I was wondering what everyones thoughts are on the new loot box legislation (they are tring to pass a law in the US that all loot box's need to be sold only to people over the age of 21 and that all odds of all drops must be shown.
I ask this becuase it very well could relate to MTGO (and any other online gaming with micro transactions WOTC puts out)
Their defintion of a loot box is any item that has a random varrable that is purchases for real world money.
Could this type of law mean that MTG would become a 21+ game and would WOTC be ok posting actuly adds (including foil odds for each card) on their product.
There are currently no proposed bills in either the House or the Senate which address loot boxes. Two or three pieces of proposed legislation have been introduced into the Hawaii State Legislature but none of them have been passed as of yet.
Truthfully, this is single most interesting topic I have ever seen posted on this forum. I am the mod of the politics/news/current events forum elsewhere; I think I will create a new thread to highlight this issue.
The likelihood of any legislation being passed that would apply to real-world MtG is close to 0%, since it would also have to apply to every single blind-bagged/boxed thing ever, which would result in a torches-and-pitchforks situation. For MTGO, it could be a problem - having to publish the probabilities of card pulls makes no real difference, but making it age restricted could be a problem... maybe.
Tbh, I don't see any laws passing on a wide scale that would prohibit/restrict lootboxes, at least not with the age being set to 21 (I could see maybe 16, but 21 is a stretch as lootboxes aren't "true" gambling - you always get something from the box/pack, even if it sucks). And if it isn't a wide scale law, I would assume that it would be addressed via a nudge-nudge wink-wink "residents of X must be 21 to purchase" disclaimer somewhere that isn't enforced.
Again, without a law on the books yet, it's hard to say how WotC would sidestep it, but sidestep it they would. Indeed, I have a hard time seeing any way of writing a loophole-free law that wouldn't be a draconian ban on all electronic gaming, period (as any game with any random numbers being generated is something that provides a variable experience you paid real-world money for).
Don't get me wrong, games double dipping by putting lootboxes in a pay-to-play game are disgusting, but I don't see legislation as being even remotely effective in curbing it. I would hope that there has been enough ill will built up that the practice will die out on its own, though I doubt it as long as it remains profitable. It's the same concept as laugh tracks in sitcoms - the watchers and actors hate them, but they work so they aren't going anywhere.
I guess one way to gain some insight in to this is... Since China has already passed simlar laws (at least in mandatory loot box odd rates being posted) asking if anyone from MTGS is from China and plays MTGO and if the laws have impacted their experence at all.
Was it greed on EA's part, though? Did they force anyone to use online loot boxes? No online game, as far as I am aware, forces anyone to spend money for it (aside from the actual purchase of the game, of course). Any game or portal which is "pay to play" will be clearly spelled out in the license/installation agreement.
Was it greed on EA's part, though? Did they force anyone to use online loot boxes? No online game, as far as I am aware, forces anyone to spend money for it (aside from the actual purchase of the game, of course). Any game or portal which is "pay to play" will be clearly spelled out in the license/installation agreement.
While I am not 100% I beleve that was indeed the problem the ability to progress in the game was directly tried to loot box drops.
I guess one way to gain some insight in to this is... Since China has already passed simlar laws (at least in mandatory loot box odd rates being posted) asking if anyone from MTGS is from China and plays MTGO and if the laws have impacted their experence at all.
The odds of pulling magic cards isn't currently hidden, so being forced to tell you the odds wouldn't change anything. The information is already known.
Was it greed on EA's part, though? Did they force anyone to use online loot boxes? No online game, as far as I am aware, forces anyone to spend money for it (aside from the actual purchase of the game, of course). Any game or portal which is "pay to play" will be clearly spelled out in the license/installation agreement.
Yes they did, its psychological pressure that is done to "force" you to buy it.
People are taught how to milk players in game design schooling and the trend just gets worse every moment.
Its even more crazy in lots of "free" games that use the Shop to buy stuff as an actual ingame feature, and push you in many more aspects to buy something:
Like the ever present "stamina" so you simply cannot continue playing for a time unless you spend money to get some kind of stamina booster items.
Daily Quests and login-Bonus to keep players as addicted as possible to play the game at least once per day. Stretch that to a weekly or monthly streak and you give players a real incentive to always login, and if they ever cannot login, you offer them a payed "service" to get a login retrospective.
Game needs to be competitive, so players directly compare to players that spend tremendous amount of money. The feeling to fall behind is a pretty strong driving force for some people to spend money, especially if they believe that lots of others do so too.
All of these "features" , "mechanics" or "services" are tagged on and its actively using psychology to milk players for money that are susceptible to addictions.
And using a persons addiction to make money is anything but fair, its done because companies get greedy for easy money and nothing is easier than using a persons addiction to make them pay.
Backing that up with "Well you agreed to our terms" is not helping here, as you actively sell something to a person that will literally agree to everything as long as they get what they want.
Its like selling drugs to kids and asking them to please sign this papers, thats simply not going to work and thats why laws forbid it in many ways.
Loot-boxes in games are a very real problem that just becomes more and more troubling , especially if people dont recognize it creeping into the games they love , stop it early instead of when people are already addicted and committed to it.
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Putting a real strict paywall to the players would help to reduce the extremes, but as of right now, the industry of free2play games really really depends on the people that pay a lot of money, so a lot of them cannot survive with the business model they run.
Bigger companies simply use loot-boxes to add easy elements to a game that milks people for more money. Minimal cost and someone always pays money for services that are just insultingly trivial.
While I am not 100% I beleve that was indeed the problem the ability to progress in the game was directly tried to loot box drops.
I suppose I need to look into that, then--I hadn't heard that. I don't play any online or console games so I would have missed that situation. Which game was that?
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The odds of pulling cards may not be hidden but the variance in opening packs, whether real or virtual, is probably the point of contention. You open a pack and get Rekindling Phoenix while I open a pack and get Silverclad Ferocidons. One of us is clearly the winner in that round of the pack lottery--a crafty lawyer can stretch that into "gambling".
Was it greed on EA's part, though? Did they force anyone to use online loot boxes? No online game, as far as I am aware, forces anyone to spend money for it (aside from the actual purchase of the game, of course). Any game or portal which is "pay to play" will be clearly spelled out in the license/installation agreement.
There are some pretty blatant psychological tricks involved in loot boxes tho, and certain people get really addicted to them. I don't have links at this exact second, but some of Activision/Blizzard's internal psych leaked a while back, and it's fair to say that any deliberate slanting of players towards loot boxes is extremely deliberately engineered for maximum brain-hookage.
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“Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.” Esmeralda Santiago Art is life itself.
While I am not 100% I beleve that was indeed the problem the ability to progress in the game was directly tried to loot box drops.
I suppose I need to look into that, then--I hadn't heard that. I don't play any online or console games so I would have missed that situation. Which game was that?
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The odds of pulling cards may not be hidden but the variance in opening packs, whether real or virtual, is probably the point of contention. You open a pack and get Rekindling Phoenix while I open a pack and get Silverclad Ferocidons. One of us is clearly the winner in that round of the pack lottery--a crafty lawyer can stretch that into "gambling".
Battlefront 2 was the trigger but the lootbox backlash has been brewing for a while.
Market examples include:
* Free-to-Play games with no way to advance beyond the first couple of levels/rounds/maps/whatever without payment but NOT billed as demos. A number of Apple Store software does this.
* Steam captive market and the commissions earned from loot box swag B/S.
* Reports of adults spending thousands a month on games like Candy Crush, such as the woman who spent so much money she was left with no money for food one month. (This is an example of gambling addiction).
* Children gaining access to P2P games and charging thousands on their parents accounts.
* Theft of accounts and the accompanying swag (this happened to me but I had no swag to steal.)
* The increased hidden cost to get the "full" game, e.g. Mortal Kombat.
- as an aside, there is also the subtle practice of releasing a game then releasing expansion packs that should have been in the original in the first place. This is a big gray area but IIRC Gotham suffered from this.
- some online stores are getting better about total costs involving "full games" so this is less of a problem now.
* Old game titles originally released as full titles now modified for micro-transactions. Dungeon Keeper, Sonic the Hedgehog, Kid Chameleon to name a few.
That's all off the top of my head. Many have been going on for a long time.
Was it greed on EA's part, though? Did they force anyone to use online loot boxes? No online game, as far as I am aware, forces anyone to spend money for it (aside from the actual purchase of the game, of course). Any game or portal which is "pay to play" will be clearly spelled out in the license/installation agreement.
There are some pretty blatant psychological tricks involved in loot boxes tho, and certain people get really addicted to them. I don't have links at this exact second, but some of Activision/Blizzard's internal psych leaked a while back, and it's fair to say that any deliberate slanting of players towards loot boxes is extremely deliberately engineered for maximum brain-hookage.
Agreed. I used to subscribe to a game devoper publishing about ten years ago and there was an article written about exactly how to do that. I believe the example used was Counter Strike or Team Fortress and how to eek money out of the players on the Steam platform. I'm not sure if I kept the hard drive from back then though.
Most loot box laws would have far reaching consequences without further refinement as far as trading card games go. It would force regulation of the secondary market for singles.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I guess since I never played these games online I missed out, hm?
It was started by a well meaning senator in Hawaii and there has been a lot of talk on the subject across various groups both for and against it. Recently the esrb took a non-committal position on it and just require games to include an in game purchases label.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Topic is pretty huge, and wont go away and companies already try to cheat the "solutions" to keep the ball running and milking the addicted players they could catch.
While I am not 100% I beleve that was indeed the problem the ability to progress in the game was directly tried to loot box drops.
I suppose I need to look into that, then--I hadn't heard that. I don't play any online or console games so I would have missed that situation. Which game was that?
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The odds of pulling cards may not be hidden but the variance in opening packs, whether real or virtual, is probably the point of contention. You open a pack and get Rekindling Phoenix while I open a pack and get Silverclad Ferocidons. One of us is clearly the winner in that round of the pack lottery--a crafty lawyer can stretch that into "gambling".
That's not exactly how the law works. A single crafty lawyer is insufficient; after all, in an adversarial court system the opposing lawyer can be presumed to be equally crafty.
"TCGs as Gambling" has been litigated in the past, uniformly resulting in victory for the TCG companies. While it's possible that a change in law would result in a change in outcome, it does not set high expectations for a success by any lawsuit.
Notably, one of the lawsuits - specifically against Nintendo and WotC for the Pokemon TCG - was dismissed due to lack of standing, in turn due to lack of damages. The court specifically ruled that disappointment in the cards one gets is not "damages". There are many situations where the law requires damages; that is, even if someone did X which is nominally a violation of the law, you have to prove that this violation of the law actually hurt you or your financial interests.
Of course, WotC/Hasbro has a legal department that is paying attention to any developments in this space, and you can be certain that they've devoted more thought and expertise to this than we have. Having a legal department doesn't guarantee they aren't or won't do anything illegal - plenty of companies do illegal things despite the presence of a legal department. But even if so, it would be a lot more complex than just "element of chance -> gambling -> big lawsuit win".
Of course, WotC/Hasbro has a legal department that is paying attention to any developments in this space, and you can be certain that they've devoted more thought and expertise to this than we have.
I wouldnt be THAT certain of that, given the legal department of WotC is like 1 dude that probably doesnt have a law degree ...
But i might totally exaggerate that a little bit , almost certainly.
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The value difference in cards is in the 2ndary market.
For WotC ignoring the 2ndary market, every card has the equal value to any other junk, as they are all just cards, players can choose to play or they dont.
Nobody really demands you to play good cards to attend any tournament, as long as they are legal, you could just play with a 60 cards basic land deck, chances to win are not that great (Unless its Urzas Saga Standard, in which a 1000 island deck was literally competitive, and that irony smells big, especially as its not even a joke).
Any-how , WotC claim like any other card game really comes down to that the stuff has no value, but the 2ndary market and that value is frankly arbitrary, people can charge whatever they want for a card, and someone might even pay that price, but the card is in reality just what it is, a piece of expensive paper.
Law as it is backs that up and the market isnt really big compared to Casino Gambling which a much larger % of people play compared to something specific as magic (or even all trading card games combined is still a not really significant number that a government would really feel the need to put up laws to tax it harder or regulate it more, its like kids toys and in this point of time its around for so long that its kinda proven itself that it doesnt really harm anyone, unless they go all out and buy booster packs for whatever crazy reason without being a major reseller).
However, a bit regulation already exists.
Booster packs really say what they contain. Cards in numbers, and the chances to get a foil card are also printed on the booster packs (at least the EU ones i can check right here).
It reads "Premium cards approx. 1:67
And they have at least some kind of tracking number, no idea if they "actually" could trace that back to determine what was actually in the booster pack or thats just potentially a thing (they could, but was it ever used by anybody, like ever and officially?).
Was it greed on EA's part, though? Did they force anyone to use online loot boxes? No online game, as far as I am aware, forces anyone to spend money for it (aside from the actual purchase of the game, of course). Any game or portal which is "pay to play" will be clearly spelled out in the license/installation agreement.
There are some pretty blatant psychological tricks involved in loot boxes tho, and certain people get really addicted to them. I don't have links at this exact second, but some of Activision/Blizzard's internal psych leaked a while back, and it's fair to say that any deliberate slanting of players towards loot boxes is extremely deliberately engineered for maximum brain-hookage.
Agreed. I used to subscribe to a game devoper publishing about ten years ago and there was an article written about exactly how to do that. I believe the example used was Counter Strike or Team Fortress and how to eek money out of the players on the Steam platform. I'm not sure if I kept the hard drive from back then though.
I checked Gamasutra, and found Behavioral Game Design, which is old enough to have been written before loot boxes were so major a concept.
Now that is the kind of research I like--I have cited cases from that site on several topics before (not here, of course, but I am here only for spoilers).
So are baseball card collections illegal gambling, are MTG collections illegal? Well actually we saw lawsuits about that in the mid to late 1990's. A number of different lawsuits across the country tried to say that baseball leagues and manufacturers were in cahoots that were scheming together to run illegal gambling operations through the inclusion of which is called a "chase card" within their packs. The idea that including very rare, very limited cards within another would be otherwise an ordinary pack resulting in people really buying the packs for the purpose of the "chase cards" not for the underlying cards.
Same kind of lawsuits later on were extended against WotC and Nintendo for their Pokémon card collections as well as some other ones, and same to say basically that the selling of all random cards within a pack and the way it was inherently marketed all made it illegal gambling. Now we can generally say that all those lawsuits failed. Now they didn't fail on the question of whether or not it was gambling, they failed because they were sued under the RICO Act otherwise known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It's a federal act that's basically a way they go after the Mafia by trying to say that there's collusion and conspiracy among multiple actors toward an illegal activity.
In this case they were saying that Major League Baseball was leaguing together with a card manufacturer by colluding within the entire country to sell these illegal gambling cards. Same thing they tried to do with MTG and Pokémon and they lost. They lost based on the technicality of the law which basically said that while in state law you could sue to recover damages associated with gambling. That ability under state law is not sufficient for a RICO Act lawsuit. But while we don't have case law telling us whether or not these would be violations of state law, we have a lot of information about how the judges were actually looking at it.
What did judges think about it when they were looking at it when they were considering the RICO case because they were looking at state law. They all had to look at New York, California, New Jersey, Texas law and considering the RICO issues they gave us a lot of information to go on even though we don't have cases that have reached a conclusion saying that it's definitely a violation of state law. So here's where we can draw some distinctions between MTG cards and baseball cards and Pokémon cards versus loot boxes. See I've always thought that the entire concept behind basically wagering on a pack of baseball cards was going on for a very long time.
In fact it hasn't, this was effectively a recent promotional effort. Those lawsuits were like late 1990's, so you're talking about 5 to 6 years before that so like early to mid 1990's when baseball card manufacturers started putting the "chase cards" in their packs. Before that they were always selling it as random cards in a pack, you never knew what you were getting, but they weren't playing around with quantity and limited availability and what are the odds of getting any one card. The idea was that you were trying to collect a certain collection of cards or I could try to make sure that it's as complete as possible.
And there's lots of different collections, lots of different card manufacturers, and lots of different type of cards for any specific player. But the idea is that there's a collection and that you're trying to get that collection. So in order to sell it rather than sell you one card at a time they're gonna sell you a random pack over six. Now people always wanted certain cards more than others, obviously within a team you wanted certain others than not. But the manufacturers weren't playing around so directly by eliminating the availability of cards and you know what are the odds of getting one card versus the other and playing around with how one card is more valuable than another.
They were just trying to sell you a complete set by selling you random quantities within the card. The concept that started out for them within the mid 90's is to include a "chase card" right? So you're still getting your six cards but one of them is going to be much more rare, they played the odds, they started manufacturing very limited quantity of very specialized cards and put them in each and every pack. Your odds of getting this kind of card is 1 in 30,000 where otherwise the cards were 1 in 100 whatever the odds were. People very quickly started asking the question, "Well If you include a chase card isn't it considered gambling because frankly at that point I don't care about any of the other cards, I'm buying this pack just for the chance to pull this chase card."
So that's where the lawsuit stemmed from, this inclusion of a chase card where before nobody really worried about it. But when the courts looked at it, they basically saw a situation where the concept of selling randomized packs was absolutely permitted. You knew what you were paying for, you were paying for six cards with randomized selection in those packs, you had no idea that you were getting the value. The minute that you included a chase card, that became more of a promotional that existed in card packs. It wasn't as If people were buying it for the chase card even though that was practically what was going on.
People weren't buying it for the chase card, the market already was substantiated, already existed for the pack of randomized cards that the chase card alone wasn't sufficient enough to turn it into a gambling operation. It almost became like a free promotion of the packs meaning you've already bought those cards that was a market stretching for decades and decades by buying cards in that format and there was nothing illegal about selling that. So when you started including chase cards that became a way of promoting it. More and more people were buying it, still getting their value, still getting their six cards, but the free promotion became the inclusion of the chase card.
At least that's the way some of the cases and some of the judges started to look at that and the same kind of idea we saw with MTG and Pokémon cards. Basically people were buying it for a specific reason, they wanted to have a complete set or a specific set. If they were collecting it it was for a complete set. If you were buying it really for playability there were trying to put together a specific set. Yeah they were trading although it was really for the purpose of collecting the kind of sets that they needed but usually for playability. When people were buying packs they got exactly what they were paying for the same as they did in baseball collection cards right?
They were getting their five to six cards that are randomized in a pack for a specific price including specific cards that are more limited or more valuable on the Secondary Market. We're seeing as really more of a way of promoting the fact that you needed to buy those cards in order to complete your collection or specific sets. So there was a purpose to the purchase of the packs which were completely independent and those were the reasons you were buying that. You weren't buying it for the individual cards, no you might have, you might have wanted that specific card but let's call it a chase card from the baseball language just for practicality.
Let's say you were buying that specific chase card because you wanted to resell it. But that's not why those cards were being sold, those cards were being sold as promotions for the greater packs so people need to complete a set or a specific set to be able to play better were buying it and those were seen as promotion. Now it's okay If you don't accept that. You can say that it's not true most people are only buying it for the chase cards whether it's baseball, or MTG, or Pokémon they wanted that unique card so they could flip it and make some money. That might be the case mentally but that's not the way the courts have seen it and differentiated it.
In my mind that's why you didn't see a lot of prosecutions on it because people looked back on it and said, "That was a legitimate business for why it was sold this way for collectibility, for usability, within games, or just collection because you wanted baseball cards or Pokémon cards not because you were using it and these were legitimate reasons and these are seen as largely promotional. Free promotional, proven to a be like a sweepstakes within a card that would just sell more packs. Now how is that now different from loot crates? Couldn't you say the same? The problem is now you're dealing in these virtual properties and the question is whether or not If there's a legitimate reasons to buy these boxes independent to what else is inside.
Are people buying randomized packs or these digital assets or lets say skins? Would I actually go and purchase a randomized skin? You're gonna get six randomized skins within this pack. Is there a legitimate market or really are they just giving you stuff that nobody in their right mind would? None of it has any value in collection it doesn't have any value in usability it's just a way of giving you garbage so you go after the chase object. Are they providing you something that you would buy independent of whether or not If there's a chase object. You can see it in baseball cards where the people buy it for collectibility reasons and they want to have that as many as possible.
The collection can grow infinite now that there's a lot of baseball players. Obviously there's a whole history of baseball players, so there will be an enormous amount plus you can have variations the type of card for every single player. So the number of potential cards and collections are just enormous. Do you have the same thing with loot boxes? Do you want to collect loot boxes no matter what? If it's skins and you want to have every possible skin made available would you do that If they were guns? Or is 99% of all guns pretty much the same and it's just the way they look and we don't collect them but we want to use them but there's no usable differences among the different guns and among the different skins or among the different vehicles you can buy.
So a lot of times digital assets and digital properties like loot boxes, it's hard to argue that people want to collect them as actually having value to any of those. It's hard to argue that people want the next 100 or 200 different guns because they all do much the same thing, they might have some variation in the way they look and name but they don't have collectible value nor do they have any sort of usage value. The entire process is really rigged for you to go after the chase object. There is no value left in MTG where there's some collectibly and as playability or in baseball where it's largely a collection.
You don't see that in the loot boxes where it really is a system designed for you to go after the chase object. So you are paying money for a chance, a random chance, a kind of a prize that you don't know what it is but is something you've paid for. But I think there's enough to say that there is a gambling problem here especially when you're targeting children with this kind of "chase card" based cards where nobody would buy so many cards, so many packs, you wouldn't buy more, more, more where you're just buying variations of skins. What you're shooting for is that one valuable gun, skin, or vehicle that's going to give you an edge or you're going to resell. That's what you're shooting for and the rest of it is just garbage that people throw away.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I guess one way to gain some insight in to this is... Since China has already passed simlar laws (at least in mandatory loot box odd rates being posted) asking if anyone from MTGS is from China and plays MTGO and if the laws have impacted their experence at all.
The odds of pulling magic cards isn't currently hidden, so being forced to tell you the odds wouldn't change anything. The information is already known.
I don't think that's universally true. Not all rares and uncommons show up at the same frequency (anecdotally, Fatal Push looks to be almost as frequent as a rare), and they don't publicly post per-card frequencies. That's not even accounting for all the box/case randomization issues that we keep seeing.
I guess one way to gain some insight in to this is... Since China has already passed simlar laws (at least in mandatory loot box odd rates being posted) asking if anyone from MTGS is from China and plays MTGO and if the laws have impacted their experence at all.
The odds of pulling magic cards isn't currently hidden, so being forced to tell you the odds wouldn't change anything. The information is already known.
I don't think that's universally true. Not all rares and uncommons show up at the same frequency (anecdotally, Fatal Push looks to be almost as frequent as a rare), and they don't publicly post per-card frequencies. That's not even accounting for all the box/case randomization issues that we keep seeing.
This is a false. There isn't secret rarities. Every card is printed as much as every other card with the same rarity.
I guess one way to gain some insight in to this is... Since China has already passed simlar laws (at least in mandatory loot box odd rates being posted) asking if anyone from MTGS is from China and plays MTGO and if the laws have impacted their experence at all.
The odds of pulling magic cards isn't currently hidden, so being forced to tell you the odds wouldn't change anything. The information is already known.
I don't think that's universally true. Not all rares and uncommons show up at the same frequency (anecdotally, Fatal Push looks to be almost as frequent as a rare), and they don't publicly post per-card frequencies. That's not even accounting for all the box/case randomization issues that we keep seeing.
This is a false. There isn't secret rarities. Every card is printed as much as every other card with the same rarity.
It was done before mythic rarity was a thing, but it was more a factor of where things showed up on the print sheets.
Right now the bigger problem is that wizards has over printed a lot of cards. The company basically wants to take cards that see 4x play in modern decks, upshift them, and then make them lotto cards for master sets.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
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I was wondering what everyones thoughts are on the new loot box legislation (they are tring to pass a law in the US that all loot box's need to be sold only to people over the age of 21 and that all odds of all drops must be shown.
I ask this becuase it very well could relate to MTGO (and any other online gaming with micro transactions WOTC puts out)
Their defintion of a loot box is any item that has a random varrable that is purchases for real world money.
Could this type of law mean that MTG would become a 21+ game and would WOTC be ok posting actuly adds (including foil odds for each card) on their product.
Thoughts?
Truthfully, this is single most interesting topic I have ever seen posted on this forum. I am the mod of the politics/news/current events forum elsewhere; I think I will create a new thread to highlight this issue.
Tbh, I don't see any laws passing on a wide scale that would prohibit/restrict lootboxes, at least not with the age being set to 21 (I could see maybe 16, but 21 is a stretch as lootboxes aren't "true" gambling - you always get something from the box/pack, even if it sucks). And if it isn't a wide scale law, I would assume that it would be addressed via a nudge-nudge wink-wink "residents of X must be 21 to purchase" disclaimer somewhere that isn't enforced.
Again, without a law on the books yet, it's hard to say how WotC would sidestep it, but sidestep it they would. Indeed, I have a hard time seeing any way of writing a loophole-free law that wouldn't be a draconian ban on all electronic gaming, period (as any game with any random numbers being generated is something that provides a variable experience you paid real-world money for).
Don't get me wrong, games double dipping by putting lootboxes in a pay-to-play game are disgusting, but I don't see legislation as being even remotely effective in curbing it. I would hope that there has been enough ill will built up that the practice will die out on its own, though I doubt it as long as it remains profitable. It's the same concept as laugh tracks in sitcoms - the watchers and actors hate them, but they work so they aren't going anywhere.
While I am not 100% I beleve that was indeed the problem the ability to progress in the game was directly tried to loot box drops.
Yes they did, its psychological pressure that is done to "force" you to buy it.
People are taught how to milk players in game design schooling and the trend just gets worse every moment.
Its even more crazy in lots of "free" games that use the Shop to buy stuff as an actual ingame feature, and push you in many more aspects to buy something:
Like the ever present "stamina" so you simply cannot continue playing for a time unless you spend money to get some kind of stamina booster items.
Daily Quests and login-Bonus to keep players as addicted as possible to play the game at least once per day. Stretch that to a weekly or monthly streak and you give players a real incentive to always login, and if they ever cannot login, you offer them a payed "service" to get a login retrospective.
Game needs to be competitive, so players directly compare to players that spend tremendous amount of money. The feeling to fall behind is a pretty strong driving force for some people to spend money, especially if they believe that lots of others do so too.
All of these "features" , "mechanics" or "services" are tagged on and its actively using psychology to milk players for money that are susceptible to addictions.
And using a persons addiction to make money is anything but fair, its done because companies get greedy for easy money and nothing is easier than using a persons addiction to make them pay.
Backing that up with "Well you agreed to our terms" is not helping here, as you actively sell something to a person that will literally agree to everything as long as they get what they want.
Its like selling drugs to kids and asking them to please sign this papers, thats simply not going to work and thats why laws forbid it in many ways.
Loot-boxes in games are a very real problem that just becomes more and more troubling , especially if people dont recognize it creeping into the games they love , stop it early instead of when people are already addicted and committed to it.
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Putting a real strict paywall to the players would help to reduce the extremes, but as of right now, the industry of free2play games really really depends on the people that pay a lot of money, so a lot of them cannot survive with the business model they run.
Bigger companies simply use loot-boxes to add easy elements to a game that milks people for more money. Minimal cost and someone always pays money for services that are just insultingly trivial.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
I suppose I need to look into that, then--I hadn't heard that. I don't play any online or console games so I would have missed that situation. Which game was that?
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The odds of pulling cards may not be hidden but the variance in opening packs, whether real or virtual, is probably the point of contention. You open a pack and get Rekindling Phoenix while I open a pack and get Silverclad Ferocidons. One of us is clearly the winner in that round of the pack lottery--a crafty lawyer can stretch that into "gambling".
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@ TheOnlyOne652089 -- very insightful.
Art is life itself.
Battlefront 2 was the trigger but the lootbox backlash has been brewing for a while.
Market examples include:
* Free-to-Play games with no way to advance beyond the first couple of levels/rounds/maps/whatever without payment but NOT billed as demos. A number of Apple Store software does this.
* Steam captive market and the commissions earned from loot box swag B/S.
* Reports of adults spending thousands a month on games like Candy Crush, such as the woman who spent so much money she was left with no money for food one month. (This is an example of gambling addiction).
* Children gaining access to P2P games and charging thousands on their parents accounts.
* Theft of accounts and the accompanying swag (this happened to me but I had no swag to steal.)
* The increased hidden cost to get the "full" game, e.g. Mortal Kombat.
- as an aside, there is also the subtle practice of releasing a game then releasing expansion packs that should have been in the original in the first place. This is a big gray area but IIRC Gotham suffered from this.
- some online stores are getting better about total costs involving "full games" so this is less of a problem now.
* Old game titles originally released as full titles now modified for micro-transactions. Dungeon Keeper, Sonic the Hedgehog, Kid Chameleon to name a few.
That's all off the top of my head. Many have been going on for a long time.
Agreed. I used to subscribe to a game devoper publishing about ten years ago and there was an article written about exactly how to do that. I believe the example used was Counter Strike or Team Fortress and how to eek money out of the players on the Steam platform. I'm not sure if I kept the hard drive from back then though.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It was started by a well meaning senator in Hawaii and there has been a lot of talk on the subject across various groups both for and against it. Recently the esrb took a non-committal position on it and just require games to include an in game purchases label.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu6pXCxiRxU
And a follow up too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IXgzc41W3s
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Topic is pretty huge, and wont go away and companies already try to cheat the "solutions" to keep the ball running and milking the addicted players they could catch.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
"TCGs as Gambling" has been litigated in the past, uniformly resulting in victory for the TCG companies. While it's possible that a change in law would result in a change in outcome, it does not set high expectations for a success by any lawsuit.
Notably, one of the lawsuits - specifically against Nintendo and WotC for the Pokemon TCG - was dismissed due to lack of standing, in turn due to lack of damages. The court specifically ruled that disappointment in the cards one gets is not "damages". There are many situations where the law requires damages; that is, even if someone did X which is nominally a violation of the law, you have to prove that this violation of the law actually hurt you or your financial interests.
Of course, WotC/Hasbro has a legal department that is paying attention to any developments in this space, and you can be certain that they've devoted more thought and expertise to this than we have. Having a legal department doesn't guarantee they aren't or won't do anything illegal - plenty of companies do illegal things despite the presence of a legal department. But even if so, it would be a lot more complex than just "element of chance -> gambling -> big lawsuit win".
Edit: For reference, thought I'd link this since it took me a while to find and others may be interested:
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/300/1083/545861/
I wouldnt be THAT certain of that, given the legal department of WotC is like 1 dude that probably doesnt have a law degree ...
But i might totally exaggerate that a little bit , almost certainly.
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The value difference in cards is in the 2ndary market.
For WotC ignoring the 2ndary market, every card has the equal value to any other junk, as they are all just cards, players can choose to play or they dont.
Nobody really demands you to play good cards to attend any tournament, as long as they are legal, you could just play with a 60 cards basic land deck, chances to win are not that great (Unless its Urzas Saga Standard, in which a 1000 island deck was literally competitive, and that irony smells big, especially as its not even a joke).
Any-how , WotC claim like any other card game really comes down to that the stuff has no value, but the 2ndary market and that value is frankly arbitrary, people can charge whatever they want for a card, and someone might even pay that price, but the card is in reality just what it is, a piece of expensive paper.
Law as it is backs that up and the market isnt really big compared to Casino Gambling which a much larger % of people play compared to something specific as magic (or even all trading card games combined is still a not really significant number that a government would really feel the need to put up laws to tax it harder or regulate it more, its like kids toys and in this point of time its around for so long that its kinda proven itself that it doesnt really harm anyone, unless they go all out and buy booster packs for whatever crazy reason without being a major reseller).
However, a bit regulation already exists.
Booster packs really say what they contain. Cards in numbers, and the chances to get a foil card are also printed on the booster packs (at least the EU ones i can check right here).
It reads "Premium cards approx. 1:67
And they have at least some kind of tracking number, no idea if they "actually" could trace that back to determine what was actually in the booster pack or thats just potentially a thing (they could, but was it ever used by anybody, like ever and officially?).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
I also found The Troubling Psychology of Pay To Loot Systems, and while neither article is exactly the one I was thinking of, they hit relevant points.
Art is life itself.
Now that is the kind of research I like--I have cited cases from that site on several topics before (not here, of course, but I am here only for spoilers).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMRNQ7_xJes
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I don't think that's universally true. Not all rares and uncommons show up at the same frequency (anecdotally, Fatal Push looks to be almost as frequent as a rare), and they don't publicly post per-card frequencies. That's not even accounting for all the box/case randomization issues that we keep seeing.
It was done before mythic rarity was a thing, but it was more a factor of where things showed up on the print sheets.
Right now the bigger problem is that wizards has over printed a lot of cards. The company basically wants to take cards that see 4x play in modern decks, upshift them, and then make them lotto cards for master sets.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!