As a coder: there's no reason why they can't implement duplicate protection across art forms. The game can already register that the cards function the same, the game does already have a form of duplicate protection. They can do it and in less time than 6 months.
For sure, They could probably do it in 3 days. Since you can't have more than 4 copies of a card in a deck they already have them identified as the same card for that.
@@EtherwroughtPaige Exactly. They already have code to identify that these cards are actually the same card. It wouldn't be very difficult at all to simply have the pack-opening script check your entire collection, rather than just which cards from that set you own. But as has been said in the video repeatedly, this was a choice, not a mistake.
This *is* already the case. You can't open a 5th copy across sets, provided they have the same art, unless you've collected every other rare from those sets. So you can't open a Kaladesh Rishkar if you have 4 of the Jumpstart Rishkar (but if you choose a jumpstart pack with Rishkar in it after you have 4 total copies, you're out of luck because those packs are predetermined). However, this does NOT, to my knowledge apply to the ICRs, which is still very shit.
@@TheRealHungryHobo And heck, they have implemented what you suggested - Reprint Protection already checks your full collection for cards that share the name and art, and avoids giving you any Rare or Mythic you have 4 of that matches both properties until you otherwise complete the set. All it would take is to say "don't check for art any more." and boom. Though obviously I'd prefer that they go full-scale on this and remove those cards from the pool entirely once you have a playset. Leave it to the player to use WCs or card styles to fill in any art gaps they want to fill in at their own will.
a lot of "gaming" companies do similiar stuff... solution = do not buy their product "mtg arena stuff" period... magic is a great game if you play with real cards...
It really is insane, you can't price packs the same as they would cost in paper if you can't also shop for singles. Never in my life have I built a constructed deck just by opening like 60 boosters, despite what Wizards might think we do
@@40Found Yes, when I first started it took me a while to notice, but on Arena you get 8 cards per pack versus 15 cards irl, literally HALF the amount of cards, and they also don't have duplicate protection on uncommons or commons so seeing Fatal Pushes get shat out by KLD packs as I open them after having already spent my wildcards on the full playset is frustrating to say the least
@@Sceleri I certainly dont think that they have no idea what theyre doing, because implementing a card game where every card has its own functionality is pretty complicated. and something like duplicate protection is basically going through a list and checking if a certain item is already present, so pretty simple in comparison to that. and concerning the mobile game, there are a lot of reasons why this may have been delayed and probably all of them are way more complicated.
It's made that way on purpose. The mtga economy is purposely made to extract as much money as possible from its player base. When you gamble, the house always wins.
Yes but they are not business people. they are game designers with large egos and as such they dont register the perspective that playing a diverse selection of decks is key to long term growth and retenti9n
@@seankuhn6633 The game is advertised by the business people at wotc. The updates are dictated by the business people. The designers and developers are just a means to an end for the business people.
@@zztzgza These are not business people. Business people know how to siphon money AND make the experience worthwhile. MTG Arena's devs don't do that. They are a bunch of people who know how to make money. They don't know how to run things from a good business perspective.
@@rickymullins3844 I got that from the opening post. My point was that I would already see it as an improvement if I could just redeem all the codes I get. Like, when I play more than one pre-release event, which I regularly do.
You know, I got to say you kind of summed up my online magic experience pretty damn well. I thought magic Arena was kind of the best way for me to stay engaged with standard and even some of the other formats that started popping up on Arena. It had fun special game modes that made me think of when I would get friends together and we do something silly with the game we change a rule or do this or that. But I stop playing for a couple of months and when I came back I couldn't use any of the Decks that I had spent weeks and weeks and weeks building. I burn through all of my wild cards and had no way to create new decks with the new cards from the new sets because I didn't want to sink any money in. So I ended up just not playing it as much. I think maybe I get on Magic Arena once in a blue moon just to play Magic at a very basic and non-competitive level. I still love the game, but it just is very inaccessible to me financially online and due to covid-19 paper Magic is not an option. Love your videos, stay saucy.
Honestly, what finished Arena for me and had me uninstall is when I saw new communication bubbles were being locked behind a paywall. I love the social aspect of Magic, and Arena is doing everything it can to remove that from the game. Made me realize it was not for me. Still lacking easy ways to play with friends, can't meet people in game and make friends. Can't communicate. As Wizards is fond of saying, "This product is not for me."
Arena will NEVER last because it’s so lonely and solitary. 95% of us began playing mostly because of the gathering. Even on MTGO, I have a blast interacting with my opponents when playing vintage cube. I can only be entertained so long playing basically by myself...
I learned how to play magic on arena and much prefer to play paper to see other people's reasoning behind their in game decisions and the emotions of timmys
Honestly, the economy would be so much better just by being able to purchase wildcards, and be able to dismantle rotated sets or banned cards. The biggest issue with arena is they claim it is the most accessible version of magic, but you need to play for a while before being able to actually build what you want and that is frustrating
@@regirayquaza Even compared to MTGO just getting a starter deck in Arena is looking to be a several hundred dollar investment that will just dissepear in 2 years
i watched seths' video yesterday and all it did was confirm my suspicion that I will stick to just paper (despite not being able to play it atm) and to go and check out runeterra
Runeterra is the only other ccg I've gotten into besides MtG, and it does a pretty good job scratching that 1.v.1 itch w/o having to cash out or grind an obscene amount to get the cards you want.
I remember when wildcards were a 'temporary solution' and we were having this exact conversation about how much they sucked. I sincerely hope their predatory BS bites them in the ass soon.
Never let it be forgotten that WotC's original plan was to have 2:1 WC redemption for non-Standard sets too, at a time when most of these supplemental sets would have been early in development. Makes you wonder how they ever saw people playing Historic beyond just dumping that $400 into every supplemental set. Makes me think they didn't.
@@seankuhn6633 truly, it was a 5head, 9001 IQ by WotC of the Coast, a Hasbro Inc subsidiary. Making us complacent to the Wildcard system by...making it work the same way it always had for like, 2 years. Honestly we should all feel ashamed of ourselves for falling for such an obvious ruse. 4srs. Also can we make plox a thing again? I miss plox.
if anything it should be you get an extra copy of each card you craft for historic as the cards can be played in half as many formats they should cost half as much on arena
Hadn't played magic in about a year, but recently wanted to get back in to it with some friends on arena. That was until I realized it would take forever or several hundred dollars to accrue a collection to be able to play a half decent deck. This is when I realized the client could be so much better by allowing the purchase of singles or wildcards. Just think of the others like me who want to get back in to magic and the only way to really play is online but are priced out by wizards greed
When Vince talked about how hard it is to come back after taking a break from Arena, I felt that. Every rotation, every short hiatus, I get the feeling I'm being had. And after a while, I threw my hands up in the air and decided that MTGO was a better choice for me.
Tbh, if MTGO had the same free to play access that arena had, I guarantee you that most players would be on MTGO rather than arena. The literally biggest reason arena is popular is because you can just download it and get going while mtgo costs money to begin with.
I quit Arena after ravnica allegiance. I spent like 200 dollars building decks online, and after I had my fun with them, I felt like shit. Like they expect me to drop that much money (or more) every expansion, or I dont get to play the decks I want? I feel bad for people invested in this game. I wish I had spent those 200 bucks in paper cards
And remember how it was near impossible to get all the battle pass before people cried about it.... or how they reduced how much f2p gains... or how they changed the chest to makes it worse...
@@clad95150 capitalist mentality is raping my childhood nostalgia... im just going to make an awesome cube with a low powerlevel, and use dollar rares with amazing art as bombs
Hey, I'm a software engineer who works on games. A duplication prevention system that checks your current library for a card regardless of set probably could have been implemented overnight if Arena is setup with any level of competence. In fact, they probably had to implement code to stop their current duplication prevention system from doing that by default.
The Arena economy is absolute shite. There's plenty Wizards could do about it and still make a profit. Just in the last two months I've become so frustrated with it, I decided to start grinding to see if I could make enough gold to draft and get cards that way, but I run into plenty of situations where I am grinding, not enjoying the game, finally get a chance to draft, and just lose three games in a row. Admittedly, I might feel differently if I had friends on Arena that I could duel, but the whole reason I downloaded the game was because I don't have a playgroup. I love playing, but I'm burning out because I can't afford to play it the way I could in paper if I only had people to play with. And I admit I'm close to giving up on Arena altogether. Unfortunately for me, that also means not playing Magic anymore.
Your first problem is thinking you can play limited for profit. If you are spending your gold on drafting and going 0-3 frequently, I would maybe suggest not playing limited and buy 5 or 10 packs instead? Considering you have to consistently hit 5+ wins to even see decent return value, those 5 to 10 packs will generate more value in wildcards alone. I've only spent 25 since release and have access to most top tier decks in historic. I'd say worry about building one COMPETITIVE deck for either constructed format and grinding gold with it(you'll also get waaaay better at piloting the deck as well). Targeting the right packs with your gold is also key after you decide on the competitive deck you want to build. I'm not completely disagreeing with you about it being a pain in the ass to grind everything out(especially standard), and the fact wizards isn't exactly keen on giving access to everything in a much easier manner doesn't help either, but it is very possible to have variety in your deck choices by spending wildcards correctly. For example, lets say you build something like Goblins for historic to start off because its relatively cheap and pretty competitive. After you start banking gold and wildcards start targeting things like shocklands or other dualies and mana bases for other colors that interest you. Building a manabase collection is probably the most important part of spending wildcards, because mana bases are one of the most important aspects of deckbuilding to begin with. They have a lot more value themselves than something like 4 snoops in goblins because snoops only go in goblins while the lands can be used in many different decks. Sorry for the wall of text but hopefully it helps you out.
If you want to play limited, it really is a different format that takes some getting used to. I'm also on ftp. Getting to draft was very annoying at first (and my start in it was during Eldraine, when they hadn't fixed how easy it was to force the mill deck yet), but it did eventually become somewhat easier, also because I had a decent amount of standard decks I was sufficiently happy playing. I have become better at drafting and I rarely run into 0-3 anymore, if I turn out a 2-3, it's a proper bad run (or I weakened my deck picking rares or mythics that didn't fit it, just to have the card). Watching some content creators (partly) dedicated to playing limited on arena helped my understanding of it as well, made me a better player. (LegenVD and Nizzahon for me, but there are bound to be more) Granted, historic is still very much out of reach for me. It's hard enough having a couple of standard decks (especially right after rotation). Because of that I don't bother with drafting the historic sets. I fully understand the feeling of it turning into a chore. If you care a lot about the ladder, it will become a chore.
Problem is, I don’t think arena can ever be as big as it can because the economy sucks so much. Imagine explaining it to a new player, “sure it’s ftp but if you actually want to play the game you’ll have to pay 150-200 every 3 months”. Crickets.
And adding a 3rd format (because I don't count brawl, fight me) also doesn't help. I love Pioneer, and it might help get more people into the format which is a lot more diverse than the MODO number might make it seem is nice... but now the queues are split across Standard, Historic, and Pioneer, not to mention Bo1 versus Bo3 and play the queue. Also, it took months for Historic to get a ladder and I'm gonna be really sad if WotC does the same to Pioneer.
@@emyron1843 Brawl is the only way for commander players to get their "commander" fix on arena. :') But it doesn't compete with the same kind of players who play the other formats, so not counting it is kinda valid.
$150-$200 every three months? I haven't spent $150 in total and I have every single top-tier standard deck, not to mention my 50 rare wildcards and 60 mythic wildcards. If you are spending that much every set, then you don't know what you are doing.
@@emyron1843 I don't know what to say. I'm sure as fuck not going to go over the math of how many packs you get for free, the rate you get rare wildcards, and the number of rare wildcards you need per top-tier deck. I've done this in the past and I know it is a waste of time, because you don't want to learn.
Economy is what turned me away from this game. Can't believe people still play this greedy garbage. MTGO is far better. With actual support for every format like commander, modern, vintage, etc.
@@Midknight0122 I rather have a no free option if it means for 10 bucks on MTGO I could build a fully functional 100 card commander deck than spend 10 bucks for a few packs of random cards.
@@40Found it does but it isn't fun. well, gladiator is fun but that isn't supported. and to get the cards for it i need to play the other dogshit formats.
"you can't pause the game for 5 month, then come back and craft a new deck out of your WC. YEP, you pretty much summed it up in one sentence. It's kinda the same for MTGO to a lesser extent tho, since we have trade and we can also sell cards we don't need to get ressources. But in the end, like you said : this kind of economic model doesn't insentivise me to play more magic, in fact it makes me want to play less while i have been in love with this game since the early begining. I would be lying if i said i don't play MTGA on a daily basis, but i've came back on MTGO a lot more for quit some time now, due to many problem you talked about in the video. I'am a modern lover, so i naturally went into historic, and we have now dedicated historic set in addition to the usual standart realeases. If you don't spend money you can't keep up, still waiting for that historic traditionnal event tho............
Thank you for having the integrity and courage to speak out upon a very important issue. Brother, continue to stand firm, hold fast, and not cave to the naysayers!!👊😎
I stopped playing when Oko's Throne of Elkes dropped and intended to go back now that meta seems to be decent Took a look at the current land investment and opted out
The piece that's normally missing from the "capitalism is bad" analysis is that these corporations are structured such that they cannot stop doing that. They absolutely MUST make a profit, but moreover they have to make more profit than the previous year. Even if all the people working on the game understand that a decision is bad for the players and will damage retention, Hasbro must take that action anyway. It's a structural problem, not a decision being made by people. Glad you pointed that out.
The economy is why I stopped playing MTG Arena tbh, having to buy mutilple "boxes" just as an attempt to get the cards I need, not to mention there's no system to "dust", to take the hearthstone wording, bad cards and craft what you specifically want to play with
Nope. Fuck dusting. It is much worse than what Arena has. In hearthstone, you have to start from scratch every time you want to build a new deck. In Arena, your collection only grows and the more it grows the faster your earn resources.
As someone who plays about 10 games average everyday in arena (sometimes skip a day or two, sometimes play more if I enjoy the matches) - what I would really need is Wildcard conversion - I have a sh*t ton of C and UC and even a plenty of mythic ones, but no rares (due to the rare lands and otherwise). Also, the worst is that you cannot just jump into a standard after a year or so break if you enjoy constructed. I mostly gain my cards through drafts though, if you get like 60% win ratio, they also pay for themselves, since daily wins/quest are done in the meanwhile (interchanging Gold and Games rewards as a source of "income" for the entry fee), so you don't have to spend any money if you continuously play and do it well enough (drafts are also not "pricing you out" since you only have the same pool as everyone else).
Thank you for making this. I play Historic exclusively now and I like to have options of which deck to play and the cost is RIDICULOUS as you said if you take a break it costs a lot to catch up.
Here is a fantastic idea. How about instead giving us gems for rare and mythic cards that we have multiples of, give us a rare or mythic wild cards for those extra cards instead. Also, I think we should be able to convert our common and uncommon wild cards into rares or mythic wild cards.
You can trade up in a *very* roundabout way. If you craft all the uncommons of a new set, then every pack you open will fill your Vault. The conversion rate is terrible, but it does mean you turn like 200 uncommon wc into 4/6 rare rather than 0
I wrote my story for Seth, but I thought you might want it as well. I played Arena-beta, and before the game conned me, I conned myself. When they said all cards would be not be trade-able, would not dust-able, would not be sell-able, I evangelized to my friends that this wouldn't be a problem because WotC was making a long-term investment in building Arena. This system isn't a staggeringly short-sighted cash-grab, no! They know that the more we play on Arena, the happier we'll be having access to a wide variety of cards to use in a wide variety of offered formats. Since Arena is intended to be an on-ramp to enfranchise newer and more causal players, they'll be sure to keep the cost down. Why, it wouldn't surprise me if they even offered a free redemption code on each paper booster pack for an equivalent Arena pack! And as for new players who show up later after Arena has already taken off, why, they could rent their way into format access by buying season passes that give them all the relevant cards for a span of time, or something like that. Clearly, WotC wants people to use their new system to put product in their hands and whet their appetite for all the other products! See, this isn't a burn-out scam; it's an investment! Boy, I wish.
This is so sad. I'm an angry fish. I was very excited for Arena during the beta. Then a few years later, I abandonned the game. The economy is terrible, the UI has not improved in years. I accepted those poor decisions for a time, hoping Wizards would change direction or listen to the community. But they did not and probably never will, no way I'm supporting this greedy behavior. Arena is far from being a finished product but they won't acknowledge that. What a shame, the gameplay is great but everything around is garbage.
When I first started playing magic I loved, and I mean: LOVED, Grislebrand. I didn't like it because it was super busted. It was a new standard card. I just thought it was cool. I wanted one. Bad. So I bought like 40 packs of Avacyn Restored trying to open one. This... did not occur. I ended up with a collection and I began building decks and learning the game, devolping friendships snd growing as a player. So it worked out. But I never got ne a Grislebrand until I bought four of them in singles. And sleeves. And a deck box. That was how I learned that cracking packs does not build decks. It is fun but. That is it. Arena has not nor will it be Magic until they fix the issues with the economy. And allow trading and better social interaction.
You're the first person I've heard talk about the problem with rare wildcards. I have plenty of mythic wildcards to spare but always run out of rare wildcards when I'm trying to build a new deck.
The issues is, it they allow you to dust your old cards the profits will drop dramatically in the short term, if not always. So they have no reason at the moment to do it as they just loss money.
There is already a free to play way to play magic free to play- it's called proxying cards! Also coding the packs to not have a fifth copy is so easy it's a joke. I am new to coding and it still sounds easy!
@@iam9991000 As a developer, if implementing something as basic as this is complicated, that probably means the code architecture is complete dogshit. and because implementing a card game where every card can have its own functionality is pretty complicated, i dont think that is the case.
@@iam9991000 No, it's not harder. They already have a method to not let you put a fifth card copy of something in your deck. The logic literally already exists in their code base. Just stop.
@@senor_m6673 Given how the code has been described to me, complete dogshit is an understatement. From what I've seen, every time they add a new mechanic even for just a single card it needs to be hard coded into the game engine rather then being an effect tied just to the specific card in question. And seeing that, its also no wonder how most people cant even run the game
You're right on all points. I used some wildcards for a Historic deck when I started playing in August, and it can only get as far as platinum, but I don't have the wildcards for a new one. Side note, Historic Brawl has been the most fun I've ever had with Arena, and my games per day is gonna tank when it's gone.
PK identified a further critical point against the design of the Arena economy, being that is clearly NOT designed to appeal to new players, casual players, or dabblers. This, despite the fact that Arena was initially described in the planning stages as being designed to on-ramp and enfranchise players, growing the community overall. And the above is a product I dearly wish WotC had made, rather than this no-future vulture.
I love your talking videos man. For real, I wait for them everytime I open my youtube. Here in Brazil we call these kind of content "resenhas" just bring us mooooooore please :)
So, to preface this, I still am buying my singles and packs from my lgs and still support them a lot. At this point though, my mates and I are proxying cards for paper. MTG has just been too expensive for the last few years, to get into standard, to get into Arena, especially after a hiatus, is so difficult. It's difficult to get into Arena without needing to pay hundreds of dollar or thousands of Rands just to play a bit more competitively. Thanks for this video Vince, you and Seth really voiced something that my friends and I realised but couldn't voice. It feels a bit stifling at the moment.
WotC is in the middle of their 5-year plan to double the value of MTG. We might see an end to the destructive "Short term gain, Long term loss" once the short term is up and the people who are pumping our game are done earning money and ready to move on to bigger corporations with a gold star on their resume for the "amazing work" that they did. They will also pointedly ignore the fires and destroyed foundations that they leave behind, citing the new management as the problem.
As a programmer, considering that they already check your collection when they roll your pack, checking if your collection contains 4 of a card with the same NAME and not just card ID is something they can solve in a week if they're being lazy. They choose not to - there is nothing technical stopping them.
I would play arena if it had an economy that was even half as good as legends of runeterra Legends of runeterra is a digital card game economy done so so right
Arena shouldn't base their business on selling game pieces on arena they should focus on cosmetics Because I don't see people that have arena as their first mtg experience transitioning to paper when they realize they have to buy the same cards twice And paper mtg is as we all probably know they far superior way to enjoy mtg
The issue of duplicates across sets was mostly fixed back in June. Since then it won't give you a rare or mythic that you already have a combined four of across your entire collection unless you already have a combined four of every card at that rarity in the set. See: magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/mtg-arena-state-game-june-2020-06-23 There is also a way to inefficiently upgrade your common and uncommon wildcards to rares and mythics. It's certainly more time consuming than it needs to be but you can convert 1000 commons or 333 uncommons or any linear combination thereof into 2 rares and a mythic (and 3 more uncommons). All you have to do is use your wild cards before you open the packs so that excess the commons and uncommons you open, go directly into your vault.
Because of covid, I was able to convince my edh group to start playing arena, it only took them a few months to realize the financial investment required and have never played since... so this isn't appealing to newcomers either
You're absolutely right. The problem is as a whole that this market of selling completely digital products are so new its kind of like the wild west right now. People aren't sure how long this will even be possible so they are trying to get in and get their money while they can. Unfortunately this is causing some bad design decisions in the games being made and choices being made that are unhealthy for the longevity of the digital game. I just hope that in a few years, probably more like a decade or two, the companies realize that us gammer's are here to stay but we will only give people who treat us right our money and time.
It’s weird I think if me more likely to spend if I always know that I can dust my cards later. Because I can’t, I just do my best to grind for gold; then just do my best to draft well enough to get more drafts and more cards
PK, thank you for taking the time to speak plainly on these issues. Until/unless pro players, content creators, and other visible people in Magic to agree about these problems and insist that things change. WotC will likely keep walking this path to its burn-out conclusion. I'm not saying we abandon ship. There might be enough time to turn its course.
Duuuude that point about the paper/digital reprint desire is so insane. I had never thought about that before. It is a fundamental incongruity in set design.
MTG Arena is the worst CCG economy I've ever experienced, even worse than Hearthstone, and I stopped playing the game altogether because of it. Paper MTG's economy is also a joke, with individual pieces of cardboard valued at $100+ each (Or sometimes $10000+ each, thanks Reserve List), BUT it's helped SO MUCH by trading and selling. I managed to accrue a decent collection simply by playing draft and trading away any cards I didn't want. I was able to trade into a standard deck, play standard for a while, and then trade/sell some of those cards away when they rotated. There are a lot of strategies in the paper MTG economy to help retain the value on your cards. So I've occasionally moved in and out of paper standard when it looks like the meta is fun. On Arena, I draft and crack valuable rares for my collection and... what then? What deck do I aim to build with two dozen random rares? I can't look at my collection, decide on what deck for standard I want to trade into and try to move there by trading away the cards I don't need. Literally the only way to move towards a specific deck is to spend enough money on packs to accumulate a bunch of wild cards to spend PERMANENTLY on the cards I need for the deck I want. And that transaction is PERMANENT. I can't try out a deck and, if I don't like it, trade it away for something else. I can't try to get some value back from rotation from the cards that managed to retain their value in older formats. If I spend money getting wildcards to make a deck and it sucks, gets banned, or it rotates, the only way to get another deck to play with is to just throw hundreds of more dollars at the screen. And that's just *standard*. Heaven forbid I want to play any older formats on Arena.
I think the two best points you made are the inability to dust old cards for some kind of progress and the whole getting a fifth copy of a card being literally useless are two huge misses that would improve things a lot if fixed.
Hey Vince, just a note on rare protection given your suggestion at 13:00, as it already (kind of) works like that: You can't open a rare *from packs* if you have 4 copies of it with the same art already from another release until you have every other rare from that set. So if you had 4 fabled passage from Throne of Eldraine, you couldn't open any from M21 until you collect every other M21 rare. This does NOT however apply to Individual Card Rewards, which can give you those cards. In the case of jumpstart, it works one way but not the other as jumpstart packs are preset. So in the case of Rishkar at 11:40, if you have 4 Jumpstart copies you shouldn't be able to open any from Kaladesh. I currently have 4 copies of Heroic intervention, 3 from M21 and 1 from Kaladesh, so I should not open any more copies *in packs* but still could through ICR. It's still shit, and sorcerer's spyglass isn't protected because they have different arts, but it's slightly less shit than you think it is even if it's ridiculously convoluted. What it *does* mean is that if you are rare complete in a set normally you'll get 20 gems from each pack, but if you're "rare complete" because you have the rares from other sets, you'll still open them and have no use for them
you are right in everything you say but the fact that you still open them just after you finish the rest of the set has been summed up by the proff quite nicely when he described it as 'relocated greed' wizzards still get to sell faulty packs they just wait.
Hello, professional developper here. Changes in any product and especially a live one will always take some time to be deployed. This said, implementing and testing a better booster randomizer should be relativly trivial and Magic Arena should be able to deploy it within a release cycle.
This is a joke by a software engineering class: "Software companies are the only ones other than the drug dealers that call their clients users" Let that one sink in. And this applies to TH-cam and social media and a lot other apps we use everyday. Welcome to our boring dystopia.
@@hellNo116 ya a documentary about how social media makes u addicted to it... ironically netflix uses same structures but never was mentioned once in the documentary 😆
@@johnkon292 man i extremely close to kill all this apps from my life. maybe keep netflix, since i seem to be able to have full control over watching series, since i cannot take the emotional weight of watching a new one all the time.
a few tips for the arena economy: 1. dont buy packs 2. drafting is king 3. if you want to play for free, you have to grind Btw i still think, that a dusting mechanic would improve the game's economy dramatically . And i think that the best way to play arena is to play free to play, because opening packs is a literally waste of money (except for the wildcard progression).
Agree! So much agreeing. Just throwing this out, "it is NOT that bad", is not true for newer players. Developing a collection as a newer player is hard and expensive enough to be a major barrier to entry. Thanks you.
Great video! How shitty the arena economy is really hit me when I bought packs for 20 bucks and I just wanted a mythic rare wildcard to complete a deck and I didn't got a single one. It was so disheartening and frustrating it took me two weeks and I was a happy Runeterra player. I'm still playing paper magic and collect but Arena is nothing but frustration
I started on Arena when it dropped, played for 8 months, and quit for all the reasons you brought up. It was impossible to keep up, cracking a ton of packs to earn a wild card to build one deck was nonsense, and I could never take time off from playing as I would lose resources to make me be able to play. What ended up happening was playing standard with terrible decks because I couldn't get the wildcards needed for an actual deck I had in mind, which led to burn out and quitting to never pick it up again. I play a ton of paper Magic on my own time when I can find a game and have been for 10 years. I would highly prefer playing on Arena, but there's no way to keep up or afford the game in its current state. I won't be back to Arena until economy changes and I hope it does because Arena is amazing outside of the economy. Thanks for your thoughts, friend.
Even though this topic has been discussed before, I'm actually surprised people don't speak out more against MTGA. It's awful -- I acknowledge that WOTC needs to make money, but especially since so many bans have been dished out recently, it becomes an absolute nightmare to try to build decks, not to mention that there's no resale value.
I played Arena for six months, 1-2 hours a day every single day, just trying to grind out the daily rewards. I even spent a bit of money, but despite that I still didn’t have the cards I needed to make more than two meta decks in that entire time. I tried to collect all the commons from a single set, but even that was impossible because of all the “bonus” commons that are included in the client but never show up in packs. Basically it felt like I spent six months beating my head against the wall of insanely slow control & permission decks for very little reward. It wasn’t even hard to quit, I didn’t have enough of a collection to feel like I was losing anything, and it felt incredibly freeing to not feel like I had to play every day or lose progress.
"They are design choices implemented for a purpose. And that purpose is probably peak profitability, with no regard for the end user". - PK This is exactly the stance that WotC is taking on the "economy". They dont care what decisions would make it better for players, because this is what maximizes Hasbros bottom line. The last 2 years of shitty WotC decisions turned me off from playing the game at all. Now I build and paint tiny demon models to battle angry space men with. Its loads more fun, and arguably cheaper and more fulfilling from a creativity standpoint. ❤ you Vince, keep up the good work buddy.
Great video Vince! I know it's a shitty topic to cover but I'm glad you did. I have burnt out on arena, I still play some historic but not enough to stay relevant in standard. Brawl is actually my favorite format on arena as a f2p player, I can complete quests and build different decks at least. Really enjoyed your tatyova deck tech, please do more of that content as well.
I found this video really interesting. I have to say I've been priced out of competitive magic as soon as I got into the hobby. I've also found, compared to magic online, arena with it's ladder system has meant I play much more. I basically use casual decks to bump around gold and silver which I enjoy and I've not paid to crack packs for. Plus I play limited a lot which is where I spend my money and for me this where I have the most fun. On arena I don't have to rare draft for value. I think the sunk cost concept, like a lot of economic theory, doesn't account for the enjoyment factor of an activity. It records the transaction but not necessarily the journey between those transactions. Though I can imagine for content creators the cost of trying to get cards in both arena and magic online is a pretty steep overhead.
Good chat Vince. I try and play as ‘free’ as I can, although I do buy gems now and then. As for Kaladesh, I was super excited but decided not to go in as hard as I did with Amonkhet. Only time will tell if that’s going to ‘hurt’ my enjoyment of Arena... Keep up the good work bro, you’re fingers on the pulse 😎👊
they could also treat the artwork/set symbol as a graphic type. So when you get a new card you unlock the card, and then you are unlocking the option of that sets art and set symbol too. So once you have 4 of a card from any set, you can only open 1 from other sets afterwords unlocking its artwork + maybe a few coins or something.
I have to say you hit it spot on. If wizards wants to have a playerbase when we can all play paper again they need to make some changes. Over the last year I know a dozen or more people who have just given up on Magic and it's sad to see the game i love losing players cause the producers of the game only care about their profits.
I stopped playing Magic because of the economy. The money it had taken from me to play Magic was so insane. I love the game, but I hate this predatory money-grab way more.
Great video. I think another factor is that I don't think that, when they launched arena and designed it's monetization model, they ever planned for it to support any constructed format aside from Standard. While definitely still not ideal, if you only consider collecting for and playing standard, it's kind of functional, though it demands a lot of a free to play player if you want to ensure you can build whatever deck you want to play as the meta shifts. It's still bad, but not dealbreaking necessarily. However, when you have to start factoring in historic and eventually going back to pioneer and maybe modern some day, it just becomes a completely unworkable system. It already is, and they need to fix it before it does further harm to their health of the game. I'm a standard only player because I frankly can't afford the buy in for paper or even mtgo, and the only reason I'm even playing right now is because standard is finally pretty good again after the last bans. If standard hits another patch like it had the last couple years, and they have done nothing to fix arena's business model, they will probably have lost me. I love the game, but the business model is just horrible.
Software Developer here. In a healthy code base, rare duplicate protection is something like 1 to 10 lines of code depending on language and implementation.
Part of what we put money into physical cards is because later we can resell them. Until they implement a way to trade I am not putting any more money into the product. It looks great, but it is missing the core fundamental part of the CCG aspect of magic.
I rarely say this but I agree with you 100%. I usually watch your videos for the comedy but this is rather insightful and everything you say is correct, literally everything. It really upsets me that people fall for the inclusivity bullshit when it's clearly just marketing and PR. If they cared about the players then the economy wouldn't be this bad in arena and do note that it was even worse at one point. This is EA levels of disrespect for its playerbase.
I would kill for any sort of dusting system to be implemented. Like, let me convert cards I'm not using into Wildcards or gold in some way. It would at least help mitigate the cost of keeping up with new releases.
The economy on MTGA works decently for smaller formats such as standard that also have a scedueles release cylce. Unless you always want to build every deck in standard, you can usually spend a little bit of money at the beginning of a format to get a deck and then save up for 3 months until the next set comes out. Most people can do this at mostly free to play. Historic and eventually Pioneer is differnent in that they release new cards way too often. There are about twice as many set realeases for Historic than for standard, including remastered sets, jumpstart, anthology sets and other specialties. A free-to-play player can never keep up with a new product being released every month. If their goal really is to get Pioneer onto Arena eventually, they will have to change their system, otherwise most people won't play it because they can't afford to buy into it.
My relationship with Arena is so hard for me to put into words. First and foremost I love magic. I have loved it for so many years it is just a part of who I am as a gamer. I play Arena more than 99% of people according to those little emails you get every so often. I used to grind events like crazy and have spend a few hundred dollars from beta to now. However, I have always been annoyed at the economy or lack of economy in Arena. it is pretty insane that our cards aren't investments and are instead just a long term waste. It was weird when historic didn't exist (despite the promise that it was going to exist and then the months and months where it didn't exist). It is pretty annoying that the economy continues to be dogshit and worse that no one at wotc seems to be talking about this topic. Hopefully after you and Seth and other creators talk about it more it will get some response. I guess that is a topic on its own though. They don't respond to any of my tweets, emails, or website posts. It just is an information blackhole. They are terrible at communicating in general as well, information about the game never comes from a central place, nor is it mirrored across all of their platforms. You might learn something new from a random twitch stream they put on, or a tweet, or a post on the mothership, or a post on their dev website, or very rarely something that pops up on the carousel in the game. So that is a huge problem, that would be nice to see a fix. Just basic communication. I know that they are running a successful corporation and that internal communication is absolutely something they stress among their employees, let's see some external communication. (Maybe I'm salty because I worked on Twelpforce when businesses talking to customers on the internet was new, but figure it out). I think the thing that chaps my ass more than anything else however, is the user experience. The UX in Arena overall is just straight up garbage enough of the time that it makes me want to quit. However, I'm a god damned addict and continue to play because I lack the ability to dump all of my vices all at once. I gave up drinking this year, so maybe next year I give up arena, who knows? Anyway, I am regularly pissed about the lack of rule 722 shortcuts being implemented and think this topic is one that is even worse than the shit economy. Because to be fair, we could just slow down on the spending money and acquire cards the slow way. Sure we wouldn't be as competitive, but not all of us are content creators and most of us aren't playing in the top 1000 or whatever of mythic. So we could do with a bit more jank in our lives. But no matter if the economy gets fixed or not, resolving a stack of 300+ scute swarms is pretty fucking stupid right now. How about going for an Emry Pardox Engine loop with a mana rock and a tormod's crypt and an aether spellbomb... Go ahead and try that one if you haven't. Or really any infinite combo. And yes, right now these are fringe combos, but as we draw nearer to pioneer, I'll bet that becomes a much more pressing issue for more players. This isn't new either, of course. MTGO has had this problem for ever (though it handles it better) which is why it is all the more annoying. You are telling me that in nearly 20 years, they couldn't find a developer that could code a shortcut system based on the already codified rules? Bullshit, this was a clear oversight and needs to be fixed before they move forward. But look back on this shit in one to two years, or whatever it takes for them to get pioneer rolling. Just wait until there is a viable infinite combo that sees play or would see play if it weren't a liability. And what do I mean by that? Well due to the chess clock in bo3, trying to play some of these infinite combo strategies in arena will lead to losing the game due to an opponent making you kill them (which is their right), because shortcuts don't exist. Whatever this is the hill I want to die on, sorry that it isn't just about the economy (which also needs to be fixed).
The key to getting a collection in arena is getting good at draft. You can pretty consistently profit or break even in draft and you get packs and wildcards everytime.
Great vid. I’ve quit arena bc I couldn’t afford it any more. Now they’ve lost my business even though they got a lot of it in one short burst. Instead if it was as you described they would still get my money just not as much at once but more over time.
There is aktually duplicate protection from packs for rares and above for cards you have 4 of even accross multiple sets (you wont open a 5th rishkar from a pack, unless you already have every rare in the set), however this does not apply to cards rewarded directly and of course drafting (though for drafting the draft itself would have to be unchanged). As a free to play player i am still enjoying arena but more despite of its issues. It does seem like whoever manages arena cant be convinced to spend money on anything which cant immediatly return money.
I feel you on the getting back in to a game. Just picked up warhammer40k and God I'm so happy that when I did play I got all the models I really wanted, the price got crazy. Like I have 6 landraiders and the price on them is insane to what it was then. Or my all metal oop sisters of Battle and grey knights. Now having a problem of trying to get 1pf the 2 Redemptor dreadnought I need. Called all gaming stores on a 60 mile radius and no one has them in stock.
As a coder: there's no reason why they can't implement duplicate protection across art forms. The game can already register that the cards function the same, the game does already have a form of duplicate protection. They can do it and in less time than 6 months.
probably in like a week... or a day depending on the database
For sure, They could probably do it in 3 days. Since you can't have more than 4 copies of a card in a deck they already have them identified as the same card for that.
@@EtherwroughtPaige Exactly. They already have code to identify that these cards are actually the same card. It wouldn't be very difficult at all to simply have the pack-opening script check your entire collection, rather than just which cards from that set you own.
But as has been said in the video repeatedly, this was a choice, not a mistake.
This *is* already the case. You can't open a 5th copy across sets, provided they have the same art, unless you've collected every other rare from those sets. So you can't open a Kaladesh Rishkar if you have 4 of the Jumpstart Rishkar (but if you choose a jumpstart pack with Rishkar in it after you have 4 total copies, you're out of luck because those packs are predetermined). However, this does NOT, to my knowledge apply to the ICRs, which is still very shit.
@@TheRealHungryHobo And heck, they have implemented what you suggested - Reprint Protection already checks your full collection for cards that share the name and art, and avoids giving you any Rare or Mythic you have 4 of that matches both properties until you otherwise complete the set. All it would take is to say "don't check for art any more." and boom.
Though obviously I'd prefer that they go full-scale on this and remove those cards from the pool entirely once you have a playset. Leave it to the player to use WCs or card styles to fill in any art gaps they want to fill in at their own will.
It's not really a economy if there's no way to exchange purchases.
yep true, you can't trade cards
"but cash machine goes *brrrrrrrr* " -wotc, probably
@@cavemantero check out hasbros quarterly reports from this year. it basically states what i wrote up there
I haven't put money in the game since Theros and I never will again. That shitty standard has burned me.
a lot of "gaming" companies do similiar stuff... solution = do not buy their product "mtg arena stuff" period... magic is a great game if you play with real cards...
It really is insane, you can't price packs the same as they would cost in paper if you can't also shop for singles. Never in my life have I built a constructed deck just by opening like 60 boosters, despite what Wizards might think we do
Not only that, there are LESS cards in Arena boosters if you're not drafting
@@40Found Yes, when I first started it took me a while to notice, but on Arena you get 8 cards per pack versus 15 cards irl, literally HALF the amount of cards, and they also don't have duplicate protection on uncommons or commons so seeing Fatal Pushes get shat out by KLD packs as I open them after having already spent my wildcards on the full playset is frustrating to say the least
I have actually done that, but it was a challenge that a friend and I have ourselves. In addition, we had the ability to sell the cards afterwards.
@@emyron1843 I could have sword I heard that Uncommons and Commons had duplicate protection.
@@devonwilliams5738 Not from what I can tell. I've got a playset of Agonizing Remorse as well and I'm always getting those from my dailies.
From a programmer: The dupe protection across sets is not hard to implement. Unless they have no idea what they are doing in general.
they probably don't have any idea what they're doing, otherwise we would have a mobile version already. since that would make them even more money
The horde of compensation MtG players would probably expect is more troubling to them. I have to have dozens of duplicate rares.
so impossible?
@@Sceleri I certainly dont think that they have no idea what theyre doing, because implementing a card game where every card has its own functionality is pretty complicated. and something like duplicate protection is basically going through a list and checking if a certain item is already present, so pretty simple in comparison to that.
and concerning the mobile game, there are a lot of reasons why this may have been delayed and probably all of them are way more complicated.
It's already there. Try adding a 5 opt to your deck. Even if 2x from one set and 3x from another.
It's made that way on purpose. The mtga economy is purposely made to extract as much money as possible from its player base. When you gamble, the house always wins.
Yes but they are not business people. they are game designers with large egos and as such they dont register the perspective that playing a diverse selection of decks is key to long term growth and retenti9n
@@seankuhn6633 The game is advertised by the business people at wotc. The updates are dictated by the business people. The designers and developers are just a means to an end for the business people.
@@zztzgza These are not business people. Business people know how to siphon money AND make the experience worthwhile. MTG Arena's devs don't do that. They are a bunch of people who know how to make money. They don't know how to run things from a good business perspective.
@@klutzmtg2310 You say that but Magic Arena is hugely profitable and numbers don't lie. They are greedy and it unfortunately works.
there's no need to shave, I love your Drannith Magistrate cosplay.
Great work as usual.
Is... Is Vince a hate-bear? Bruh my mind is blown
@@don8535 Drannith Magistrate is the most Vince card I can possibly imagine, both in style and function
@@ToxicAtom agreed, also both are fairly dashing
Vince, cosplaying as Drannith Magistrate cosplaying as Thalia.
Vince isn't Drannith Magistrate... yet. He could be in another 10 to 15 years when he gets a little grey in the beard and side hair though.
"Rare lands are the backbone of every format"
Pauper players: are you sure?
Jumpstart lands: "Yes".
(Technically not rare, but still hard to find)
Ohhh fck they are pauper legal.
Have been quite out of pauper, do some 3+ color decks run them?
Urza lands are also often printed at rare and any Pauper player can tell you that yes, sadly, they are legal.
@@Narabedla4 yes, they are used in mardu monarch, slivers, ephemerate and, of course, tron
I just want a code card per pack like Pokémon.
One code per pack? I'd already be happy if I could just use the codes that I get, and not just one of every kind.
@@Volkbrecht In Pokémon, when you buy a real pack. The code you get will give you a pack online as well.
@@rickymullins3844 I got that from the opening post. My point was that I would already see it as an improvement if I could just redeem all the codes I get. Like, when I play more than one pre-release event, which I regularly do.
It's one thing Pokemon TCG did really well. The online was great.
You know, I got to say you kind of summed up my online magic experience pretty damn well. I thought magic Arena was kind of the best way for me to stay engaged with standard and even some of the other formats that started popping up on Arena. It had fun special game modes that made me think of when I would get friends together and we do something silly with the game we change a rule or do this or that. But I stop playing for a couple of months and when I came back I couldn't use any of the Decks that I had spent weeks and weeks and weeks building. I burn through all of my wild cards and had no way to create new decks with the new cards from the new sets because I didn't want to sink any money in. So I ended up just not playing it as much. I think maybe I get on Magic Arena once in a blue moon just to play Magic at a very basic and non-competitive level. I still love the game, but it just is very inaccessible to me financially online and due to covid-19 paper Magic is not an option.
Love your videos, stay saucy.
Honestly, what finished Arena for me and had me uninstall is when I saw new communication bubbles were being locked behind a paywall. I love the social aspect of Magic, and Arena is doing everything it can to remove that from the game. Made me realize it was not for me. Still lacking easy ways to play with friends, can't meet people in game and make friends. Can't communicate. As Wizards is fond of saying, "This product is not for me."
This is ironic, with a game called The Gathering.... Lol
@@jaafarmhasan8713 very
Arena will NEVER last because it’s so lonely and solitary. 95% of us began playing mostly because of the gathering. Even on MTGO, I have a blast interacting with my opponents when playing vintage cube. I can only be entertained so long playing basically by myself...
I learned how to play magic on arena and much prefer to play paper to see other people's reasoning behind their in game decisions and the emotions of timmys
@Larry Byrd seconded
Honestly, the economy would be so much better just by being able to purchase wildcards, and be able to dismantle rotated sets or banned cards.
The biggest issue with arena is they claim it is the most accessible version of magic, but you need to play for a while before being able to actually build what you want and that is frustrating
arena is the lost expensive way to play magic since you can always proxy physical cards lol
@@Sceleri proxying isn't an official way to play. Otherwise Untap would be the cheapest.
@@regirayquaza Even compared to MTGO just getting a starter deck in Arena is looking to be a several hundred dollar investment that will just dissepear in 2 years
@@regirayquaza exactly, it is the cheapest way to play magic. the second cheapest is tabletop simulator lol
@@aidanquiett668 Arena is pretty awful financially speaking unless you want to stick with one deck.
i watched seths' video yesterday and all it did was confirm my suspicion that I will stick to just paper (despite not being able to play it atm) and to go and check out runeterra
Runeterra is the only other ccg I've gotten into besides MtG, and it does a pretty good job scratching that 1.v.1 itch w/o having to cash out or grind an obscene amount to get the cards you want.
Eternal is also pretty fun, the economy is quite generous, and is a bit closer to MTG as far as gameplay goes.
Try flesh and blood on table top simulator.
gauntlet is pretty fun and original.
I remember when wildcards were a 'temporary solution' and we were having this exact conversation about how much they sucked. I sincerely hope their predatory BS bites them in the ass soon.
Ya this was back in the time where there was still hope Arena was going to learn from MTGO
Finally someone has the BALLS to make a video on this. Their economy is abysmal and it ruins the funnest part of magic: deck building
Noxious' ui video is pretty great too literally fixed it in ms paint
Never let it be forgotten that WotC's original plan was to have 2:1 WC redemption for non-Standard sets too, at a time when most of these supplemental sets would have been early in development.
Makes you wonder how they ever saw people playing Historic beyond just dumping that $400 into every supplemental set.
Makes me think they didn't.
That was a calculated ploy on thier part to get you complacent wake up plox siriusis
wait why wouldn't we want people dropping 400$ on the game for every supplemental set that comes out, that sounds like a lot of money not being made
@@paxmen2264 Sorry if I was unclear. I'm proposing that that's the only way they originally saw people getting into Historic.
@@seankuhn6633 truly, it was a 5head, 9001 IQ by WotC of the Coast, a Hasbro Inc subsidiary. Making us complacent to the Wildcard system by...making it work the same way it always had for like, 2 years.
Honestly we should all feel ashamed of ourselves for falling for such an obvious ruse. 4srs.
Also can we make plox a thing again? I miss plox.
if anything it should be you get an extra copy of each card you craft for historic as the cards can be played in half as many formats they should cost half as much on arena
Hadn't played magic in about a year, but recently wanted to get back in to it with some friends on arena. That was until I realized it would take forever or several hundred dollars to accrue a collection to be able to play a half decent deck. This is when I realized the client could be so much better by allowing the purchase of singles or wildcards. Just think of the others like me who want to get back in to magic and the only way to really play is online but are priced out by wizards greed
I am a casualty of Arena's economy.
One of those "six month break" guys.
When Vince talked about how hard it is to come back after taking a break from Arena, I felt that.
Every rotation, every short hiatus, I get the feeling I'm being had. And after a while, I threw my hands up in the air and decided that MTGO was a better choice for me.
Agreed. Mtg is not a fucking esport
@@DiabloTommaso well, it should be equally competitive as an esport, but it shouldn't be seen as digital only
Tbh, if MTGO had the same free to play access that arena had, I guarantee you that most players would be on MTGO rather than arena.
The literally biggest reason arena is popular is because you can just download it and get going while mtgo costs money to begin with.
I quit Arena after ravnica allegiance. I spent like 200 dollars building decks online, and after I had my fun with them, I felt like shit. Like they expect me to drop that much money (or more) every expansion, or I dont get to play the decks I want? I feel bad for people invested in this game. I wish I had spent those 200 bucks in paper cards
@@Tacklepig yes sorry i meant it s not a digital game too complex
Remember that WOTC wanted to charge DOUBLE for historic wildcards while still not having historic brawl 24/7
Omg yes
And remember how it was near impossible to get all the battle pass before people cried about it.... or how they reduced how much f2p gains... or how they changed the chest to makes it worse...
@@clad95150 capitalist mentality is raping my childhood nostalgia... im just going to make an awesome cube with a low powerlevel, and use dollar rares with amazing art as bombs
Hey, I'm a software engineer who works on games. A duplication prevention system that checks your current library for a card regardless of set probably could have been implemented overnight if Arena is setup with any level of competence. In fact, they probably had to implement code to stop their current duplication prevention system from doing that by default.
When PK said that gameplay has been 'plagued by horrors' I could almost hear him screaming about Uro in the background.
UroOmnathOkoCompanion say what?!
The Arena economy is absolute shite. There's plenty Wizards could do about it and still make a profit. Just in the last two months I've become so frustrated with it, I decided to start grinding to see if I could make enough gold to draft and get cards that way, but I run into plenty of situations where I am grinding, not enjoying the game, finally get a chance to draft, and just lose three games in a row.
Admittedly, I might feel differently if I had friends on Arena that I could duel, but the whole reason I downloaded the game was because I don't have a playgroup. I love playing, but I'm burning out because I can't afford to play it the way I could in paper if I only had people to play with. And I admit I'm close to giving up on Arena altogether. Unfortunately for me, that also means not playing Magic anymore.
I tried playing for free, but Arena turns my favorite game into a chore.
Your first problem is thinking you can play limited for profit. If you are spending your gold on drafting and going 0-3 frequently, I would maybe suggest not playing limited and buy 5 or 10 packs instead? Considering you have to consistently hit 5+ wins to even see decent return value, those 5 to 10 packs will generate more value in wildcards alone. I've only spent 25 since release and have access to most top tier decks in historic. I'd say worry about building one COMPETITIVE deck for either constructed format and grinding gold with it(you'll also get waaaay better at piloting the deck as well). Targeting the right packs with your gold is also key after you decide on the competitive deck you want to build. I'm not completely disagreeing with you about it being a pain in the ass to grind everything out(especially standard), and the fact wizards isn't exactly keen on giving access to everything in a much easier manner doesn't help either, but it is very possible to have variety in your deck choices by spending wildcards correctly. For example, lets say you build something like Goblins for historic to start off because its relatively cheap and pretty competitive. After you start banking gold and wildcards start targeting things like shocklands or other dualies and mana bases for other colors that interest you. Building a manabase collection is probably the most important part of spending wildcards, because mana bases are one of the most important aspects of deckbuilding to begin with. They have a lot more value themselves than something like 4 snoops in goblins because snoops only go in goblins while the lands can be used in many different decks. Sorry for the wall of text but hopefully it helps you out.
If you want to play limited, it really is a different format that takes some getting used to. I'm also on ftp. Getting to draft was very annoying at first (and my start in it was during Eldraine, when they hadn't fixed how easy it was to force the mill deck yet), but it did eventually become somewhat easier, also because I had a decent amount of standard decks I was sufficiently happy playing.
I have become better at drafting and I rarely run into 0-3 anymore, if I turn out a 2-3, it's a proper bad run (or I weakened my deck picking rares or mythics that didn't fit it, just to have the card). Watching some content creators (partly) dedicated to playing limited on arena helped my understanding of it as well, made me a better player. (LegenVD and Nizzahon for me, but there are bound to be more)
Granted, historic is still very much out of reach for me. It's hard enough having a couple of standard decks (especially right after rotation). Because of that I don't bother with drafting the historic sets.
I fully understand the feeling of it turning into a chore. If you care a lot about the ladder, it will become a chore.
Problem is, I don’t think arena can ever be as big as it can because the economy sucks so much. Imagine explaining it to a new player, “sure it’s ftp but if you actually want to play the game you’ll have to pay 150-200 every 3 months”. Crickets.
And adding a 3rd format (because I don't count brawl, fight me) also doesn't help. I love Pioneer, and it might help get more people into the format which is a lot more diverse than the MODO number might make it seem is nice... but now the queues are split across Standard, Historic, and Pioneer, not to mention Bo1 versus Bo3 and play the queue. Also, it took months for Historic to get a ladder and I'm gonna be really sad if WotC does the same to Pioneer.
@@emyron1843 Brawl is the only way for commander players to get their "commander" fix on arena. :')
But it doesn't compete with the same kind of players who play the other formats, so not counting it is kinda valid.
$150-$200 every three months? I haven't spent $150 in total and I have every single top-tier standard deck, not to mention my 50 rare wildcards and 60 mythic wildcards. If you are spending that much every set, then you don't know what you are doing.
@@BrotherAlpha then please, enlighten us all
@@emyron1843 I don't know what to say. I'm sure as fuck not going to go over the math of how many packs you get for free, the rate you get rare wildcards, and the number of rare wildcards you need per top-tier deck. I've done this in the past and I know it is a waste of time, because you don't want to learn.
Economy is what turned me away from this game. Can't believe people still play this greedy garbage. MTGO is far better. With actual support for every format like commander, modern, vintage, etc.
But does it have a free to play option?
@@Midknight0122 I rather have a no free option if it means for 10 bucks on MTGO I could build a fully functional 100 card commander deck than spend 10 bucks for a few packs of random cards.
@@Midknight0122 no but at this point Arena basically doesn't either
@@40Found it does but it isn't fun. well, gladiator is fun but that isn't supported. and to get the cards for it i need to play the other dogshit formats.
@@willemboele2079 I mean if the economy turns what is usually a fun experience into dogshit, then what is the point XD
Clearest video about the topic I've seen. Well done, Vince
"you can't pause the game for 5 month, then come back and craft a new deck out of your WC. YEP, you pretty much summed it up in one sentence. It's kinda the same for MTGO to a lesser extent tho, since we have trade and we can also sell cards we don't need to get ressources. But in the end, like you said : this kind of economic model doesn't insentivise me to play more magic, in fact it makes me want to play less while i have been in love with this game since the early begining. I would be lying if i said i don't play MTGA on a daily basis, but i've came back on MTGO a lot more for quit some time now, due to many problem you talked about in the video. I'am a modern lover, so i naturally went into historic, and we have now dedicated historic set in addition to the usual standart realeases. If you don't spend money you can't keep up, still waiting for that historic traditionnal event tho............
Thank you for having the integrity and courage to speak out upon a very important issue. Brother, continue to stand firm, hold fast, and not cave to the naysayers!!👊😎
I stopped playing when Oko's Throne of Elkes dropped and intended to go back now that meta seems to be decent
Took a look at the current land investment and opted out
The piece that's normally missing from the "capitalism is bad" analysis is that these corporations are structured such that they cannot stop doing that. They absolutely MUST make a profit, but moreover they have to make more profit than the previous year. Even if all the people working on the game understand that a decision is bad for the players and will damage retention, Hasbro must take that action anyway. It's a structural problem, not a decision being made by people. Glad you pointed that out.
The economy is why I stopped playing MTG Arena tbh, having to buy mutilple "boxes" just as an attempt to get the cards I need, not to mention there's no system to "dust", to take the hearthstone wording, bad cards and craft what you specifically want to play with
Nope. Fuck dusting. It is much worse than what Arena has. In hearthstone, you have to start from scratch every time you want to build a new deck. In Arena, your collection only grows and the more it grows the faster your earn resources.
As someone who plays about 10 games average everyday in arena (sometimes skip a day or two, sometimes play more if I enjoy the matches) - what I would really need is Wildcard conversion - I have a sh*t ton of C and UC and even a plenty of mythic ones, but no rares (due to the rare lands and otherwise).
Also, the worst is that you cannot just jump into a standard after a year or so break if you enjoy constructed.
I mostly gain my cards through drafts though, if you get like 60% win ratio, they also pay for themselves, since daily wins/quest are done in the meanwhile (interchanging Gold and Games rewards as a source of "income" for the entry fee), so you don't have to spend any money if you continuously play and do it well enough (drafts are also not "pricing you out" since you only have the same pool as everyone else).
Thank you for making this. I play Historic exclusively now and I like to have options of which deck to play and the cost is RIDICULOUS as you said if you take a break it costs a lot to catch up.
MTG:A and Hearthstone: *Terrible economies.*
Legends of Runeterra: Hello there. :D
Here is a fantastic idea. How about instead giving us gems for rare and mythic cards that we have multiples of, give us a rare or mythic wild cards for those extra cards instead.
Also, I think we should be able to convert our common and uncommon wild cards into rares or mythic wild cards.
You can trade up in a *very* roundabout way. If you craft all the uncommons of a new set, then every pack you open will fill your Vault. The conversion rate is terrible, but it does mean you turn like 200 uncommon wc into 4/6 rare rather than 0
I wrote my story for Seth, but I thought you might want it as well.
I played Arena-beta, and before the game conned me, I conned myself. When they said all cards would be not be trade-able, would not dust-able, would not be sell-able, I evangelized to my friends that this wouldn't be a problem because WotC was making a long-term investment in building Arena. This system isn't a staggeringly short-sighted cash-grab, no! They know that the more we play on Arena, the happier we'll be having access to a wide variety of cards to use in a wide variety of offered formats. Since Arena is intended to be an on-ramp to enfranchise newer and more causal players, they'll be sure to keep the cost down. Why, it wouldn't surprise me if they even offered a free redemption code on each paper booster pack for an equivalent Arena pack!
And as for new players who show up later after Arena has already taken off, why, they could rent their way into format access by buying season passes that give them all the relevant cards for a span of time, or something like that. Clearly, WotC wants people to use their new system to put product in their hands and whet their appetite for all the other products! See, this isn't a burn-out scam; it's an investment!
Boy, I wish.
This is so sad. I'm an angry fish. I was very excited for Arena during the beta. Then a few years later, I abandonned the game. The economy is terrible, the UI has not improved in years. I accepted those poor decisions for a time, hoping Wizards would change direction or listen to the community. But they did not and probably never will, no way I'm supporting this greedy behavior. Arena is far from being a finished product but they won't acknowledge that. What a shame, the gameplay is great but everything around is garbage.
When I first started playing magic I loved, and I mean: LOVED, Grislebrand. I didn't like it because it was super busted. It was a new standard card. I just thought it was cool. I wanted one. Bad. So I bought like 40 packs of Avacyn Restored trying to open one. This... did not occur. I ended up with a collection and I began building decks and learning the game, devolping friendships snd growing as a player. So it worked out. But I never got ne a Grislebrand until I bought four of them in singles. And sleeves. And a deck box.
That was how I learned that cracking packs does not build decks. It is fun but.
That is it.
Arena has not nor will it be Magic until they fix the issues with the economy.
And allow trading and better social interaction.
Am I the only one who saw this shit coming when they announced arena. We never should have let them get away with this in the get go
It took me like 6 months to build a goblins deck.
You're the first person I've heard talk about the problem with rare wildcards. I have plenty of mythic wildcards to spare but always run out of rare wildcards when I'm trying to build a new deck.
The issues is, it they allow you to dust your old cards the profits will drop dramatically in the short term, if not always. So they have no reason at the moment to do it as they just loss money.
There is already a free to play way to play magic free to play- it's called proxying cards!
Also coding the packs to not have a fifth copy is so easy it's a joke. I am new to coding and it still sounds easy!
There's probably some easy stuff you can do in spark to find out what card people have how many copies of
It SOUNDS easy but doing it is harder, not that they shouldn't try though.
@@iam9991000 As a developer, if implementing something as basic as this is complicated, that probably means the code architecture is complete dogshit.
and because implementing a card game where every card can have its own functionality is pretty complicated, i dont think that is the case.
@@iam9991000 No, it's not harder. They already have a method to not let you put a fifth card copy of something in your deck. The logic literally already exists in their code base. Just stop.
@@senor_m6673 Given how the code has been described to me, complete dogshit is an understatement. From what I've seen, every time they add a new mechanic even for just a single card it needs to be hard coded into the game engine rather then being an effect tied just to the specific card in question. And seeing that, its also no wonder how most people cant even run the game
You're right on all points. I used some wildcards for a Historic deck when I started playing in August, and it can only get as far as platinum, but I don't have the wildcards for a new one. Side note, Historic Brawl has been the most fun I've ever had with Arena, and my games per day is gonna tank when it's gone.
Every single ftp game has an economist on staff, this isn't accidental. Wizards has Kenneth Fortson in their employ.
PK identified a further critical point against the design of the Arena economy, being that is clearly NOT designed to appeal to new players, casual players, or dabblers. This, despite the fact that Arena was initially described in the planning stages as being designed to on-ramp and enfranchise players, growing the community overall.
And the above is a product I dearly wish WotC had made, rather than this no-future vulture.
@0.21 thanks for the video - finally short enough to watch completely
I love your talking videos man. For real, I wait for them everytime I open my youtube. Here in Brazil we call these kind of content "resenhas" just bring us mooooooore please :)
So, to preface this, I still am buying my singles and packs from my lgs and still support them a lot. At this point though, my mates and I are proxying cards for paper. MTG has just been too expensive for the last few years, to get into standard, to get into Arena, especially after a hiatus, is so difficult. It's difficult to get into Arena without needing to pay hundreds of dollar or thousands of Rands just to play a bit more competitively. Thanks for this video Vince, you and Seth really voiced something that my friends and I realised but couldn't voice. It feels a bit stifling at the moment.
WotC is in the middle of their 5-year plan to double the value of MTG. We might see an end to the destructive "Short term gain, Long term loss" once the short term is up and the people who are pumping our game are done earning money and ready to move on to bigger corporations with a gold star on their resume for the "amazing work" that they did. They will also pointedly ignore the fires and destroyed foundations that they leave behind, citing the new management as the problem.
As a programmer, considering that they already check your collection when they roll your pack, checking if your collection contains 4 of a card with the same NAME and not just card ID is something they can solve in a week if they're being lazy. They choose not to - there is nothing technical stopping them.
I would play arena if it had an economy that was even half as good as legends of runeterra
Legends of runeterra is a digital card game economy done so so right
Arena shouldn't base their business on selling game pieces on arena they should focus on cosmetics
Because I don't see people that have arena as their first mtg experience transitioning to paper when they realize they have to buy the same cards twice
And paper mtg is as we all probably know they far superior way to enjoy mtg
Came for the Thumbnail. Stayed for the Economic lessons on Sunk Cost.
$400 per set? Welcome to Hearthstone guys c:
I tried out Arena, saw I wasn't going to enjoy the economy, and decided to stop playing the game.
The issue of duplicates across sets was mostly fixed back in June. Since then it won't give you a rare or mythic that you already have a combined four of across your entire collection unless you already have a combined four of every card at that rarity in the set. See: magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/mtg-arena-state-game-june-2020-06-23
There is also a way to inefficiently upgrade your common and uncommon wildcards to rares and mythics. It's certainly more time consuming than it needs to be but you can convert 1000 commons or 333 uncommons or any linear combination thereof into 2 rares and a mythic (and 3 more uncommons). All you have to do is use your wild cards before you open the packs so that excess the commons and uncommons you open, go directly into your vault.
Because of covid, I was able to convince my edh group to start playing arena, it only took them a few months to realize the financial investment required and have never played since... so this isn't appealing to newcomers either
You're absolutely right. The problem is as a whole that this market of selling completely digital products are so new its kind of like the wild west right now. People aren't sure how long this will even be possible so they are trying to get in and get their money while they can. Unfortunately this is causing some bad design decisions in the games being made and choices being made that are unhealthy for the longevity of the digital game. I just hope that in a few years, probably more like a decade or two, the companies realize that us gammer's are here to stay but we will only give people who treat us right our money and time.
It’s weird I think if me more likely to spend if I always know that I can dust my cards later. Because I can’t, I just do my best to grind for gold; then just do my best to draft well enough to get more drafts and more cards
PK, thank you for taking the time to speak plainly on these issues. Until/unless pro players, content creators, and other visible people in Magic to agree about these problems and insist that things change. WotC will likely keep walking this path to its burn-out conclusion.
I'm not saying we abandon ship. There might be enough time to turn its course.
Yeah...after spending more time on Magic: Arena than I did with my ex last year...I've decided to quit.
1. Great video, great point.
2. It's "it's" in this case.
Duuuude that point about the paper/digital reprint desire is so insane. I had never thought about that before. It is a fundamental incongruity in set design.
MTG Arena is the worst CCG economy I've ever experienced, even worse than Hearthstone, and I stopped playing the game altogether because of it.
Paper MTG's economy is also a joke, with individual pieces of cardboard valued at $100+ each (Or sometimes $10000+ each, thanks Reserve List), BUT it's helped SO MUCH by trading and selling. I managed to accrue a decent collection simply by playing draft and trading away any cards I didn't want. I was able to trade into a standard deck, play standard for a while, and then trade/sell some of those cards away when they rotated. There are a lot of strategies in the paper MTG economy to help retain the value on your cards. So I've occasionally moved in and out of paper standard when it looks like the meta is fun.
On Arena, I draft and crack valuable rares for my collection and... what then? What deck do I aim to build with two dozen random rares? I can't look at my collection, decide on what deck for standard I want to trade into and try to move there by trading away the cards I don't need. Literally the only way to move towards a specific deck is to spend enough money on packs to accumulate a bunch of wild cards to spend PERMANENTLY on the cards I need for the deck I want. And that transaction is PERMANENT. I can't try out a deck and, if I don't like it, trade it away for something else. I can't try to get some value back from rotation from the cards that managed to retain their value in older formats. If I spend money getting wildcards to make a deck and it sucks, gets banned, or it rotates, the only way to get another deck to play with is to just throw hundreds of more dollars at the screen.
And that's just *standard*. Heaven forbid I want to play any older formats on Arena.
20 seconds was all I needed for this video, that was a really long outro though.
I think the two best points you made are the inability to dust old cards for some kind of progress and the whole getting a fifth copy of a card being literally useless are two huge misses that would improve things a lot if fixed.
Let's summon this up...
Paper MTG: Reprints - good
MTG Arena: Reprints - bad
Hey Vince, just a note on rare protection given your suggestion at 13:00, as it already (kind of) works like that:
You can't open a rare *from packs* if you have 4 copies of it with the same art already from another release until you have every other rare from that set. So if you had 4 fabled passage from Throne of Eldraine, you couldn't open any from M21 until you collect every other M21 rare.
This does NOT however apply to Individual Card Rewards, which can give you those cards. In the case of jumpstart, it works one way but not the other as jumpstart packs are preset. So in the case of Rishkar at 11:40, if you have 4 Jumpstart copies you shouldn't be able to open any from Kaladesh. I currently have 4 copies of Heroic intervention, 3 from M21 and 1 from Kaladesh, so I should not open any more copies *in packs* but still could through ICR.
It's still shit, and sorcerer's spyglass isn't protected because they have different arts, but it's slightly less shit than you think it is even if it's ridiculously convoluted. What it *does* mean is that if you are rare complete in a set normally you'll get 20 gems from each pack, but if you're "rare complete" because you have the rares from other sets, you'll still open them and have no use for them
you are right in everything you say but the fact that you still open them just after you finish the rest of the set has been summed up by the proff quite nicely when he described it as 'relocated greed' wizzards still get to sell faulty packs they just wait.
Hello, professional developper here. Changes in any product and especially a live one will always take some time to be deployed. This said, implementing and testing a better booster randomizer should be relativly trivial and Magic Arena should be able to deploy it within a release cycle.
This is a joke by a software engineering class:
"Software companies are the only ones other than the drug dealers that call their clients users"
Let that one sink in. And this applies to TH-cam and social media and a lot other apps we use everyday. Welcome to our boring dystopia.
somone saw the netflix documentary... 😏
@@johnkon292 that was in a documentary? Not even our professors can come with original stuff anymore, Jesus 🤣🤣🤣
@@hellNo116 ya a documentary about how social media makes u addicted to it... ironically netflix uses same structures but never was mentioned once in the documentary 😆
@@johnkon292 man i extremely close to kill all this apps from my life. maybe keep netflix, since i seem to be able to have full control over watching series, since i cannot take the emotional weight of watching a new one all the time.
a few tips for the arena economy:
1. dont buy packs
2. drafting is king
3. if you want to play for free, you have to grind
Btw i still think, that a dusting mechanic would improve the game's economy dramatically . And i think that the best way to play arena is to play free to play, because opening packs is a literally waste of money (except for the wildcard progression).
Agree! So much agreeing. Just throwing this out, "it is NOT that bad", is not true for newer players. Developing a collection as a newer player is hard and expensive enough to be a major barrier to entry. Thanks you.
Great video! How shitty the arena economy is really hit me when I bought packs for 20 bucks and I just wanted a mythic rare wildcard to complete a deck and I didn't got a single one. It was so disheartening and frustrating it took me two weeks and I was a happy Runeterra player. I'm still playing paper magic and collect but Arena is nothing but frustration
I started on Arena when it dropped, played for 8 months, and quit for all the reasons you brought up. It was impossible to keep up, cracking a ton of packs to earn a wild card to build one deck was nonsense, and I could never take time off from playing as I would lose resources to make me be able to play. What ended up happening was playing standard with terrible decks because I couldn't get the wildcards needed for an actual deck I had in mind, which led to burn out and quitting to never pick it up again. I play a ton of paper Magic on my own time when I can find a game and have been for 10 years. I would highly prefer playing on Arena, but there's no way to keep up or afford the game in its current state. I won't be back to Arena until economy changes and I hope it does because Arena is amazing outside of the economy.
Thanks for your thoughts, friend.
As an angry fish I wholeheartedly agree
Even though this topic has been discussed before, I'm actually surprised people don't speak out more against MTGA. It's awful -- I acknowledge that WOTC needs to make money, but especially since so many bans have been dished out recently, it becomes an absolute nightmare to try to build decks, not to mention that there's no resale value.
I played Arena for six months, 1-2 hours a day every single day, just trying to grind out the daily rewards. I even spent a bit of money, but despite that I still didn’t have the cards I needed to make more than two meta decks in that entire time. I tried to collect all the commons from a single set, but even that was impossible because of all the “bonus” commons that are included in the client but never show up in packs.
Basically it felt like I spent six months beating my head against the wall of insanely slow control & permission decks for very little reward. It wasn’t even hard to quit, I didn’t have enough of a collection to feel like I was losing anything, and it felt incredibly freeing to not feel like I had to play every day or lose progress.
"They are design choices implemented for a purpose. And that purpose is probably peak profitability, with no regard for the end user". - PK
This is exactly the stance that WotC is taking on the "economy". They dont care what decisions would make it better for players, because this is what maximizes Hasbros bottom line. The last 2 years of shitty WotC decisions turned me off from playing the game at all.
Now I build and paint tiny demon models to battle angry space men with. Its loads more fun, and arguably cheaper and more fulfilling from a creativity standpoint. ❤ you Vince, keep up the good work buddy.
Great video Vince! I know it's a shitty topic to cover but I'm glad you did. I have burnt out on arena, I still play some historic but not enough to stay relevant in standard. Brawl is actually my favorite format on arena as a f2p player, I can complete quests and build different decks at least.
Really enjoyed your tatyova deck tech, please do more of that content as well.
Excellent video Sir. I appreciate you sharing.
And No, you're not being harsh.
Arena is a casino you cannot cash out of.
Pleasant Kenobi is slowly turning into Jim Sterling :)
I found this video really interesting. I have to say I've been priced out of competitive magic as soon as I got into the hobby. I've also found, compared to magic online, arena with it's ladder system has meant I play much more. I basically use casual decks to bump around gold and silver which I enjoy and I've not paid to crack packs for. Plus I play limited a lot which is where I spend my money and for me this where I have the most fun. On arena I don't have to rare draft for value. I think the sunk cost concept, like a lot of economic theory, doesn't account for the enjoyment factor of an activity. It records the transaction but not necessarily the journey between those transactions. Though I can imagine for content creators the cost of trying to get cards in both arena and magic online is a pretty steep overhead.
Good chat Vince. I try and play as ‘free’ as I can, although I do buy gems now and then. As for Kaladesh, I was super excited but decided not to go in as hard as I did with Amonkhet. Only time will tell if that’s going to ‘hurt’ my enjoyment of Arena... Keep up the good work bro, you’re fingers on the pulse 😎👊
they could also treat the artwork/set symbol as a graphic type.
So when you get a new card you unlock the card, and then you are unlocking the option of that sets art and set symbol too. So once you have 4 of a card from any set, you can only open 1 from other sets afterwords unlocking its artwork + maybe a few coins or something.
I have to say you hit it spot on. If wizards wants to have a playerbase when we can all play paper again they need to make some changes. Over the last year I know a dozen or more people who have just given up on Magic and it's sad to see the game i love losing players cause the producers of the game only care about their profits.
I stopped playing Magic because of the economy. The money it had taken from me to play Magic was so insane. I love the game, but I hate this predatory money-grab way more.
Great video. I think another factor is that I don't think that, when they launched arena and designed it's monetization model, they ever planned for it to support any constructed format aside from Standard. While definitely still not ideal, if you only consider collecting for and playing standard, it's kind of functional, though it demands a lot of a free to play player if you want to ensure you can build whatever deck you want to play as the meta shifts. It's still bad, but not dealbreaking necessarily.
However, when you have to start factoring in historic and eventually going back to pioneer and maybe modern some day, it just becomes a completely unworkable system. It already is, and they need to fix it before it does further harm to their health of the game. I'm a standard only player because I frankly can't afford the buy in for paper or even mtgo, and the only reason I'm even playing right now is because standard is finally pretty good again after the last bans. If standard hits another patch like it had the last couple years, and they have done nothing to fix arena's business model, they will probably have lost me. I love the game, but the business model is just horrible.
Software Developer here. In a healthy code base, rare duplicate protection is something like 1 to 10 lines of code depending on language and implementation.
arena feels like a daily graind, no interaction, no fun... fuck spending money on this crap
Part of what we put money into physical cards is because later we can resell them. Until they implement a way to trade I am not putting any more money into the product.
It looks great, but it is missing the core fundamental part of the CCG aspect of magic.
I rarely say this but I agree with you 100%. I usually watch your videos for the comedy but this is rather insightful and everything you say is correct, literally everything. It really upsets me that people fall for the inclusivity bullshit when it's clearly just marketing and PR. If they cared about the players then the economy wouldn't be this bad in arena and do note that it was even worse at one point. This is EA levels of disrespect for its playerbase.
I would kill for any sort of dusting system to be implemented. Like, let me convert cards I'm not using into Wildcards or gold in some way. It would at least help mitigate the cost of keeping up with new releases.
Me too thanks great idea
and even that is awful in hearthstone
but mtga is insane for a f2p player
The economy on MTGA works decently for smaller formats such as standard that also have a scedueles release cylce. Unless you always want to build every deck in standard, you can usually spend a little bit of money at the beginning of a format to get a deck and then save up for 3 months until the next set comes out. Most people can do this at mostly free to play. Historic and eventually Pioneer is differnent in that they release new cards way too often. There are about twice as many set realeases for Historic than for standard, including remastered sets, jumpstart, anthology sets and other specialties. A free-to-play player can never keep up with a new product being released every month. If their goal really is to get Pioneer onto Arena eventually, they will have to change their system, otherwise most people won't play it because they can't afford to buy into it.
My relationship with Arena is so hard for me to put into words. First and foremost I love magic. I have loved it for so many years it is just a part of who I am as a gamer. I play Arena more than 99% of people according to those little emails you get every so often. I used to grind events like crazy and have spend a few hundred dollars from beta to now. However, I have always been annoyed at the economy or lack of economy in Arena. it is pretty insane that our cards aren't investments and are instead just a long term waste. It was weird when historic didn't exist (despite the promise that it was going to exist and then the months and months where it didn't exist). It is pretty annoying that the economy continues to be dogshit and worse that no one at wotc seems to be talking about this topic. Hopefully after you and Seth and other creators talk about it more it will get some response.
I guess that is a topic on its own though. They don't respond to any of my tweets, emails, or website posts. It just is an information blackhole. They are terrible at communicating in general as well, information about the game never comes from a central place, nor is it mirrored across all of their platforms. You might learn something new from a random twitch stream they put on, or a tweet, or a post on the mothership, or a post on their dev website, or very rarely something that pops up on the carousel in the game. So that is a huge problem, that would be nice to see a fix. Just basic communication. I know that they are running a successful corporation and that internal communication is absolutely something they stress among their employees, let's see some external communication. (Maybe I'm salty because I worked on Twelpforce when businesses talking to customers on the internet was new, but figure it out).
I think the thing that chaps my ass more than anything else however, is the user experience. The UX in Arena overall is just straight up garbage enough of the time that it makes me want to quit. However, I'm a god damned addict and continue to play because I lack the ability to dump all of my vices all at once. I gave up drinking this year, so maybe next year I give up arena, who knows? Anyway, I am regularly pissed about the lack of rule 722 shortcuts being implemented and think this topic is one that is even worse than the shit economy. Because to be fair, we could just slow down on the spending money and acquire cards the slow way. Sure we wouldn't be as competitive, but not all of us are content creators and most of us aren't playing in the top 1000 or whatever of mythic. So we could do with a bit more jank in our lives. But no matter if the economy gets fixed or not, resolving a stack of 300+ scute swarms is pretty fucking stupid right now. How about going for an Emry Pardox Engine loop with a mana rock and a tormod's crypt and an aether spellbomb... Go ahead and try that one if you haven't. Or really any infinite combo. And yes, right now these are fringe combos, but as we draw nearer to pioneer, I'll bet that becomes a much more pressing issue for more players. This isn't new either, of course. MTGO has had this problem for ever (though it handles it better) which is why it is all the more annoying. You are telling me that in nearly 20 years, they couldn't find a developer that could code a shortcut system based on the already codified rules? Bullshit, this was a clear oversight and needs to be fixed before they move forward. But look back on this shit in one to two years, or whatever it takes for them to get pioneer rolling. Just wait until there is a viable infinite combo that sees play or would see play if it weren't a liability. And what do I mean by that? Well due to the chess clock in bo3, trying to play some of these infinite combo strategies in arena will lead to losing the game due to an opponent making you kill them (which is their right), because shortcuts don't exist. Whatever this is the hill I want to die on, sorry that it isn't just about the economy (which also needs to be fixed).
I like how this is coinciding with the hearthstone backlash and how both are about the same.
The key to getting a collection in arena is getting good at draft. You can pretty consistently profit or break even in draft and you get packs and wildcards everytime.
Great vid. I’ve quit arena bc I couldn’t afford it any more. Now they’ve lost my business even though they got a lot of it in one short burst. Instead if it was as you described they would still get my money just not as much at once but more over time.
There is aktually duplicate protection from packs for rares and above for cards you have 4 of even accross multiple sets (you wont open a 5th rishkar from a pack, unless you already have every rare in the set), however this does not apply to cards rewarded directly and of course drafting (though for drafting the draft itself would have to be unchanged). As a free to play player i am still enjoying arena but more despite of its issues. It does seem like whoever manages arena cant be convinced to spend money on anything which cant immediatly return money.
I feel you on the getting back in to a game. Just picked up warhammer40k and God I'm so happy that when I did play I got all the models I really wanted, the price got crazy. Like I have 6 landraiders and the price on them is insane to what it was then. Or my all metal oop sisters of Battle and grey knights.
Now having a problem of trying to get 1pf the 2 Redemptor dreadnought I need. Called all gaming stores on a 60 mile radius and no one has them in stock.
Well glad to see at least 3 content creators are giving a voice. Boycott time