Germany wants to add loot box warning to video game ratings

[CriticalGaming]

I know Magic removes cards from tourney play over the years.

From 1 type of tourney play. But Magic has many different tournament types, and no cards are removed from all formats unless the card absolute is over powered and broken. And even then you can still play it with friends in casual games at the local card shops.

You can still get garbage commons in physical cards. Even if you're doing some deck that uses 10 of such and such card, getting an 11th of that card is going to be useless.

Yes but every card can still be used somewhere. It's the players who ultimately decide a card is trash, not the card itself. And people find uses for "dumb" cards all the time that can suddenly skyrocket their desirability. No card player buys cards on an endless cycle either. Usually you buy cards until you have everything you want out of a given set so the likelihood of you having 20 copies of a card you don't want is not really a thing. Especially when maybe shops give players the option of just buying the exact card they want at a premium without dealing with the RNG of opening packs.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

From 1 type of tourney play. But Magic has many different tournament types, and no cards are removed from all formats unless the card absolute is over powered and broken. And even then you can still play it with friends in casual games at the local card shops.



Yes but every card can still be used somewhere. It's the players who ultimately decide a card is trash, not the card itself. And people find uses for "dumb" cards all the time that can suddenly skyrocket their desirability. No card player buys cards on an endless cycle either. Usually you buy cards until you have everything you want out of a given set so the likelihood of you having 20 copies of a card you don't want is not really a thing. Especially when maybe shops give players the option of just buying the exact card they want at a premium without dealing with the RNG of opening packs.

I don't play Magic, I just know people that did so I know some stuff about it.

I explained how you can still use player cards that aren't of the highest level in a sports game. Magic is basically an endless cycle, it costs over $4,000 just to get every card released in 2020 according to this. Everything that is done in the physical space can be recreated in the digital space. Sure, maybe such and such game doesn't have a marketplace for cards or items or whatever, but they can make one and probably even make more money off that than they are currently making.

I just don't get why loot boxes are so evil, they've already existed and still exist all over the place really. If you're gonna ban loot boxes because they're gambling, you'd have to ban all this other stuff too because it's the same and it's been around for decades. That's just why it's never gonna happen because it's so easy to argue this in court as a lawyer for EA (or whoever). I don't really care personally because there's like no actually good video games IMO that have loot boxes or if the game requires content from loot boxes to be good, then I'm not going to play it, just like I don't play Magic or any CCG. There's tons of other games to play.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I don't play Magic, I just know people that did so I know some stuff about it.

I explained how you can still use player cards that aren't of the highest level in a sports game. Magic is basically an endless cycle, it costs over $4,000 just to get every card released in 2020 according to this. Everything that is done in the physical space can be recreated in the digital space. Sure, maybe such and such game doesn't have a marketplace for cards or items or whatever, but they can make one and probably even make more money off that than they are currently making.

I just don't get why loot boxes are so evil, they've already existed and still exist all over the place really. If you're gonna ban loot boxes because they're gambling, you'd have to ban all this other stuff too because it's the same and it's been around for decades. That's just why it's never gonna happen because it's so easy to argue this in court as a lawyer for EA (or whoever). I don't really care personally because there's like no actually good video games IMO that have loot boxes or if the game requires content from loot boxes to be good, then I'm not going to play it, just like I don't play Magic or any CCG. There's tons of other games to play.

Again you don't seem to separate your understanding in the difference. When you buy real cards, you take home a real thing.

If you buy loot boxes, you only keep those things until the wipe the servers. What do you get when the game shut's down? NOTHING, and the bigger problem is that you have no ceiling of what you can spend.

As illustrated with your magic example, for $4000 I get every card. Meaning I having everything, and I get to save and keep the cards I want and sell the ones I don't so I'll make some of that cost back. And the cards i do keep can end up having much higher value later on (much like a comic book) so there is future value in those cards that can exceed the cost to obtain them.

With digital goods, the value will only ever go down. Not to mention that constant updates require constant buying of these lootboxes making there be a no real cap on what you spend. Especially when you factor in things like experience boosters or strong consumable items which give the player an excuse to spend infinitely. Then combine all that with the fact that there is no longer term reward for purchasing digital crap. Eventually the game will shut down, server wiped, and even more likely the playerbase will abandon the game and move on to something else. Where does that leave your ultimate team? Ultimately fuck all, that's where.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Again you don't seem to separate your understanding in the difference. When you buy real cards, you take home a real thing.

If you buy loot boxes, you only keep those things until the wipe the servers. What do you get when the game shut's down? NOTHING, and the bigger problem is that you have no ceiling of what you can spend.

As illustrated with your magic example, for $4000 I get every card. Meaning I having everything, and I get to save and keep the cards I want and sell the ones I don't so I'll make some of that cost back. And the cards i do keep can end up having much higher value later on (much like a comic book) so there is future value in those cards that can exceed the cost to obtain them.

With digital goods, the value will only ever go down. Not to mention that constant updates require constant buying of these lootboxes making there be a no real cap on what you spend. Especially when you factor in things like experience boosters or strong consumable items which give the player an excuse to spend infinitely. Then combine all that with the fact that there is no longer term reward for purchasing digital crap. Eventually the game will shut down, server wiped, and even more likely the playerbase will abandon the game and move on to something else. Where does that leave your ultimate team? Ultimately fuck all, that's where.

You can say the same thing about entire games themselves. There's tons of games you can't play anymore that are online only. There's tons of games people invested years into that will be shutdown at some point. Didn't Blizzard shutdown stuff like Warcraft 3 so you had to buy the remaster to play online?

 

[CriticalGaming]

You can say the same thing about entire games themselves. There's tons of games you can't play anymore that are online only. There's tons of games people invested years into that will be shutdown at some point. Didn't Blizzard shutdown stuff like Warcraft 3 so you had to buy the remaster to play online?

Some games sure. But there are many games that you'll be able to play forever so long as you keep working equipment.

On a long enough timeline nothing is forever.

However with most games, even if they stop working, you get a reasonable experience for a flat cost. 60 bucks or less if you wait for a sale. But with the games that routinely have endless microtransactions, then games themselves have incredibly short lifespans because they are often from yearly franchises like CoD, Madden, Fifa, etc.

Also note that there is some merited exceptions for games you don't pay at all for like Fortnight. Every purchase made is optional, and you can invest as much or as little as you want into it.

I mean clearly you don't seem to think it's a problem and that's probably not going to change regardless of what i say. Maybe someone else can weigh in with an opinion as to what side of the fence people are on.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I mean clearly you don't seem to think it's a problem and that's probably not going to change regardless of what i say. Maybe someone else can weigh in with an opinion as to what side of the fence people are on.

I said it's a form of gambling and kids shouldn't be able to gamble of course. It's just that all these other accepted things are the same exact thing so a court case isn't going to be successful. People give up Magic because of the cost. I'm surprised it took video game publishers this long to "figure it out" like how it took NBA coaches/analytics over 30 years to figure out that shooting 3-pointers is better than 2-pointers.