FYI can anyone else confirm that they said that they are working on a non-rotating format for the game? I heard about this from several channels across twitch and youtube recently and if they are, that could explain why they brought back the two best land cycles outside of fetchlands, which I don't think we are ever seeing in this game.
They've said lots of things in a general way. They have no idea what they're going to do. They'd have to create a new format since Kaladesh is as far back as what they've programmed. Arena modern? No thanks.
I hope players who don't have LGSs near them consider grinding instead of paying to play this game. They shouldn't be rewarded for this cheap, Hearthstone imitating, clunky, poorly planned mtg product.
The animations are nice sure, BUT many of them are clunky and poorly timed and have been for multiple releases. They don't seem to care to polish them.
Tapping land is horrible. HORRIBLE. Look at an MTGO stream and how fast that old OLD software taps lands then look at Arena tapping, which is slow and heavy, and tell me they've done a great job. They lessened the 'whack a mole' but didn't get rid of it completely. Autotap should be removed from the game it's trash and players need to learn to play around it (tap partials then let it do the rest when you are color safe). Tapping lands, the most basic thing in MTG is clunky and poorly done. Apply that to the rest of the game.
Currently you buy packs to create a 'collection' that you cannot trade, sell, or dust to move forward. It's a money grab to not let you manipulate or 'own' your collection. Worst decision ever. All they need is an auction house and they'd make 10x the money they're planning to make off this cheaply developed game. They still don't have a plan for 5th copies of cards!!!!!!! So buying packs you get a 5th copy and the old system of a 'vault' progress is still there but HIDDEN. HIDDEN FROM VIEW!!!! Vault progress was a lame system but hiding it without a solution at this point?? Open beta without even a proposed solution to this??? Just wow.
I can't believe they think it's time for open beta. Please don't invest cash in this game. Just grind it if you like it people. Matchmaking in Bo1 is manipulated so you only play decks your deck is 'rated' the same as. What's this rating system you ask? No one knows they won't say. Just be sure to know you will play mirror matches and the same 2-3 types of decks they've 'rated' based on ???. That's the only free play mode of the game. With the crap timer you could PAY to play Bo3 but good luck there as you can get roped (time wasters taking forever with EVERY TURN) and have what should be a max 40 Bo3 into hours. That you paid to play. They still don't have a solution for NoF chaining without a win con since you can't call a judge you get to sit there while they chain without being able to win.
After all this time playing Arena and seeing how it is evolving, it's getting better, but it's not serving the real purpose for customers, new audience, and ultimately shareholders. They want a bigger stack from twitch/mobile audience, but I don't see Arena serving this purpose. At the same time it's trying to make MTGO crowd not unhappy by making it as close as MTG as possible while trying to be light and friendly to the general public. Again, it will failure at both fronts. At best it's just a compromise. However, we have that already and it's MTGO.
I think the best they can do is those duel games. Maybe they should make a new IP that may have some aspects of MTG Lore (like the idea of players being Planeswalkers) with new rules better adapted to mobile and streaming gaming that also can be translated to paper if they wanted to. It would hit two birds with two stones: increase the brand name for a bigger and younger audience and also increase the digital presence in a meaningful way. They could leave the Avenger style writing to that as well.
MTG is clearly not cut for the digital era IMO. MTG is in its own bubble and maybe it should stay that way. MTG isn't for everybody and never will be. Trying to push it to a wider audience just dilute its own special charm. Arena could just be a proper mobile/freemium game without trying to translate the paper experience 100%. It's not suitable to anybody. People are just forced to use MTGO because either they don't have better option or the need a tool for grinding. MTGO is perfect fine as is. Arena is just a more streamlined MTGO experience without any identity of its own. It's try to be HS with bad mobile micro transactions and MTGO style events.
Just another cute note, they're not dropping a patch to the beta prior to open beta release but they're supposedly making changes.
I guess they don't understand how PTRs work or realize that it's probably a good idea to test your release before it goes wide.
Maximum Effort.
I cannot believe the game is now Open Beta and there is almost zero social aspect in it. No friend list, no practice games with people you know, no gifting or trading, not even a simple chat box. I seriously cannot remember another online multiplayer game that went into open beta like this, and I've played a lot (not CCG ones though).
The game is not very welcoming to new players as a result. MTG has never been easy to introduce to new players in the first place, I cannot understand why it has to be made harder. I want to invite my friends to Arena, but if I can't even play games with them to teach them more than the tutorial does, or at least let them play comfortably without getting intimidated by getting a permanent loss record or playing against someone they don't know, then the chance of them staying drops significantly.
Right now, I feel the game is still geared towards experienced players. And even they won't be guaranteed to stay because of the grind and uncertainty. It feels bad to receive a 5th copy of a card without even knowing where it goes (without research, outside of the game), and even worse once you find out how miniscule the percentage it contributes to the hidden vault. I'd rather keep the useless card hoping someday I can give it away to be honest, than have it disappear and contribute a measly 0.5% towards opening the vault.
The only incentive I feel when I play the game is grinding so I can complete a competitive deck. And to be honest after a week of playing I'm no longer compelled to go back to it. I'm already bored playing the same 2 decks over and over, because if I play something else my progress would be even slower, not to mention it's going to be a preconstructed deck I don't really want to be playing anyway. Sometimes I just want to play, not caring about losing or winning or rewards, just play. You know a game is good when you feel that, and you know you're going to back to it. Paper MTG makes me feel that way, hell I sometimes do it alone in Cockatrice, so by extention Arena does too, but the difference is Paper lets me do it, Cockatrice lets me do it, Arena however, because of its shortcomings and how cards are aquired, does not which is just... well, sad.
I cannot believe the game is now Open Beta and there is almost zero social aspect in it. No friend list, no practice games with people you know, no gifting or trading, not even a simple chat box. I seriously cannot remember another online multiplayer game that went into open beta like this, and I've played a lot (not CCG ones though).
I cannot believe the game is now Open Beta and there is almost zero social aspect in it. No friend list, no practice games with people you know, no gifting or trading, not even a simple chat box. I seriously cannot remember another online multiplayer game that went into open beta like this, and I've played a lot (not CCG ones though).
They are working on a Friend List and there will (likely) never be trading or gifting. That introduces real world money and messes up the in game economy. I don't think I would ever want them to get to that point. People complain about the game being pay to win now; introducing those things just makes it worse. Also, I personally am kind of glad there is no chat box. I wouldn't complain if there was one, but not having one means I don't have to talk to people and I like it like that.
I cannot believe the game is now Open Beta and there is almost zero social aspect in it. No friend list, no practice games with people you know, no gifting or trading, not even a simple chat box. I seriously cannot remember another online multiplayer game that went into open beta like this, and I've played a lot (not CCG ones though).
They are working on a Friend List and there will (likely) never be trading or gifting. That introduces real world money and messes up the in game economy. I don't think I would ever want them to get to that point. People complain about the game being pay to win now; introducing those things just makes it worse. Also, I personally am kind of glad there is no chat box. I wouldn't complain if there was one, but not having one means I don't have to talk to people and I like it like that.
As someone who went into Arena expecting to hate it and have so far been pleasantly surprised, here's my takes:
-Friends list - This should be one of their biggest focuses on solving, because that opens up so much more not just for players but for events in general, and it enables a lot more connectivity overall.
-Trading/gifting - 100% will never happen, it will be too easy to same the system where you make dozens of accounts and just have all of the hydra head accounts funnel their cards to the main one. Give me an afternoon and I could have playsets of effectively everything you'd ever want.
-Economy - I bought the $5 welcome pack and I'm still going off it. Obviously having played for over a decade and having the experience in limited and deckbuilding gives me a leg up over someone who just learned how to play, but some of the intro decks are frighteningly powerful (The WB one immediately comes to mind, it gets out of control fast.) If you devote yourself to just making 1 deck and drafting to help put it together you should have a steady stream of wildcards to fill in the gaps, and from there Comp Constructed queues are just fun.
-On older cards/formats: This is the real bugaboo. It helps that Wizards has 12 months to figure this out, but they are going to need to figure out what to do when IXL/RIX/DOM rotate out - on one hand they can't just be content with being a standard engine where cards just auto-dust as they leave standard, but on the other hand offering modern or legacy or even reintroducing extended leaves the problem of people opening packs only to find out that they can't jam their newly crafted lightning bolt into standard.
I'm interested to see what they come up with for this, because "nothing" isn't an answer.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
I think right now I have 2 significant complaints about the game.
First, something needs to be done about the daily rewards. They way they are currently set up -- so that with the exception of the single "play X amount of these colored spells" quest everything requires winning to unlock -- incentivizes some pretty unfun play patterns. Right now, I have no reason to play anything except the one deck I actually put all my wildcards into because that is simply my best deck and therefore has the best chance of earning rewards. The problem is that playing the same deck day in and day out is extremely boring. Unfortunately, it is actively bad for me to try to play anything else because I will literally just be wasting my time. And even if, by some chance, I do feel like playing a pile of jank for fun, nobody else will be because they've all come to the same conclusion I just did, so they're all playing their best deck to finish their quests as quickly as possible, meaning I'll just get stomped anyway. WotC needs to spread out the rewards to include things other than just winning. More quests for doing game actions, or even just for playing some games, win or lose. I've played paper Magic basically every week for almost a decade straight, but in barely a month of Arena they've managed to turn the game into a chore instead of something I look forward to. This is a massive problem and it should be worrying the hell out of the devs right now.
My second complaint is comparatively quite simple; allow players to exchange prize packs for a pack of a previous set. Frankly, I just don't want to open GRN anymore, but it is currently the literal only prize pack I can earn without spending money. I don't see any reason why WotC should care if I take my winnings in Dominaria or Ixalan compared to Guilds of Ravnica. A digital pack is a digital pack.
-Trading/gifting - 100% will never happen, it will be too easy to same the system where you make dozens of accounts and just have all of the hydra head accounts funnel their cards to the main one. Give me an afternoon and I could have playsets of effectively everything you'd ever want.
Not if freebies & rewards earned from playing are not tradable, or it takes half a year before they become tradable, or only cosmetic items are tradable. There are multitudes of restrictions that can be put in place to prevent such exploits. Other games, some almost a decade old now, have done it before. But I'm not kidding myself, the sole reason trading won't be available is the same reason as other games with no trading - Wizards wants all purchases to themselves. It's actually a pretty cunning move, by not enabling trading and dusting, players won't be able to get any value out of cards or extra copies they won't be using meaning they'd have to spend more (or grind more) than they would if such features were enabled. At the same time they can convince the more... supportive players that it's all for the sake of fair play. Brilliant.
-Trading/gifting - 100% will never happen, it will be too easy to same the system where you make dozens of accounts and just have all of the hydra head accounts funnel their cards to the main one. Give me an afternoon and I could have playsets of effectively everything you'd ever want.
Not if freebies & rewards earned from playing are not tradable, or it takes half a year before they become tradable, or only cosmetic items are tradable. There are multitudes of restrictions that can be put in place to prevent such exploits. Other games, some almost a decade old now, have done it before. But I'm not kidding myself, the sole reason trading won't be available is the same reason as other games with no trading - Wizards wants all purchases to themselves. It's actually a pretty cunning move, by not enabling trading and dusting, players won't be able to get any value out of cards or extra copies they won't be using meaning they'd have to spend more (or grind more) than they would if such features were enabled. At the same time they can convince the more... supportive players that it's all for the sake of fair play. Brilliant.
I agree the two aspects why trading is unlikely to come are ingame economy and Wizards wanting to hog 100% of revenues generated with MTG Arena, but my evaluation of whether thats a good or bad thing is quite different.
1. Ingame economy: By keeping card collections isolated within accounts, Wizards can ensure the pace of collections improving. Thias is important for players without much experience in trading and bargaining, because it keeps the economic decision trees simple: I want a certain card, so I'll craft it with a wildcard. I I don'T have the wildcard to craft it, I need to acquire it. Thats a simple process. If we had a fully fledged secondary market on MTG Arena, you would need to consider if its better to craft a sought-after card to may be able to trade it for mutiple copies of your wanted card. In short, wildcards would have diffwrent values depending on what you craft with them, so in order to not "waste" your wild card you need to consider the market, which is a much more complicated matter than just exchanging a resource for a product.
Note that its not just beginners who may be overburdened with the secondary market. I've been playing Magic for 8 years now but am unwilling to inform myself about exact trade values etc. I just want to play Magic, not study a market. I prefer the wildcard system over a trade market becasue its nice and EASY.
2. Wizards share of revenue: I never understand why people complain about this. How is Wizards claiming all revenue from their own product an evil thing? Tradeable card on MTG Arena will create a market where real some people will make money of a Wizards product, and it is totally reasonable for Wizards to contruct a system that ensures that they alone make money of their property.
My second complaint is comparatively quite simple; allow players to exchange prize packs for a pack of a previous set. Frankly, I just don't want to open GRN anymore, but it is currently the literal only prize pack I can earn without spending money. I don't see any reason why WotC should care if I take my winnings in Dominaria or Ixalan compared to Guilds of Ravnica. A digital pack is a digital pack.
Initially this was my stance as well. I have however become less enraged about this over time. With the Vault system being the way it is, the fact that you are forced into the pack type that corresponds to the event you are in doesnt bother me so much anymore. In the instance of GRN, the more packs I open of that set, the more multiples I get, which in turn opens the vault faster netting me more wildcards, ipso facto turning into the cards I want most. Even if I was able to switch out my packs, I almost want to say that strategically speaking, it actually makes more sense to open the same set repetitively.
2. Wizards share of revenue: I never understand why people complain about this. How is Wizards claiming all revenue from their own product an evil thing? Tradeable card on MTG Arena will create a market where real some people will make money of a Wizards product, and it is totally reasonable for Wizards to contruct a system that ensures that they alone make money of their property.
I honestly dont see how making digital singles tradable would net any person outside of wizards physical money.
Initially this was my stance as well. I have however become less enraged about this over time. With the Vault system being the way it is, the fact that you are forced into the pack type that corresponds to the event you are in doesnt bother me so much anymore. In the instance of GRN, the more packs I open of that set, the more multiples I get, which in turn opens the vault faster netting me more wildcards, ipso facto turning into the cards I want most. Even if I was able to switch out my packs, I almost want to say that strategically speaking, it actually makes more sense to open the same set repetitively.
There is no way in which opening duplicates is strategically sound with the current Vault system. You need to open an astronomical amount of duplicates to open your Vault, which contains a measly 1 Mythic Wildcard, 2 Rare Wildcards, and 3 Uncommon Wildcards. The Vault system is really just a mess and needs to be fixed soon.
Initially this was my stance as well. I have however become less enraged about this over time. With the Vault system being the way it is, the fact that you are forced into the pack type that corresponds to the event you are in doesnt bother me so much anymore. In the instance of GRN, the more packs I open of that set, the more multiples I get, which in turn opens the vault faster netting me more wildcards, ipso facto turning into the cards I want most. Even if I was able to switch out my packs, I almost want to say that strategically speaking, it actually makes more sense to open the same set repetitively.
There is no way in which opening duplicates is strategically sound with the current Vault system. You need to open an astronomical amount of duplicates to open your Vault, which contains a measly 1 Mythic Wildcard, 2 Rare Wildcards, and 3 Uncommon Wildcards. The Vault system is really just a mess and needs to be fixed soon.
This is literally how the vault works... Each rarity is assigned a value, when you open a duplicate, that value is credited to your vault total. When you reach 900 vault points, voila... vault opens. The more duplicates you open, the more the vault points you get, which is also why you should be picking uncommons as opposed to commons in drafts when the pick seems like it shouldnt matter, as their rarity value attributes to your vault total more than a common would. Therefor, a method that would allow you to open more duplicates, more frequently is actually to your collections benefit in the current scenario. Hope that helps.
This is literally how the vault works... Each rarity is assigned a value, when you open a duplicate, that value is credited to your vault total. When you reach 900 vault points, voila... vault opens. The more duplicates you open, the more the vault points you get, which is also why you should be picking uncommons as opposed to commons in drafts when the pick seems like it shouldnt matter, as their rarity value attributes to your vault total more than a common would. Therefor, a method that would allow you to open more duplicates, more frequently is actually to your collections benefit in the current scenario. Hope that helps.
I understand how it works. I'm telling you you're wrong. When the value of a 5th copy of a Mythic is a hilarious 10 points, and the reward for opening the Vault is a total of 6 Wildcards, you are in no way incentivized to intentionally open duplicates. Doing some rough math, if you're opening packs containing nothing but duplicate cards, you would need to open about 50 packs to unlock your Vault. That's absurd. You will literally earn more Wildcards from the act of opening packs than you will get as a reward for opening the Vault.
That's a hard pass from me. I'd much rather open 50 packs of cards for a set I don't already have a full collection of. Please let me trade my prize packs in for any previous set, WotC. At the very least leave up different queues so I can earn something that isn't freaking GRN.
The act of opening a pack generates wildcards "naturally" at the same rate regardless of whose methodology you want to believe. If that is a constant, but my way also nets you more wildcards faster, over time via the vault...;)
The act of opening a pack generates wildcards "naturally" at the same rate regardless of whose methodology you want to believe. If that is a constant, but my way also nets you more wildcards faster, over time via the vault...;)
However, your initial summary referenced picking uncommons over commons in Draft to increase your chances of getting the Vault faster. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that Drafts do not provide Wildcards naturally; you just get the cards and (terrible) Vault Progression.
So, it is either open packs normally to get normal wildcards or draft, get no wild cards, and *maybe* slightly increase your chances for Vault progression. That seems like a poor system overall. I am with Impossible on this one as this being something they need to change.
Another thought I had (or, I should say, something I think someone else said that I agree with) is that they need to do something to make me play normal games. I know we have the weekly prizes for getting 3 packs a week. And we have the daily challenges and wins up to 15 a day. But, I have been finding that I grind daily to get the challenges, and to get the first 4 wins, and then I stop. I don't actually use the platform as an avenue in which to play Magic; I just use it to accumulate gold and that is it. And, since they stopped offering Ravnica Drafts for Gold (it is just Dominaria now) I don't even use the gold.
I would like it if there was something in place that rewarded actually playing and/or winning in the "Play Now" room without having to invest in the "tournaments". 50 or 75 gold for a win or something. And I stop at 4 wins because the prizes turn into cards that I don't generally care about and 50 or 25 gold every other win (again, only up to 15).
The act of opening a pack generates wildcards "naturally" at the same rate regardless of whose methodology you want to believe. If that is a constant, but my way also nets you more wildcards faster, over time via the vault...;)
That's kind of the problem. If simply opening packs returns more Wildcards than the Vault ever will, what is your incentive to intentionally open duplicates? If I open 50 packs of DOM (of which I currently own basically none of the cards in the set) I will still net more Wildcards than what you'd find in the Vault, as well as actually opening 50 packs worth of cards, including 50 unowned rares/mythics. That seems like a far better return to me than intentionally opening 50 packs of GRN (of which I currently own most cards), earning the same amount of Wildcards as if I had opened DOM, but then ALSO watching every card I open in the packs magically disappear into the aether and turn into... 6 whole Wildcards. Wow.
Seriously though, don't intentionally open packs to get duplicates. It's just not good value.
Another thought I had (or, I should say, something I think someone else said that I agree with) is that they need to do something to make me play normal games. I know we have the weekly prizes for getting 3 packs a week. And we have the daily challenges and wins up to 15 a day. But, I have been finding that I grind daily to get the challenges, and to get the first 4 wins, and then I stop. I don't actually use the platform as an avenue in which to play Magic; I just use it to accumulate gold and that is it. And, since they stopped offering Ravnica Drafts for Gold (it is just Dominaria now) I don't even use the gold.
I would like it if there was something in place that rewarded actually playing and/or winning in the "Play Now" room without having to invest in the "tournaments". 50 or 75 gold for a win or something. And I stop at 4 wins because the prizes turn into cards that I don't generally care about and 50 or 25 gold every other win (again, only up to 15).
I think that was also me. I commented that they need to rework how they do the daily quests to de-incentivize winning and incentivize just playing. Right now finishing the daily quests just seems like a chore because the best strategy is to play your best deck all the time to win as quickly as possible. There's no variety.
That's kind of the problem. If simply opening packs returns more Wildcards than the Vault ever will, what is your incentive to intentionally open duplicates? If I open 50 packs of DOM (of which I currently own basically none of the cards in the set) I will still net more Wildcards than what you'd find in the Vault, as well as actually opening 50 packs worth of cards, including 50 unowned rares/mythics. That seems like a far better return to me than intentionally opening 50 packs of GRN (of which I currently own most cards), earning the same amount of Wildcards as if I had opened DOM, but then ALSO watching every card I open in the packs magically disappear into the aether and turn into... 6 whole Wildcards. Wow.
Seriously though, don't intentionally open packs to get duplicates. It's just not good value.
Your theory operates under the assumption that you will open 50 unique rares/mythics. That is simply not true. Also, of those 50 rares, maybe only half are playable and then at that, maybe only 8 are specifically valuable to the decks you are trying to assemble. I feel like that is the flaw in your reasoning. A wildcard will always be more valuable than just arbitrary rare "x." Which is why generating them even slightly faster, is more beneficial to you. So now it seems we are back to, if both of our methods generate rares at the same rate, but mine also generates wildcards faster... lol. If you are looking to assemble a specific deck, the fastest way possible, you are doing it via opening duplicates. This also just isnt something I have come up with. Ill happily link multiple podcasts discussing this.
[quote}I think that was also me. I commented that they need to rework how they do the daily quests to de-incentivize winning and incentivize just playing. Right now finishing the daily quests just seems like a chore because the best strategy is to play your best deck all the time to win as quickly as possible. There's no variety.[/quote]
I guess I am getting different dailys than you are, because I sort of fail to see how "play 40 lands" is an indication of "only incentivizing winning." Im also not sure how "Play 20 blue or red spells" is is an exemplification of just play your best deck, because you need to win in order to satisfy your daily quests. In fact, both of those examples seem to be in stark contrast to what you are saying.
I don't think Vault design should be incentivizing intentionally opening duplicates. It should be a "consolation prize" that offsets the inevitable incidental process of opening duplicates in the course of normally opening packs. The optimal mathematical method of acquiring a particular rare should be to open packs of the set in which that rare is printed, so you have the chance of opening it "naturally" in the pack on top of the constant rate of wildcard acquisition. It should never be more optimal to intentionally open duplicates instead of doing that. If the math on the Vault isn't doing that now, then it needs to be rebalanced.
My major beef with the Vault right now is that the progression in both invisible, and so slow as to be imperceptible in its effect, so that right now it feels as though it doesn't even exist. So it's not serving its psychological purpose of offsetting the frustration of opening duplicates at all. Even if all we could see is some tiny little icon that tells us that the duplicates are doing *something*, that would be better than the current system.
Even in paper magic though, who actually tries to assemble playsets by purchasing packs, and naturally opening the 4x of a rare you actually need/want? I dont think thats how most players go about it IRL and I dont think its necessarily the best option here.
I agree with you on some sort of visualization of how far along you are in your vault progress though. That would be immensely appreciated.
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They've said lots of things in a general way. They have no idea what they're going to do. They'd have to create a new format since Kaladesh is as far back as what they've programmed. Arena modern? No thanks.
I hope players who don't have LGSs near them consider grinding instead of paying to play this game. They shouldn't be rewarded for this cheap, Hearthstone imitating, clunky, poorly planned mtg product.
The animations are nice sure, BUT many of them are clunky and poorly timed and have been for multiple releases. They don't seem to care to polish them.
Tapping land is horrible. HORRIBLE. Look at an MTGO stream and how fast that old OLD software taps lands then look at Arena tapping, which is slow and heavy, and tell me they've done a great job. They lessened the 'whack a mole' but didn't get rid of it completely. Autotap should be removed from the game it's trash and players need to learn to play around it (tap partials then let it do the rest when you are color safe). Tapping lands, the most basic thing in MTG is clunky and poorly done. Apply that to the rest of the game.
Currently you buy packs to create a 'collection' that you cannot trade, sell, or dust to move forward. It's a money grab to not let you manipulate or 'own' your collection. Worst decision ever. All they need is an auction house and they'd make 10x the money they're planning to make off this cheaply developed game. They still don't have a plan for 5th copies of cards!!!!!!! So buying packs you get a 5th copy and the old system of a 'vault' progress is still there but HIDDEN. HIDDEN FROM VIEW!!!! Vault progress was a lame system but hiding it without a solution at this point?? Open beta without even a proposed solution to this??? Just wow.
I can't believe they think it's time for open beta. Please don't invest cash in this game. Just grind it if you like it people. Matchmaking in Bo1 is manipulated so you only play decks your deck is 'rated' the same as. What's this rating system you ask? No one knows they won't say. Just be sure to know you will play mirror matches and the same 2-3 types of decks they've 'rated' based on ???. That's the only free play mode of the game. With the crap timer you could PAY to play Bo3 but good luck there as you can get roped (time wasters taking forever with EVERY TURN) and have what should be a max 40 Bo3 into hours. That you paid to play. They still don't have a solution for NoF chaining without a win con since you can't call a judge you get to sit there while they chain without being able to win.
Awesome right?
I think the best they can do is those duel games. Maybe they should make a new IP that may have some aspects of MTG Lore (like the idea of players being Planeswalkers) with new rules better adapted to mobile and streaming gaming that also can be translated to paper if they wanted to. It would hit two birds with two stones: increase the brand name for a bigger and younger audience and also increase the digital presence in a meaningful way. They could leave the Avenger style writing to that as well.
MTG is clearly not cut for the digital era IMO. MTG is in its own bubble and maybe it should stay that way. MTG isn't for everybody and never will be. Trying to push it to a wider audience just dilute its own special charm. Arena could just be a proper mobile/freemium game without trying to translate the paper experience 100%. It's not suitable to anybody. People are just forced to use MTGO because either they don't have better option or the need a tool for grinding. MTGO is perfect fine as is. Arena is just a more streamlined MTGO experience without any identity of its own. It's try to be HS with bad mobile micro transactions and MTGO style events.
I guess they don't understand how PTRs work or realize that it's probably a good idea to test your release before it goes wide.
Maximum Effort.
The game is not very welcoming to new players as a result. MTG has never been easy to introduce to new players in the first place, I cannot understand why it has to be made harder. I want to invite my friends to Arena, but if I can't even play games with them to teach them more than the tutorial does, or at least let them play comfortably without getting intimidated by getting a permanent loss record or playing against someone they don't know, then the chance of them staying drops significantly.
Right now, I feel the game is still geared towards experienced players. And even they won't be guaranteed to stay because of the grind and uncertainty. It feels bad to receive a 5th copy of a card without even knowing where it goes (without research, outside of the game), and even worse once you find out how miniscule the percentage it contributes to the hidden vault. I'd rather keep the useless card hoping someday I can give it away to be honest, than have it disappear and contribute a measly 0.5% towards opening the vault.
The only incentive I feel when I play the game is grinding so I can complete a competitive deck. And to be honest after a week of playing I'm no longer compelled to go back to it. I'm already bored playing the same 2 decks over and over, because if I play something else my progress would be even slower, not to mention it's going to be a preconstructed deck I don't really want to be playing anyway. Sometimes I just want to play, not caring about losing or winning or rewards, just play. You know a game is good when you feel that, and you know you're going to back to it. Paper MTG makes me feel that way, hell I sometimes do it alone in Cockatrice, so by extention Arena does too, but the difference is Paper lets me do it, Cockatrice lets me do it, Arena however, because of its shortcomings and how cards are aquired, does not which is just... well, sad.
+1 This.
+1 on recharge.
My thoughts exactly.
As someone who went into Arena expecting to hate it and have so far been pleasantly surprised, here's my takes:
-Friends list - This should be one of their biggest focuses on solving, because that opens up so much more not just for players but for events in general, and it enables a lot more connectivity overall.
-Trading/gifting - 100% will never happen, it will be too easy to same the system where you make dozens of accounts and just have all of the hydra head accounts funnel their cards to the main one. Give me an afternoon and I could have playsets of effectively everything you'd ever want.
-Economy - I bought the $5 welcome pack and I'm still going off it. Obviously having played for over a decade and having the experience in limited and deckbuilding gives me a leg up over someone who just learned how to play, but some of the intro decks are frighteningly powerful (The WB one immediately comes to mind, it gets out of control fast.) If you devote yourself to just making 1 deck and drafting to help put it together you should have a steady stream of wildcards to fill in the gaps, and from there Comp Constructed queues are just fun.
-On older cards/formats: This is the real bugaboo. It helps that Wizards has 12 months to figure this out, but they are going to need to figure out what to do when IXL/RIX/DOM rotate out - on one hand they can't just be content with being a standard engine where cards just auto-dust as they leave standard, but on the other hand offering modern or legacy or even reintroducing extended leaves the problem of people opening packs only to find out that they can't jam their newly crafted lightning bolt into standard.
I'm interested to see what they come up with for this, because "nothing" isn't an answer.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
First, something needs to be done about the daily rewards. They way they are currently set up -- so that with the exception of the single "play X amount of these colored spells" quest everything requires winning to unlock -- incentivizes some pretty unfun play patterns. Right now, I have no reason to play anything except the one deck I actually put all my wildcards into because that is simply my best deck and therefore has the best chance of earning rewards. The problem is that playing the same deck day in and day out is extremely boring. Unfortunately, it is actively bad for me to try to play anything else because I will literally just be wasting my time. And even if, by some chance, I do feel like playing a pile of jank for fun, nobody else will be because they've all come to the same conclusion I just did, so they're all playing their best deck to finish their quests as quickly as possible, meaning I'll just get stomped anyway. WotC needs to spread out the rewards to include things other than just winning. More quests for doing game actions, or even just for playing some games, win or lose. I've played paper Magic basically every week for almost a decade straight, but in barely a month of Arena they've managed to turn the game into a chore instead of something I look forward to. This is a massive problem and it should be worrying the hell out of the devs right now.
My second complaint is comparatively quite simple; allow players to exchange prize packs for a pack of a previous set. Frankly, I just don't want to open GRN anymore, but it is currently the literal only prize pack I can earn without spending money. I don't see any reason why WotC should care if I take my winnings in Dominaria or Ixalan compared to Guilds of Ravnica. A digital pack is a digital pack.
Not if freebies & rewards earned from playing are not tradable, or it takes half a year before they become tradable, or only cosmetic items are tradable. There are multitudes of restrictions that can be put in place to prevent such exploits. Other games, some almost a decade old now, have done it before. But I'm not kidding myself, the sole reason trading won't be available is the same reason as other games with no trading - Wizards wants all purchases to themselves. It's actually a pretty cunning move, by not enabling trading and dusting, players won't be able to get any value out of cards or extra copies they won't be using meaning they'd have to spend more (or grind more) than they would if such features were enabled. At the same time they can convince the more... supportive players that it's all for the sake of fair play. Brilliant.
I agree the two aspects why trading is unlikely to come are ingame economy and Wizards wanting to hog 100% of revenues generated with MTG Arena, but my evaluation of whether thats a good or bad thing is quite different.
1. Ingame economy: By keeping card collections isolated within accounts, Wizards can ensure the pace of collections improving. Thias is important for players without much experience in trading and bargaining, because it keeps the economic decision trees simple: I want a certain card, so I'll craft it with a wildcard. I I don'T have the wildcard to craft it, I need to acquire it. Thats a simple process. If we had a fully fledged secondary market on MTG Arena, you would need to consider if its better to craft a sought-after card to may be able to trade it for mutiple copies of your wanted card. In short, wildcards would have diffwrent values depending on what you craft with them, so in order to not "waste" your wild card you need to consider the market, which is a much more complicated matter than just exchanging a resource for a product.
Note that its not just beginners who may be overburdened with the secondary market. I've been playing Magic for 8 years now but am unwilling to inform myself about exact trade values etc. I just want to play Magic, not study a market. I prefer the wildcard system over a trade market becasue its nice and EASY.
2. Wizards share of revenue: I never understand why people complain about this. How is Wizards claiming all revenue from their own product an evil thing? Tradeable card on MTG Arena will create a market where real some people will make money of a Wizards product, and it is totally reasonable for Wizards to contruct a system that ensures that they alone make money of their property.
UR Mizzix of the Izmagnus ~~~ Build your own win-condition: Finite Spellslinging
UR Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer ~~~ We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic ~~~ A Guide to dying slowly
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose ~~~ Marchesa's undying Marionettes
RGW Mayael the Anima ~~~ All Hail the Big Chungus
GWU Chulane, Teller of Tales ~~~ Permanents Only ETB Shenanigans
BGU Sidisi, Brood Tyrant ~~~ Sidisi's Restless Servants
WUBRG The Ur-Dragon ~~~ Dragons eat your face
Initially this was my stance as well. I have however become less enraged about this over time. With the Vault system being the way it is, the fact that you are forced into the pack type that corresponds to the event you are in doesnt bother me so much anymore. In the instance of GRN, the more packs I open of that set, the more multiples I get, which in turn opens the vault faster netting me more wildcards, ipso facto turning into the cards I want most. Even if I was able to switch out my packs, I almost want to say that strategically speaking, it actually makes more sense to open the same set repetitively.
I honestly dont see how making digital singles tradable would net any person outside of wizards physical money.
This is literally how the vault works... Each rarity is assigned a value, when you open a duplicate, that value is credited to your vault total. When you reach 900 vault points, voila... vault opens. The more duplicates you open, the more the vault points you get, which is also why you should be picking uncommons as opposed to commons in drafts when the pick seems like it shouldnt matter, as their rarity value attributes to your vault total more than a common would. Therefor, a method that would allow you to open more duplicates, more frequently is actually to your collections benefit in the current scenario. Hope that helps.
That's a hard pass from me. I'd much rather open 50 packs of cards for a set I don't already have a full collection of. Please let me trade my prize packs in for any previous set, WotC. At the very least leave up different queues so I can earn something that isn't freaking GRN.
So, it is either open packs normally to get normal wildcards or draft, get no wild cards, and *maybe* slightly increase your chances for Vault progression. That seems like a poor system overall. I am with Impossible on this one as this being something they need to change.
Another thought I had (or, I should say, something I think someone else said that I agree with) is that they need to do something to make me play normal games. I know we have the weekly prizes for getting 3 packs a week. And we have the daily challenges and wins up to 15 a day. But, I have been finding that I grind daily to get the challenges, and to get the first 4 wins, and then I stop. I don't actually use the platform as an avenue in which to play Magic; I just use it to accumulate gold and that is it. And, since they stopped offering Ravnica Drafts for Gold (it is just Dominaria now) I don't even use the gold.
I would like it if there was something in place that rewarded actually playing and/or winning in the "Play Now" room without having to invest in the "tournaments". 50 or 75 gold for a win or something. And I stop at 4 wins because the prizes turn into cards that I don't generally care about and 50 or 25 gold every other win (again, only up to 15).
Seriously though, don't intentionally open packs to get duplicates. It's just not good value. I think that was also me. I commented that they need to rework how they do the daily quests to de-incentivize winning and incentivize just playing. Right now finishing the daily quests just seems like a chore because the best strategy is to play your best deck all the time to win as quickly as possible. There's no variety.
Your theory operates under the assumption that you will open 50 unique rares/mythics. That is simply not true. Also, of those 50 rares, maybe only half are playable and then at that, maybe only 8 are specifically valuable to the decks you are trying to assemble. I feel like that is the flaw in your reasoning. A wildcard will always be more valuable than just arbitrary rare "x." Which is why generating them even slightly faster, is more beneficial to you. So now it seems we are back to, if both of our methods generate rares at the same rate, but mine also generates wildcards faster... lol. If you are looking to assemble a specific deck, the fastest way possible, you are doing it via opening duplicates. This also just isnt something I have come up with. Ill happily link multiple podcasts discussing this.
[quote}I think that was also me. I commented that they need to rework how they do the daily quests to de-incentivize winning and incentivize just playing. Right now finishing the daily quests just seems like a chore because the best strategy is to play your best deck all the time to win as quickly as possible. There's no variety.[/quote]
I guess I am getting different dailys than you are, because I sort of fail to see how "play 40 lands" is an indication of "only incentivizing winning." Im also not sure how "Play 20 blue or red spells" is is an exemplification of just play your best deck, because you need to win in order to satisfy your daily quests. In fact, both of those examples seem to be in stark contrast to what you are saying.
My major beef with the Vault right now is that the progression in both invisible, and so slow as to be imperceptible in its effect, so that right now it feels as though it doesn't even exist. So it's not serving its psychological purpose of offsetting the frustration of opening duplicates at all. Even if all we could see is some tiny little icon that tells us that the duplicates are doing *something*, that would be better than the current system.
I agree with you on some sort of visualization of how far along you are in your vault progress though. That would be immensely appreciated.