I'm going to put this out here since I've now had this discussion in several places with people across the past few months, but paper is cheaper if you play locally than playing MTGA, and it allows for faster swapping to whatever meta is forming than MTGA.
First, the cost: People are getting very lost here on the cost because of a very basic cultural issue when it comes to understanding cost. Most people are not trained to look at cost over time, so when they look at something like Arena, which offers a cheap purchase price per pack and the gem economy, it makes it feel cheaper because of the cost granularity. You are able to buy in at any point if you so much as have enough money to buy a Mcdonalds happy meal, and the high end cards are not priced any differently than the lower end ones.
Two things to keep in mind: In standard, the most expensive cards are the cards currently being played in the meta in decks that have significant spotlights on them, or are just so damn good that anyone who sees it basically just knows to buy them. Things like Lyra Dawnbringer, despite being an unprotected removal magnet, are a good example of a really pricey standard card that remains pricey regardless of how time keeps rolling on. Cards like Arclight Phoenix are expensive because they fit into a specific meta deck that can disappear later. In the case of the Phoenix, it's price is probably going to be high for the foreseeable future thanks to the modern Izzit Phoenix decks.
So, if someone is keeping up with the meta at their locals, the real cost of paper is not as high as someone might think. Most sellers are not players and can't tell if a card is going to be good until the spot light hits them. Then they raise the price and flocks of casual competitive players buy into the card, causing the price increases. Old cards like Legions landing go up simply from attrition, but since the boxes are still sold singles sellers just crack them until they feel it's too risky to keep opening more.
This means that someone who plays paper can absolutely play the market and trade up and out of bad cards, such as Lyra Dawnbringer in a meta full of black removal. Meanwhile, in Arena the only recourse someone has to get out of a deck is to buy more packs for wild cards or depend on their existing stock, meaning they would have to play a rediculous amount of games a night to even be able to claim that arena is cheaper. We're talking going beyond the dailies and grinding well into the singles and 50 gold rewards areas. Even then, the shortage on rare wild cards is real and pack opening is absolutely necessary.
Going by how the tournaments work, that also isn't a reliable way for players to get rares. People like Rogue Deckbuilder or experienced tournament players will find that these tournaments are a good way to save a buck, but players who are less experienced will often sign up and wash out before reaching the rare card pile. This means that constructed events are actually a worse option for less skilled and newer players, and a superior option for the cream de la creme. To put it bluntly, if you are among the ones who can win constructed events online consistently, you are within that special subset of players.
Also, the cost on events is a bit tricky to get a grasp of. The thing is, a player can pay for any event with in-game gold, but depending on the newness of a set and the skill of a player, most will not necessarily have the gold to participate in events. Draft is typically 5000 gold, which for a casual player can be most of their work week playing the game for an hour or so a night. Combo that with the temptation to expand ones collection because of losing in Best of One matches too much, and ultimately that player will never have the gold to play in events. That leads them to spending money on gems in order to pay for them, which starts to add up on the total for what one is spending per month.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I've seen you argue this a lot but still have yet to put any kind of numbers out that even hit at this possibility. The fact that everyone plays differently makes it even harder to generalize that one is cheaper than the other. It is reasonable to build up a profile and say "If you fit this profile X is cheaper than Y" but then it only applies to people in that profile. The profile you appear to be building is someone very in-tuned to the market and willing to wait for the right moment to play a deck rather than someone who follows trends and ends up paying the high price of whats popular. Which seems like an extremely niche profile.
To give an example I'll use my own personal experience/profile. To talk about starting costs is rather hard because I started many many years ago, so instead I'll use upkeep costs over about a year.
*Going to a prerelease of a set is $25, I try to do 3 to get a good base of cards from the new set. Over these 3 sealed events I end up with about 50 packs including prize. This is not typical but still I'm down $120 from entry, gas, and food.
*Not doing anymore limited I spend $5-15 a week on entry to tournaments and through winnings and trading I can have any new cards I need within 2-3 weeks. About 11 weeks in-between sets will add about $100 with entry fees gas and food. If I do a larger event like a GP or such its even more but lets ignore those for this purpose because there aren't GPs and the like on Arena yet.
*So a single Set costs about $220 to play through. This is also devoting most of my weekends to going to tournaments because I enjoy them and any tournament takes up the whole day.
*4 set releases a year means I'll pour at least $880 into playing standard. My actual spending on Magic is several times that due to Commander products and other extra releases.
Lets look at arena. It hasn't a been out for a year yet but I can already reasonably predict my expected spending habits based on how the last few set releases have gone. I started January 24th of this year.
*My first purchase was the welcome pack for $5. This allowed me to draft 15 times. I know this is very abnormal but Its important to note that going even longer is possible.
*Having fallen in love with draft I bought 3,400 gems for $20. Allowing me to draft an uncounted number of more times.
*Out of gems I threw together mono red and jumped on the constructed best of 1 events to build gold to draft more.
*After a few days I built the Gates deck and went onto the best of 3 constructed events.
*I have no plans of ever spending more money on Arena, not because it isn't good but because I have no need as I can play the decks I want, I can play draft if I want and the best part is that I can play when I want to play, not only on the weekend spending the entire day out.
So summed up cost for 1 year of Paper Magic was estimated at $880, being generous. While Arena was $25. Its fairly obvious which version is cheaper but like I said. That is only if you fit the profile of someone skilled enough to win more than half their games at draft and enjoys playing on their own time rather than someone else scheduled. I've only played two days this week totaling 6 hours which isn't even a full tournament in Paper.
I would like to see an actual cost analysts from you Colt47. What is your own personal experience with Arena vs Paper because I know everyone claiming its cheaper than Paper is having at least a partly similar experience to me.
Hypothetical for a moment. Lets say I want to jump right in an play whatever deck I want on Arena and Paper, to such an extreme degree that I want to change my deck every week.
*I jump in to paper with Sultai Midrage at a whopping $500, to get this deck on arena is harder to pin down but lets assume you are ungodly unlucky or specifically opening packs that can't get you the cards you want; for a mere $200 we get the same deck.
*Now lets jump ship to Mono-Blue Tempo, by selling/trading our sultai deck we can easily pick this up without extra investment. Unfortunately there is almost no overlap without Arena cards so another $50 because we are using the worst possible numbers.
*Next we jump ship to Esper another deck with almost no overlap. Paper will cost use about $200 more due to the loss of funds from selling to get the mono blue and then the further loss to switch again. Arena will cost us nearly $200 again due to the lack of over lap in the cards we are using. However it is tremendously important to note that we have opened 400 packs in arena and only used the rare wild cards from the progress bar. So we have 400 rare/mythic cards from undetermined sets, needing only 212 rares and 60 mythics to complete a set you have obviously gotten quite a bit of cards you can use to fill out the other decks that will fill up so I'll stop here
*Paper costs us about $700 to play what we wanted when we wanted while arena costs us $450 and probably won't cost use anymore for quite a while.
I've seen you argue this a lot but still have yet to put any kind of numbers out that even hit at this possibility. The fact that everyone plays differently makes it even harder to generalize that one is cheaper than the other. It is reasonable to build up a profile and say "If you fit this profile X is cheaper than Y" but then it only applies to people in that profile. The profile you appear to be building is someone very in-tuned to the market and willing to wait for the right moment to play a deck rather than someone who follows trends and ends up paying the high price of whats popular. Which seems like an extremely niche profile.
To give an example I'll use my own personal experience/profile. To talk about starting costs is rather hard because I started many many years ago, so instead I'll use upkeep costs over about a year.
*Going to a prerelease of a set is $25, I try to do 3 to get a good base of cards from the new set. Over these 3 sealed events I end up with about 50 packs including prize. This is not typical but still I'm down $120 from entry, gas, and food.
*Not doing anymore limited I spend $5-15 a week on entry to tournaments and through winnings and trading I can have any new cards I need within 2-3 weeks. About 11 weeks in-between sets will add about $100 with entry fees gas and food. If I do a larger event like a GP or such its even more but lets ignore those for this purpose because there aren't GPs and the like on Arena yet.
*So a single Set costs about $220 to play through. This is also devoting most of my weekends to going to tournaments because I enjoy them and any tournament takes up the whole day.
*4 set releases a year means I'll pour at least $880 into playing standard. My actual spending on Magic is several times that due to Commander products and other extra releases.
Lets look at arena. It hasn't a been out for a year yet but I can already reasonably predict my expected spending habits based on how the last few set releases have gone. I started January 24th of this year.
*My first purchase was the welcome pack for $5. This allowed me to draft 15 times. I know this is very abnormal but Its important to note that going even longer is possible.
*Having fallen in love with draft I bought 3,400 gems for $20. Allowing me to draft an uncounted number of more times.
*Out of gems I threw together mono red and jumped on the constructed best of 1 events to build gold to draft more.
*After a few days I built the Gates deck and went onto the best of 3 constructed events.
*I have no plans of ever spending more money on Arena, not because it isn't good but because I have no need as I can play the decks I want, I can play draft if I want and the best part is that I can play when I want to play, not only on the weekend spending the entire day out.
So summed up cost for 1 year of Paper Magic was estimated at $880, being generous. While Arena was $25. Its fairly obvious which version is cheaper but like I said. That is only if you fit the profile of someone skilled enough to win more than half their games at draft and enjoys playing on their own time rather than someone else scheduled. I've only played two days this week totaling 6 hours which isn't even a full tournament in Paper.
I would like to see an actual cost analysts from you Colt47. What is your own personal experience with Arena vs Paper because I know everyone claiming its cheaper than Paper is having at least a partly similar experience to me.
Hypothetical for a moment. Lets say I want to jump right in an play whatever deck I want on Arena and Paper, to such an extreme degree that I want to change my deck every week.
*I jump in to paper with Sultai Midrage at a whopping $500, to get this deck on arena is harder to pin down but lets assume you are ungodly unlucky or specifically opening packs that can't get you the cards you want; for a mere $200 we get the same deck.
*Now lets jump ship to Mono-Blue Tempo, by selling/trading our sultai deck we can easily pick this up without extra investment. Unfortunately there is almost no overlap without Arena cards so another $50 because we are using the worst possible numbers.
*Next we jump ship to Esper another deck with almost no overlap. Paper will cost use about $200 more due to the loss of funds from selling to get the mono blue and then the further loss to switch again. Arena will cost us nearly $200 again due to the lack of over lap in the cards we are using. However it is tremendously important to note that we have opened 400 packs in arena and only used the rare wild cards from the progress bar. So we have 400 rare/mythic cards from undetermined sets, needing only 212 rares and 60 mythics to complete a set you have obviously gotten quite a bit of cards you can use to fill out the other decks that will fill up so I'll stop here
*Paper costs us about $700 to play what we wanted when we wanted while arena costs us $450 and probably won't cost use anymore for quite a while.
How did paper cost you 700 dollars?! In standard?! o o; I'm not one to go crazy here, but I spend maybe 120 dollars total in paper when I'm playing in paper standard. Without even needing to bring out the numbers sheet you're already over three times that total.
My budget on cards (being a MTG player on the last three months)
Standard: 120 dollars
Commander: probably 40ish give or take.
Pauper: about 12 dollars.
Modern: Nothing lately.
Arena: being thrifty I was able to pull off about 250 dollars in the last three months. If I had put that money into paper I'd have all the lands and cards needed for just about anything outside of Teferi and some outliers.
Let me put it this way: other games that use a lootbox model like this one, such as Fifa 2018, had some players spending about 10,000 dollars over a two year period. While I doubt it's going to get that high, if someone wants to play with most of the cards and wants to keep up, they will be spending at least 150 dollars each new set unless they are doing something clever like doing Cocatrice games to figure out decks first and then rationing their rare wild cards. In all honesty, that is being optimistic since they went to bigger sets in order to pad things out.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
How did paper cost you 700 dollars?! In standard?! o o; I'm not one to go crazy here, but I spend maybe 120 dollars total in paper when I'm playing in paper standard. Without even needing to bring out the numbers sheet you're already over three times that total.
My budget on cards (being a MTG player on the last three months)
Standard: 120 dollars
Commander: probably 40ish give or take.
Pauper: about 12 dollars.
Modern: Nothing lately.
Arena: being thrifty I was able to pull off about 250 dollars in the last three months. If I had put that money into paper I'd have all the lands and cards needed for just about anything outside of Teferi and some outliers.
I question your reading comprehension if you are legitimately asking how I got a number when I very expressly spelled out how I got those numbers. The $700 was the cost of jumping straight into standard with nothing wanting to play the best decks and switching between them regularly. It was an initial $500 for the first deck because that is what the first deck would cost if you had nothing. Switching to another deck didn't cost anything because you could sell your first deck back to buy what you needed of the second. However you lose money every time you switch so the third deck costed another $200 because its actual cost is $500 but you had already had a large surplus from the first deck.
Your personal Standard budget is about half mine but I want to question this "Budget on Cards" what are you doing with your cards? I factored in the cost of Tournament entries and had essentially $0 actual expense on cards due to trading and opening product from tournaments. Arena has tournament costs but they were also factored in to keep things balanced. Regardless, as I first said, your premises is built around a specific set of skills, interests, and time. So while it might be cheaper for you someone who doesn't meet your exact specifications could have a radically different cost/experience. As several have pointed out if you take the position that under a specific defined set of parameters then Arena can cost $0 so paper can't cost less. Yes this is ignoring the "cost" of time but if you are playing magic and enjoying it, what is the actual "cost".
If you really want to look at other lootbox economies then Arena is a saint. I have seen players throw hundreds and even thousands of dollars into some gatcha games, every few months as new content comes out and only barely get the minimum of what they wanted. While Magic has a hard cap on how much you will have to spend at any given point. The hard cap is about a thousand dollars but almost no one would ever actually want to hit that cap.
I agree with paper being cheaper. For me the issue with Arena is the lootbox aspect and that I can't really just craft a card I want without "earning" one of their obnoxious wildcards. There are SO many rare cards and mythic cards in each viable meta deck, and there is little crossover unless you play similar decks. So to make my Golgari deck, from before RNA dropped, I needed say 18 rares and 7 mythics. Now I am tapped out of rare and mythic wildcards. RNA launches and to make that deck competitive again I need another 6 rares and 4 mythics. The only way to get these are to open a boatload of packs (is it 20 packs for the guaranteed mythic?) In a shop I can buy them, and even sell the cards that are not in the meta anymore. And some of these rares I need are like $0.75. But in Arena they all have the same value and that value is either long-ass grind, or $40+ in packs to either lootbox RNG the card or earn the WC.
Heaven forbid that you get tired of playing the same deck over and over and want to change it up and make something else competitive. Now I need to earn another 20 rares and 10 mythics (on average Id say) to build another deck of a different type. Arena is a huge expense IMO. IRL I play mainly draft at FNM and buy a few packs or cards just to mess around in standard and I have better standard decks IRL than I do in Arena which I can play everyday. And my cards have an actual real-world value. So even though it's not a true investment, it at least feels like if I drop $3 on a pack, I can "earn" money by pulling a $10 card from it. In Arena it's all valueless except in it's rarity which is selectively doled out by a program that rewards only time or (larger) amounts of money.
Heaven forbid that you get tired of playing the same deck over and over and want to change it up and make something else competitive. Now I need to earn another 20 rares and 10 mythics (on average Id say) to build another deck of a different type. Arena is a huge expense IMO.
So much truth right here...
In Arena it's all valueless except in it's rarity which is selectively doled out by a program that rewards only time or (larger) amounts of money.
Heaven forbid that you get tired of playing the same deck over and over and want to change it up and make something else competitive. Now I need to earn another 20 rares and 10 mythics (on average Id say) to build another deck of a different type. Arena is a huge expense IMO.
So much truth right here...
In Arena it's all valueless except in it's rarity which is selectively doled out by a program that rewards only time or (larger) amounts of money.
As well as this.
Yeah, basically that. At this point I'm actually getting worn down by the toxic players now that are running around arena. You basically have to just mute everyone globally and not even let them have emotes anymore, or you end up with some idiot being overly smug when he played a mono-blue aggro deck against some random munitions skeleton combo deck that someone is clearly playing for fun. Right now Arena is a no fun allowed kind of place.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
On Arena I don't have to travel over an hour to get to a LGS and sit on a hard chair.
On Arena I don't have to concede to someone because I don't like them and don't want to spend 50 minutes staring at their face, pretending to be sportsmanlike.
On Arena I can drop a bunch of $ and get full decks with tons of Mythics.
On Arena there is no toxicity because you can't chat or anything, if they spam Emotes you can mute them.
On Arena I get stuff for free every day, and I can save the Gold to get more stuff later. Right now I have 30,000 gold saved, so by the time M20 comes out in July or whenever, or War of the Spark in April, I'll be able to get 30+ packs and have a new deck build immediately.
On Arena I don't need sleeves or dice, or a judge.
On Arena I can get a game any time I want...yes you can do this with Cockatrice or whatever, but I never liked those clients.
Arena is beastly. Once they add cosmetic or Season rewards (Avatars for finishing at Mythic, Gold, Platinium, Diamond, Siver, Bronze...) the game will be unstoppable.
Heck, I sold all my paper junk except for a Commander deck or two because I just don't want to play with people unless one of my best friends that I like is there, and he's there only once in a while because he lives two hours away (or less) in MTL.
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The "Crazy One", playing casual magic and occasionally dipping his toes into regular play since 1994.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
No?
Arema is an excellent platform. They are adding cosmetics finally, so it's going to be super sweet as of the Mrach update.
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The "Crazy One", playing casual magic and occasionally dipping his toes into regular play since 1994.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
On Arena there is no toxicity because you can't chat or anything, if they spam Emotes you can mute them.
Agreed. Given some of the LGS I have been to, Arena is a much better option. I can't even begin to write about the "happenings" at certain LGS. Why travel 2-3hrs for that, when I can play whenever I want in comfort.
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First, the cost: People are getting very lost here on the cost because of a very basic cultural issue when it comes to understanding cost. Most people are not trained to look at cost over time, so when they look at something like Arena, which offers a cheap purchase price per pack and the gem economy, it makes it feel cheaper because of the cost granularity. You are able to buy in at any point if you so much as have enough money to buy a Mcdonalds happy meal, and the high end cards are not priced any differently than the lower end ones.
Two things to keep in mind: In standard, the most expensive cards are the cards currently being played in the meta in decks that have significant spotlights on them, or are just so damn good that anyone who sees it basically just knows to buy them. Things like Lyra Dawnbringer, despite being an unprotected removal magnet, are a good example of a really pricey standard card that remains pricey regardless of how time keeps rolling on. Cards like Arclight Phoenix are expensive because they fit into a specific meta deck that can disappear later. In the case of the Phoenix, it's price is probably going to be high for the foreseeable future thanks to the modern Izzit Phoenix decks.
So, if someone is keeping up with the meta at their locals, the real cost of paper is not as high as someone might think. Most sellers are not players and can't tell if a card is going to be good until the spot light hits them. Then they raise the price and flocks of casual competitive players buy into the card, causing the price increases. Old cards like Legions landing go up simply from attrition, but since the boxes are still sold singles sellers just crack them until they feel it's too risky to keep opening more.
This means that someone who plays paper can absolutely play the market and trade up and out of bad cards, such as Lyra Dawnbringer in a meta full of black removal. Meanwhile, in Arena the only recourse someone has to get out of a deck is to buy more packs for wild cards or depend on their existing stock, meaning they would have to play a rediculous amount of games a night to even be able to claim that arena is cheaper. We're talking going beyond the dailies and grinding well into the singles and 50 gold rewards areas. Even then, the shortage on rare wild cards is real and pack opening is absolutely necessary.
Going by how the tournaments work, that also isn't a reliable way for players to get rares. People like Rogue Deckbuilder or experienced tournament players will find that these tournaments are a good way to save a buck, but players who are less experienced will often sign up and wash out before reaching the rare card pile. This means that constructed events are actually a worse option for less skilled and newer players, and a superior option for the cream de la creme. To put it bluntly, if you are among the ones who can win constructed events online consistently, you are within that special subset of players.
Also, the cost on events is a bit tricky to get a grasp of. The thing is, a player can pay for any event with in-game gold, but depending on the newness of a set and the skill of a player, most will not necessarily have the gold to participate in events. Draft is typically 5000 gold, which for a casual player can be most of their work week playing the game for an hour or so a night. Combo that with the temptation to expand ones collection because of losing in Best of One matches too much, and ultimately that player will never have the gold to play in events. That leads them to spending money on gems in order to pay for them, which starts to add up on the total for what one is spending per month.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
To give an example I'll use my own personal experience/profile. To talk about starting costs is rather hard because I started many many years ago, so instead I'll use upkeep costs over about a year.
*Going to a prerelease of a set is $25, I try to do 3 to get a good base of cards from the new set. Over these 3 sealed events I end up with about 50 packs including prize. This is not typical but still I'm down $120 from entry, gas, and food.
*Not doing anymore limited I spend $5-15 a week on entry to tournaments and through winnings and trading I can have any new cards I need within 2-3 weeks. About 11 weeks in-between sets will add about $100 with entry fees gas and food. If I do a larger event like a GP or such its even more but lets ignore those for this purpose because there aren't GPs and the like on Arena yet.
*So a single Set costs about $220 to play through. This is also devoting most of my weekends to going to tournaments because I enjoy them and any tournament takes up the whole day.
*4 set releases a year means I'll pour at least $880 into playing standard. My actual spending on Magic is several times that due to Commander products and other extra releases.
Lets look at arena. It hasn't a been out for a year yet but I can already reasonably predict my expected spending habits based on how the last few set releases have gone. I started January 24th of this year.
*My first purchase was the welcome pack for $5. This allowed me to draft 15 times. I know this is very abnormal but Its important to note that going even longer is possible.
*Having fallen in love with draft I bought 3,400 gems for $20. Allowing me to draft an uncounted number of more times.
*Out of gems I threw together mono red and jumped on the constructed best of 1 events to build gold to draft more.
*After a few days I built the Gates deck and went onto the best of 3 constructed events.
*I have no plans of ever spending more money on Arena, not because it isn't good but because I have no need as I can play the decks I want, I can play draft if I want and the best part is that I can play when I want to play, not only on the weekend spending the entire day out.
So summed up cost for 1 year of Paper Magic was estimated at $880, being generous. While Arena was $25. Its fairly obvious which version is cheaper but like I said. That is only if you fit the profile of someone skilled enough to win more than half their games at draft and enjoys playing on their own time rather than someone else scheduled. I've only played two days this week totaling 6 hours which isn't even a full tournament in Paper.
I would like to see an actual cost analysts from you Colt47. What is your own personal experience with Arena vs Paper because I know everyone claiming its cheaper than Paper is having at least a partly similar experience to me.
Hypothetical for a moment. Lets say I want to jump right in an play whatever deck I want on Arena and Paper, to such an extreme degree that I want to change my deck every week.
*I jump in to paper with Sultai Midrage at a whopping $500, to get this deck on arena is harder to pin down but lets assume you are ungodly unlucky or specifically opening packs that can't get you the cards you want; for a mere $200 we get the same deck.
*Now lets jump ship to Mono-Blue Tempo, by selling/trading our sultai deck we can easily pick this up without extra investment. Unfortunately there is almost no overlap without Arena cards so another $50 because we are using the worst possible numbers.
*Next we jump ship to Esper another deck with almost no overlap. Paper will cost use about $200 more due to the loss of funds from selling to get the mono blue and then the further loss to switch again. Arena will cost us nearly $200 again due to the lack of over lap in the cards we are using. However it is tremendously important to note that we have opened 400 packs in arena and only used the rare wild cards from the progress bar. So we have 400 rare/mythic cards from undetermined sets, needing only 212 rares and 60 mythics to complete a set you have obviously gotten quite a bit of cards you can use to fill out the other decks that will fill up so I'll stop here
*Paper costs us about $700 to play what we wanted when we wanted while arena costs us $450 and probably won't cost use anymore for quite a while.
You can talk about Trading, selling, buying singles. Its all irrelevant. You can earn, and develop, multiple Tier decks, for $0, in Arena.
Spirits
How did paper cost you 700 dollars?! In standard?! o o; I'm not one to go crazy here, but I spend maybe 120 dollars total in paper when I'm playing in paper standard. Without even needing to bring out the numbers sheet you're already over three times that total.
My budget on cards (being a MTG player on the last three months)
Standard: 120 dollars
Commander: probably 40ish give or take.
Pauper: about 12 dollars.
Modern: Nothing lately.
Arena: being thrifty I was able to pull off about 250 dollars in the last three months. If I had put that money into paper I'd have all the lands and cards needed for just about anything outside of Teferi and some outliers.
Let me put it this way: other games that use a lootbox model like this one, such as Fifa 2018, had some players spending about 10,000 dollars over a two year period. While I doubt it's going to get that high, if someone wants to play with most of the cards and wants to keep up, they will be spending at least 150 dollars each new set unless they are doing something clever like doing Cocatrice games to figure out decks first and then rationing their rare wild cards. In all honesty, that is being optimistic since they went to bigger sets in order to pad things out.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Your personal Standard budget is about half mine but I want to question this "Budget on Cards" what are you doing with your cards? I factored in the cost of Tournament entries and had essentially $0 actual expense on cards due to trading and opening product from tournaments. Arena has tournament costs but they were also factored in to keep things balanced. Regardless, as I first said, your premises is built around a specific set of skills, interests, and time. So while it might be cheaper for you someone who doesn't meet your exact specifications could have a radically different cost/experience. As several have pointed out if you take the position that under a specific defined set of parameters then Arena can cost $0 so paper can't cost less. Yes this is ignoring the "cost" of time but if you are playing magic and enjoying it, what is the actual "cost".
If you really want to look at other lootbox economies then Arena is a saint. I have seen players throw hundreds and even thousands of dollars into some gatcha games, every few months as new content comes out and only barely get the minimum of what they wanted. While Magic has a hard cap on how much you will have to spend at any given point. The hard cap is about a thousand dollars but almost no one would ever actually want to hit that cap.
Heaven forbid that you get tired of playing the same deck over and over and want to change it up and make something else competitive. Now I need to earn another 20 rares and 10 mythics (on average Id say) to build another deck of a different type. Arena is a huge expense IMO. IRL I play mainly draft at FNM and buy a few packs or cards just to mess around in standard and I have better standard decks IRL than I do in Arena which I can play everyday. And my cards have an actual real-world value. So even though it's not a true investment, it at least feels like if I drop $3 on a pack, I can "earn" money by pulling a $10 card from it. In Arena it's all valueless except in it's rarity which is selectively doled out by a program that rewards only time or (larger) amounts of money.
So much truth right here...
As well as this.
Yeah, basically that. At this point I'm actually getting worn down by the toxic players now that are running around arena. You basically have to just mute everyone globally and not even let them have emotes anymore, or you end up with some idiot being overly smug when he played a mono-blue aggro deck against some random munitions skeleton combo deck that someone is clearly playing for fun. Right now Arena is a no fun allowed kind of place.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
On Arena I don't have to travel over an hour to get to a LGS and sit on a hard chair.
On Arena I don't have to concede to someone because I don't like them and don't want to spend 50 minutes staring at their face, pretending to be sportsmanlike.
On Arena I can drop a bunch of $ and get full decks with tons of Mythics.
On Arena there is no toxicity because you can't chat or anything, if they spam Emotes you can mute them.
On Arena I get stuff for free every day, and I can save the Gold to get more stuff later. Right now I have 30,000 gold saved, so by the time M20 comes out in July or whenever, or War of the Spark in April, I'll be able to get 30+ packs and have a new deck build immediately.
On Arena I don't need sleeves or dice, or a judge.
On Arena I can get a game any time I want...yes you can do this with Cockatrice or whatever, but I never liked those clients.
Arena is beastly. Once they add cosmetic or Season rewards (Avatars for finishing at Mythic, Gold, Platinium, Diamond, Siver, Bronze...) the game will be unstoppable.
Heck, I sold all my paper junk except for a Commander deck or two because I just don't want to play with people unless one of my best friends that I like is there, and he's there only once in a while because he lives two hours away (or less) in MTL.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
Arema is an excellent platform. They are adding cosmetics finally, so it's going to be super sweet as of the Mrach update.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
Esper Control
Sultai Midrange
Mono White
Gruul Aggro
2.
Agreed. Given some of the LGS I have been to, Arena is a much better option. I can't even begin to write about the "happenings" at certain LGS. Why travel 2-3hrs for that, when I can play whenever I want in comfort.