Loot Boxes Revisited

[Ceka Cianci]

28 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Whether LL decided to do this themselves or were made to by law makers doesn't really matter.  LL still crafted and implemented the "Gaming Rules" as they apply to SL which of course would have been an interpretation of the law and that may yet happen again with Gacha.

The effect is still the same though and that is the initial step has already been taken to protect addicts in SL so it's too late to make an appeal with the slippery slope argument.  That was the point of my response to Parhelion.  I am quite happy to agree that LL did this in response to the law.
 

 

I wasn't really arguing..I was just remembering back is all.. A lot of businesses had to make those changes to comply..

I just remember how much it impacted a lot of things in SL.. Even the leisure type games like sploders..

Those were fun to just play with friends while hanging out..Even a lot of friends left SL back then,which sucked..

 

I don't think Gachas being changed to a game of chance will have the kind of impact that SL went though back then.. There is more than one type of gacha anyways..They will probably just switch to one of the other types which give a person a better shot at the items..

Kind of like what you mentioned before,where you eventually get them all, but just not being sure what the order they will come.. taking the same amount of turns as there are items in the list.

I'm kind of in the same place really..I won't lose sleep over them staying or going really..I'd much rather just go buy whatever it is..hehehe

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I wasn't really arguing..I was just remembering back is all.. A lot of businesses had to make those changes to comply..

I just remember how much it impacted a lot of things in SL.. Even the leisure type games like sploders..

Those were fun to just play with friends while hanging out..Even a lot of friends left SL back then,which sucked..

 

I don't think Gachas being changed to a game of chance will have the kind of impact that SL went though back then.. There is more than one type of gacha anyways..They will probably just switch to one of the other types which give a person a better shot at the items..

Kind of like what you mentioned before,where you eventually get them all, but just not being sure what the order they will come.. taking the same amount of turns as there are items in the list.

I'm kind of in the same place really..I won't lose sleep over them staying or going really..I'd much rather just go buy whatever it is..hehehe

🤗 It is all good I don't mind explaining myself when required 😃 All part of healthy debate.

I have no idea what will happen of course but nothing either way will surprise me really and tbh if they stayed it wouldn't bother or affect me much.
That doesn't mean of course I don't have views 😉.

[Lindal Kidd]

I very seldom patronize gacha vendors.

How about Powder Packs?  Are THOSE gambling?  (I don't use these either).

The only gambling I endorse is the trees that drop random coconuts on visitors...deadly coconuts, if you have land that's Damage enabled.  I call it "Brush and Roulette", or "Frond Memories"!

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I very seldom patronize gacha vendors.

How about Powder Packs?  Are THOSE gambling?  (I don't use these either).

The only gambling I endorse is the trees that drop random coconuts on visitors...deadly coconuts, if you have land that's Damage enabled.  I call it "Brush and Roulette", or "Frond Memories"!

Whether it is gambling or not depends on your point of view but ultimately, I guess, the only view that matters is the one making the laws.

I like best the simple proposition of something being offered for sale that is honestly presented where the potential buyer can have a reasonable degree of knowing what they would be buying at a known price.  Buying anything sight-unseen and hoping I like what I get  doesn't interested me much.

[Lindal Kidd]

Just now, Gabriele Graves said:

Whether it is gambling or not depends on your point of view but ultimately, I guess, the only view that matters is the one making the laws.

And that is the scary thing about government, especially "progressive" government.  Someone is always keen to make a law that forbids you to do something or have something.  Never THEM, mind you.  Always other people, and always "for their own good."

Whoops, I got political.  Sorry.

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

And that is the scary thing about government, especially "progressive" government.  Someone is always keen to make a law that forbids you to do something or have something.  Never THEM, mind you.  Always other people, and always "for their own good."

Whoops, I got political.  Sorry.

Nothing to say sorry for from my side.  This stuff touches our all our lives, it would be bizarre if it didn't leak into any conversation despite best intentions. 🙂

[Ceka Cianci]

I don't think Powder packs are the same thing..

Those are more like my fathers beer of the month club..Where he gets like a six pack of different beers from around the world or vapings zample box.. Where they get this box of different juices every month from different vape shops from all over..

I just got the Genus powder pack a week or so back..It's like a box of different designers  products..like euphoric s lipsticks and eye shadows or avi glams mesh eyes and textures and skins and all kinds of goodies like that..

I think at the event you can pre-order and pay less price and as soon as it's over you pay more for it..I just waited and seen the youtubers do the unboxing and paid the bigger price when I seen it was still a good deal..

There was some really nice things in there and just a couple items made it well worth it for me anyways..Almost the whole thing i kept 

I used to do the luxeboxes also and it always seemed like such good designers were in those also..

 

[Marianne Little]

7 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I very seldom patronize gacha vendors.

How about Powder Packs?  Are THOSE gambling?  (I don't use these either).

The only gambling I endorse is the trees that drop random coconuts on visitors...deadly coconuts, if you have land that's Damage enabled.  I call it "Brush and Roulette", or "Frond Memories"!

I have not bought many of them. I have been really unhappy with them. It is a lot of things, but from a pack, I only use the eyebrows - as in my profile pic - and a set of lipgloss. Really not worth 1500 L, even if it has several makeups and skins. I don't remember the other packs, I think it was even worse. Nothing I am using from them.

At lest with a gacha I can get rid of the things, or send it to alts.

And same with the boxes with buildings. The buildings, I would not buy them at all, regardless price. They are just not right for me. The things I have liked has been small furniture pieces, that would cost 200-300 L or so.

[Selene Gregoire]

For me, the bottom line is, no copy and/or no mod? No sale. Which rules out gachas.

[Paul Hexem]

Of course gacha isn't gambling.

That's why the advice that constantly comes up, including in this thread, is to just make an MP store and sell all the items you get that you don't want. It's not gambling if you can sell all the losses you got when you gambled on trying to get the item you wanted!

Wait, what?

[Drake1 Nightfire]

Are we really hasing this out again? 

There are no Loot boxes in SL. Not like the ones in MMos anyway.  Gatchas are exactly like the 25 cent vendors in malls, grocery stores and movie theaters. And YES i have seen someone sit at one that took a credit card and empty the machine. It was 1 USD per "pull" for some mini pokemon toy. Don't know if they had a toy store or what, but they must have spent $200 to empty it. Same goes for the ones at my Friendly Local Hobby Store. They have 3 machines, one has dice sets in it for $3, one has D&D minis for $5 and one has rare Magic card for $5 each. People sit there for hours with watchers offering to buy anything they dont want for cost. 

Can we stop with the whole Gatchas will be banned/are evil/will be regulated as gambling? You do not have to spend USD to play a gatcha as you can earn L$ in SL. I know many people who have yet to put a dime into SL and have all the latest mesh and several thousand L$ to play with. 

[Zeta Vandyke]

3 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

You do not have to spend USD to play a gatcha as you can earn L$ in SL

I also played poker with L$ earned in SL or played in the SL Casino's with self earned L$. I don't think that is a decisive factor in being gamble or not.

I do not understand how you can not see it as gambling. You pay money and get a random item out of it, most useless as the sheer amount of them on MP will not let you sell for cost price. And you have to keep paying till the Random Gods decides your worthy and get the item you want or anything of value at all.

[Blush Bravin]

16 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

 You pay money and get a random item out of it, most useless as the sheer amount of them on MP will not let you sell for cost price. 

I always sell my gachas for pull price, and I have no trouble selling them at that price. I don't have many to sell though because I just don't play gacha but very rarely. I much prefer to buy gachas through the MP. 

22 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

And you have to keep paying till the Random Gods decides your worthy and get the item you want or anything of value at all.

You know what's in the machine and the odds of getting the items. There's some randomness to it but it's limited, because you know what you're going to get. You may not know the exact piece, but you know it's going to be one of those pieces in the machine. Gachas are games, IMO, not so much a gamble. I know I'm going to get something equaling the value of the Lindens I put in the machine. IMO gambling doesn't fit unless you have the possibility of getting absolutely zero or something of lesser value than what you put in. 

Honestly, if someone wants to gamble they can pick anything to gamble on. It doesn't need to be a gacha machine. It can be anything. Take for instance the classic Seinfeld where Kramer meets up with a guy in an airport and they start gambling on which plane will land next. So using that as example, airports should be outlawed. Of course I say this tongue-in-cheek. But personal responsibility must play a part. If someone can't walk away from a gacha machine without spending a huge amount of money, then they need to take responsibility and not play in the first place.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

3 hours ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

I do not understand how you can not see it as gambling. You pay money and get a random item out of it, most useless as the sheer amount of them on MP will not let you sell for cost price. And you have to keep paying till the Random Gods decides your worthy and get the item you want or anything of value at all.

You pay money and get an item of more value than you paid into it.. I mean, with a single dress going for $500-800L on the MP getting one for 50 seems cheap. So what if its a random color. Gambling means you have a chance to lose. If you get an item, you haven't lost.  All of the items have value.  Hell i played one once and got the super rare on my first two tries. I gave one to the person next to me. Should i have put it on the MP for thousands when it cost me $50L? People are taking this waaay too seriously. 

[So Whimsy]

On 2/23/2019 at 10:25 AM, Selene Gregoire said:

For me, the bottom line is, no copy and/or no mod? No sale. Which rules out gachas.

Out of sheer curiousity, what are your thoughts on Gacha's where the creator a) offers to exchange the no transfer for a copy version or b) has an exchange station right on their sim so you don't even have to talk to anyone, you just rez the no transfer item on the appropiate station and you immediately receive the copy/mod version?

Option a) I have come across a few times, though its gotten less because its a lot of work for the merchant and option b) I have only seen once and it's super convenient and awesome. As long as the item is in its original packaging it works perfectly. Actually I have come across this twice, though the second merchant I found only offered this for the rare's, not commons.

I truly wish all gacha makers would offer option b)

Edited February 25, 2019 by Syn Anatine

[So Whimsy]

10 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Are we really hasing this out again?

Yes we are because this is the first time where I see you not being smart about a topic. The price of the pull doesn't matter, but the function does. And that's exactly as a lootbox in an mmorpg.

Believe me, I can pile screenshots upon screenshots of the mmorpg's I played, and yes I did purchase lootboxes in all of them and yes, they're like gachas EXCEPT for the fact I couldn't trade the stuff for real money, just in game gold or gems, so actually SL gacha's are worse in that respect.

What games did/do you play? Maybe we can have a jam session sometimes. Up for grabs are BDO, Tera, GW2, MS2, ESO that I currently have installed. And yep, all of them have them lootboxes.

[Selene Gregoire]

2 hours ago, Syn Anatine said:

Out of sheer curiousity, what are your thoughts on Gacha's where the creator a) offers to exchange the no transfer for a copy version or b) has an exchange station right on their sim so you don't even have to talk to anyone, you just rez the no transfer item on the appropiate station and you immediately receive the copy/mod version?

Option a) I have come across a few times, though its gotten less because its a lot of work for the merchant and option b) I have only seen once and it's super convenient and awesome. As long as the item is in its original packaging it works perfectly. Actually I have come across this twice, though the second merchant I found only offered this for the rare's, not commons.

I truly wish all gacha makers would offer option b)

Too many hoops to have to jump through. Why not make them copy/mod/no trans to begin with and save everyone the time and hassle. Some of us have full time jobs plus the full time job of taking care of the home and the full time job of taking care of family. Our time online and in SL is limited. Why would we want to waste any of it unnecessarily? For some of us, life is getting too short to willingly waste time.

[Fionalein]

2 hours ago, Syn Anatine said:

Out of sheer curiousity, what are your thoughts on Gacha's where the creator a) offers to exchange the no transfer for a copy version or b) has an exchange station right on their sim so you don't even have to talk to anyone, you just rez the no transfer item on the appropiate station and you immediately receive the copy/mod version?

Option a) I have come across a few times, though its gotten less because its a lot of work for the merchant and option b) I have only seen once and it's super convenient and awesome. As long as the item is in its original packaging it works perfectly. Actually I have come across this twice, though the second merchant I found only offered this for the rare's, not commons.

I truly wish all gacha makers would offer option b)

I prefer option c): gacha gives you a caspervend voucher you can trade like you used to or use to recieve a "copy mod" item (WITH REDELIVERY AND UPDATES!)

[So Whimsy]

10 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Too many hoops to have to jump through. Why not make them copy/mod/no trans to begin with and save everyone the time and hassle. Some of us have full time jobs plus the full time job of taking care of the home and the full time job of taking care of family. Our time online and in SL is limited. Why would we want to waste any of it unnecessarily? For some of us, life is getting too short to willingly waste time.

That won't work in a gacha, as then you would truly be stuck with the doubles and each new double would literally be wasted money.

Don't get me wrong, I said it only a couple days ago that I much prefer the old days where creators put their best stuff into the stores to be directly purchaseable. Yet thus far, we have to live with all the gachas so having that service you can do at your own leisure is a great idea.

Can't please everyone *shrugs*

[Selene Gregoire]

59 minutes ago, Syn Anatine said:

That won't work in a gacha,

That's not on me. 

 

1 hour ago, Syn Anatine said:

we have to live with all the gachas

We who? I've never played one of the machines and never will. I live without gachas just fine. As SL was just fine before gachas and will be after them, if LL ever nerfs them.

1 hour ago, Syn Anatine said:

Can't please everyone *shrugs*

I don't recall asking to be pleased. You asked me

 

1 hour ago, Fionalein said:

what are your thoughts on Gacha's

and I answered. If you don't like the answer, that is on you, not me.

[Fionalein]

I didn't say that... @Selene Gregoire

[Love Zhaoying]

[Dillon Levenque]

I haven't ever used a gacha machine and almost certainly never will. I didn't know what a lootbox was until I googled it. Why then (you might be asking yourself) did I bother to read this thread at all? What possible benefit could I gain from doing so? What could I learn that could be of any use to me?

That question can be answered with one word: Belgium

I've long suspected something of the sort was true. I mean come on. Jean Claude Van Damme? And my God, who thought of those horrible sprouts? Thank you, @Zeta Vandyke, for shining that beacon of truth into our lives :-).

[Selene Gregoire]

49 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

I didn't say that... @Selene Gregoire

I didn't quote you. Forum must have glitched. Whatever is wrong, LL still hasn't fixed it even after running maint earlier. 

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

44 minutes ago, Dillon Levenque said:

And my God, who thought of those horrible sprouts?

Brussels sprouts are gifts from god. Slice them in half, pan fry some bacon then the sprouts with some garlic, add in a little apple cider and simmer till thickened.. Perfection on a plate.