I think the game is a horrible place to spend money on, because of the fast rotations and the unavailability of direct purchase of singles. If your goal is to play competitive (constructed) magic play MTGO, is vastly superior when it comes to that, offers all formats and actually even has the better interface. And you can cashout at any point.
Arena is for casual fun and limited (where ofc you can also sink a lot of money into). If you only enjoy the game trashing F2P decks with your netdeck, then in my opinion are a very poor guy.
It's been about a week now. In bronze rank nearly every deck I face is now a meta deck. Apparently I'm the only person still playing with a janky version of the starter deck. Pretty sure I'm tapping out of the beta. Dont really have the energy to grind against U/B control decks or mono green stompy over and over so I can buy a ePack every other day and hope for a decent card.
It's been about a week now. In bronze rank nearly every deck I face is now a meta deck. Apparently I'm the only person still playing with a janky version of the starter deck. Pretty sure I'm tapping out of the beta. Dont really have the energy to grind against U/B control decks or mono green stompy over and over so I can buy a ePack every other day and hope for a decent card.
I don't want to sound like a condescending dick (he says, right before sounding like a condescending dick) but I think you're doing it wrong. I don't think the optimal strategy is to buy packs. I think it is do the daily rewards for Gold (the ones that don't require winning) and save that up to enter Limited events. In Limited it doesn't matter how big your collection is, so literally everyone can do well with a little know-how and a bit of luck. And doing even moderately well can earn you back the majority of your entry fee. Ideally, the payout is in Gems instead of Gold, and that opens up the ability to do other events for free. For example, right now for 5000 Gold you can do a M19 Draft, and getting 5 wins before 3 losses yields 650 Gems + a pack + whatever you drafted. That's more than a 1/4th of the Gems required to play in a GRN Sealed (2000 Gems), or almost half of a Competitive GRN Draft (1500 Gems). Basically, I don't think packs are a good use of your Gold. It makes more sense to play Limited and use that to build your collection, and maybe even go semi-infinite if you get a hot streak going. But that's just my opinion. If you are more interested in Standard and that's all you want to do, I can see how it might be frustrating without a decent collection.
But I actually come to ask if WotC reversed course on the "you only get 5 out of the 10 starter decks" thing because after the update today, when I completed my quest for a new deck I got 5 instead and I think they're all the ones I didn't have already but I'm not sure. This happen to anyone else?
From a game design standpoint it's a broken game state when a player is unable to compete effectively against others. It's not really about if they have a way to make the money to upgrade and eventually compete: If someone has a bad experience repeatedly during the first couple hours of the game they are not going to keep playing the game. However, I believe what is happening should be expected. With a limited number of players entering the game the system likely doesn't have low powered opponents to pair people against anymore.
This situation is basically what I've termed "the wave" in MMORPGs, where the best time to get in on end-game content is right when it gets released. Once the first two weeks pass the wave subsides and the players separate into the "have not" and the "haves". To fix the situation in MtG Arena they need a catch up system for late comers. Maybe increase the rewards for the new players and give them bonus packs and wild cards to catch up to the longer running players.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well, I thought about trying Arena, but now I am not sure.
I played first Duels of the Planeswalkers just as single player campaign, and it was sufficient for me (I'm mainly a collector, not a Magic player).
Is it possible to use Magic Arena just for some single player campaign (like in DotP)? Or is it strictly player vs. player where I must continuously upgrade my decks or play draft?
I just managed to move out of Bronze into Silver yesterday, without spending a single cent on the game (and not using a single WC, I am saving those for when I find out what I want to focus on), but let me tell you, was that a major pain. I, however, didn't play against that many clearly paying people. I have no clue how the pairing system works, but there may be a difference in the currently playing population on the time of the day - I play most of my games between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. UTC.
I agree with Impossible on the limited approach to collection building. It might seem hard to go semi-infinite, but it's actually doable once you realize you should not think about drafting as if you were actually drafting - the AI seems to have a mostly random approach to picks, so just take the best card P1P1 and stick to that, the deck usually shapes itself just fine by simple forcing.
Is it possible to use Magic Arena just for some single player campaign (like in DotP)? Or is it strictly player vs. player where I must continuously upgrade my decks or play draft?
Arena is purely PvP, no single player mode is available right now. And as you can see from the discussion, the environment is not exactly balanced.
But I actually come to ask if WotC reversed course on the "you only get 5 out of the 10 starter decks" thing because after the update today, when I completed my quest for a new deck I got 5 instead and I think they're all the ones I didn't have already but I'm not sure. This happen to anyone else?
Yes, same here. Only got 5 of them (and not even the WB one, so I didn't get a single Contempt). Is there any official statement on this?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
standard: BUG The Baron (it doesn't work, but I try anyway)
From a game design standpoint it's a broken game state when a player is unable to compete effectively against others. It's not really about if they have a way to make the money to upgrade and eventually compete: If someone has a bad experience repeatedly during the first couple hours of the game they are not going to keep playing the game. However, I believe what is happening should be expected. With a limited number of players entering the game the system likely doesn't have low powered opponents to pair people against anymore.
This situation is basically what I've termed "the wave" in MMORPGs, where the best time to get in on end-game content is right when it gets released. Once the first two weeks pass the wave subsides and the players separate into the "have not" and the "haves". To fix the situation in MtG Arena they need a catch up system for late comers. Maybe increase the rewards for the new players and give them bonus packs and wild cards to catch up to the longer running players.
I get what you're saying but I think that's more because the Beta is relatively new. The ladder hasn't had time to sort itself out yet, so everyone is clumped together around bronze and silver. I think this will be a self correcting problem after a month or so once everyone settles into their appropriate level on the ladder.
Yes, same here. Only got 5 of them (and not even the WB one, so I didn't get a single Contempt). Is there any official statement on this?
Yeah I found one on the official Arena forums. Here's the relevant bit:
New Player Experience
A new quest has been added to the end of the NPE quest chain that rewards players the remaining five uncollected dual-color decks. For players that have already completed the NPE, the quest will populate upon login.
The forums also seem to contain some posts about bugs with the update, like some people getting 5 mono-colored decks and some random M19 packs instead. If you're confident you missed out on a deck you should probably contact support and ask them to look into it.
Strange, in my experience, on the low ladder ranks, people run mostly the precons or slight modifications of them, so I have around 50% win rate with them as one would expect (not actual statistics, just a feeling). Just steer clear of the limited event until you expand your collection and build something good, the power level is much higher there and you would just end up wasting coins.
But I actually come to ask if WotC reversed course on the "you only get 5 out of the 10 starter decks" thing because after the update today, when I completed my quest for a new deck I got 5 instead and I think they're all the ones I didn't have already but I'm not sure. This happen to anyone else?
Yes, same here. Only got 5 of them (and not even the WB one, so I didn't get a single Contempt). Is there any official statement on this?
After reading Impossible's comment, I logged back in and completed the challenge (Deal 100 Damage) and I got all 5 decks I was missing. So, maybe they did reverse something but I now have 15 "Pre Con" decks total: 5 of the Welcome Decks (or whatever they call them) that are 1 color and 10 of the 2 color decks.
Stop acting like a child and learn the way that businesses work. People act like this game was free to make, that wizards created it for some "greater good" to let everyone enjoy magic. Wotc and hasbro are businesses- their aim is to generate sales and deliver returns for their investors. They don't give a **** that you can't compete with the players who paid money to play the game- and no, it's not a "broken game state" when you can't compete with those players if you put literally $0 in. You are not entitled to anything when it comes to this game whatsoever. The fact that the game is free and they give you anything is free is pretty incredible- you don't get jack ***** on MTGO. MTGO doesn't even have daily rewards where you're actually able to get cards for simply playing the game. All it takes is $50 to get you into a tier 1 deck- at that point you'll win more and be rewarded for it.
Stop acting like a child and learn the way that businesses work. People act like this game was free to make, that wizards created it for some "greater good" to let everyone enjoy magic. Wotc and hasbro are businesses- their aim is to generate sales and deliver returns for their investors. They don't give a **** that you can't compete with the players who paid money to play the game- and no, it's not a "broken game state" when you can't compete with those players if you put literally $0 in. You are not entitled to anything when it comes to this game whatsoever. The fact that the game is free and they give you anything is free is pretty incredible- you don't get jack ***** on MTGO. MTGO doesn't even have daily rewards where you're actually able to get cards for simply playing the game. All it takes is $50 to get you into a tier 1 deck- at that point you'll win more and be rewarded for it.
...no.
Games become less fun when they are pay to win. Hearthstone throws packs at you constantly, and you can dust cards you don't want to get ones you do want. Pokemon TCG lets you get online pack codes when you buy sealed product in the stores, getting you a two for one deal. MTGO has interplayer trading options. Arena takes the microtransactions in the worst possible direction. The standard meta almost always consists of 2-3 decks and everything else is a distant second. that's a feature, not a flaw, to move more product. In paper, the secondary market helps by letting players spend $200 in singles if they want that deck instead of spending $2K on boxes to hopefully pull everything they need.
Arena's problem is that it is purely pay to win. There is no alternative. Wild cards are a poor substitute. I, and I imagine some others, would rather pay $20-30 for a game that came equipped with enough resources to compete and then pay later on than start and get whooped repeatedly.
Or to put it shortly, screw it I'm waiting for Artifact.
I agree with Mcnealstash's underlying sentiment (though not necessarily the method of delivering that message). The game is free and can be free and enjoyed. Yes, not putting money into it will likely create situations where someone has a tiered deck that you lose to. This happens in real life too when people go to FNM with a $50 deck to compete against others with $300 decks. The important things to keep in mind is that a) doing that here costs no money and b) the $50 decks still win. Which means the free decks can still win. As people have pointed out, Arena provides ways to increase your collection for free and without a ton of effort. For example, I have 3 daily challenges all worth 500 gold. That is 1.5 packs or part of a tournament entry. I think Draft is 5000 gold so it is a little under a third of that. Also, during the closed beta there was always one challenge worth 750 gold so I am not sure if they just got rid of that. And, winning games (up to 15) also gets you gold and cards. I think it is somewhere around 500 gold total with 7 or 8 cards.
Since these are daily events, that means after 1 week you get 10,500 gold total if you never win a game so you can enter 2 limited environments for a guaranteed 8 packs or just buy 10 packs outright. It is not the fastest way of course, but it is doable. This also doesn't take into account the wildcards you get during this process. And, the weekly challenge gets you another 3 packs. So, over the course of a week you can get upwards of 13 packs just by buying/winning them.
There are likely improvements that could be made but it is nowhere near as bad as some are making it out to be. And, as the rankings are established, you are less likely to see those higher tiered decks unless you also are winning a lot to match them (or someone new just dumped a bunch of money into the game which, again, is just like FNM).
EDIT: I do want to clarify that the evaluation above is based on all 3 daily events refreshing each day since I am pretty sure that is what I saw happen in the closed beta. I realized I have never actually completed all 3 at once in the open beta and then confirmed that I got 3 new ones each day. If not, then I rescind my assessment above and agree that the ability to grind is made even worse as that means you can only get 500 gold a day (maybe another 500 or so from winning 15 games but that is harder to without a decent deck) which means that without winning, you need to play for 10 days to get entry into a limited tournament. That makes it much worse than the 2 tournaments a week my math above suggests.
You do not get 3 new quests daily. Each quest refreshes every 24 hours I believe.
I spent $5 on the welcome bundle, which I would say is worth it as I used the gems to do the sealed Ravnica event which I ended up getting enough gems to do again about 3-5 times before I lost out. After that I built up a decent collection for the most part. I have a UBr control deck I have fun with (no rare lands for it though), and a UW deck with a twist I did that I am having fun with. Other than that I save up for limited events and play those, I think it is the best use of the in game gold as you have a chance to just keep going.
It feels too predatory as a F2P game from the economy. Many of the problems that were raised during the closed beta I see still haven't been addressed properly regarding the economy.
I had plenty of wildcards of each category that I was saving up for the next set only to find out that hard work would be wiped. Since I didn't spend a dime on it, all that hard work is gone, especially with the pittance of wildcards given at the start. My mood soured on repeating the grind.
I seen this pattern from developers before, if they actually considered the problem as worth their time they would have fixed it already instead of shrugging and saying "still haven't figured out a solution" and promising "we will figure something out". That its been over eight months of waiting patiently to see change es that aren't coming. Staying and hoping something changes is like hoping that an unhealthy relationship works itself out magically out of the blue.
Oh and about Brawl, that new flagship format that came out with Dominaria, the one said to come onto Arena? Man that got abandoned before it even reached Arena publicly. Just shows how little of importance it was and how much they cared for it. That if Brawl can't, I honestly can't imagine one of the most major flagship formats like Commander would even sail on Arena let alone either Modern or Legacy.
Also at least MTGO allows for buying/selling/trading of specific cards that someone would desire to make the decks they want. Something that Arena distinctly lacks.
EDIT: Also if MTG Arena is supposed to be so loved and the future of online MTG play, where is TCC or TMS? Big MTG content creators that would do wonders for supporting it on a livestream or on twitter or their respective youtube channels. TCC I know already made a video several months back on it during the closed beta phase, but he highlighted how negative the economy was for the player.
Games become less fun when they are pay to win. Hearthstone throws packs at you constantly, and you can dust cards you don't want to get ones you do want. Pokemon TCG lets you get online pack codes when you buy sealed product in the stores, getting you a two for one deal. MTGO has interplayer trading options. Arena takes the microtransactions in the worst possible direction. The standard meta almost always consists of 2-3 decks and everything else is a distant second. that's a feature, not a flaw, to move more product. In paper, the secondary market helps by letting players spend $200 in singles if they want that deck instead of spending $2K on boxes to hopefully pull everything they need.
Arena's problem is that it is purely pay to win. There is no alternative. Wild cards are a poor substitute. I, and I imagine some others, would rather pay $20-30 for a game that came equipped with enough resources to compete and then pay later on than start and get whooped repeatedly.
Or to put it shortly, screw it I'm waiting for Artifact.
I understand where you're coming from. It feels like crap when you have your little deck that you've cobbled together through drafts and laddering and the few packs playing for free gets you, only to see your opponent open with 3 shocklands and a bunch of rares and follow it up with lots of mythics. It feels like you're not even playing the same game and it's easy to blame it on all the money they spent to whale out.
But they probably didn't sink a ton of money into the game. The welcome pack was $5 and was incredibly high value for the price. If they went to a pre-release they got a code for a free sealed event - that's a guaranteed 9 packs and if they did fairly well (or even average with their pool) then they got enough gems to do several drafts as well. The code "PlayRavnica" is good for 3 packs as well. That could be as much as 36 packs of product they got that you didn't, which means they also got a lot more wildcards and a lot of deck ideas, which gets them more gold and more gems when they turn the gold in for more limited. All with a very little cash inlay.
As proof of this, take a look at Skybilz on Twitch. She's spent a total of $5 on the game (The welcome kit I mentioned) and she has a boros deck that looks incredibly flashy with 3 and 4 copies each of Lyra Dawnbringer, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice as well as a History of Benalia and a Sacred Foundry. She has torn through competitive standard events with that list and is able to keep getting cards and packs and coins with it. Simply by investing what she had into one really good deck, and being really good with that deck. Feel free to check her VoDs or stream, she streams Arena most Wednesdays and Thursdays.
McNealstash was overly blunt about his assessment, but the core of it still holds valid: Wizards is a business. They operate to make a profit for their owners, and if the people in charge don't make profits, they'll be replaced. Arena was released yes so people could play magic online, but also because it makes money for the company and its owners. This means Wizards will try and convince people to buy things for Arena, with varying degrees of success.
But more to the point, it makes zero sense for them to market or pander to a section of their playerbase that, by definition, will never contribute to their bottom line.
If you insist on never spending a penny on Arena, then you have to accept that you're not part of their target market for Arena, and the company has no incentive (and certainly no obligation) to make things any more fun for you. Because they need to make money on it to keep it going - at least enough to keep the servers active. If they don't, then Arena will get taken down.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Games become less fun when they are pay to win. Hearthstone throws packs at you constantly, and you can dust cards you don't want to get ones you do want. Pokemon TCG lets you get online pack codes when you buy sealed product in the stores, getting you a two for one deal. MTGO has interplayer trading options. Arena takes the microtransactions in the worst possible direction. The standard meta almost always consists of 2-3 decks and everything else is a distant second. that's a feature, not a flaw, to move more product. In paper, the secondary market helps by letting players spend $200 in singles if they want that deck instead of spending $2K on boxes to hopefully pull everything they need.
Arena's problem is that it is purely pay to win. There is no alternative. Wild cards are a poor substitute. I, and I imagine some others, would rather pay $20-30 for a game that came equipped with enough resources to compete and then pay later on than start and get whooped repeatedly.
Or to put it shortly, screw it I'm waiting for Artifact.
I understand where you're coming from. It feels like crap when you have your little deck that you've cobbled together through drafts and laddering and the few packs playing for free gets you, only to see your opponent open with 3 shocklands and a bunch of rares and follow it up with lots of mythics. It feels like you're not even playing the same game and it's easy to blame it on all the money they spent to whale out.
But they probably didn't sink a ton of money into the game. The welcome pack was $5 and was incredibly high value for the price. If they went to a pre-release they got a code for a free sealed event - that's a guaranteed 9 packs and if they did fairly well (or even average with their pool) then they got enough gems to do several drafts as well. The code "PlayRavnica" is good for 3 packs as well. That could be as much as 36 packs of product they got that you didn't, which means they also got a lot more wildcards and a lot of deck ideas, which gets them more gold and more gems when they turn the gold in for more limited. All with a very little cash inlay.
As proof of this, take a look at Skybilz on Twitch. She's spent a total of $5 on the game (The welcome kit I mentioned) and she has a boros deck that looks incredibly flashy with 3 and 4 copies each of Lyra Dawnbringer, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice as well as a History of Benalia and a Sacred Foundry. She has torn through competitive standard events with that list and is able to keep getting cards and packs and coins with it. Simply by investing what she had into one really good deck, and being really good with that deck. Feel free to check her VoDs or stream, she streams Arena most Wednesdays and Thursdays.
McNealstash was overly blunt about his assessment, but the core of it still holds valid: Wizards is a business. They operate to make a profit for their owners, and if the people in charge don't make profits, they'll be replaced. Arena was released yes so people could play magic online, but also because it makes money for the company and its owners. This means Wizards will try and convince people to buy things for Arena, with varying degrees of success.
But more to the point, it makes zero sense for them to market or pander to a section of their playerbase that, by definition, will never contribute to their bottom line.
If you insist on never spending a penny on Arena, then you have to accept that you're not part of their target market for Arena, and the company has no incentive (and certainly no obligation) to make things any more fun for you. Because they need to make money on it to keep it going - at least enough to keep the servers active. If they don't, then Arena will get taken down.
Yes, but no. A game like Hearthstone, Blizzard realized they need F2P players as well as paying players. Yes, paying players PAY them money, but they dont stick around if the game is dead, which is what happens when "free" players leave it. I remember seeing a graphic before showing the breakdown of people who pay money on a Hearthstone that could apply to any CCG game, the majority of players spend like $5-20 a YEAR on the game. A small percentage are "whales" and another larger percentage is 100% free to play. If a game is only those whale players, it wont survive. They wont stick around to play with their $100 decks when no one is there to play with them.
Strange, in my experience, on the low ladder ranks, people run mostly the precons or slight modifications of them, so I have around 50% win rate with them as one would expect (not actual statistics, just a feeling). Just steer clear of the limited event until you expand your collection and build something good, the power level is much higher there and you would just end up wasting coins.
I have a feeling they are still running that rigged matchmaking thing they ran in closed beta where it compares "deck strength" or something. I have been playing a JANKY G/B deck and all I am facing at bronze is complete stompy decks, complete control decks and complete W/G token decks. I literally just played like 5 games tonight and 4 were against this deck like 100% complete with every single card.
Strange, in my experience, on the low ladder ranks, people run mostly the precons or slight modifications of them, so I have around 50% win rate with them as one would expect (not actual statistics, just a feeling). Just steer clear of the limited event until you expand your collection and build something good, the power level is much higher there and you would just end up wasting coins.
I have a feeling they are still running that rigged matchmaking thing they ran in closed beta where it compares "deck strength" or something. I have been playing a JANKY G/B deck and all I am facing at bronze is complete stompy decks, complete control decks and complete W/G token decks. I literally just played like 5 games tonight and 4 were against this deck like 100% complete with every single card.
Yeah, the matchmaking is weird in this regard. It seems that I keep getting specific types of decks depending on what I am running. Today I took out green stompy for quests and kept getting matched agains WB lifegain, to the point where I was almost rage-quitting every time I saw Ajani's welcome...
Stop acting like a child and learn the way that businesses work. People act like this game was free to make, that wizards created it for some "greater good" to let everyone enjoy magic. Wotc and hasbro are businesses- their aim is to generate sales and deliver returns for their investors. They don't give a **** that you can't compete with the players who paid money to play the game- and no, it's not a "broken game state" when you can't compete with those players if you put literally $0 in. You are not entitled to anything when it comes to this game whatsoever. The fact that the game is free and they give you anything is free is pretty incredible- you don't get jack ***** on MTGO. MTGO doesn't even have daily rewards where you're actually able to get cards for simply playing the game. All it takes is $50 to get you into a tier 1 deck- at that point you'll win more and be rewarded for it.
I think you are having conflicting discussions here and are mixing the streams. What does business and finance have to do with game design outside of casinos? Unless someone is designing a pachinko machine finance is the last thing on the metric that anyone should be looking at when designing a game. Those finance decisions are choices made later by the company upper management in order to best monetize the game, and that has it's own list of problems that are not worth discussing here.
Games absolutely must grab and keep players interested in those first few hours of play. If the game is overly complicated or the player can never seem to win, that cuts out a huge swath of potential players and thus a lot of future revenue. The objective of Arena is to bring players in and make them committed players, as those are the players that will occassionally throw some money into the game and buy packs, events, etc. I don't know if they have plans to push people from committed into competitive leagues on the level of MTGO, but that is another possibility if they can get enough people committed to the game.
I mean, why do people in paper buy packs even though they know they are a bad deal, or keep buying products even when the game is doing horribly and they are not actively playing? It's because those players are committed to the game and collecting useful cards is part of their life. It's going to be the same way with Arena or any other type of game that has a long term commitment. This differs from "one shot" type games like single player RPGs such as Witcher 3 or God of War, where success is measured by the initial pre-sales and the first few months of game sales.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
This game feels like it started as "how to strip money from customers the best way possible" first and gameplay second. It seems like the devs have no idea on what direction to take with Arena. They say it's for the general public, but they pander the old guard and don't really do much at attract players outside of the HS community with those sponsorships. I guess they are happy with that.
They thought that an engine for the card would be more than enough. The basics are all over the place. The UI and menus are so 2000s, the animation effect is just OK at this stage of the beta, the timer is garbage, the collection management is amateurish, and matchmaking seems barebone at best. Arena would be amazing in 200X, but its systems and propositions seem very dated.
I don't care about the whole "economy sux" etcetera. HS economy sux and it's doing pretty fine. However, HS gameplay justifies its shoddy economy. It clearly started as a gameplay first like any good designed game should. Arena doesn't feel like that, so the only thing that matters is the economy as gameplay is just the bare minimum of acceptability for today's standard. I believe HS economy is worse than Arena right now, but it doesn't matter because HS service is way ahead of Arena (and that's a game with a very vocal community). Now I don't think there are much to Arena to back its economy proposition.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Arena is for casual fun and limited (where ofc you can also sink a lot of money into). If you only enjoy the game trashing F2P decks with your netdeck, then in my opinion are a very poor guy.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
But I actually come to ask if WotC reversed course on the "you only get 5 out of the 10 starter decks" thing because after the update today, when I completed my quest for a new deck I got 5 instead and I think they're all the ones I didn't have already but I'm not sure. This happen to anyone else?
This situation is basically what I've termed "the wave" in MMORPGs, where the best time to get in on end-game content is right when it gets released. Once the first two weeks pass the wave subsides and the players separate into the "have not" and the "haves". To fix the situation in MtG Arena they need a catch up system for late comers. Maybe increase the rewards for the new players and give them bonus packs and wild cards to catch up to the longer running players.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I played first Duels of the Planeswalkers just as single player campaign, and it was sufficient for me (I'm mainly a collector, not a Magic player).
Is it possible to use Magic Arena just for some single player campaign (like in DotP)? Or is it strictly player vs. player where I must continuously upgrade my decks or play draft?
Thanks
I agree with Impossible on the limited approach to collection building. It might seem hard to go semi-infinite, but it's actually doable once you realize you should not think about drafting as if you were actually drafting - the AI seems to have a mostly random approach to picks, so just take the best card P1P1 and stick to that, the deck usually shapes itself just fine by simple forcing.
Arena is purely PvP, no single player mode is available right now. And as you can see from the discussion, the environment is not exactly balanced.
Yes, same here. Only got 5 of them (and not even the WB one, so I didn't get a single Contempt). Is there any official statement on this?
BUG The Baron (it doesn't work, but I try anyway)
modern:
RGShaman Aggro
legacy:
UHigh Tide
German highlander:
BUG aggro control
EDH:
a positively unhealthy amount of decks
Yeah I found one on the official Arena forums. Here's the relevant bit:
The forums also seem to contain some posts about bugs with the update, like some people getting 5 mono-colored decks and some random M19 packs instead. If you're confident you missed out on a deck you should probably contact support and ask them to look into it.
...no.
Games become less fun when they are pay to win. Hearthstone throws packs at you constantly, and you can dust cards you don't want to get ones you do want. Pokemon TCG lets you get online pack codes when you buy sealed product in the stores, getting you a two for one deal. MTGO has interplayer trading options. Arena takes the microtransactions in the worst possible direction. The standard meta almost always consists of 2-3 decks and everything else is a distant second. that's a feature, not a flaw, to move more product. In paper, the secondary market helps by letting players spend $200 in singles if they want that deck instead of spending $2K on boxes to hopefully pull everything they need.
Arena's problem is that it is purely pay to win. There is no alternative. Wild cards are a poor substitute. I, and I imagine some others, would rather pay $20-30 for a game that came equipped with enough resources to compete and then pay later on than start and get whooped repeatedly.
Or to put it shortly, screw it I'm waiting for Artifact.
Since these are daily events, that means after 1 week you get 10,500 gold total if you never win a game so you can enter 2 limited environments for a guaranteed 8 packs or just buy 10 packs outright. It is not the fastest way of course, but it is doable. This also doesn't take into account the wildcards you get during this process. And, the weekly challenge gets you another 3 packs. So, over the course of a week you can get upwards of 13 packs just by buying/winning them.
There are likely improvements that could be made but it is nowhere near as bad as some are making it out to be. And, as the rankings are established, you are less likely to see those higher tiered decks unless you also are winning a lot to match them (or someone new just dumped a bunch of money into the game which, again, is just like FNM).
EDIT: I do want to clarify that the evaluation above is based on all 3 daily events refreshing each day since I am pretty sure that is what I saw happen in the closed beta. I realized I have never actually completed all 3 at once in the open beta and then confirmed that I got 3 new ones each day. If not, then I rescind my assessment above and agree that the ability to grind is made even worse as that means you can only get 500 gold a day (maybe another 500 or so from winning 15 games but that is harder to without a decent deck) which means that without winning, you need to play for 10 days to get entry into a limited tournament. That makes it much worse than the 2 tournaments a week my math above suggests.
I spent $5 on the welcome bundle, which I would say is worth it as I used the gems to do the sealed Ravnica event which I ended up getting enough gems to do again about 3-5 times before I lost out. After that I built up a decent collection for the most part. I have a UBr control deck I have fun with (no rare lands for it though), and a UW deck with a twist I did that I am having fun with. Other than that I save up for limited events and play those, I think it is the best use of the in game gold as you have a chance to just keep going.
I had plenty of wildcards of each category that I was saving up for the next set only to find out that hard work would be wiped. Since I didn't spend a dime on it, all that hard work is gone, especially with the pittance of wildcards given at the start. My mood soured on repeating the grind.
I seen this pattern from developers before, if they actually considered the problem as worth their time they would have fixed it already instead of shrugging and saying "still haven't figured out a solution" and promising "we will figure something out". That its been over eight months of waiting patiently to see change es that aren't coming. Staying and hoping something changes is like hoping that an unhealthy relationship works itself out magically out of the blue.
Oh and about Brawl, that new flagship format that came out with Dominaria, the one said to come onto Arena? Man that got abandoned before it even reached Arena publicly. Just shows how little of importance it was and how much they cared for it. That if Brawl can't, I honestly can't imagine one of the most major flagship formats like Commander would even sail on Arena let alone either Modern or Legacy.
Also at least MTGO allows for buying/selling/trading of specific cards that someone would desire to make the decks they want. Something that Arena distinctly lacks.
EDIT: Also if MTG Arena is supposed to be so loved and the future of online MTG play, where is TCC or TMS? Big MTG content creators that would do wonders for supporting it on a livestream or on twitter or their respective youtube channels. TCC I know already made a video several months back on it during the closed beta phase, but he highlighted how negative the economy was for the player.
I understand where you're coming from. It feels like crap when you have your little deck that you've cobbled together through drafts and laddering and the few packs playing for free gets you, only to see your opponent open with 3 shocklands and a bunch of rares and follow it up with lots of mythics. It feels like you're not even playing the same game and it's easy to blame it on all the money they spent to whale out.
But they probably didn't sink a ton of money into the game. The welcome pack was $5 and was incredibly high value for the price. If they went to a pre-release they got a code for a free sealed event - that's a guaranteed 9 packs and if they did fairly well (or even average with their pool) then they got enough gems to do several drafts as well. The code "PlayRavnica" is good for 3 packs as well. That could be as much as 36 packs of product they got that you didn't, which means they also got a lot more wildcards and a lot of deck ideas, which gets them more gold and more gems when they turn the gold in for more limited. All with a very little cash inlay.
As proof of this, take a look at Skybilz on Twitch. She's spent a total of $5 on the game (The welcome kit I mentioned) and she has a boros deck that looks incredibly flashy with 3 and 4 copies each of Lyra Dawnbringer, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice as well as a History of Benalia and a Sacred Foundry. She has torn through competitive standard events with that list and is able to keep getting cards and packs and coins with it. Simply by investing what she had into one really good deck, and being really good with that deck. Feel free to check her VoDs or stream, she streams Arena most Wednesdays and Thursdays.
McNealstash was overly blunt about his assessment, but the core of it still holds valid: Wizards is a business. They operate to make a profit for their owners, and if the people in charge don't make profits, they'll be replaced. Arena was released yes so people could play magic online, but also because it makes money for the company and its owners. This means Wizards will try and convince people to buy things for Arena, with varying degrees of success.
But more to the point, it makes zero sense for them to market or pander to a section of their playerbase that, by definition, will never contribute to their bottom line.
If you insist on never spending a penny on Arena, then you have to accept that you're not part of their target market for Arena, and the company has no incentive (and certainly no obligation) to make things any more fun for you. Because they need to make money on it to keep it going - at least enough to keep the servers active. If they don't, then Arena will get taken down.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Yes, but no. A game like Hearthstone, Blizzard realized they need F2P players as well as paying players. Yes, paying players PAY them money, but they dont stick around if the game is dead, which is what happens when "free" players leave it. I remember seeing a graphic before showing the breakdown of people who pay money on a Hearthstone that could apply to any CCG game, the majority of players spend like $5-20 a YEAR on the game. A small percentage are "whales" and another larger percentage is 100% free to play. If a game is only those whale players, it wont survive. They wont stick around to play with their $100 decks when no one is there to play with them.
I have a feeling they are still running that rigged matchmaking thing they ran in closed beta where it compares "deck strength" or something. I have been playing a JANKY G/B deck and all I am facing at bronze is complete stompy decks, complete control decks and complete W/G token decks. I literally just played like 5 games tonight and 4 were against this deck like 100% complete with every single card.
Yeah, the matchmaking is weird in this regard. It seems that I keep getting specific types of decks depending on what I am running. Today I took out green stompy for quests and kept getting matched agains WB lifegain, to the point where I was almost rage-quitting every time I saw Ajani's welcome...
I think you are having conflicting discussions here and are mixing the streams. What does business and finance have to do with game design outside of casinos? Unless someone is designing a pachinko machine finance is the last thing on the metric that anyone should be looking at when designing a game. Those finance decisions are choices made later by the company upper management in order to best monetize the game, and that has it's own list of problems that are not worth discussing here.
Games absolutely must grab and keep players interested in those first few hours of play. If the game is overly complicated or the player can never seem to win, that cuts out a huge swath of potential players and thus a lot of future revenue. The objective of Arena is to bring players in and make them committed players, as those are the players that will occassionally throw some money into the game and buy packs, events, etc. I don't know if they have plans to push people from committed into competitive leagues on the level of MTGO, but that is another possibility if they can get enough people committed to the game.
I mean, why do people in paper buy packs even though they know they are a bad deal, or keep buying products even when the game is doing horribly and they are not actively playing? It's because those players are committed to the game and collecting useful cards is part of their life. It's going to be the same way with Arena or any other type of game that has a long term commitment. This differs from "one shot" type games like single player RPGs such as Witcher 3 or God of War, where success is measured by the initial pre-sales and the first few months of game sales.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
They thought that an engine for the card would be more than enough. The basics are all over the place. The UI and menus are so 2000s, the animation effect is just OK at this stage of the beta, the timer is garbage, the collection management is amateurish, and matchmaking seems barebone at best. Arena would be amazing in 200X, but its systems and propositions seem very dated.
I don't care about the whole "economy sux" etcetera. HS economy sux and it's doing pretty fine. However, HS gameplay justifies its shoddy economy. It clearly started as a gameplay first like any good designed game should. Arena doesn't feel like that, so the only thing that matters is the economy as gameplay is just the bare minimum of acceptability for today's standard. I believe HS economy is worse than Arena right now, but it doesn't matter because HS service is way ahead of Arena (and that's a game with a very vocal community). Now I don't think there are much to Arena to back its economy proposition.