But, after age verification, they won’t be able to independently make the loot-box purchases that grant players access to the game’s collectable characters.

This sounds a bit misleading. "Grant players access" sounds like there was no access before purchase. As far as I know, there are no characters that require any purchases at all. I mean, wishes aka gacha pulls use 2 types of currency and both types you get either with real money or through gameplay (including dailies for example). I've got 4 four-star characters from gacha pulls without spending any real money on gacha pull currency so far at AR33.