Problem is that there are still enough idiots out there who are willing to slave away because it's Magic.Originally Posted by Meekrab
Reminds me of the tweet of a guy at Wizards (I think a manager or whatever) who has a family with kids and willingly took a 50% cut from his prior to job (which translated roughly into -70k $ yearly IIRC) for the added benefits of free drafts.
1) STEM is really just TE.
2) I have a Chemistry PhD but have chosen to make what a programmer would call a "pauper's salary". then again i make beer at a craft brewery (no shareholders) for a living so its recession and financial-meltdown proof. And i have one of the sweetest jobs going.
You young'uns who learned C++ or C# or whatever need to hold up a sec and look at the rest of the world.
@warfordium on twitter.
This seems to be a common thread with people who leave Wizards - they hire people who are Magic fans first and programmers / game designers / whatever second. That means you pass up a lot of top tier talent just because they happened to never get into MTG.
Money issues aside, it'd be interesting to see the difference in an MTGO or WER produced by someone who is purely a software dev and not into the game at all. Maybe then there would be some UX considerations!
Everybody bitches about MTGO but continues playing.
It could be worse. You could work for Wizards...
From my phone. I do my best, dammit!
Nah, some of us have sold out. Every once in a while I get the itch to play but just open up Hearthstone (which is not nearly as good a game, but much better a computer game) instead of dumping the $2k back in to play for a little while and get bitched at for RNG by my opponent. I would love to play MTGO if the idea was different than it being "the same as real life cards" where you have to buy them each individually instead of just getting to play with whatever you want like on Cockatrice, but that's never going to change.
WotC makes money off MTGO in the following ways:
1. The Magic Online Store.
2. See #1, and only #1.
Technically, yes you do support WotC indirectly by buying singles from one of the bot networks. But that's only if they take your money and turn around and buy more product from #1.
Consuming Tickets does not generate money for WotC.
Consuming Play Points does not generate money for WotC.
Logging in and playing "free play" does not generate money for WotC.
The system is built to annihilate consumable tickets. The marketplace works to levelize the value of Event Tickets. If their value is too high, people go to the Magic Online Store and buy more tickets for cheaper, so indirectly the system will funnel in more tickets. Ultimately, those tickets are bought in the Magic Online Store.
Playing events indirectly benfit$ Wizards, but at the same time awards prizes at a less than unity rate of ticket consumption, say 90% tickets to payout. This doesn't make Wizards nearly as much money as just buying tickets however.
West side
Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
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Just curious about this part - when was the last time this actually happened? I ask because:
Tickets have a nominal value of $1.00
Ticket bots sell tickets for <$1.00 (The site I buy from is currently selling at $0.97)
At least for me, tickets cost more than $1.00 from the WotC store. ($1.08 due to tax)
Therefore the ticket bot is selling at a nominal discount of 3% but an actual discount of 10%
How are new tickets actually entering the system? Are there really that many people not in-the-know spending money on tickets via the WotC store?
I once ordered 100 tickets through the WotC store. I got to checkout and saw the tax and removed them from my cart. I bought the $x tickets I needed to play in an event right then but Googled how to acquire the other tickets.
New survey regarding Play Points and leagues
One thing I found interesting was the question if people are interested in buying Play Points from the store. Wouldn't that be effectively be the same as Tix, except way worse?
That only makes sense if you discount the Play Points away from the assumed 10 PP = 1 Tix. But this just devalues PP in the long run, even more than they are now.
The unwashed masses lose faith in the currency > Introduce new currency > Slowly phase out old currency
Well now I know the answer to "What does MTGO have in common with third world countries?"
Several third world countries have kinda given up already and are practically just using the US Dollar these days. MODO is still stuck in the "we'll have our own currency - with blackjack and hookers" scenario. I wonder when they will start crafting imaginary uniforms for their leaders, the way Gaddafi did. That would be hilarious.
The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
1. Discuss the unbanning ofLand TaxEarthcraft.
2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
4. Stifle Standstill.
5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).
Unless PP are cheaper to buy, there's basically zero advantage in buying them since they're untradable, except for the odd cases where you're stuck with barely not enough PP to join an event.
If they replaced Tix with buyable PP, then the MTGO economy would go to hell since there's no reliable, tradable currency available anymore.
This kind of thing only gets worse over time. We all already know WotC. And anyone who has been paying attention or plays online knows what to expect from MTGO. Their overall numbers must be down. More terrible ideas and plans coming.
Black Jack is likely the reason they don't use USD (or any other currency) - it looks way too much like online gambling to buy in + play game + possibly win money
Well the whole, er, point of introducing play points was to make in-print boosters (and therefore, draft events) more expensive (in terms of tix) by replacing some of the payout of events with what are essentially entry coupons for future events. They succeeded massively at that, BFZ packs are currently .2 tix off retail price despite having absolute **** all valuable cards to open. Dragons of Tarkir is actually trading at a premium to retail in the secondary market. Back when Theros draft was still around you could get a whole draft, entry included, for like 7-8 tix because the packs were so cheap.
Iirc there was also a question to the effect of "would you like it if PP were usable to purchase digital objects?".
Gods, that would be awful.
Not because of any problems with buying digital objects but because they'd essentially be going back to the old system, except this time you have to convert your pp into boosters before you sell them to bots. We'll be right where we are now but with an extra step.
Now if they included tickets in the list of buyable DOs, that would be really interesting. Then we'd basically be buying casino chips and moving them around (but with the annoying step of converting to tickets after each tournament).
Except it would still fulfill their goal that you can take your won PP and use it to enter another tournament instead of taking the extra step of selling boosters to bots for Tix.
*ahem*
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