I loved Booster Packs when I first started as a young teenager. I was really into the idea of "You are a Planeswalker," so I treated each pack as if it were a chapter of my planeswalking where I met new people, saw new artifacts, and explored new spells for future use. I chose to give the experience meaning in my player story. Sometimes I'm tempted to get a new booster and see if I can get that same feeling again. I've only been buying singles and precons, so that older feeling doesn't have an outlet for me. I've only drafted once or twice, so maybe I could explore that avenue as well.
Drafts and pre-releases are the best way to open boosters, and the best way to recapture that nostalgic experience of just playing with what you have instead of arguing with yourself to justify purchases.
I found a vendor on TCG that had 80-90% of Bloomburrow for sale at $0.05 a card, most of which were foil. I now have a bloomburrow cube for about $70. I'm adding more cards to it which are bringing that cost up but after being able to get so many cards for so cheap (nearly all foil at that), why buy booster packs? I feel no urge to one when I'm at my LGS.
I really appreciate what you guys say about having limited data back in the day. In the first 6 or 7 years of magic players didn't even have access to the rarity of cards
Love hearing magic being talked about through a grounded and honest lens. It's possible to live the game and be critical of it's flaws and try not to play in to those flaws or pretend they don't exist
I won 6 bloomburrow packs from FNM recently (this is generally the only time I open boosters anyway) and got nothing that fit a deck, nothing of trade value, or anything interesting at all. I think I'm gonna start saving them to draft with because it's the most reliable way to extract some value from them. Thanks for the reminder :)
An overlooked point of value for booster packs I think is the way that a booster pack makes you more emotionally engaged with your cards. With LCGs where every card is provided together in a known quantity for a standard price, it's hard to really have "your cards"; every card is just a game piece that everyone has. For me, a significant aspect of card games is self-expression; getting to have favourite cards, getting the excitement of opening a shiny card that has personal value to you, or trading for such a card at a good value. I recently started playing Weiss Schwarz specifically because I got lucky with a rare card, which was beautiful, and made me want to see what else might be going on over there. A game needs to have booster packs so that not everyone has every card - not as an "exclusive rares" thing, just as a "people on the secondary market only buy the cards they want, not all cards" thing - so that the cards I have feel like "my cards"; an expression of my tastes.
@@distractionmakers have booster collectibles. That way you still get “your cards”. Fortnite and other games have already proven that skins are what makes people feel unique not, paying to beat others by having access to better weapons.
Everyone will still have every card though, if they choose to pursue it. Even if the secondary market didn't exist, people would simply buy more booster packs. Heck, even now, there are still plenty of people who prefer to buy booster boxes until they have virtually every card. Only a matter of time and resources, really. I think a much stronger (perhaps the strongest) argument for the existence of booster packs, are limited formats. But for the rest of us? It's really just gambling. And gambling can be fun! But a lot of people like playing the game more than how they get their cards, and so, opt for the financially safe alternative - buying singles.
@@distractionmakers Kind of depends what we're treating as predatory vs fair randomness mechanics. For me, I don't feel like I'm being preyed on when they're honest about pull rates, when they're not putting boosters in places where they'll be impulse-bought, and when they're reprinting low-bling versions of expensive cards within 6-12 months. The one that feels most predatory to me, which I think is an unpopular opinion, is when they do special rare artworks, because the cheap version usually looks terrible in comparison, obviously to push sales. Multiple rarities is a great way of reducing cost, but as far as I'm concerned, different artworks count as different cards, so special foiling effects is a fairer way to do rare versions than unique artworks is.
@@distractionmakers Splitting the difference and doing effectively a LCG where the big $100 box of singletons comes with a booster pack of 15 alt arts at random could be interesting
So, this is a complicated topic, because you have to really consider the card game as a whole product, rather than just through the lens of game design. If you're a competitive player, the thing that best serves you is being able to buy singles for exactly your deck and nothing else, never cracking packs. The ideal product structure for a competitive player would be the capability to buy all the cards you want at the same price, or pay a subscription service to freely pick the exact cards you want (but obviously both of these are pretty much impossible business models to provide to consumers, except digitally). For an ideal competitive environment, everyone has equal access to all the cards, and everyone is capable of building the exact deck they want. From a product standpoint, part of the issue with ECGs is that you might need to buy multiple products to get a full playset for the cards in the deck you're building, and you'll definitely end up with a bunch of cards you don't want, which are guaranteed to not have any resale value. And if you want to build multiple decks that use the same cards, you need to buy many duplicates of cards you already have. From a product standpoint, ECGs make more sense when they're used in a game that uses all the cards. TCGs force players to circulate cards amongst each other, which is part of what helps form TCG communities. This is why ECGs have pretty much entirely switched away from being competitive games where you build your own deck to fight other people, and towards cooperative games where all the cards are shared in common with all the other player. (look at Fantasy Flight's current line-up). I've had it suggested to me that the product design of TCGs is the only viable business model for TCGs and the product design of ECGs incentivizes things closer to board games than competition. Of course the lootbox thing is dumb, but it's entirely likely that the alternative isn't really viable for mass production and distribution. Of course, that's dumb in its own right, but I don't think we want to go into the horrors of capitalism on this channel (though I'd definitely welcome you to!). Additionally, draft is a great way for Magic to give value to the packs themselves, instead of just the singles. It's a great way to give value to sealed product. Other card games have SUCH a hard time replicating this, because other card games don't have the 5 color system of magic, and they end up with archetypes that need to be narrowly confined to. MTG's big strength is having the ability to mix cards together, but at the cost of consistency. So you can have these incredibly tight consistent decks in constructed, and these thrown together decks in limited that still work. You can mix together as many colors as you want, but you take a hit in tempo/consistency versus a monocolor deck. If you tried to draft yugioh boosters, you simply wouldn't end up with a functional deck. The synergies are too strong, and too baked into the archetypes, and that's kind of inherent to the game. They don't have a CHOICE except to make these archetypal synergies, or they'd wind up with the queen problem. MTG's solution to the queen problem with lands is super elegant (even if mana flood/screw suck), because it allows you to mix things at a cost, without rigidly requiring cards to be dependent on one another. In MTG terms, they avoided parasitic design. MTG is a powerhouse because they got an incredible number of things right in a way that creates a ridiculous product synergy.
I mostly agree with this. And magic's design lends itself to booster distribution by asking the question "if players are only getting a subset of the cards how do we ensure they can play as many of those as possible in a single deck?". There is clearly an issue with forcing players to buy a bunch of cards they don't need or want in the ECG model, even though boosters are effectively doing the same thing, but putting it on the distributor side (players want singles, WOTC sells boosters, distributors buy boosters to open and sell singles). So, perhaps the solution is cutting the booster and selling ECG style and singles. The rise of $1 proxy sites might be a disruption in the market similar to Napster for music.
@@distractionmakers I get high quality proxies at the price of less than 50 cents a card. Secret lair is definitely a way to sell singles directly. It's worth acknowledging that part of the appeal of magic is their potential as an investment vehicle (collectibility). LGSes make a lot of money on the sales of singles, by buying bulk cheap, and speculating on future value. LGSes are how Wizards makes their sales and creates an environment for people to play. Ever notice that ECGs aren't sold in LGSes? They're sold in normal board game stores. The ecosystem that we enjoy is kind of all tied up in the rarity of these cards. It's difficult from a product standpoint to disentangle from that and Wizards has something of a commitment to create products that will help prop up this ecosystem.
@@distractionmakers This idea (ECG + singles) is what my mind immediately jumps to as the best alternative to boosters, but selling individual cards doesn't make much sense as a business model when you account for shipping, packaging, etc. A great way to get around this to let customers build and buy custom decks. Customers pick 60 cards (or however many are in a deck) and buy them as a set. Commons are $0.50, uncommons $1, rares $2, mythics $4, and lands are cheap (like $0.10 or something); the deck is the total price for all the cards. A lot of online deckbuilders (moxfield, mtggoldfish, etc) already do this with third party stores. Having a first party deckbuilder would be a godsend, especially if it launches alongside a big-box "starter set" that players can practice deckbuilding with. A starter set like that would also be a great introduction to cube, which is a fantastic draft format that can serve as an alternative to booster draft.
I think it would be neat if the normal set cards (with no special art treatments or anything) could be bought or if you could just buy specific colors / color pairs from the set. then the collector boosters (or whatever else they would decide to do in this hypothetical world) would be where you can get foils, alternate arts, and the actual COLLECTIBLE cards that people want to seek out. still gives people the option of opening packs if they like to, it makes the pack opening experience more special, it gives players acccess to cards so they can actually play (and not feel bad for getting stomped on for not having good cards especially as a new player, it gives them a fighting chance, AND it gives new players a way to get a LOT of cards they can use. I also wish they still made the deckbuilders toolkits. I guess thats kind of what fat packs have become but I loved those deckbuilder toolkits (plus those pamphlets that had a lot of the basic rules, keywords, etc. unlike the crappy card versions they have now). with how quick releases are now and how they dont even make standard decks for each set like they used to makes it very difficult for players to get into it (both in terms of GETTING cards and cards to actually make a deck). I think theres a massive reason commander has exploded and become the most popular format and thats because its the only format they make decks for so new players can pick one up and ACUTALLY be able to play the game (without needing knowledge on deckbuilding or synergy). It gets them started and then they can collect cards to improve the deck, and eventually make their own deck from scratch.
The deckbuilders toolkits were awesome. Gives you a good baseline of common/uncommon cards to build around rather than being at the whim of whatever happened to be inside the handful of boosters you opened
Like that you brought up Netrunner and Living card games. Recently talking about legacy I said I got "Netrunnered out" and had to explain it. And it goes, on paper $15 per month to keep up and have an entire collection sounds like a great deal. But what happens if, the meta changes every 4 weeks. If I only get 1 event a week max, that means at most I have 4 weeklies before the meta change. By that time, the meta isn't even solved yet responding to the last set. Eventually the constant flux and deck changes burnt me out. With all of the powerhouse auxiliary sets combined with more powerful standard sets, legacy is changing on a monthly basis. New decks keep evolving and dropping, getting banned, and then new cards come out to repeat the cycle. It just requires too much attention to keep up. At that point the cost is irrelevant. Why am I going to buy 4x a $10+ card, when it becomes banned or obsolete after 4 events?
I had a similar experience, though I didn't play events. I bought the core set all the expansions as they came out and sleeved them, etc, but eventually I just collected unopened boxes of cards. There were just so many, and I didn't really need them, because I had such a great experience with what I already had. I'm trying to achieve the same with MtG, getting "enough" cards, but I notice that the scale of MtG is such that "I always want more."
Another advantage of booster packs is that they require you to build your own deck. A psychological issue I've had with some living car games is that I just don't want to put in the effort to create or make changes to a deck and really think about what is good and bad when I can just play yhe starting decks with friends. I can remember buying a couple boxes of magic cards with my brother and dad when I was young and making crappy decks to play with. And because I had to participate in the deckbuilding aspect of the game, even when I was young and not good at the game, I had to learn and make adjustments to make my deck better. With commander being the premier casual format though, that advantage of boosters is going away though, it's just not really practical to make a commander deck from only boosters.
As long as cards have substantially different values, this is absolutely true. Hell, even *if* you're drafting, after the game is done, someone's keeping the cards so it's still gambling in the large sense.
I have friends who are new players and they still feel joy opening a pack and getting a cool card. I feel like it's gambling for myself to buy a pack. It's all subjective
I think casual players definitely do open boosters packs to see what cool cards they get and decide what deck to build from there. I know because I used to do that. It solves analysis paralysis, from over a hundred cards in a set to just the 3 high rarity cards you opened.
Opening packs was fun back when there was only one kind of pack. The introduction of things like collectors packs really nuked the fun of opening regular packs.
When Android: Netrunner launched I became very hardcore about CCGs and booster packs being evil. That stuck for a long time, but here I am with multiple cases of Sorcery on the shelf. They really recaptured the magic of the booster pack experience.
As a longtime fan of Arkham Horror lCG, L5r, and most especially Android Netrunner, it's fun watching you guys come to conclusions I came to back in 2014
@@tobyyasutake9094 It would be interesting if you develop your point about Marvel Champions being subpar compare to Arkham Horror and others LCG you mensioned. Is it the economic format? The game mechanics? The Difficulty of the game? Etc. Thank you.
@@alberttaco3668 I only played it three times, and that was on TTS, so take with a large grain of salt. I really didn't like the in game economy, the predictable damage, the theme, the lack of campaign... I don't know. I felt like it was a step backwards from AH:LCG
@@tobyyasutake9094 I also think the in game economy of MC is a bit over the top; making the game very snow bally, more often than not in player favor, and the scenarios are very straight forward. But this said, the simplicity of the game, the "arcade" feeling, is what I enjoyed. MC is like old school Capcom beat em up on CPS-2, it has not the in depth layers of mechanic of modern fighting games such as Arc System games, or all the flavors and themes of modern brawler such as Dark Souls, but I think it is MC points. Arkham and LOTR LCG exists, Marvel champions stepped aside, and went the other way. Which is clever in my eyes.
Ever since I came back to Magic in 2012, I discovered booster draft and that's become what I enjoy playing most, so booster packs are very important to me. As I build the cardpool, I build a set cube and at some point, I don't need any more sealed packs and just build them from my cube and can replicate the draft/sealed process from now on. But I definitely don't care for booster packs as a distribution means for a game without a draft format. I am curious how well designed the draft formats for other TCGs are, but I'm satisfied enough with Magic draft that I don't feel a need to branch out.
I remember when I first started playing a TCG which two of my friends played and, not knowing the basics of card games, just throwing in a ton of win cons from different archetypes and no actual enablers. The equivalent of magic would be like 20 ten mana spells and 10 lands, with spells of all colors and 2 lands of each color
I love how at the jump cut at 20:15, it's so obvious exactly what happened in the conversation based on all the dialogue immediately preceding it. I'm sure that laugh was a hearty one. I'm a big card game junkie, love your channel! Keep up the great work.
I also opened Mana Crypt in a box of mystery boosters. Made an Okoan and Zndrsplt deck because I knew “it’s a coin flip theme deck” was the only way I’d be able to justify using it.
The fun thing about booster packs for me, as a competitive player who mainly plays pauper, is opening them at the end of FNM, not many of us really care about value because we didnt pay for the packs and we don't know much about the new cards since we play non rotating formats mostly so they aren't very impactful so it genuinely is the experience of reading the cards because you've never seen them before
I think they should at least have the option going forward to just buy the full 4 copies of each card expansion box. They could even split it into smaller divisions of commons, uncommons, rares, or mythics while limiting it to exclude full-art, alt-art, and foils. That way people who want to do a booster draft can and those who just want the cards themselves can do so. Technically, they could release them later into the set(maybe when the next set is released) so they can have a better view of how to set the pricing. Though if they do that, they would need to be extremely careful to not price it too high to abuse $100+ cards in standard.
Yup. This is why I've been printing off proxies of singles for years. Over 100 commander decks built now, doing that. Cube formats really intrigue me, but that's literally the only thing that seems interesting about Booster Packs for me
I've never been a buyer of boosters in MtG. Playing Yugioh in '04-'05 (with atrocious pull-rates) taught me not to trust boosters. Just buy singles and open the boosters you get from tournaments. At least then your pulls feel earned, whether the cards are good or bad.
I love draft and sealed. It is my favorite way to play magic.I just hate that it is used as an excuse by WotC to make it harder to get cards. Both should be available, and play boosters are just making it a little worse imo.
Man, I have so many thoughts about booster packs as they are now, but i think at face value, they are fine and not what i would consider to be "loot boxes". I believe the main problem people have with loot boxes in games is that the items you get from them are not tradeable, with a few exceptions for some games. Like, at the end of the day, when you open a booster pack, you have *something* physical that you can do something with, right? Also, i think people really underestimate what a healthy secondary market has done for the game's longevity, which wouldn't really exist if not for randomized booster packs
Having TCGPlayer price data especially really just makes packs feel like lottery tickets to me. I do see the benefit from the buyer's side, though. There is less temptation to roll if you just want one thing, and no suffering through finding out you bought skins you hate for characters you don't play that you can't even give to your friends.
This might be a bit of a hot take, but if a card game doesn’t have collectibility through some form of booster packs, then I don’t have any interest in. Opening the packs, discovering their contents, and acquiring a collection through that is half the fun of a card game. If all the cards are available, then that feels like starting an RPG video game at max level.
Even if all cards were more or less coming in decks or fixed sets. The fact that they may not be reprinted past the initial print run would still give them secondary market value. Like if commander were only played with cards from commander precons; there may be a face commander from a Set you didn't get before but now you really want it. The supply will in theory be higher than it is for traditional boosters but the demand could still be there. I think this is true even if a fixed set gives you a playset at the time. The secondary market will find a way to demand certain cards more unless the rules of the game prohibit it (like hard format rotations). This creates a situation where at the time of release a card may be at its cheapest but will gain value over time as you get past the print run. I also think you'd still have people demanding certain cards from a Set that don't want to buy the whole thing. So you'd have some early secondary market movement there.
Why not have a bit of both. I really like draft, but at the same time I think it should be a bit easier to collect and get cards from a booster pack. So I think if we reduced the number of cards per set and kept the size of the booster pack more or less the same, maybe we can hit both spots: create a fun limited environment and also make game pieces not that hard to find. Something like, if you buy 2 or 3 booster boxes, then you'll most likely have 4 copies of each card. Add a little serialized/foil/alternate-art as something ultra rare and you have a TCG for limited players, constructed players and collecters.
One potential issue I see with "living card games", what happens when an expansion sucks? If I know what's in the pack, the entire pack better kick ass or else I'll grab a different pack. And then, you'll go to the store and all that will be there is the shitty pack. When the cards are random, you'll sell every one because there's a chance for any card in any pack.
13:30 this is exactly how I play commander in todays age. Open new products not knowing a single thing about the set other than the theme. Following the opening I brew new decks or add to established lists for fun to play with my play group. (Been playing commander for 9 years)
I'm primarily a limited player (drafter), so for me, they're integral to the experience, sadly this also makes my favorite format terribly expensive since every time I have to crack open new product...
70% of my collection is from booster packs and I've gotten my money back from packs and I have most good cards ( cabal coffers, esper sentinel, sheoldred, bristly bill, farewell, etc ) The main problem with booster packs is the frequency of set releases marking down prices down 50-70% after 2-3 months , so unless you wanna experience draft or gamble it's more cost effective to buy singles I recently got phyrexian vindicator and it's a 3 dollar card , it was amazing to get but it's insane that last year it was 20-30 dollars
I feel like Magic hit the nail on the head, but while doing the wrong construction project. I think a card game could work by allowing an "expansion" of cards, non-foil, base art, and then supplement the desire for customization and discovery with collector boosters. There could still be a market around singles for players to trade around, while not disallowing the ability to just simply pick up a box of cards and play the damn game, or gating new players out of the idea of ever having the appropriate "competitive" cards.
This absolutely could've been an option, and I think it'd be good for games in the future, but Magic, any other game too but especially Magic, is heavily incentivized to not use such a system. Even though it'd be almost exclusively better for the gae, it would limit the ability for them to make money off of the segment of players that play exclusively for the game, to the point where even if that segment got substantially bigger, they might still make less money in the long run. It could totally work, but it'd be a hard sell. That said, it works pretty swimmingly in the digital space (with other kinds of games that is), so maybe it'd work better than I think.
Booster packs make since when you have a way to play with every card in the pack. The "Kitchen Table" environments you describe, or the original envisioning of Elder Dragon Highlander.
I haven't "traded" a card in probably 10 years. Because people can see the prices for cards, it's more annoying to say "I will trade you this this and this that adds up to $10 for that $10 card" rather than rare for rare or what ever. You gotta look up the prices, tally the stuff up and pray everything equals out.
good or bad booster packs are required for a successful card game at this scale that they exist at now. the idea of an economy around the game is important for local game stores, players and the company itself. the evidence for this is that there are many trading card games that exist as huge markets within the hobby space where as there is not a single living card game that lives up to even the lowest popular tcg
I love when they give us bad commander cards meant for limited at all rarities, like all the legends in DMU. Legends for the sake of legendary. I think it also streamlines balancing since they dont have to worry about 2 being out at once on the same side. That is the modern buffer. We get all these bad commander cards that are bad in limited because we get so many cards and we can just pick other ones right?
To avoid this problem, i always proxy everything from my local city printer shop. No stress, no 2 steps headaches, cheap af and efficient for home play with friends.
I wish you guys had talked more about the legal difficulties around boosters, but I understand why you wouldn't. As much as I love mtg, I think booster packs (and loot boxes) should not be sold to kids. They should be treated and regulated as gambling.
Booster packs are also really cool in a world where singles dont exist cause then everyones collection is different which is how it should be lol not everybody gets a sheoldred
I am waiting for the people who deride Konami's use of lootboxes and microtransactions in their videogames and pachinko machines to look over at the TCG side of the business.
Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't get this. But what exactly is solved? If it's there's a best deck, doesn't the meta keep evolving as people tech against it? And then the tech gets teched and etc
There’s a peak in player interest a format. Once the “best” decks have been established there is a drop off in players who want to keep optimizing. It’s not necessary solved, but it might as well be.
The card distribution in M:tG packs is a rigged system to print few of the strong cards for constructed play and floods of the garbage card only considered for limited. This leads the competitive cards to rise in price that leads people to foolishly think the game can be an investment, which it is not.
This is a really interesting video to me, because I have been basically telling the r/EDH community for a while now that Magic is the original Gacha game. What I find most interesting is that you guys feel this is a bug, but my point is always to tell people that it is NOT a bug, it's a feature - it is working as intended. Artificial scarcity is an intended part of the game, as you yourselves pointed out. It is one of my primary arguments against the use of proxies or the belief that all cards should be readily available and/or cheap: Magic isn't Netrunner. It was never TRYING to be Netrunner and if that's the experience you want, then go PLAY Netrunner. What I *DO* agree on is that Draft is nowhere near as relevant as WotC seems to want to make/push it to be and I detest that sets and packs are designed more for draft than anything else. They've even said that they design specifically BAD cards as a way of making poor draft picks for people. I seriously wish someone would slap the stupid out of whoever is at WotC tellign them that draft is a mode of play anyone cares about or wants, even if that person is MaRo himself. Draft sucks. No one does it. Stop designing for it. As a final note, the question of is a loot box/gacha distribution system predatory? I am forced to answer yes, though unlike pretty much any loot box or gacha based game (or even a straight lottery), you can buy, sell and trade to obtain the desired outcome, which changes the arithmetic on this. At the end of the day, this is still a game and if you don't like a core feature like this, all I can say is move along. Sure, Ganshin Impact would be a FAR better game if they dropped the gacha aspects and just put it out as a standalone game, but I assure you that game experience already exists elsewhere.
We’re not saying booster packs are 100% bad. We even talked about pros and cons in the video. They have an intended purpose, the question is if they still fulfill that purpose.
@@distractionmakers I understand, though your message did come off harder on the 'cons' side to me - this is the first video I've seen from you guys, I'm unfamiliar with your delivery. I do agree that there are issues with booster packs, but those issues primarily have to do with a focus on draft in my opinion. The gacha aspect is simply a part of the game as is the artificial scarcity. A lot of people mistakenly believe they begin playing Magic when they sit down to shuffle up and turn cards sideways, but the game itself begins at collecting and deckbuilding - you cannot remove an aspect and still be playing Magic.
Booster packs and the collection aspect is what ruins games imho. There is too much exogenous toxicity that constricts gameplay. When I was a yound teenager I met a slightly older guy who had everything and was playing already 28 years ago like you'd play on arena ladder or even mtgo. Outside his older community consisting of maybe incel 3 to 4 dudes he wasn't playing the same game). A close friend of mine sticked with playing with him regularily and ultimately, despite his way lower budget he managed to maintain 3 T2 strong decks, one was a control brew which he won local tournaments with at age 15. I never oppened a booster pack since I was 12, I always hated it, that creepy omnipresent fomo feeling and the fact that I was deleting 1/20 of a console game each time. And I hated trading. Paper magic players are either wealthy and unconscious or masochistic imho. I play arena and I have few lists on mtgo because there you can buy decks and there are spicy fun stuffs that are cheap. Magic is an amazing game(maybe the best game ever) but the business model is imho crime against humanity territory and I'm not even sure it is even good for the game.
I disagree with this. The card game will still go on. It is simply the secondary market that will fail, and less demand from the creators for bulk. Dominion is a card game that still goes on without a secondary market perfectly fine.
30 minutes!? Too much, boys. Considering you tend to talk and not say much.. while still being relatively interesting. Be more concise or make a podcast.
I loved Booster Packs when I first started as a young teenager. I was really into the idea of "You are a Planeswalker," so I treated each pack as if it were a chapter of my planeswalking where I met new people, saw new artifacts, and explored new spells for future use. I chose to give the experience meaning in my player story. Sometimes I'm tempted to get a new booster and see if I can get that same feeling again. I've only been buying singles and precons, so that older feeling doesn't have an outlet for me. I've only drafted once or twice, so maybe I could explore that avenue as well.
I highly reccomend drafting and sealed play! Such an awesome way to experience some of the new sets as well as socialise with people at your LGS
@@benjaminperez-cottaar3607 I'll need to work my sche3dule out to make it work then! Thanks for the encouragement!
I love this concept.
Drafts and pre-releases are the best way to open boosters, and the best way to recapture that nostalgic experience of just playing with what you have instead of arguing with yourself to justify purchases.
Sealed is my favorite format.
I found a vendor on TCG that had 80-90% of Bloomburrow for sale at $0.05 a card, most of which were foil. I now have a bloomburrow cube for about $70. I'm adding more cards to it which are bringing that cost up but after being able to get so many cards for so cheap (nearly all foil at that), why buy booster packs? I feel no urge to one when I'm at my LGS.
Yugioh has no excuse for booster packs outside of managing scarcity of their playable cards. It's kind of shocking how badly they're designed.
I really appreciate what you guys say about having limited data back in the day. In the first 6 or 7 years of magic players didn't even have access to the rarity of cards
Love hearing magic being talked about through a grounded and honest lens. It's possible to live the game and be critical of it's flaws and try not to play in to those flaws or pretend they don't exist
Edit: possible to *love* the game
I won 6 bloomburrow packs from FNM recently (this is generally the only time I open boosters anyway) and got nothing that fit a deck, nothing of trade value, or anything interesting at all. I think I'm gonna start saving them to draft with because it's the most reliable way to extract some value from them. Thanks for the reminder :)
I opened 1 single pack, and I got a ledger shredder.
Bad luck is bad luck
@@nicks4802I won the slot machine at Vegas last night. Bad luck is bad luck 🤷♀️
It’s only called a living card game if it comes from the FFG subsidiary of Asmodee. Otherwise it’s called a sparkling card game.
Who calls it a sparkling card game? Not snark genuinely wondering cause I’ve never heard it
@ it’s a reference to the quote about champagne: “It’s only Champagne if it’s from the Champagne region of France, otherwise it’s sparkling wine.”
An overlooked point of value for booster packs I think is the way that a booster pack makes you more emotionally engaged with your cards. With LCGs where every card is provided together in a known quantity for a standard price, it's hard to really have "your cards"; every card is just a game piece that everyone has. For me, a significant aspect of card games is self-expression; getting to have favourite cards, getting the excitement of opening a shiny card that has personal value to you, or trading for such a card at a good value. I recently started playing Weiss Schwarz specifically because I got lucky with a rare card, which was beautiful, and made me want to see what else might be going on over there. A game needs to have booster packs so that not everyone has every card - not as an "exclusive rares" thing, just as a "people on the secondary market only buy the cards they want, not all cards" thing - so that the cards I have feel like "my cards"; an expression of my tastes.
That is a great point. I wonder if there’s a way to achieve this without the predatory aspects.
@@distractionmakers have booster collectibles. That way you still get “your cards”. Fortnite and other games have already proven that skins are what makes people feel unique not, paying to beat others by having access to better weapons.
Everyone will still have every card though, if they choose to pursue it. Even if the secondary market didn't exist, people would simply buy more booster packs. Heck, even now, there are still plenty of people who prefer to buy booster boxes until they have virtually every card. Only a matter of time and resources, really. I think a much stronger (perhaps the strongest) argument for the existence of booster packs, are limited formats. But for the rest of us? It's really just gambling. And gambling can be fun! But a lot of people like playing the game more than how they get their cards, and so, opt for the financially safe alternative - buying singles.
@@distractionmakers Kind of depends what we're treating as predatory vs fair randomness mechanics. For me, I don't feel like I'm being preyed on when they're honest about pull rates, when they're not putting boosters in places where they'll be impulse-bought, and when they're reprinting low-bling versions of expensive cards within 6-12 months.
The one that feels most predatory to me, which I think is an unpopular opinion, is when they do special rare artworks, because the cheap version usually looks terrible in comparison, obviously to push sales. Multiple rarities is a great way of reducing cost, but as far as I'm concerned, different artworks count as different cards, so special foiling effects is a fairer way to do rare versions than unique artworks is.
@@distractionmakers Splitting the difference and doing effectively a LCG where the big $100 box of singletons comes with a booster pack of 15 alt arts at random could be interesting
So, this is a complicated topic, because you have to really consider the card game as a whole product, rather than just through the lens of game design. If you're a competitive player, the thing that best serves you is being able to buy singles for exactly your deck and nothing else, never cracking packs. The ideal product structure for a competitive player would be the capability to buy all the cards you want at the same price, or pay a subscription service to freely pick the exact cards you want (but obviously both of these are pretty much impossible business models to provide to consumers, except digitally). For an ideal competitive environment, everyone has equal access to all the cards, and everyone is capable of building the exact deck they want.
From a product standpoint, part of the issue with ECGs is that you might need to buy multiple products to get a full playset for the cards in the deck you're building, and you'll definitely end up with a bunch of cards you don't want, which are guaranteed to not have any resale value. And if you want to build multiple decks that use the same cards, you need to buy many duplicates of cards you already have. From a product standpoint, ECGs make more sense when they're used in a game that uses all the cards. TCGs force players to circulate cards amongst each other, which is part of what helps form TCG communities. This is why ECGs have pretty much entirely switched away from being competitive games where you build your own deck to fight other people, and towards cooperative games where all the cards are shared in common with all the other player. (look at Fantasy Flight's current line-up).
I've had it suggested to me that the product design of TCGs is the only viable business model for TCGs and the product design of ECGs incentivizes things closer to board games than competition.
Of course the lootbox thing is dumb, but it's entirely likely that the alternative isn't really viable for mass production and distribution. Of course, that's dumb in its own right, but I don't think we want to go into the horrors of capitalism on this channel (though I'd definitely welcome you to!).
Additionally, draft is a great way for Magic to give value to the packs themselves, instead of just the singles. It's a great way to give value to sealed product. Other card games have SUCH a hard time replicating this, because other card games don't have the 5 color system of magic, and they end up with archetypes that need to be narrowly confined to. MTG's big strength is having the ability to mix cards together, but at the cost of consistency. So you can have these incredibly tight consistent decks in constructed, and these thrown together decks in limited that still work. You can mix together as many colors as you want, but you take a hit in tempo/consistency versus a monocolor deck.
If you tried to draft yugioh boosters, you simply wouldn't end up with a functional deck. The synergies are too strong, and too baked into the archetypes, and that's kind of inherent to the game. They don't have a CHOICE except to make these archetypal synergies, or they'd wind up with the queen problem. MTG's solution to the queen problem with lands is super elegant (even if mana flood/screw suck), because it allows you to mix things at a cost, without rigidly requiring cards to be dependent on one another. In MTG terms, they avoided parasitic design.
MTG is a powerhouse because they got an incredible number of things right in a way that creates a ridiculous product synergy.
I mostly agree with this. And magic's design lends itself to booster distribution by asking the question "if players are only getting a subset of the cards how do we ensure they can play as many of those as possible in a single deck?".
There is clearly an issue with forcing players to buy a bunch of cards they don't need or want in the ECG model, even though boosters are effectively doing the same thing, but putting it on the distributor side (players want singles, WOTC sells boosters, distributors buy boosters to open and sell singles).
So, perhaps the solution is cutting the booster and selling ECG style and singles. The rise of $1 proxy sites might be a disruption in the market similar to Napster for music.
Oh, secret lair might also be an indicator.
@@distractionmakers I get high quality proxies at the price of less than 50 cents a card. Secret lair is definitely a way to sell singles directly.
It's worth acknowledging that part of the appeal of magic is their potential as an investment vehicle (collectibility). LGSes make a lot of money on the sales of singles, by buying bulk cheap, and speculating on future value. LGSes are how Wizards makes their sales and creates an environment for people to play. Ever notice that ECGs aren't sold in LGSes? They're sold in normal board game stores.
The ecosystem that we enjoy is kind of all tied up in the rarity of these cards. It's difficult from a product standpoint to disentangle from that and Wizards has something of a commitment to create products that will help prop up this ecosystem.
@@distractionmakers This idea (ECG + singles) is what my mind immediately jumps to as the best alternative to boosters, but selling individual cards doesn't make much sense as a business model when you account for shipping, packaging, etc. A great way to get around this to let customers build and buy custom decks. Customers pick 60 cards (or however many are in a deck) and buy them as a set. Commons are $0.50, uncommons $1, rares $2, mythics $4, and lands are cheap (like $0.10 or something); the deck is the total price for all the cards.
A lot of online deckbuilders (moxfield, mtggoldfish, etc) already do this with third party stores. Having a first party deckbuilder would be a godsend, especially if it launches alongside a big-box "starter set" that players can practice deckbuilding with. A starter set like that would also be a great introduction to cube, which is a fantastic draft format that can serve as an alternative to booster draft.
I think it would be neat if the normal set cards (with no special art treatments or anything) could be bought or if you could just buy specific colors / color pairs from the set. then the collector boosters (or whatever else they would decide to do in this hypothetical world) would be where you can get foils, alternate arts, and the actual COLLECTIBLE cards that people want to seek out. still gives people the option of opening packs if they like to, it makes the pack opening experience more special, it gives players acccess to cards so they can actually play (and not feel bad for getting stomped on for not having good cards especially as a new player, it gives them a fighting chance, AND it gives new players a way to get a LOT of cards they can use.
I also wish they still made the deckbuilders toolkits. I guess thats kind of what fat packs have become but I loved those deckbuilder toolkits (plus those pamphlets that had a lot of the basic rules, keywords, etc. unlike the crappy card versions they have now). with how quick releases are now and how they dont even make standard decks for each set like they used to makes it very difficult for players to get into it (both in terms of GETTING cards and cards to actually make a deck).
I think theres a massive reason commander has exploded and become the most popular format and thats because its the only format they make decks for so new players can pick one up and ACUTALLY be able to play the game (without needing knowledge on deckbuilding or synergy). It gets them started and then they can collect cards to improve the deck, and eventually make their own deck from scratch.
The deckbuilders toolkits were awesome. Gives you a good baseline of common/uncommon cards to build around rather than being at the whim of whatever happened to be inside the handful of boosters you opened
These are wonderful ideas that I'm copying thank youuu ✨
Like that you brought up Netrunner and Living card games.
Recently talking about legacy I said I got "Netrunnered out" and had to explain it.
And it goes, on paper $15 per month to keep up and have an entire collection sounds like a great deal.
But what happens if, the meta changes every 4 weeks. If I only get 1 event a week max, that means at most I have 4 weeklies before the meta change. By that time, the meta isn't even solved yet responding to the last set. Eventually the constant flux and deck changes burnt me out.
With all of the powerhouse auxiliary sets combined with more powerful standard sets, legacy is changing on a monthly basis. New decks keep evolving and dropping, getting banned, and then new cards come out to repeat the cycle.
It just requires too much attention to keep up. At that point the cost is irrelevant. Why am I going to buy 4x a $10+ card, when it becomes banned or obsolete after 4 events?
I had a similar experience, though I didn't play events. I bought the core set all the expansions as they came out and sleeved them, etc, but eventually I just collected unopened boxes of cards. There were just so many, and I didn't really need them, because I had such a great experience with what I already had. I'm trying to achieve the same with MtG, getting "enough" cards, but I notice that the scale of MtG is such that "I always want more."
Another advantage of booster packs is that they require you to build your own deck. A psychological issue I've had with some living car games is that I just don't want to put in the effort to create or make changes to a deck and really think about what is good and bad when I can just play yhe starting decks with friends. I can remember buying a couple boxes of magic cards with my brother and dad when I was young and making crappy decks to play with. And because I had to participate in the deckbuilding aspect of the game, even when I was young and not good at the game, I had to learn and make adjustments to make my deck better. With commander being the premier casual format though, that advantage of boosters is going away though, it's just not really practical to make a commander deck from only boosters.
im surprised you guys didn't mention keyforge at any point, the game where every precon is also a booster
Oh yeah 😆
If you're not drafting with them, it's clearly and incontrovertibly gambling.
As long as cards have substantially different values, this is absolutely true.
Hell, even *if* you're drafting, after the game is done, someone's keeping the cards so it's still gambling in the large sense.
I have friends who are new players and they still feel joy opening a pack and getting a cool card. I feel like it's gambling for myself to buy a pack. It's all subjective
@@Awes0m3n3s5 "It's not gambling if people like it."
I think casual players definitely do open boosters packs to see what cool cards they get and decide what deck to build from there. I know because I used to do that. It solves analysis paralysis, from over a hundred cards in a set to just the 3 high rarity cards you opened.
This is the primary reason I buy boosters. I also draft each new set with my friends now, so it provides some break from our usual game nights
Happy it sounds like you'll be talking about Altered, thats one a friend and i are cautiously but very optimistically looking at
A video not directly tied to MtG? We are blessed!!!
Opening packs was fun back when there was only one kind of pack. The introduction of things like collectors packs really nuked the fun of opening regular packs.
When Android: Netrunner launched I became very hardcore about CCGs and booster packs being evil. That stuck for a long time, but here I am with multiple cases of Sorcery on the shelf. They really recaptured the magic of the booster pack experience.
I'm making an ECG, you should talk more about those, I'd definitely watch
As a longtime fan of Arkham Horror lCG, L5r, and most especially Android Netrunner, it's fun watching you guys come to conclusions I came to back in 2014
Marvel Champions sucks though. Shots fired
@@tobyyasutake9094 It would be interesting if you develop your point about Marvel Champions being subpar compare to Arkham Horror and others LCG you mensioned. Is it the economic format? The game mechanics? The Difficulty of the game? Etc.
Thank you.
@@alberttaco3668 I only played it three times, and that was on TTS, so take with a large grain of salt.
I really didn't like the in game economy, the predictable damage, the theme, the lack of campaign... I don't know. I felt like it was a step backwards from AH:LCG
@@tobyyasutake9094 I also think the in game economy of MC is a bit over the top; making the game very snow bally, more often than not in player favor, and the scenarios are very straight forward.
But this said, the simplicity of the game, the "arcade" feeling, is what I enjoyed.
MC is like old school Capcom beat em up on CPS-2, it has not the in depth layers of mechanic of modern fighting games such as Arc System games, or all the flavors and themes of modern brawler such as Dark Souls, but I think it is MC points.
Arkham and LOTR LCG exists, Marvel champions stepped aside, and went the other way. Which is clever in my eyes.
Ever since I came back to Magic in 2012, I discovered booster draft and that's become what I enjoy playing most, so booster packs are very important to me. As I build the cardpool, I build a set cube and at some point, I don't need any more sealed packs and just build them from my cube and can replicate the draft/sealed process from now on. But I definitely don't care for booster packs as a distribution means for a game without a draft format. I am curious how well designed the draft formats for other TCGs are, but I'm satisfied enough with Magic draft that I don't feel a need to branch out.
I remember when I first started playing a TCG which two of my friends played and, not knowing the basics of card games, just throwing in a ton of win cons from different archetypes and no actual enablers. The equivalent of magic would be like 20 ten mana spells and 10 lands, with spells of all colors and 2 lands of each color
I love how at the jump cut at 20:15, it's so obvious exactly what happened in the conversation based on all the dialogue immediately preceding it. I'm sure that laugh was a hearty one.
I'm a big card game junkie, love your channel! Keep up the great work.
Love the new setup!
we need to talk about Fruit Monsters booster packs...
You guys should look up millennium blades by L99 games
I also opened Mana Crypt in a box of mystery boosters. Made an Okoan and Zndrsplt deck because I knew “it’s a coin flip theme deck” was the only way I’d be able to justify using it.
The fun thing about booster packs for me, as a competitive player who mainly plays pauper, is opening them at the end of FNM, not many of us really care about value because we didnt pay for the packs and we don't know much about the new cards since we play non rotating formats mostly so they aren't very impactful so it genuinely is the experience of reading the cards because you've never seen them before
when I used to play standard opening packs was very much looking for value and it just wasn't as fun
I think they should at least have the option going forward to just buy the full 4 copies of each card expansion box. They could even split it into smaller divisions of commons, uncommons, rares, or mythics while limiting it to exclude full-art, alt-art, and foils. That way people who want to do a booster draft can and those who just want the cards themselves can do so.
Technically, they could release them later into the set(maybe when the next set is released) so they can have a better view of how to set the pricing. Though if they do that, they would need to be extremely careful to not price it too high to abuse $100+ cards in standard.
Sadly I don’t trust major card game companies anymore. They have over and over demonstrated that greed is more important than fun.
Yeah… seems like the idea that they could stand in the way of the greed machine was shortsighted.
Yup. This is why I've been printing off proxies of singles for years. Over 100 commander decks built now, doing that. Cube formats really intrigue me, but that's literally the only thing that seems interesting about Booster Packs for me
I've never been a buyer of boosters in MtG. Playing Yugioh in '04-'05 (with atrocious pull-rates) taught me not to trust boosters. Just buy singles and open the boosters you get from tournaments. At least then your pulls feel earned, whether the cards are good or bad.
I love draft and sealed. It is my favorite way to play magic.I just hate that it is used as an excuse by WotC to make it harder to get cards. Both should be available, and play boosters are just making it a little worse imo.
Man, I have so many thoughts about booster packs as they are now, but i think at face value, they are fine and not what i would consider to be "loot boxes".
I believe the main problem people have with loot boxes in games is that the items you get from them are not tradeable, with a few exceptions for some games. Like, at the end of the day, when you open a booster pack, you have *something* physical that you can do something with, right? Also, i think people really underestimate what a healthy secondary market has done for the game's longevity, which wouldn't really exist if not for randomized booster packs
Eeh... on the other hand, if what you are getting has a defined monetary value, how are you not operating a casino?
Having TCGPlayer price data especially really just makes packs feel like lottery tickets to me. I do see the benefit from the buyer's side, though. There is less temptation to roll if you just want one thing, and no suffering through finding out you bought skins you hate for characters you don't play that you can't even give to your friends.
@@cheeseitup1971 To me, the differentiating factor is that there aren't businesses that operate by employing people to scratch lottery tickets
@@cheeseitup1971 what is different to me is that stores can't profit from doing scratch offs
@@cheeseitup1971 why do LGSs do mass openings instead of getting lottery tickets?
This might be a bit of a hot take, but if a card game doesn’t have collectibility through some form of booster packs, then I don’t have any interest in. Opening the packs, discovering their contents, and acquiring a collection through that is half the fun of a card game. If all the cards are available, then that feels like starting an RPG video game at max level.
Hmm interesting take for sure. I do agree that there is a level up nature to collecting.
Even if all cards were more or less coming in decks or fixed sets. The fact that they may not be reprinted past the initial print run would still give them secondary market value. Like if commander were only played with cards from commander precons; there may be a face commander from a Set you didn't get before but now you really want it. The supply will in theory be higher than it is for traditional boosters but the demand could still be there. I think this is true even if a fixed set gives you a playset at the time. The secondary market will find a way to demand certain cards more unless the rules of the game prohibit it (like hard format rotations). This creates a situation where at the time of release a card may be at its cheapest but will gain value over time as you get past the print run.
I also think you'd still have people demanding certain cards from a Set that don't want to buy the whole thing. So you'd have some early secondary market movement there.
Where the heck are you??
We recorded at Gavin’s place this week.
@@distractionmakers You both have nice places! Good interior design to go along with our game design episodes :)
Woah love the new setup
Why not have a bit of both. I really like draft, but at the same time I think it should be a bit easier to collect and get cards from a booster pack. So I think if we reduced the number of cards per set and kept the size of the booster pack more or less the same, maybe we can hit both spots: create a fun limited environment and also make game pieces not that hard to find. Something like, if you buy 2 or 3 booster boxes, then you'll most likely have 4 copies of each card. Add a little serialized/foil/alternate-art as something ultra rare and you have a TCG for limited players, constructed players and collecters.
Draft as a format started with Mirage. Earlier boosters had 8 cards in them.
One potential issue I see with "living card games", what happens when an expansion sucks? If I know what's in the pack, the entire pack better kick ass or else I'll grab a different pack. And then, you'll go to the store and all that will be there is the shitty pack.
When the cards are random, you'll sell every one because there's a chance for any card in any pack.
19:50 was peak humor ngl
You could combine every single LCG, netrunner, and non collectible card game and probably wouldn’t even be able to pay the rent of 1 local game store.
So to what extent do you discuss in a discord? Like if Im working on my own thing.
13:30 this is exactly how I play commander in todays age. Open new products not knowing a single thing about the set other than the theme. Following the opening I brew new decks or add to established lists for fun to play with my play group. (Been playing commander for 9 years)
It's a rare set i buy more than 20 cards from, playing limited and opening prize packs are the only times i open product anymore.
I'm primarily a limited player (drafter), so for me, they're integral to the experience, sadly this also makes my favorite format terribly expensive since every time I have to crack open new product...
Looter box gatcha is created by mtg! Such an advanced thinking and we should admire that
70% of my collection is from booster packs and I've gotten my money back from packs and I have most good cards ( cabal coffers, esper sentinel, sheoldred, bristly bill, farewell, etc )
The main problem with booster packs is the frequency of set releases marking down prices down 50-70% after 2-3 months , so unless you wanna experience draft or gamble it's more cost effective to buy singles
I recently got phyrexian vindicator and it's a 3 dollar card , it was amazing to get but it's insane that last year it was 20-30 dollars
I feel like Magic hit the nail on the head, but while doing the wrong construction project. I think a card game could work by allowing an "expansion" of cards, non-foil, base art, and then supplement the desire for customization and discovery with collector boosters. There could still be a market around singles for players to trade around, while not disallowing the ability to just simply pick up a box of cards and play the damn game, or gating new players out of the idea of ever having the appropriate "competitive" cards.
This absolutely could've been an option, and I think it'd be good for games in the future, but Magic, any other game too but especially Magic, is heavily incentivized to not use such a system.
Even though it'd be almost exclusively better for the gae, it would limit the ability for them to make money off of the segment of players that play exclusively for the game, to the point where even if that segment got substantially bigger, they might still make less money in the long run.
It could totally work, but it'd be a hard sell. That said, it works pretty swimmingly in the digital space (with other kinds of games that is), so maybe it'd work better than I think.
It's always been loot boxes. Since day 1.
Not enough cards is also a great idea tbh a world with 4 blue eyes is a lot more interesting than a world with infinity sheoldreds
Booster packs make since when you have a way to play with every card in the pack. The "Kitchen Table" environments you describe, or the original envisioning of Elder Dragon Highlander.
What game are you working on? Hope we get information about here on this channel.
I haven't "traded" a card in probably 10 years. Because people can see the prices for cards, it's more annoying to say "I will trade you this this and this that adds up to $10 for that $10 card" rather than rare for rare or what ever. You gotta look up the prices, tally the stuff up and pray everything equals out.
good or bad booster packs are required for a successful card game at this scale that they exist at now. the idea of an economy around the game is important for local game stores, players and the company itself. the evidence for this is that there are many trading card games that exist as huge markets within the hobby space where as there is not a single living card game that lives up to even the lowest popular tcg
Yall should draft that bloomburrow box, its super fun
We usually do!
I play with some casual commander players and they will open a pack, read every card, and add some of them to their decks.
But where am I supposed to get my sweet dopamine from without booster packs?
Nice introduction 😏
I love when they give us bad commander cards meant for limited at all rarities, like all the legends in DMU. Legends for the sake of legendary. I think it also streamlines balancing since they dont have to worry about 2 being out at once on the same side. That is the modern buffer. We get all these bad commander cards that are bad in limited because we get so many cards and we can just pick other ones right?
To avoid this problem, i always proxy everything from my local city printer shop. No stress, no 2 steps headaches, cheap af and efficient for home play with friends.
Booster packs are amazing when youre a kid and have no idea whats in a set thats a hell of a feeling lol
I think Limited alone, both draft and sealed, justify the booster pack.
Nice Set
I just like gambling with my friends where even losing lets us get something out of it
OOH THERE'S A NAME FOR IT! I guess what I'm making is an Expanding Card Game 😮
Edit: Not the trademarked term lol
In pokemon this is the Optimal 60.
Quality over quantity please.
I wish you guys had talked more about the legal difficulties around boosters, but I understand why you wouldn't. As much as I love mtg, I think booster packs (and loot boxes) should not be sold to kids. They should be treated and regulated as gambling.
Booster packs are also really cool in a world where singles dont exist cause then everyones collection is different which is how it should be lol not everybody gets a sheoldred
I am waiting for the people who deride Konami's use of lootboxes and microtransactions in their videogames and pachinko machines to look over at the TCG side of the business.
Rule zero is a rule that is designed for people who do not need rules to play games.
They tried that and it is not selling~~~
Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't get this. But what exactly is solved?
If it's there's a best deck, doesn't the meta keep evolving as people tech against it? And then the tech gets teched and etc
There’s a peak in player interest a format. Once the “best” decks have been established there is a drop off in players who want to keep optimizing. It’s not necessary solved, but it might as well be.
If the world was good every card game would be “living” but we like to be cheated by booster packs
Yu-Gi-Oh speed duels is also a "living card game."
Was.
The card distribution in M:tG packs is a rigged system to print few of the strong cards for constructed play and floods of the garbage card only considered for limited. This leads the competitive cards to rise in price that leads people to foolishly think the game can be an investment, which it is not.
I'm done with 'dopamine' as a way to describe random chance features in games. It's everywhere, it's lame.
This is a really interesting video to me, because I have been basically telling the r/EDH community for a while now that Magic is the original Gacha game. What I find most interesting is that you guys feel this is a bug, but my point is always to tell people that it is NOT a bug, it's a feature - it is working as intended. Artificial scarcity is an intended part of the game, as you yourselves pointed out. It is one of my primary arguments against the use of proxies or the belief that all cards should be readily available and/or cheap: Magic isn't Netrunner. It was never TRYING to be Netrunner and if that's the experience you want, then go PLAY Netrunner.
What I *DO* agree on is that Draft is nowhere near as relevant as WotC seems to want to make/push it to be and I detest that sets and packs are designed more for draft than anything else. They've even said that they design specifically BAD cards as a way of making poor draft picks for people. I seriously wish someone would slap the stupid out of whoever is at WotC tellign them that draft is a mode of play anyone cares about or wants, even if that person is MaRo himself. Draft sucks. No one does it. Stop designing for it.
As a final note, the question of is a loot box/gacha distribution system predatory? I am forced to answer yes, though unlike pretty much any loot box or gacha based game (or even a straight lottery), you can buy, sell and trade to obtain the desired outcome, which changes the arithmetic on this. At the end of the day, this is still a game and if you don't like a core feature like this, all I can say is move along. Sure, Ganshin Impact would be a FAR better game if they dropped the gacha aspects and just put it out as a standalone game, but I assure you that game experience already exists elsewhere.
alot of people draft are you a moron?
We’re not saying booster packs are 100% bad. We even talked about pros and cons in the video. They have an intended purpose, the question is if they still fulfill that purpose.
@@distractionmakers I understand, though your message did come off harder on the 'cons' side to me - this is the first video I've seen from you guys, I'm unfamiliar with your delivery.
I do agree that there are issues with booster packs, but those issues primarily have to do with a focus on draft in my opinion. The gacha aspect is simply a part of the game as is the artificial scarcity. A lot of people mistakenly believe they begin playing Magic when they sit down to shuffle up and turn cards sideways, but the game itself begins at collecting and deckbuilding - you cannot remove an aspect and still be playing Magic.
you're right, people should play more netrunner :)
Booster packs should be illegal like loot boxes in Belgium.
yo
Booster packs and the collection aspect is what ruins games imho. There is too much exogenous toxicity that constricts gameplay. When I was a yound teenager I met a slightly older guy who had everything and was playing already 28 years ago like you'd play on arena ladder or even mtgo. Outside his older community consisting of maybe incel 3 to 4 dudes he wasn't playing the same game). A close friend of mine sticked with playing with him regularily and ultimately, despite his way lower budget he managed to maintain 3 T2 strong decks, one was a control brew which he won local tournaments with at age 15. I never oppened a booster pack since I was 12, I always hated it, that creepy omnipresent fomo feeling and the fact that I was deleting 1/20 of a console game each time. And I hated trading. Paper magic players are either wealthy and unconscious or masochistic imho. I play arena and I have few lists on mtgo because there you can buy decks and there are spicy fun stuffs that are cheap. Magic is an amazing game(maybe the best game ever) but the business model is imho crime against humanity territory and I'm not even sure it is even good for the game.
first, gottem
good time to refresh youtube
If there is no secondary/collector market, a card game is doomed to fail at some point.
This is a consideration. Though, there are quite a few LCGs that have been going strong for years. Arkham Horror and Lord of the Rings are a couple.
I disagree with this. The card game will still go on. It is simply the secondary market that will fail, and less demand from the creators for bulk. Dominion is a card game that still goes on without a secondary market perfectly fine.
yea it's g*mba, and anyone who says otherwise is coping
30 minutes!? Too much, boys.
Considering you tend to talk and not say much.. while still being relatively interesting. Be more concise or make a podcast.
... this is a podcast
Is this a new set? I like it. The other one is very empty.