What's the difference? Is one okay but the other isn't?

What's the difference? Is one okay but the other isn't?

MTG has physical value, you can purchase individual cards you want from either local game stores or the internet.

Lootboxes are just shitty cosmetics.

I feel bad for you OP, here's a pity bump.

being able to buy/sell/trade your cards is a big aspect of it i think, typically i think the lootbox stuff on steam where you can buy/sell cosmetics is a little better recieved

Thank god for that, it'd been almost 2 minutes.

/thread

You get a physical object with trading cards, which (more importantly) has value and can be exchanged with other people for other items of value. If I want to complete a set or even just get a specific rare, I can trade away the ones I do have in exchange for the ones I want. Lootboxes are locked to your account, and you have no way to trade multiple copies of something you own or just ones you don't want for the ones you do.

buying MTG cards is like buying the core game, people that get really into spend a ton, but buying a couple packs of MTG cards to draft a deck is cheaper than buying a $40-60 game then buying the DLC on top of that

>You get a physical object with trading cards
That means nothing in the age of digital distribution.

one is for /tg/ and the other is for /vg/

The difference is buying MTG cards is like buying a game, they just make it random so it's harder and more money spent, but lootboxes are in OW so that they can steal money from a loyal community instead of updating their game, and giving little-to-no value items at a low chance of getting what you might want, and making it hard to save up for items

Trade value. That said card games are also gay and I don't buy them

it does when digital content has no value

Physical card packs are already regulated you fucks.
Lootboxes aren't however.

Because I can buy singles for much cheaper than going the gambling route. I can also sell or trade the cards I get if I don't want them anymore.

What do you mean by regulated? They never fell in the gambling category by legal standards to start with.

This. Not to mention you own your cards. With lootboxes you don’t own any of it.

You clearly do not understand the tactile job of sorting through a physical pile of cards.

Apparently it does if various sites like Steam and GoG prop up.

You know why overwatch gets so much shit while tf2 and CsGo don't get as much shit when they do the same thing? You can trade valves shitty cosmetics, you can sell valves shitty cosmetics, you can buy valves shitty cosmetics. Can you do that with overwatch and all the other lootbox shit? Then I think you found the source of your problem. Both are shitty but at least one gives you the freedom to recoup your losses. Nobody wants 9 genji skins and 0 pharah skins, let people trade.

Can you resell your lootbox crap?

Can you resell your digital games?

. . . you're proving my point.

Yes

>gambling for kids is okay under my mental gymnastic logic

both should be banned plane and simple.

Maybe in some games, but generally, no you can't. Especially in the ones getting the lion's share of bad press, Overwatch and Battlefront 2.

If lootboxes aren't kosher, then aren't all MMOs or any games with a randomized loot system guilty of being degenerate as well?

The only things left to play would be fighting games.

I dont understand the arguement that lootboxes are more gambling than trading cards. Doesnt the ability to cash out on the cards you got make it more like gambling than digital goods? I thought the whole definition of gambling is that you gotta be able to cash out in some way and gotta be able to gain nothing. Unless its a valve game, you dont get either of those things...

If they are earned solely through gameplay, it's not really the same as being able to purchased with real money.

No. There's a huge difference between paying a subscription to access an entire game and just buying a random box of digital crap.

Because no one cares about the legal definition here. If we go strictly by current legal standards, neither are gambling, point blank.

>Is one okay but the other isn't?

I don't think there is any difference at all, I think both are gambling and should be regulated and taxed as such. I think the reason most people tie themselves into mental knots is because they want to form a model where loot boxes are bad yet TCGs are still okay, but having played Magic for 20+ years, I know there is no real difference, both are huge money sinks preying on people with addictive personalities through skinner box mechanics. Both are gambling in my book.

You haven't made an initial purchase of 60+ dollars to get the right to buy packs.
While I don't quite know magic the gatherings practices, I know a lot of card packs have guaranteed at least 1 rare per pack, which I don't think any lootbox have.
Whatmore you can sell, trade, or even just give away your cards you get. Again, not a whole lot of lootbox games do.
And in most cases the cards you buy will be available to you to use for the card games entire life. I could still use cards from the beginning of yu-gi-oh in the games now. Any loot you get from a lootbox in Overwatch would be a moot point if they ever made an Overwatch 2. Which they won't, since the games dying as is, buy you understand what I'm trying to say.

I don't understand how people even try to use this analogy

There are strict rules regarding the rates and chances of the physical contents within the card packs.
This even predates TCGs if I am not mistaken and has been a thing since they started selling baseball cards and stuff.

If it's somehow made apparent that they've done something shady with the rates they get absolutely reamed by the law as a result.
For videogames though? They can literally present one percentage and then go with an entirely different one. It's unregulated. And they're allowed to even outright lie. No need to disclose rates and even if they do they aren't obliged to follow them.
Meanwhile there are actually ton of rules surrounding the physical sales of card packs. Just because it isn't considered gambling and just because it isn't massively regulated does not mean there aren't a bunch of rules and that it somehow isn't regulated.

Sup Forums always jumps to extremes for some reason. And keep making this comparison between physical card packs and lootboxes. Then proceeds to be 100% against any kind of lootbox regulation, completely missing how card packs are already regulated.
At the very least force developers to disclose their rates. That's a consumer friendly start. Even though it's regulation.

Trading Cards are a real item with value. You can buy, sell, or trade individual cards at will. Digital lootboxes are part of a closed economy and gambling on the box is the only way to get the items.

resale value

>comparing phyiscal items with resale value to a digital product without it

Dear Sup Forums, OP was a faggot.

Love user

>What's the difference? Is one okay but the other isn't?
You can resell the cards as they are physically owned by you 100 percent unlike that lootbox stuff which thanks to EULA you do not really even fucking own and only have access to it thanks to a license one bought to be allowed to use the shit which can be revoked at any point in time and for whatever reason.
Granted them EULA hold no real water until taken to court and upheld. The lawyering involved for an individual means that they can get away with that dumb shit.


So yeah the cards are physical tangiable shit while the lootbox shit you really do not technically really own.
That is the clear and simple difference really that should have been easy to understand for anyone who is not underaged or fucking dumb ass casual who grow up with the ps3 and 360 as their first consoles. Ya faggot.

In Overwatch, you can at least get in game currency for all your dupes and then buy whatever skin you want.

ok but why is this garbage okay

fucking rng shit but still

I can buy individual Magic cards online.

Apart from the fact that one is a physical object...

If stores that sold Magic cards had running credit card accounts that children were allowed and encouraged to use when their parents weren't present, there would probably be a lot of heat coming down on card sellers too. Digital business models that tacitly encourage children to purchase with linked accounts they are not actually in control over are generally deemed "predatory"

Because if I'm just dying to have a specific card, I'm not forced to buy packs until I get it through sheer random chance. I can just go and buy a single of that card through 3rd party resellers. If I really want a specific skin, I would have to lay down an indefinite amount of money on lootboxes, or go without it.

It's all about trolling.

There are differences on both sides of the situation. On the one hand, you could consider TCGs as more like gambling because, as you say, you could spend money and then "cash out" by just selling the cards. On the other hand, there are other things you could do with the cards (including entering a draft and/or winning competitions) which give them worth outside just what they will sell for. Plus, there is a factor of prospecting and predicting value changes, somewhat similar to a stock market which isn't (technically) considered gambling. You could hold onto a card predicting that its value might increase, or sell it predicting that its value will drop, based on information rather than just chance.

Lootboxes (at least the Overwatch style) aren't "gambling" but it does involve spending money for only a chance of getting something you might want. There are some "chance for prizes" games which aren't considered much more than gambling that exist already, and the parallels are fairly obvious. Plus, the fact that none of these digital goods have any ability to be traded or any value outside the account - and that these accounts generally can't be exchanged - means that it is basically a worthless money sink. People are going to be less favorable to a worthless money sink than they are to something which could conceivably have value, even if it doesn't have much.

Situations like TF2 are slightly different, but most companies are specifically not attempting to create that kind of economy.

no one ever said it was ok

It's not. Hearthstone isn't a TCG because there's no trading. But OP compared Overwatch lootboxes to physical MTG packs.

Because it's F2P, you don't pay 60 bucks and then get hit with lootboxes on top of that.

It's not okay, but it IS F2P. P2W is not anything new.

No because you can't buy loot with real money, at least not games I know of. In Guild Wars 2 you can technically buy exotic gear with real money if you buy microtransactions but any gear past that requires you to earn it through gameplay
Also, MMOs provide microtransactions for people who are too lazy to grind for shit, whereas Overwatch and BF2 have stuff locked behind lootboxes solely to get you to buy lootboxes.
You can argue that MMOs are only grindy in order to push you into buying microtransactions but at the same time the grindiness and feeling of accomplishment is kind of the point of MMOs. Where in Overwatch you don't accomplish or earn anything because of the lootboxes. I don't play the game so correct me if I am wrong but I'm pretty sure there isn't anything like the Gold Guns for CoD in Overwatch. There's nothing to earn and all the unlockables are there solely to get you to buy lootcrates and give them money.

Blizzard can ban/suspend your account if you break one of their rules, thus preventing you from using your purchased digital items.

The amount is tiny though. They should sell skins and other cosmetics outright, not lootboxes. It would be good for everyone, because that encourages Blizzard to make lots of actually desirable stuff instead of 50 bazillion bullshit sprays.

so gambling is okay as long as the item you gamble for has physical value?

age 13+

The cards are the game.

Pokemon cards are 6+. Explain?

If the contents of an item being random makes purchasing it gambling, then a lot of toys are in trouble too.

Doesn't even need to be physical. Look at the stock market.

>Lootboxes are just shitty cosmetics.
For Valve games, you can buy and sell the items contained in the lootboxes, making them exactly like MtG cards.

You don't pay $60 up front to be allowed to play mtg.

The government wanted to step in and claim it was gambling, but tricked them into that they aren't.

Doesn't magic publish the odds of getting a mythic? If so, there's one thing that's different.

yeah you pay a couple hundred

If you gain something of relative value, then it's not gambling.

If I buy a chocolate bar and one of them has a golden ticket, even if it doesn't I still got an item of value (chocolate).

If I buy a scratch off lottery ticket and it is not a winner, I paid and received nothing.

Ultimately, the video games are being undone by their own "you don't own anything, you only get to use the license" arguments to circumvent doctrine of first sale. They wanted to fight against resale of games, and they've turned lootboxes into technical gambling because of it.

Starter packs are $20 or so and are fairly good these days. Plus, you could do drafts. (Although admittedly, you need to be pretty decent at the game to have any chance at that.)

>I thought the whole definition of gambling is that you gotta be able to cash out in some way and gotta be able to gain nothing
That's not the definition of gambling though. The strict definition of the word is
>take risky action in the hope of a desired result.
You're putting something up for potential loss in hopes of getting a desired result. Nobody is opening up lootboxes going "wow! Display pictures, I wanted those!" But you can bet your sweet ass they get excited when they get a legendary outfit.

Obviously the legal word has a vastly different meaning considering you have things like blind boxes, card packs, quarter machines, etc existing all over the world.

I'd argue that it is. If you're just opening the box/pack without any intention of getting anything, then sure it's not. Since there isn't anything really of 'greater value' to be obtained in said scenario, but if that was the case then most of the time you wouldn't really open one in the first place.

>Trading Cards are a real item with value.
That makes them closer to the legal definition of gambling that is often used.

The difference is the MTG booster packs give you a physical item to resell if you so chose.

Mine and many others biggest problem with loot boxes is that we cant do anything with the items once we have them. We cant trade them. We cant sell them. Nothing. We can put money into the system but not take it out. For MTG I maintain a pretty much a zero sum game. I get to play because I sell what I open in packs. If I could not resell the cards I open I would not continue to play. Its as simple as that.

The difference is that overwatch is normie as fuck, while MTG is for social outsiders.

FPBP

This. I have some YGO TCG's lying around and looked up the number codes on them and turns out that some of them are worth $10+

You own magic cards, you don't own digital goods

>you don't own digital goods
Being able to sell the digital goods you have means that you own them for all intents and purposes.

and they skirt that definition by having the producer not define the value of said cards themselves. the cards are essentially worthless until the players assign values to them

>they skirt that definition by having the producer not define the value of said cards themselves.
They define the value of the cards by assigning a value to the packages the cards come in. The consumers then adjust the value of those cards based on rarity and usefulness.

>comparing shitty cosmetic digital boxes to physical valuable goods

Do you understand the difference between killing people in a game and in real life, you fucking inbred?

until your account is terminated or the service ends, of course

Which I always find silly since if they're not all weighted the same obtain rate then they're heavily influencing the value of it.

Why do people complain of literal cosmetics?
You don't need them. At all.
Stop complaining about it.

You're the problem. Please burn yourself alive

Only to a certain extent. You only own it up until the server dies or you lose your account either through actually losing it or getting banned. Digital goods are absolutely idiotic and I can't understand why people push for them. They only benefit indies and even then you don't own the game in perpetuity.

No, tell me what's wrong with having a completely optional random cosmetic draw

One is prying open shitty plastic to get cards. The other is sitting through a flashing lights, satisfying sounds and animations designed to make you want to keep buying and opening loot boxes. Look at the fucking image, they're literally glowing. They're literally designed to prey upon the mentally weak.

A lot. You're just a tunnel-vision rodent.
Look at the wider context holy fuck I'm not going to spoonfeed you

If these triple A games had markets similar to tf2 where you can sell or trade whatever undesirable item you get in a lootbox for the something you actually want I bet a majority of people wouldn't give nearly as much a shit about loot boxes. Any cosmetic or weapon I wanted in tf2 I could just find a seller and get it easy without gambling

You piece of shit stop making these retarded threads

I imagine it stems from the frustration of not being able to stop poor retards from giving their money to rich assholes, which gives the rich assholes more power to fuck over the not rich people.

>don't like what cards I got
>can trade or sell them
vs.
>don't like what loot I got
>too bad

hmm, I can't seem to spot the difference

I'm not a fan of booster packs either, and prefer the living card game model, that said, magic booster packs do have a small amount of actual gameplay significance, in that booster packs are used in certain magic formats like drafting which wouldn't function without them.

Thats just how free markets work
Unless you wanna go full retard and say "lets have the government step jn and ban this" you just gotta realize if people put a price tag on it and someone buys it that's how capitalism works
If it's not worth the price then people will stop buying.

>1997+10
>buying Magic the Gathering

>starter packs
>good these days

Magic literally designs their starter packs to have cards that are unusable in any kind of remotely competitive format.

MTG doesn't give you free cards just from playing the game a few hours a week.

I get free magic cards all the time.
-Go to a draft
-win because I'm not a shitter
-exchange portion of prize for free entry next week
-keep everything left over
-repeat

Just gotta git gud.

>remotely competitive format
If you mean tournament level, then I guess you are right. Then again, good luck with any sort of tournament level without spending $1000.

If you mean any sort of play less than that, then they are reasonably decent. I probably wouldn't recommend those "world tournament" decks to a new player since they likely won't understand how to play, but even the common ones you see with each new set tend to be fairly good. At least, it was far better than in the early 2000s where your standard blue/white deck would have shit like a 1UW 1/2 flier as its "good" card. Seriously, old starter packs were Grizzly Bears/Scathe Zombies tier of usefulness.

>playing kitchen table magic

Why even fucking bother?

Aftermarkets. It's why TF2 lootboxes are tolerated because you can trade for weapons and hats with pennies worth of in-game resources.

By US Law, It's not considered gambling because the distributor of the card packs assigns no value to anything inside of the packs.

Wow OP btfo on first post.

Free markets aren't really a thing in real life, as far as I'm aware. Even in this situation I could argue that the loot crates in overwatch are price fixed by a monopoly and is therefore not a free market.
Also, there's different levels of regulation between allowed and banned. I'm not going to make any claim as to what level of regulation if any is most desirable though, since I don't know myself.

>implying there is a difference

>For Valve games, you can buy and sell the items contained in the lootboxes, making them exactly like MtG cards.
That's why nobody is accusing Valve, you Sherlock.