the first round. The Infinium wheels currently available in the shop, for example, went for less than one key in the community’s trading market before the update. This came down to less than a single dollar for the wheels. But the item shop sells it for 1400 credits, which roughly equals 14 keys, or about $14. The same amount of money would have bought you 14 to 28 sets of Infinium wheels before the update. In addition, our site 5mmo.com has a large quantity of safe Rocket League Items For Sale.

The Rocket League community immediately picked up their pitchforks and took to Reddit and Twitter to voice their displeasure over the prices. And who can blame them? While it might be worth paying a bit more for guaranteed unlocks, the inflation of these prices seems ridiculous at best. Even for those who were lucky enough to have a crate turn into a rare black market blueprint, these are all set to cost 2000 credits each for the unpainted version. Meanwhile, many of them went for just a few keys in the community trading market.

The new patch will also include the game’s new Item Shop, which will let players buy specific items, including esports cosmetics. The other major cosmetic addition to the game in patch 1.7 is the Rocket Pass 5, the game’s latest battle pass. The pass starts on Dec. 4, and players can unlock a variety of cosmetics from it as they level it up. Unlike previous passes, which gave keys for rewards at certain tiers, Rocket Pass 5 will now give Credits instead.