Lootbox Warning

Lootboxes are, and always will be, predatory as *. Think about it this way;

Most people who will have spent money on lootboxes will PROBABLY have spent that money in order to get 1 or 2 specific skins. These players also would have likely just bought the skin had it been for sale on it's own in a regular * shop.

This is practically stealing money from that person because they want to know exactly what they're getting when they buy it, but the game hasn't given them the option.
Lootboxes are put in place not so that a game can continue/manage to be free-to-play, but so that developers can make more money in less time. Take the cosmetics in this game for example.

A legendary cosmetic costs what, 1,200 crafting materials? More or less?
I've played for the last 2 days straight as soon as I've gotten home and the ONLY way to get more of that currency is by rolling for more lootboxes. There aren't any dupes, so you'll always get something new right? Well take all of the cosmetics in the game (taking into account even the useless things like all the banner crap and the quips), and divide that by 3.

For every character.

Even the ones you don't have unlocked already.

I've rolled a ton of higher tier stuff for the two characters that are locked, and the only way to get the in-game currency that allows access to the MAJORITY of the cosmetics is to get MORE lootboxes. You can't even buy the items directly with Apex coins...so what's the argument here? The rotating shop that sells a character skin for 2 Legends at a time that takes a week to rotate? Why not just allow people to buy them? Because lootboxes are a predatory way to scam more money out of players. 

Lootboxes are really only there as a smoke and mirror tactic to get whales to spend more money searching for that perfect skin and to pad out the game time for more casual players. Just look at how they explain it themselves; (https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/player-spending-principles)
Look at principle number 5, and go out and find me the monkey who prefers lootboxes to an actual in-game store, if given the choice. All it does is change the player's goal from "I want to play to win because winning is fun" to "I want to play because if I don't play I'll never unlock that Legendary vanity item".

Furthermore, "don't like it, don't buy it" doesn't work for something like this because respawn DIDN'T have lootboxes in their last game. They've included them here because even though most people don't buy them (at least, I'd like to think it's "most" people), they still make boatloads of money because there's always going to be hundreds of people out of the thousands that play that will spend even more hundreds of dollars on them just by themselves. The only way this problem can gain any traction is if the detractors not only refuse to buy them, but actively encourage others to do the same.

If you genuinely think that Respawn (backed by * EA GAMES of all companies) couldn't afford to keep this game alive without lootboxes, then I strongly suggest you look up the current value of EA's stocks, even after all the mud their name has dragged them through.