If I'm reading this right (as I am not a pro-tour player, and have only attended a few States events in the years I have played Magic) it means that the pro-tour season ends at Gen-Con, which is one of the largest conventions for gaming in general right?
It also means the pro-tour season will end before the next set is due to launch and changing the meta.
If this is right what this does is bring players to the tables at FNM, but these will be players who may not necessarily need FNM to help them. If the really good to great local players come to FNM it could keep the new players out as they would have a small chance of winning (unless they increase their budget to that of the top players).
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Imagine that...killing incentives to play being detrimental to a game.
Surprising thing though as they only mentioned Yu-gi-oh with their little quip. I surely figured they would have mentioned the plethora of pro-players that moved over from the VS. system when it killed off its tournament structure and therefor game.
Honestly the future of magic is very interesting right now as they are really trying to do a lot more new stuff with the system than they ever have ever tried at one point before. Lets hope they eventually get rid of mythics or stop printing clear staples in that rarity in the future (as I fear that might play a bigger role in a mass exodus). I could only imagine the fallout of players for MTG if snapcaster would have been printed at mythic.
Lets hope they eventually get rid of mythics or stop printing clear staples in that rarity in the future (as I fear that might play a bigger role in a mass exodus).
If this was going to happen, wouldn't it have already happened? I mean, we've been having mythic rarity cards for over two years now and aside from the one mythic card that was banned, there has been a number of staples from that rarity, but the game hasn't really seen any mass exodus over it.
Well, the biggest reason is that WotC have reported it themselves in the past. R&D members have consistently reported that "kitchen table" Magic is the source for the lion's share of sales and that the direction the game has taken has been influenced by market research that shows how much revenue they get from low-investment players.
The problem with this kind of analysis is that these aren't independent markets.
First, many players play both in tournaments and in more casual environments. If some of these players quit, some of the casual-only players will start finding their kitchen tables very lonely.
Second, what happens at the high-end pro scene impacts low-end play too. It's not a coincidence that the most popular sports at the school/college level tend to be the ones with the most robust professional scenes. Even for those who will never get close to becoming a pro player, the pro leagues play an important inspirational role.
If I'm reading this right (as I am not a pro-tour player, and have only attended a few States events in the years I have played Magic) it means that the pro-tour season ends at Gen-Con, which is one of the largest conventions for gaming in general right?
Interesting... I hadn't thought about that. GenCon is indeed huge, but it's never been a huge mecca for Magic players in recent years. In fact, it used to be the first big art reveal for the big fall set before PAX became a bigger deal. FFG has bigger booths than WOTC these last few years. But whether that had more to do with the CEO of FFG getting his brag on, or Hasbro stepping back their funding... who knows.
Interesting... I hadn't thought about that. GenCon is indeed huge, but it's never been a huge mecca for Magic players in recent years. In fact, it used to be the first big art reveal for the big fall set before PAX became a bigger deal. FFG has bigger booths than WOTC these last few years. But whether that had more to do with the CEO of FFG getting his brag on, or Hasbro stepping back their funding... who knows.
WOTC is probably following through on a growing trend they've seen in recent years.
The vast majority of people who buy paper Magic do not aspire to the pro level. They are content to be competitive players in their local community, or are held back because they are no longer able to justify the time and expense of traveling to play in critical tournaments.
This apparently leaves Wizards free to make changes to the top levels of competition whose primary purpose, and primary effect, is to cut costs.
I do think however that removing the significance of Nationals is a mistake. A lot of amateur players do aim for Nats because it is a chance for them to represent their country. It should not be a ratings dead-end, nor should it be removed.
If this was going to happen, wouldn't it have already happened? I mean, we've been having mythic rarity cards for over two years now and aside from the one mythic card that was banned, there has been a number of staples from that rarity, but the game hasn't really seen any mass exodus over it.
MTG lost huge amounts of players from FNM and standard play in general when Jace, the Wallet Sculptor was in standard. That was one reason why Legacy just drew in huge amounts of players. People looked at the format and said hmmm 400$ for just the start of a standard deck or I could get into a more stable format of Legacy, and there goes people running away from Standard as the most recent example. Now do I know how big the effect of JTMS actually had? No, and I don't think anyone outside of a gag order knows how much business they lost due to that snafu. Now will they actually balance out mythics and do what they stated their original purpose? Maybe, and that works but honestly I just can't see the future.
First, many players play both in tournaments and in more casual environments.
Second, what happens at the high-end pro scene impacts low-end play too.
Sure. I brought up both these points earlier in the thread and I agree with both of them. You can't kill or ruin high-level organized play without severely harming the game of Magic as played at every level -- I feel very strongly that this is the case.
What I'd distinguish between is stuff that hurts the high-end in a way that would actually trickle down (i.e. reducing real chances for people to play with other top end players -- which is part of the problem with eliminating Worlds) and stuff that really isn't relevant outside the top-tier players. Changes to the Pro Player Club and whatnot are entirely in the latter category -- there is literally zero chance that WotC could seriously hurt their brand by messing with these things.
In general, I think a lot of discussions of these things weight the experience of pros or hopeful-pros too heavily. I'm still much more concerned about the PWP system and the various tweaks WotC has made to FNM, Pre-Releases, etc. than anything they do about the Pro Tour itself because the former affects millions of players worldwide while the latter affects about 1000 people with concerns completely different from the rest of the playerbase.
MTG lost huge amounts of players from FNM and standard play in general when Jace, the Wallet Sculptor was in standard.
They lost a ton of players when the format became degenerate. Jace was a powerful, $80 card for quite a while before we actually saw tournament attendance dip; when we did it was simultaneous with complaints about an unbalanced, narrow metagame.
What I'd distinguish between is stuff that hurts the high-end in a way that would actually trickle down (i.e. reducing real chances for people to play with other top end players -- which is part of the problem with eliminating Worlds) and stuff that really isn't relevant outside the top-tier players. Changes to the Pro Player Club and whatnot are entirely in the latter category -- there is literally zero chance that WotC could seriously hurt their brand by messing with these things.
'literally zero'? So no players look up to the PVs of this world and think 'I'm going to keep playing because I want to be that guy' ?
'literally zero'? So no players look up to the PVs of this world and think 'I'm going to keep playing because I want to be that guy' ?
"No players look up to pros" is a different statement than "There is no chance that Wizards could seriously hurt their brand by disenfranchising the players that look up to pros by messing with the pro points etc." I cannot be certain, but I would assume the number of wannabe pros who feel like this does affect them is basically a drop in the bucket of people who in reality will be unaffected by this change.
No. LSV and Brad Nelson are inspirations to zero casual players. Nobody wants to be "that guy"...they just want to have thirty dollar cardboard for kitchen table games that don't actually mean anything.
Pretty sure you'll have a dead game if you take away the money incentives completely. That might not be a bad thing though. Casual players who don't really care about the tournament scene might not mind a dead game. Dead games become $10 a booster box and pennies on the dollar. That's fun when you're on a budget and are just playing with buddies over the kitchen table.
I'm pretty sure I'm not going to run out of ways to play the game if they stop making new cards. Let's see...with over 100 sets out now and coming up on 12,000 unique cards...that gives me approximately 970,200 different combinations for making my own three set blocks if I want variety.
SCG might be able to take over the reigns to some degree to keep the money thing alive...but that doesn't really help the international players and the rest of the world, now does it?
Plus...they haven't actually said they are killing the PT. They are just changing it somehow. In a way that haven't told us about. Because it's secret apparently.
"No players look up to pros" is a different statement than "There is no chance that Wizards could seriously hurt their brand by disenfranchising the players that look up to pros by messing with the pro points etc." I cannot be certain, but I would assume the number of wannabe pros who feel like this does affect them is basically a drop in the bucket of people who in reality will be unaffected by this change.
I believe you are incorrect. There are tens to hundreds of thousands of people who play in PTQs and similar. These, not casual players, are the people who keep stores like star city alive, because these are the players who buy more singles.
Take away their incentives frequently enough and the well could dry up.
I'm not saying 'will', I'm saying more than zero chance of hurting wizards brand.
Games become dead if you take away the competitive scene and money incentives. Period. No Pro Tour in 1996 and Magic is a dead game...long, long ago...I'm betting by 2000 at the latest. It was already almost dead in 1996 anyway because of Homelands. Not because of how great it was. Or how complex. Or how neat and fun it was to play. There wasn't any point to playing it anymore other than with groups of friends to pass the time.
Suddenly people can earn money playing? As Mark Justice said...suddenly it becomes a "real sport and not something that just little kids play." Sign them up. In droves.
Take that away from them or significantly hamper it and the same people that cry "boring" because no new cards are coming out are the same people that quit because there literally is no point in playing if you don't have some sort of competitive play environment in place for them. FNM-Regionals-Nationals-PTQ-PT-Worlds.
What's fun about being the master of FNM for twenty dollars in store credit each week? To most players that's the same as not giving them ways to get paid for playing. Alright...more copies of cards I already own. Great.
As an aside...
If you literally can't figure out how to keep a game with almost 12,000 different cards fresh and interesting and also 970,200 ways to make three set blocks...than...I can't really add to the sadness of how pathetic that is.
If I'm reading this right (as I am not a pro-tour player, and have only attended a few States events in the years I have played Magic) it means that the pro-tour season ends at Gen-Con, which is one of the largest conventions for gaming in general right?
It also means the pro-tour season will end before the next set is due to launch and changing the meta.
It's nothing new. The World Championships were held in August from 1994-2004. They were moved to their current location at the end of the calendar in 2005.
Ok. There is all sorts of odd stereotyping going on in this thread.
1. Casual players don't buy singles. This seems odd to me. I consider myself and the people that I play magic with to be casual players. We all buy singles. Casual players often don't buy enough boosters to get playsets of what they need for a deck, whether that be a competitive net deck or a home brew. A related comment was that casual players trade for cards but don't buy them. Uh...so competitive players don't trade for cards? Really?
2. WoTC is removing financial incentives. No, they are talking about changing how those incentives work. That is a major difference. They will still have money prizes available, and players will still have a chance to win that money.
My take. There is a lot of sky is falling commentary going on right now. Who is this being fueled by? People currently being paid to play magic at the professional level--the people most affected by the changes and who make up 1% of the magic player base. I see them as speaking not for all magic players, but from the segment of the playing population they come from. Most of us I think are some where in the middle ranges of the competitive/casual spectrum, and these changes have little to no effect on us. Honestly, we don't even know all the changes that are being made yet.
On the topic of killing international competitive play--this is an area where I think people have a reason to complain. They are hurting competitive players outside of the U.S. with these changes. Unfortunately, this may well be an area of cold hard economic calculation. If they are spending more money on keeping these areas included competitively than they are making from those competitive players, then they are helping their bottom line by reducing support for competitive play in those areas.
This isn't Wizards anymore.. this is Hasbro and Hasbro is only looking at how it'll make more money while cutting anything it can. And let's face it: it can. Making a few angry players isn't going to hurt its revenue and cutting rewards or any benefits players received in the past is more profit for Hasbro.
These things that have been done have been while Magic has been on its peak for a while (and they're still making more cuts with rumors that there's a price hike ahead), so I'm guessing future cuts to prizes and incentives to play tournaments. For so long, we've enjoyed a pretty exciting tournament scene and that's more of a fluff than a requirement. This news is expected.
I believe you are incorrect. There are tens to hundreds of thousands of people who play in PTQs and similar. These, not casual players, are the people who keep stores like star city alive, because these are the players who buy more singles.
Take away their incentives frequently enough and the well could dry up.
I'm not saying 'will', I'm saying more than zero chance of hurting wizards brand.
I see your point, and I will concede it to you. There's a better chance than none that this does something to Wizards, but I don't think that the hit will be anything that is really taken seriously. You are right insofar that taking away all of the benefits would be bad, but this change is far from reaching that point. I think the only way the change affects anything is that you've got the most well known players complaining about it. Most players affected by this are pros, or players who are not pros yet perceive that they could become pros. In reality, a majority of them will never be more than someone who goes to too many PTQs, since most of these hundreds of thousands of people you talked about would never have been in a position to be past level one or two in the Pro Player's Club.
The well is far from drying up because "Casual" and "Competitive" aren't mutually exclusive, and there exists a class of players that are not strictly kitchen table players, but aren't going to grind PTQs because they intend to become the next big name. Many people I know don't know what the benefits of the Pro Tour are, and they don't prioritize it the way "Grinders" do--they couldn't/wouldn't even go if they won an invite, because they have obligations elsewhere or aren't able to afford the trip. Yet they all play in PTQs and they all buy singles to play the best deck. These changes don't affect the players I've described, and I find it hard to believe that there are enough people who are aware of all this stuff and enraged enough about it to do something that could affect sales or public relations on a scale that would actually reach the aforementioned group of people who are actually in the majority of players who could give a damn about what pros say.
I don't see how the changes are all that bad. It's not like Wizards can add but so many new things without cutting something else. Afterall, we're getting twice as many Granx Prix tournaments, a FNM championship, and plane tickets for every Pro Tour invite. That actually seems like it would make it far easier to play in high level events. In exchange, we lost regional prereleases, side events at Pro Tours, and Worlds. There's no reason stores can't organize large prereleases at an off site venue, like how States is done now, though. The side events at the 3 remaining Pro Tours should be replaced many times over by side events at all those extra GPs. Really, the only people getting beaten over the head are the part time pros that had the rating to qualify for Pro Tours and people that went to them just for side events. The new system is an improvement for everyone else.
Of course, the fact that the US has Star City opens is an issue, but that's not Wizards' fault. The blame falls on independent organizers for not exploiting what's, apparently, a profitable opportunity to run their own premier event league, especially in Europe.
We also lost player rewards, but we got advanced gateway promos, promos for buying boxes/duels of the planeswalkers, and lots of extra stuff in the gateway kits. We didn't really need to double up on the tournament promos, anyway. Pro Tours, Grand Prix, Prereleases, Releases, Gamedays, and FNMs already have promos and other events can have the Gateway promos as prizes if desired. I personally haven't ever played in any main event that didn't have promo cards, cash prizes, or a Pro Tour invite.
I don't see how the changes are all that bad. It's not like Wizards can add but so many new things without cutting something else. Afterall, we're getting twice as many Granx Prix tournaments, a FNM championship, and plane tickets for every Pro Tour invite.
Twice as many grand prix is good and nobody complained about it. The FNM championship is silly as it will be dominated by the same grinders who will dominate the PT invites based on PWPoints. Plane tickets for every pro tour invite is on balance not necessarily good or bad. I think most people would prefer more invites rather than less invites and more paid plane tickets, especially when those invites are based on the flawed PWP system.
That actually seems like it would make it far easier to play in high level events. In exchange, we lost regional prereleases, side events at Pro Tours, and Worlds. There's no reason stores can't organize large prereleases at an off site venue, like how States is done now, though.
States isn't run by stores. It's run by a third party. This isn't about prereleases anyways. That's a largely casual event that was fun but didn't matter much to competitive magic.
The side events at the 3 remaining Pro Tours should be replaced many times over by side events at all those extra GPs. Really, the only people getting beaten over the head are the part time pros that had the rating to qualify for Pro Tours and people that went to them just for side events. The new system is an improvement for everyone else.
You're going to have to qualify that statement. There are less slots available now and those slots will be meted out in a way that heavily favors grinders. This is a far cry from being "an improvement for everyone else."
Of course, the fact that the US has Star City opens is an issue, but that's not Wizards' fault. The blame falls on independent organizers for not exploiting what's, apparently, a profitable opportunity to run their own premier event league, especially in Europe.
Again, you're using circular reasoning. You have no idea as to the cost and profit structure of running events. SCG cut its player club benefits and as the largest third-party seller of magic products it makes a lot of money off the secondary market by buying and selling collections at its events. It also benefits from the unified US market whereas even with the EURO zone there are differing regulations and taxes. Europe seems to be at a large disadvantage with this new system, not to say anything about players in the rest of the world outside the US (and maybe Japan) that will clearly be worst off with this system.
This system is BAD for all involved except for grinders who have no opportunity cost for their time and also have enough money to fly everywhere.
Wizards cut costs and it may very well "get away" with it in the short term, but the player community should at least walk into the new situation with eyes wide open. I am tired of wizards apologists making tired arguments that simply do not reflect reality.
I didn't mean that it would, necessarily mean more opportunity to play at a Pro Tour. There's only 3 a year anyway, though. More GPs gives anyone the opportunity to go play high level Magic any time they want to, since they're open to anyone.
States is run by stores, somewhat. I know Star City ran the one here and they do, infact, have a store in Roanoke, VA.
It's actually hard to say about Star City cutting player club benefits. They're also introducing draft events, too, and they might be waiting to see how that might affect attendance for particular formats, as well as possibly leading to a bigger players' club. On top of that, they're doing more invitationals, which, as far as I know, have no entry fee and pay out considerable prize money.
Of course, if you mean the byes, you have to be careful with them. They clearly skew fields to a point and the effect is magnified, the shorter the tournament. It's not like Opens are a million rounds like a Grand Prix.
Games become dead if you take away the competitive scene and money incentives. Period. No Pro Tour in 1996 and Magic is a dead game...long, long ago...I'm betting by 2000 at the latest.
Don't blieve that for a second. They could abolish the entire tournament environment tommorow, and the vast legions of kitchen table MTG plays would carry of without missing a beat. Competitive MTG players REALLY overestimate thier importance. A tiny tiny fraction os MTG player ever enter a sanctioned tournement beyond FNM.
What did Magic and R&D start doing immediately after the debacle that was horrible sales from Homelands and droves of people leaving due to how bad the game had gotten?
I mean you know...since so many people were excited to keep spending money on a game that was giving them nothing back.
They invented the Pro Tour.
Started doing Top Down design for Blocks starting with Mirage Block so that you could have environments that people could play in competitively without having all the older cards as a necessity.
Made a concise and proper way to play limited and sealed.
Basically they responded by giving people a structured form of competitive play and dangled money in front of them. And it worked.
It's delusional to think this game is popular enough without that to keep it alive.
Don't blieve that for a second. They could abolish the entire tournament environment tommorow, and the vast legions of kitchen table MTG plays would carry of without missing a beat. Competitive MTG players REALLY overestimate thier importance. A tiny tiny fraction os MTG player ever enter a sanctioned tournement beyond FNM.
If they abolished the entire tournament environment tomorrow Magic would probably shrink immeasurably, if not immediately die.
You really do underestimate the importance of tournaments and competitive Magic. You talk as though you know anything, where's your data bro? If you don't have any then don't make such statements, they just make you look silly.
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Ok. There is all sorts of odd stereotyping going on in this thread.
1. Casual players don't buy singles. This seems odd to me. I consider myself and the people that I play magic with to be casual players. We all buy singles. Casual players often don't buy enough boosters to get playsets of what they need for a deck, whether that be a competitive net deck or a home brew. A related comment was that casual players trade for cards but don't buy them. Uh...so competitive players don't trade for cards? Really?
2. WoTC is removing financial incentives. No, they are talking about changing how those incentives work. That is a major difference. They will still have money prizes available, and players will still have a chance to win that money.
My take. There is a lot of sky is falling commentary going on right now. Who is this being fueled by? People currently being paid to play magic at the professional level--the people most affected by the changes and who make up 1% of the magic player base. I see them as speaking not for all magic players, but from the segment of the playing population they come from. Most of us I think are some where in the middle ranges of the competitive/casual spectrum, and these changes have little to no effect on us. Honestly, we don't even know all the changes that are being made yet.
On the topic of killing international competitive play--this is an area where I think people have a reason to complain. They are hurting competitive players outside of the U.S. with these changes. Unfortunately, this may well be an area of cold hard economic calculation. If they are spending more money on keeping these areas included competitively than they are making from those competitive players, then they are helping their bottom line by reducing support for competitive play in those areas.
WE ARE THE 99%!
On a more serious note the primary complaint I've seen is that even WotC doesn't know what the system is changing to. LSV in the most recent Magic TV stated he expected changes, but not a simple "they're going away but no idea what is replacing them". Considering the company brags about how they have sets in development 5-6 years in advance the fact that they did not lay out these plans completely already is very bizarre.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely despise what the money incentives and competitive play do to a game I love. On the other hand...I completely understand that it is a necessary evil to keep the game going.
I would rather they keep a tournament and money structure in place than have it die off.
The big drawback to it is that unfortunately it trickles all the way down to FNM level. I don't even go to my LFGS that runs FNM tournaments because of the crowd I have to deal with. If you can find a good group of people to play with than I'm willing to have that arrogance and contempt in existence. It's good for the overall health of the game in the long run.
Also...very interesting point on the fact that they are running two years ahead on set design, but having some sort of replacement tournament structure in place (or one they will tell us about at least) is a big secret for some reason.
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It also means the pro-tour season will end before the next set is due to launch and changing the meta.
If this is right what this does is bring players to the tables at FNM, but these will be players who may not necessarily need FNM to help them. If the really good to great local players come to FNM it could keep the new players out as they would have a small chance of winning (unless they increase their budget to that of the top players).
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Surprising thing though as they only mentioned Yu-gi-oh with their little quip. I surely figured they would have mentioned the plethora of pro-players that moved over from the VS. system when it killed off its tournament structure and therefor game.
Honestly the future of magic is very interesting right now as they are really trying to do a lot more new stuff with the system than they ever have ever tried at one point before. Lets hope they eventually get rid of mythics or stop printing clear staples in that rarity in the future (as I fear that might play a bigger role in a mass exodus). I could only imagine the fallout of players for MTG if snapcaster would have been printed at mythic.
If this was going to happen, wouldn't it have already happened? I mean, we've been having mythic rarity cards for over two years now and aside from the one mythic card that was banned, there has been a number of staples from that rarity, but the game hasn't really seen any mass exodus over it.
The problem with this kind of analysis is that these aren't independent markets.
First, many players play both in tournaments and in more casual environments. If some of these players quit, some of the casual-only players will start finding their kitchen tables very lonely.
Second, what happens at the high-end pro scene impacts low-end play too. It's not a coincidence that the most popular sports at the school/college level tend to be the ones with the most robust professional scenes. Even for those who will never get close to becoming a pro player, the pro leagues play an important inspirational role.
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Interesting... I hadn't thought about that. GenCon is indeed huge, but it's never been a huge mecca for Magic players in recent years. In fact, it used to be the first big art reveal for the big fall set before PAX became a bigger deal. FFG has bigger booths than WOTC these last few years. But whether that had more to do with the CEO of FFG getting his brag on, or Hasbro stepping back their funding... who knows.
WOTC is probably following through on a growing trend they've seen in recent years.
The vast majority of people who buy paper Magic do not aspire to the pro level. They are content to be competitive players in their local community, or are held back because they are no longer able to justify the time and expense of traveling to play in critical tournaments.
This apparently leaves Wizards free to make changes to the top levels of competition whose primary purpose, and primary effect, is to cut costs.
I do think however that removing the significance of Nationals is a mistake. A lot of amateur players do aim for Nats because it is a chance for them to represent their country. It should not be a ratings dead-end, nor should it be removed.
MTG lost huge amounts of players from FNM and standard play in general when Jace, the Wallet Sculptor was in standard. That was one reason why Legacy just drew in huge amounts of players. People looked at the format and said hmmm 400$ for just the start of a standard deck or I could get into a more stable format of Legacy, and there goes people running away from Standard as the most recent example. Now do I know how big the effect of JTMS actually had? No, and I don't think anyone outside of a gag order knows how much business they lost due to that snafu. Now will they actually balance out mythics and do what they stated their original purpose? Maybe, and that works but honestly I just can't see the future.
Sure. I brought up both these points earlier in the thread and I agree with both of them. You can't kill or ruin high-level organized play without severely harming the game of Magic as played at every level -- I feel very strongly that this is the case.
What I'd distinguish between is stuff that hurts the high-end in a way that would actually trickle down (i.e. reducing real chances for people to play with other top end players -- which is part of the problem with eliminating Worlds) and stuff that really isn't relevant outside the top-tier players. Changes to the Pro Player Club and whatnot are entirely in the latter category -- there is literally zero chance that WotC could seriously hurt their brand by messing with these things.
In general, I think a lot of discussions of these things weight the experience of pros or hopeful-pros too heavily. I'm still much more concerned about the PWP system and the various tweaks WotC has made to FNM, Pre-Releases, etc. than anything they do about the Pro Tour itself because the former affects millions of players worldwide while the latter affects about 1000 people with concerns completely different from the rest of the playerbase.
They lost a ton of players when the format became degenerate. Jace was a powerful, $80 card for quite a while before we actually saw tournament attendance dip; when we did it was simultaneous with complaints about an unbalanced, narrow metagame.
'literally zero'? So no players look up to the PVs of this world and think 'I'm going to keep playing because I want to be that guy' ?
"No players look up to pros" is a different statement than "There is no chance that Wizards could seriously hurt their brand by disenfranchising the players that look up to pros by messing with the pro points etc." I cannot be certain, but I would assume the number of wannabe pros who feel like this does affect them is basically a drop in the bucket of people who in reality will be unaffected by this change.
Pretty sure you'll have a dead game if you take away the money incentives completely. That might not be a bad thing though. Casual players who don't really care about the tournament scene might not mind a dead game. Dead games become $10 a booster box and pennies on the dollar. That's fun when you're on a budget and are just playing with buddies over the kitchen table.
I'm pretty sure I'm not going to run out of ways to play the game if they stop making new cards. Let's see...with over 100 sets out now and coming up on 12,000 unique cards...that gives me approximately 970,200 different combinations for making my own three set blocks if I want variety.
SCG might be able to take over the reigns to some degree to keep the money thing alive...but that doesn't really help the international players and the rest of the world, now does it?
Plus...they haven't actually said they are killing the PT. They are just changing it somehow. In a way that haven't told us about. Because it's secret apparently.
I believe you are incorrect. There are tens to hundreds of thousands of people who play in PTQs and similar. These, not casual players, are the people who keep stores like star city alive, because these are the players who buy more singles.
Take away their incentives frequently enough and the well could dry up.
I'm not saying 'will', I'm saying more than zero chance of hurting wizards brand.
Suddenly people can earn money playing? As Mark Justice said...suddenly it becomes a "real sport and not something that just little kids play." Sign them up. In droves.
Take that away from them or significantly hamper it and the same people that cry "boring" because no new cards are coming out are the same people that quit because there literally is no point in playing if you don't have some sort of competitive play environment in place for them. FNM-Regionals-Nationals-PTQ-PT-Worlds.
What's fun about being the master of FNM for twenty dollars in store credit each week? To most players that's the same as not giving them ways to get paid for playing. Alright...more copies of cards I already own. Great.
As an aside...
If you literally can't figure out how to keep a game with almost 12,000 different cards fresh and interesting and also 970,200 ways to make three set blocks...than...I can't really add to the sadness of how pathetic that is.
It's nothing new. The World Championships were held in August from 1994-2004. They were moved to their current location at the end of the calendar in 2005.
1. Casual players don't buy singles. This seems odd to me. I consider myself and the people that I play magic with to be casual players. We all buy singles. Casual players often don't buy enough boosters to get playsets of what they need for a deck, whether that be a competitive net deck or a home brew. A related comment was that casual players trade for cards but don't buy them. Uh...so competitive players don't trade for cards? Really?
2. WoTC is removing financial incentives. No, they are talking about changing how those incentives work. That is a major difference. They will still have money prizes available, and players will still have a chance to win that money.
My take. There is a lot of sky is falling commentary going on right now. Who is this being fueled by? People currently being paid to play magic at the professional level--the people most affected by the changes and who make up 1% of the magic player base. I see them as speaking not for all magic players, but from the segment of the playing population they come from. Most of us I think are some where in the middle ranges of the competitive/casual spectrum, and these changes have little to no effect on us. Honestly, we don't even know all the changes that are being made yet.
On the topic of killing international competitive play--this is an area where I think people have a reason to complain. They are hurting competitive players outside of the U.S. with these changes. Unfortunately, this may well be an area of cold hard economic calculation. If they are spending more money on keeping these areas included competitively than they are making from those competitive players, then they are helping their bottom line by reducing support for competitive play in those areas.
This isn't Wizards anymore.. this is Hasbro and Hasbro is only looking at how it'll make more money while cutting anything it can. And let's face it: it can. Making a few angry players isn't going to hurt its revenue and cutting rewards or any benefits players received in the past is more profit for Hasbro.
These things that have been done have been while Magic has been on its peak for a while (and they're still making more cuts with rumors that there's a price hike ahead), so I'm guessing future cuts to prizes and incentives to play tournaments. For so long, we've enjoyed a pretty exciting tournament scene and that's more of a fluff than a requirement. This news is expected.
I see your point, and I will concede it to you. There's a better chance than none that this does something to Wizards, but I don't think that the hit will be anything that is really taken seriously. You are right insofar that taking away all of the benefits would be bad, but this change is far from reaching that point. I think the only way the change affects anything is that you've got the most well known players complaining about it. Most players affected by this are pros, or players who are not pros yet perceive that they could become pros. In reality, a majority of them will never be more than someone who goes to too many PTQs, since most of these hundreds of thousands of people you talked about would never have been in a position to be past level one or two in the Pro Player's Club.
The well is far from drying up because "Casual" and "Competitive" aren't mutually exclusive, and there exists a class of players that are not strictly kitchen table players, but aren't going to grind PTQs because they intend to become the next big name. Many people I know don't know what the benefits of the Pro Tour are, and they don't prioritize it the way "Grinders" do--they couldn't/wouldn't even go if they won an invite, because they have obligations elsewhere or aren't able to afford the trip. Yet they all play in PTQs and they all buy singles to play the best deck. These changes don't affect the players I've described, and I find it hard to believe that there are enough people who are aware of all this stuff and enraged enough about it to do something that could affect sales or public relations on a scale that would actually reach the aforementioned group of people who are actually in the majority of players who could give a damn about what pros say.
Of course, the fact that the US has Star City opens is an issue, but that's not Wizards' fault. The blame falls on independent organizers for not exploiting what's, apparently, a profitable opportunity to run their own premier event league, especially in Europe.
We also lost player rewards, but we got advanced gateway promos, promos for buying boxes/duels of the planeswalkers, and lots of extra stuff in the gateway kits. We didn't really need to double up on the tournament promos, anyway. Pro Tours, Grand Prix, Prereleases, Releases, Gamedays, and FNMs already have promos and other events can have the Gateway promos as prizes if desired. I personally haven't ever played in any main event that didn't have promo cards, cash prizes, or a Pro Tour invite.
Twice as many grand prix is good and nobody complained about it. The FNM championship is silly as it will be dominated by the same grinders who will dominate the PT invites based on PWPoints. Plane tickets for every pro tour invite is on balance not necessarily good or bad. I think most people would prefer more invites rather than less invites and more paid plane tickets, especially when those invites are based on the flawed PWP system.
States isn't run by stores. It's run by a third party. This isn't about prereleases anyways. That's a largely casual event that was fun but didn't matter much to competitive magic.
You're going to have to qualify that statement. There are less slots available now and those slots will be meted out in a way that heavily favors grinders. This is a far cry from being "an improvement for everyone else."
Again, you're using circular reasoning. You have no idea as to the cost and profit structure of running events. SCG cut its player club benefits and as the largest third-party seller of magic products it makes a lot of money off the secondary market by buying and selling collections at its events. It also benefits from the unified US market whereas even with the EURO zone there are differing regulations and taxes. Europe seems to be at a large disadvantage with this new system, not to say anything about players in the rest of the world outside the US (and maybe Japan) that will clearly be worst off with this system.
This system is BAD for all involved except for grinders who have no opportunity cost for their time and also have enough money to fly everywhere.
Wizards cut costs and it may very well "get away" with it in the short term, but the player community should at least walk into the new situation with eyes wide open. I am tired of wizards apologists making tired arguments that simply do not reflect reality.
The magic world is now a much smaller world.
States is run by stores, somewhat. I know Star City ran the one here and they do, infact, have a store in Roanoke, VA.
It's actually hard to say about Star City cutting player club benefits. They're also introducing draft events, too, and they might be waiting to see how that might affect attendance for particular formats, as well as possibly leading to a bigger players' club. On top of that, they're doing more invitationals, which, as far as I know, have no entry fee and pay out considerable prize money.
Of course, if you mean the byes, you have to be careful with them. They clearly skew fields to a point and the effect is magnified, the shorter the tournament. It's not like Opens are a million rounds like a Grand Prix.
Don't blieve that for a second. They could abolish the entire tournament environment tommorow, and the vast legions of kitchen table MTG plays would carry of without missing a beat. Competitive MTG players REALLY overestimate thier importance. A tiny tiny fraction os MTG player ever enter a sanctioned tournement beyond FNM.
I mean you know...since so many people were excited to keep spending money on a game that was giving them nothing back.
They invented the Pro Tour.
Started doing Top Down design for Blocks starting with Mirage Block so that you could have environments that people could play in competitively without having all the older cards as a necessity.
Made a concise and proper way to play limited and sealed.
Basically they responded by giving people a structured form of competitive play and dangled money in front of them. And it worked.
It's delusional to think this game is popular enough without that to keep it alive.
If they abolished the entire tournament environment tomorrow Magic would probably shrink immeasurably, if not immediately die.
You really do underestimate the importance of tournaments and competitive Magic. You talk as though you know anything, where's your data bro? If you don't have any then don't make such statements, they just make you look silly.
My DCI ELO Ratings - May they rest in peace :'(
WE ARE THE 99%!
On a more serious note the primary complaint I've seen is that even WotC doesn't know what the system is changing to. LSV in the most recent Magic TV stated he expected changes, but not a simple "they're going away but no idea what is replacing them". Considering the company brags about how they have sets in development 5-6 years in advance the fact that they did not lay out these plans completely already is very bizarre.
I would rather they keep a tournament and money structure in place than have it die off.
The big drawback to it is that unfortunately it trickles all the way down to FNM level. I don't even go to my LFGS that runs FNM tournaments because of the crowd I have to deal with. If you can find a good group of people to play with than I'm willing to have that arrogance and contempt in existence. It's good for the overall health of the game in the long run.
Also...very interesting point on the fact that they are running two years ahead on set design, but having some sort of replacement tournament structure in place (or one they will tell us about at least) is a big secret for some reason.