LivDiv wrote:

nick_md wrote:

Gacha for cosmetics/taunts etc I don't really have an issue with.

I don't have an issue with them personally but I think they should still be age limited.

nick_md wrote:

the chance element and it's great when you get a sick pull.

Anything that elicits this response when paid for should be treated as gambling really. I don't have a problem with that being accessible to adults but should abide by all other gambling laws.

LivDiv wrote:

Maybe it is time card games were looked at.
Those have long since moved on from being innocent fun, some rare cards from packs (not tournament or event cards) are going for serious money even when still in circulation.

They are less of a problem than loot boxes for sure though, firstly because the buyer at least gets something of value, even the lowest card can be sold on secondly because playing Magic or whatever doesn't actively harass the player to buy more cards.
Oddly the argument that the cards have value I think means that strictly speaking they should be considered gambling already.

Think this is overstating the cost of MTG cards and misunderstanding the way MTG operates for many as their primary hobby. The Black Lotus is of course a ridiculously costed card, but it’s not really a playable thing outside of very specific legacy formats. It’s an antique, a collectors item, a first printing Marvel comic, a Babe Ruth baseball card etc

The MTG current format is always Standard, it tends to covers a few releases and the year’s core set. That’s the sphere that most competitive players exist in. Boosters are printed in a set manner so you’ll get this in each pack:

both core set and expansion booster packs contain 16 cards: One marketing card, one basic land, ten commons (one possible premium card in any rarity), three uncommons, and one rare (occasionally, about one in eight packs, replaced by a mythic rare).

The printing for these is insanely clever btw, I read about it when Keyforge came out. Algorithms dictate what a print run makes, lots of stuff to keep it weighted and fair. Very smart.

Anyway, that’s her standard £3.80 booster. People who want to play competitive Standard, or play a lot of MTG on the game store designated wednesdays or fridays will generally buy two or three booster boxes (36 packs for £90, usually with a store discount/bundle deals) That means on average they’re getting 4 mythic rares per box as well as all the other cards. In standard cards rarely go above £50, and it’s only the competitive players that will buy those after people have worked out the meta, and they know what deck they’re tuning for tournaments (with cash and card prices). Sure a novice could buy one, but they’re better off spending that money on the equivalent amount of boosters, cos by the time you’re fishing for single Mythics you might as well just buy a whole pre-built deck

The other most popular format is drafting where you pay some money, and get given a handful of boosters to make a deck around, often you’ll pick a card and pass the rest on in your cell, so players have to trade off between picking rares and and picking strong utility cards, essentially risking taking a rare that doesn’t work with their deck for the chance of keeping it (you keep all the cards you draft). If you win you get more boosters. This is a very popular format at game cafes, costs you about as much as a night at the cinema, for about 4-6 hours entertainment, and cards to add to your collection. Standard is regulated really well, and the fast momentum of card sets means yeah... you have to pay to play, but it’s the hobby really. This is as close to Davy’s “there should be skill involved” you’ll get, cos picking a Mythic or Rare requires you to know how to play to win really. Also the idea of strong cards being reward to good players is stupid anyway, it just narrows the card pool into tiers of play, and the whole fun of Magic comes from the various levels each format can be solved to, and the creating of and upsetting Metas. Cards tend to rise in price towards the end of the release cycle because of this. People take decks with obviously powerful cards and win with them, then people build decks that beat those. Prices for cards involved in them fluctuate dictated by the meta. Eventually it will be consisted “solved” but in reality it’s only solved to a degree. Wizards put a huge amount of work into their rules, which act as a sort of endless handshake between releases. Rules sets overlap in meaningful ways which keeps it interesting to play with,
especially when one set falls out of play, recontextualising the current set of cards, and adding a new set which produces new synergies, new interactions, and a new meta to be solved. Anyway yeah, standard outsider error there - plus LCGs with fixed card pools exist and they’re a different thing entirely. MTG is about construction of efficiency form what you’ve got available. Moving on.

Sets that fall out of Standard drop into formats like Modern and Legacy which have their own rules and card lists, and sometimes promotional booster releases like Modern Masters which have a far more limited pool of cards, generally culled from popular standard sets, with the most powerful cards being picked for re-release. Boosters tend to cost a quid more in get real. Modern doesn’t interact with Standard, so you can consider it the enthusiasts format - cards can get pricey in Modern, because good cards stop getting printed and might not get reprinted in a masters set. The rarity factor is natural as the game progresses. Good cards nearly always end up in Masters but their rarity often reflects their price, as people want to tun decks that are “solved” in Modern Tournaments, so things like Tarmoglyf will sell for £50 each and be very rare in MM packs.

Finally, the most popular format is Commander (EDH) which is a format where you have 100 card decks, but can only have one copy of each non-basic land card (you tend to have 40-60 land for reference). There are a few formats in EDH covering legacy, standard, modern etc, but also a few others like pauper (no rare cards). These decks can get expensive but the advantage is you only ever need one of each card so duping costs don’t hit you. Cos it’s so popular you’re always getting players, and because it tends to be Modern/Legacy that are most popular, it makes old collections really good value cos you have a huge selection of cards to pull from, and near limitless replay value for your old collection.

All of this is to say, really, that Magic is well thought out to avoid the Black Lotus situation. Certain cards are worth a lot as items, but very little in actual playable value. They’re just ornaments. Where a lot of people not involved might see predation in MTG, I see an ecosystem that you join, much like Warhammer. You buy a few packs in a draft, you build a collection. You get a big booster box to play in local tourneys. You buy and trade a few choice meta cards to do regional tournies. Maybe you never bother, and you just use your growing collection for modern or EDH. It’s not like a digital game where it might one day cease to exist, it’s one of the biggest hobbies out there, and it’s structured and formatted very carefully to avoid the chance of buying a dud booster box. Individually the cards in a booster box will add up to more then the value of the box when sold separately. Competitive decks can cost tons, but they’re for comp players and designed to win high stakes tournies.

That’s to say nothing of the rising popularity of alter ist even LCG games which have fixed releases with no randomisation, and games like Keyforge which only sell fully formatted decks that cannot chop and change card - every deck is unique and entirely fixed.

I can’t speak directly for Yu-gi-oh and Pokemon, but I gather they’re covert similar but Yu-gi-oh tends to cost more and have slightly more miserly chances with rares and so on.

Anyway, TL;DR stuff like Black Lotus, Exodia, Shiny Charizard - they’re not a good way to quantify the nature of these games as they exist outside the actual sphere that these games get played in. They’re as stupidly priced as any rare collectible. Overall I think the comparison to MTG and Gatcha/FIFA stuff misses a lot of the nuances that go into MTG’s format construction, and the way they the card you buy will always have value as objects and as playable cards for formats outside Standard.

You have to appreciate the technicalities too. I think the quickness you can ruffle through electronic card packs and the invisibility of the money are critical facts but kind of intangible things to say why it is more dangerous that way.

I do think there are aspects of the magic formula which are exploitative - I think this is evidenced by how casually sold entire boxes of packets are sold. The sense I get is that is when people buy a box of 30 packs realistically they are buying chances on 30 cards only.

Tempys point about how magic is played is I think the community working around the booster pack model rather than the company’s desired and ideal way for people to buy packs and play the game.

As someone who is on the outside of both of these, on the surface it seems like you could make a similar argument for Ultimate Team

I should make it clear too that I don't think MtG is ideal, or perfect. I just think it makes sense and the issue with random cards and certain cards existing as high value items you can buy, in the traders market, isn't really comparable to Loot Boxes.

I worked in a gaming cafe, games like MtG are their lifeblood. It's a social thing - people come and they pay to play drafts to get cards, some food, a drink, and a good evening with their pals. They walk away with, at the bare minimum the cards they drafted and a good time. They could spend that same money on buying individual cards from the traders market instead, but they don't because that misses a the main part of why MtG is popular: playing with people!

Diluted Dante wrote:

As someone who is on the outside of both of these, on the surface it seems like you could make a similar argument for Ultimate Team

The main difference, unless I have missed something with FUT, is that the old stuff eventually becomes entirely redundant and worthless. This is never really the case with MTG.

For sure!

I didn't intend for the big post to be a declarative "do not victimise magic, the good boy game!" cos hell, I don't play it, but I think it fosters some misconceptions because people see Black Lotus selling for $150,000, and they see Tarmoglyfs and Rare Lands selling from $40-$100 and its just... not the way it works in reality. 

There are a lot of formats and a lot of factors that keep it an involving and fun hobby for a lot of people. Randomness is one of them, but the degree to which it really effects the game is really overstated I find.

Could it operate in different ways? Sure. The Online version has some interesting ways to limit randomness (you can earn gems and stuff by playing and buying, and you can save those to get rare and mythic cards of your choice) but it also lacks the social aspect. A lot of the MtG's appeal is the same reason people go to the pub instead of drinking at home, despite the latter being much cheaper.

Another good thing about MtG is the fact it's physical too.

Things that are not uncommon to see retired MtG players do:
Dump job lots online
Sell all their cards itemised online
Create Cubes which they use to draft (a cube is 4 of every single card in a set, but often it has different setups) frequently people draft this format and Give all the cards back to the person who built the Cube, or if they are running it that way - they give their collection away piecemeal.
Give their collection to a person, a school, a game store, a cafe, etc

Oh, and also the fact that with each fifa you start your fut from scratch again.

Would FUT be viable is there were no loot boxes? Or would the richer punters just have 10 Ronaldos? I can see that could lose some of the fun of it. Hmm.

Maybe they'd need to reinvent it. Eg fantasy football style budgets etc.

Not that I know how FUT works...

The aim of any game like this is to have a healthy meta where there isn't just one 'best deck' (which is hard to achieve, believe me). I think MTG has that tho (not a player myself but my brother's played it since the mid-90s or so, and I get the impression from listening to him that there are a multitude of viable decks, depending on the game type you're playing).

Maybe I'm wrong though, take with a pinch 'cause as said I don't play it.

I’m not sure how it works in Pokemon Video Game but I don’t believe that is solved and the combinations are far less (six slots) but possibly more (move numbers)

Dad horrified at £4,642 gaming app bill

A father who initially paid £4.99 for his 11-year-old daughter to use a smartphone app was shocked to discover a bill for thousands of pounds a month later...
..."My daughter was really upset when we told her about the financial consequences. She thought she was playing with monopoly money - it didn't seem real to her. How can these companies be allowed to trap minors in these games? To trap people who are vulnerable?" he said.

Sounds legit.

Gaming is about playing not buying shit over and over again.
Even when it isnt gambling but open, straight forward purchases I cant think of a game that could possibly have £4k of content in it.