The last thing I saw was that they were planning on kicking them off in "Early 2015"...well...its the end of April, kind of the last month that could be considered "Early" in the year...
I loved them when I originally played MTGO, (I am almost willing to say it is the best format to take advantage of the MTGO interface/community) and will definitely be getting back into them once they launch...It will actually get me back into the game again...
I never played them, but from what all I have heard you should probably assume they don't resemble what you remember at all or resemble it very little. Might also be safe to assume you get them somewhere around v8 as well.
Have they ever actually addressed why they got rid of Leagues to begin with?
To my understanding, leagues were stopped because of how/when cards entered your collection. When leagues were first created, the cards you received in them became part of your collection at the start of the league (sealed events worked the same way) they just couldn't be traded until that league (or event) ended. At some point in time, the change was made that the cards in sealed events would become part of your collection at the conclusion of that event. Because of this change, they couldn't get leagues to work in the manner that they had worked in the past.
The really bad sign for the future of leagues right now is that the last update about them (made on 11/19/2014) has been removed from Wizards' website.
To my understanding, leagues were stopped because of how/when cards entered your collection. When leagues were first created, the cards you received in them became part of your collection at the start of the league (sealed events worked the same way) they just couldn't be traded until that league (or event) ended. At some point in time, the change was made that the cards in sealed events would become part of your collection at the conclusion of that event. Because of this change, they couldn't get leagues to work in the manner that they had worked in the past.
Now I am wondering why this was an issue that needed a change?
The leagues required you to buy your own "product" and bring it to the game. You didn't lose any of the cards through the process, so why couldn't they be in your collection from the moment you opened them? I understand the block on trading, makes perfect sense to not be able to get rid of the cards while they were "active" in the league.
So why not let you use them more or less however you wanted?
Seems like a dumb change that derailed a fantastic format.
To my understanding, leagues were stopped because of how/when cards entered your collection. When leagues were first created, the cards you received in them became part of your collection at the start of the league (sealed events worked the same way) they just couldn't be traded until that league (or event) ended. At some point in time, the change was made that the cards in sealed events would become part of your collection at the conclusion of that event. Because of this change, they couldn't get leagues to work in the manner that they had worked in the past.
Now I am wondering why this was an issue that needed a change?
The leagues required you to buy your own "product" and bring it to the game. You didn't lose any of the cards through the process, so why couldn't they be in your collection from the moment you opened them? I understand the block on trading, makes perfect sense to not be able to get rid of the cards while they were "active" in the league.
So why not let you use them more or less however you wanted?
Seems like a dumb change that derailed a fantastic format.
The V2 to V3 conversion of MTGO overhauled a lot of the underlying data structure of the game. IIRC, the programming team also changed. They were trying to make the game infrastructure easier to expand since the playerbase was exploding at that time. Frakked up a lot of stuff and took them months to get back to most of the functionality of version 2.
To my understanding, leagues were stopped because of how/when cards entered your collection. When leagues were first created, the cards you received in them became part of your collection at the start of the league (sealed events worked the same way) they just couldn't be traded until that league (or event) ended. At some point in time, the change was made that the cards in sealed events would become part of your collection at the conclusion of that event. Because of this change, they couldn't get leagues to work in the manner that they had worked in the past.
Now I am wondering why this was an issue that needed a change?
The leagues required you to buy your own "product" and bring it to the game. You didn't lose any of the cards through the process, so why couldn't they be in your collection from the moment you opened them? I understand the block on trading, makes perfect sense to not be able to get rid of the cards while they were "active" in the league.
So why not let you use them more or less however you wanted?
Seems like a dumb change that derailed a fantastic format.
The cards inside packs aren't determined until you open the packs. I'm not sure if that has always been the case, but it is the case now.
If that was always the case, then you didn't actually have any of the cards before entering a league. All you had were sealed packs which you basically exchanged for the cards to use in that league.
If they have any intelligence whatsoever, which they haven't displayed to this poitn of course, they aren't doing any custom development on V4 right now, and are balls to the wall developing v5.
The problem is, they left the current head of MTGO in his job despite this debaucle, meaning to get v5 kicked off, he'd have to admit that he completely blew it on v4 and wasted millions of dollars in development. And taht ain't happening.
...
I bet the whole program is flawed at the core and this makes any changes or improvements difficult to implement at this stage. They would be better off maybe converting all player collections into tickets and then using these tickets to credit new accounts on a totally new system. One which is designed well enough to build upon in the future.
It could quite easily be that the technical challenges to bringing in leagues are too great for the current system to handle. It might be a case of redoing the whole thing. But how can this be done when players have collections of cards?
All interesting questions. I am sure they are issues debated at wizards consistently.
Seriously doubt its discussed , or it shouldn't be in any case, since one of the drivers for v4 was precisely to get rid of the issues you note. So:
a) the issues are still present and they are beyond incompetent, they are actually negligent.
b) none of these issues are present and the driver for the continuous absence of the leagues is commercial, in whatever way that might be.
That is the thing I think most people don't understand as consumers of magic online. As someone with programming knowledge I can appreciate the difficulty of getting new features to fit with legacy systems. Maybe the data structures holding the player collections are restrictive to future development.
I bet the whole program is flawed at the core and this makes any changes or improvements difficult to implement at this stage. They would be better off maybe converting all player collections into tickets and then using these tickets to credit new accounts on a totally new system. One which is designed well enough to build upon in the future.
It could quite easily be that the technical challenges to bringing in leagues are too great for the current system to handle. It might be a case of redoing the whole thing. But how can this be done when players have collections of cards?
All interesting questions. I am sure they are issues debated at wizards consistently.
I sure hope the collections are held in a databases. Even if the database is badly designed, it would be infinity easier to move it to a new database than it would be to figure out a ticket value of everything and load people up with tickets.
It sounds like you think they are being held as objects in the memory of some server somewhere? If that is true I am cashing out right now before that server reboots.
I am quite willing to bet, that their profits from MTGO actually when up once they removed leagues, because of payout ratios and the excellent value for money leagues bring. Now folks will have to pay for drafts (that last a few hours) rather than leagues, that last a month.
Sure, new player count would likely drop, and there may be a lot of complains, but addicts will still try to get their fix....
It is pretty obvious in the way they prioritize features, and the fact that it still have not went up after all this time.
Plus, I got a sneaky feeling from this last change to phantom drafts and renaming of phantom points that when leagues are (if ever) available, they will be phantom only.
Played few games on beta leagues. Cost of joining to league was 20 league points or 10 tix. 5 games of standard, best out of 3. Didnt see any rewards. There were 230 players in league. No technical problems and my matches start almost instantly. Looked like finished product to me.
Leagues were 4 week events, with 5 matches per week counting towards your ranking and as many games as you wanted to play after that per week counting as tiebreaker points. That was the real value. You'd play 5 focused games for points and then you'd have lots of tiebreaker matches to replay your deck to get a better feel for how it played and could do things like trying different builds and stuff. It was far and away the best way to get practice with deck building and card evaluation in a limited setting, and also a great way to get lots of play for little $$$.
Each week after the first week, you were allowed to buy one more pack to add to your pool (although this was not required). This added some freshness to each week's matches, but it also made for some difficult decisions - if you weren't happy with your league deck at all, did you really want to spend even more money on it?
When leagues existed I was pretty green and never did that well. Back then leagues were 128 people and the best I ever did was something like 30th with a UB deck featuring Ensnaring Bridge to lock the board down, Plague Wind to give myself huge advantage, and then some blue bounce card, can't remember which, to bring the bridge back to hand. It actually worked much of the time, although probably alot of luck was involved. Good times.
Leagues were pretty much the best value for new and casual players on MTGO and a great way to learn to play limited. Too bad it probably isn't as profitable as their current everybody-drafts-all-the-time model.
When leagues existed I was pretty green and never did that well. Back then leagues were 128 people and the best I ever did was something like 30th with a UB deck featuring Ensnaring Bridge to lock the board down, Plague Wind to give myself huge advantage, and then some blue bounce card, can't remember which, to bring the bridge back to hand. It actually worked much of the time, although probably alot of luck was involved. Good times.
Leagues were up to 256 people. You start winning packs if you were top 128. It was pretty easy to get something as long as you finished all your games and were half-way decent.
Thank you for the correction. It's been so long since leagues, alot of details are being forgotten ...
Quote from "pelaaja13" »
In beta there are now "Stages" which might be old "weeks". Current League has only one stage and 5 matches. Looks like they can add more stages if they want. Reward for league was 2 league points (dropped after 2 losses). You couldnt sell cards which were involved in league decks.
Definately playing these leagues after they are added in mtgo.
Does anybody know what the prize payout is/will be for leagues. One of my friends told me it would be basically nothing because they were just going to give you "League Points" as prizes which just let you join more league play and packs would NOT be a prize.
Does anybody know what the prize payout is/will be for leagues. One of my friends told me it would be basically nothing because they were just going to give you "League Points" as prizes which just let you join more league play and packs would NOT be a prize.
I do not know the answer to your question, but I do know that if the prizes are League Points, then it's false to say the prizes would be "basically nothing". If you want packs, buy packs. If you want to play limited games, prizes that allow you to play more games are even more valuable than packs would be as prizes.
I personally do not want any cards because I have no use for them, since I never play constructed. It's true that if packs were awarded as prizes you could sell them for tickets, but likely you'd get less value from that if your goal is to play more limited than just receiving League Play points in the first place.
I enjoy phantom sealed and am perfectly happy with the prize structure there. Phantom sealed is a fairly economical way to play sealed events, and leagues would be even better only because tiebreaker matches (if they exist in the new leagues) would allow the sort of deck building exploration that is missing from phantom sealed.
Sorry should have been more clear on what I meant by "basically nothing." I was looking for prizes that had some sort of trade value, (tickets, packs, promo cards etc.) and not something that I just get but not able to trade. If I could trade "League Points" for tickets or packs then maybe I would be interested in Leagues but only if the monitory EV is plus for me. At this point I would rather just play in Daily Events.
Sorry should have been more clear on what I meant by "basically nothing." I was looking for prizes that had some sort of trade value, (tickets, packs, promo cards etc.) and not something that I just get but not able to trade. If I could trade "League Points" for tickets or packs then maybe I would be interested in Leagues but only if the monitory EV is plus for me. At this point I would rather just play in Daily Events.
I got what you were saying. Dailies were good EV for years and when the pack prices tanked, even dailies became not worth it.
If league prizing isn't something redeemable or something that has value in the online economy, then it IS basically nothing. I was able to cash out a bunch of tickets a year ago because I had just built them up over the years from playing dailies. And it felt great.
I dont know what prizing will be like but watch them come out with lower EV leagues, then two months later remove daily events so you'll have no alternatives at all. Because magic! You should be happy to have it at all!
[quote from="benne433 »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/magic-online-general/604194-leagues?comment=32"]
If league prizing isn't something redeemable or something that has value in the online economy, then it IS basically nothing.
You fail to understand the difference between "nothing" and "something that I don't want because I don't like to play this type of event anyway". If you don't like prizes that give you more opportunities to play the game, why are you playing the game?
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The last thing I saw was that they were planning on kicking them off in "Early 2015"...well...its the end of April, kind of the last month that could be considered "Early" in the year...
I loved them when I originally played MTGO, (I am almost willing to say it is the best format to take advantage of the MTGO interface/community) and will definitely be getting back into them once they launch...It will actually get me back into the game again...
It was, and in many ways continues to be, my favorite Magic format...though I miss Tournament Packs in my sealed deck building.
To my understanding, leagues were stopped because of how/when cards entered your collection. When leagues were first created, the cards you received in them became part of your collection at the start of the league (sealed events worked the same way) they just couldn't be traded until that league (or event) ended. At some point in time, the change was made that the cards in sealed events would become part of your collection at the conclusion of that event. Because of this change, they couldn't get leagues to work in the manner that they had worked in the past.
The really bad sign for the future of leagues right now is that the last update about them (made on 11/19/2014) has been removed from Wizards' website.
Now I am wondering why this was an issue that needed a change?
The leagues required you to buy your own "product" and bring it to the game. You didn't lose any of the cards through the process, so why couldn't they be in your collection from the moment you opened them? I understand the block on trading, makes perfect sense to not be able to get rid of the cards while they were "active" in the league.
So why not let you use them more or less however you wanted?
Seems like a dumb change that derailed a fantastic format.
The V2 to V3 conversion of MTGO overhauled a lot of the underlying data structure of the game. IIRC, the programming team also changed. They were trying to make the game infrastructure easier to expand since the playerbase was exploding at that time. Frakked up a lot of stuff and took them months to get back to most of the functionality of version 2.
The cards inside packs aren't determined until you open the packs. I'm not sure if that has always been the case, but it is the case now.
If that was always the case, then you didn't actually have any of the cards before entering a league. All you had were sealed packs which you basically exchanged for the cards to use in that league.
The problem is, they left the current head of MTGO in his job despite this debaucle, meaning to get v5 kicked off, he'd have to admit that he completely blew it on v4 and wasted millions of dollars in development. And taht ain't happening.
Seriously doubt its discussed , or it shouldn't be in any case, since one of the drivers for v4 was precisely to get rid of the issues you note. So:
a) the issues are still present and they are beyond incompetent, they are actually negligent.
b) none of these issues are present and the driver for the continuous absence of the leagues is commercial, in whatever way that might be.
I sure hope the collections are held in a databases. Even if the database is badly designed, it would be infinity easier to move it to a new database than it would be to figure out a ticket value of everything and load people up with tickets.
It sounds like you think they are being held as objects in the memory of some server somewhere? If that is true I am cashing out right now before that server reboots.
Sure, new player count would likely drop, and there may be a lot of complains, but addicts will still try to get their fix....
It is pretty obvious in the way they prioritize features, and the fact that it still have not went up after all this time.
Plus, I got a sneaky feeling from this last change to phantom drafts and renaming of phantom points that when leagues are (if ever) available, they will be phantom only.
That is quite interesting to know.
Each week after the first week, you were allowed to buy one more pack to add to your pool (although this was not required). This added some freshness to each week's matches, but it also made for some difficult decisions - if you weren't happy with your league deck at all, did you really want to spend even more money on it?
When leagues existed I was pretty green and never did that well. Back then leagues were 128 people and the best I ever did was something like 30th with a UB deck featuring Ensnaring Bridge to lock the board down, Plague Wind to give myself huge advantage, and then some blue bounce card, can't remember which, to bring the bridge back to hand. It actually worked much of the time, although probably alot of luck was involved. Good times.
Leagues were up to 256 people. You start winning packs if you were top 128. It was pretty easy to get something as long as you finished all your games and were half-way decent.
Thank you for the correction. It's been so long since leagues, alot of details are being forgotten ...
Are there still tiebreaker matches?
I do not know the answer to your question, but I do know that if the prizes are League Points, then it's false to say the prizes would be "basically nothing". If you want packs, buy packs. If you want to play limited games, prizes that allow you to play more games are even more valuable than packs would be as prizes.
I personally do not want any cards because I have no use for them, since I never play constructed. It's true that if packs were awarded as prizes you could sell them for tickets, but likely you'd get less value from that if your goal is to play more limited than just receiving League Play points in the first place.
I enjoy phantom sealed and am perfectly happy with the prize structure there. Phantom sealed is a fairly economical way to play sealed events, and leagues would be even better only because tiebreaker matches (if they exist in the new leagues) would allow the sort of deck building exploration that is missing from phantom sealed.
But the $64,000 question still remains unanswered: are there unlimited tiebreaker matches in the new leagues?
I got what you were saying. Dailies were good EV for years and when the pack prices tanked, even dailies became not worth it.
If league prizing isn't something redeemable or something that has value in the online economy, then it IS basically nothing. I was able to cash out a bunch of tickets a year ago because I had just built them up over the years from playing dailies. And it felt great.
I dont know what prizing will be like but watch them come out with lower EV leagues, then two months later remove daily events so you'll have no alternatives at all. Because magic! You should be happy to have it at all!
/oldandbitter
You fail to understand the difference between "nothing" and "something that I don't want because I don't like to play this type of event anyway". If you don't like prizes that give you more opportunities to play the game, why are you playing the game?