booster packs of trading cards are and always have just been loot boxes

You cracked the code

i was sorta on board with hearthstone until they did the MTG thing where you cards expire after a while. u are definitely right

By expire do you mean they become useless in the meta or do they just get deleted? I can’t decide which is worse but just curious which it is.

they make it so you can't use cards older than a certain cutoff point in standard play, you have to play in a special separate lesser format

while I don't love having to get new cards for rotating formats, they're the only viable solution to power creep I've ever seen, and for me at least the overall 'feel' is infinitely preferable to that of the eternal, been-solved-for-years formats. (at least in MTG, I never really got into hearthstone).

this is a cold take, there is no difference

wow what a RUDE take

ah so quite literally the mtg thing

Am I the only person here who has never played a collectible card game?

i sorta understand why MTG does it but in digital formats, cards can be nerfed immediately at any time if they're too imbalanced, so it should be a lot easier to preserve balance without expiring cards... plus, i'm not really opposed to the idea of a game being "complete". the need to continually be selling new cards is just capitalism making games worse