MTGO discussion

[WorstBandNameEver]

I don't understand Legacy/Vintage players who play on MTGO. I really don't.

- Playing for fun: You can have some fun playing online, but to me, the most fun I've ever had playing Magic was just straight-up, in-person. Nothing digital can compare to the fun of playing in real tournaments against people you can actually talk to and observe while playing. And the camaraderie of playing with a big group of Magic players is something that you can't ever experience online. So if you're playing for "fun", you're basically just playing an inferior version of the paper game. In fact, I would have more fun playing Type 2 at a local FNM than playing Legacy on MTGO if we're talking purely about "fun". There is really no reason not to just play the actual cardboard game instead of MTGO for this particular reason. If you want to have fun, instead of playing MTGO you'd probably be better suited just searching your local town for shops that support the game, and building a deck for whatever format is most popular there, whether that is Legacy or not.

- Playing to test for paper events: ...

I would say I fall into the "Playing for Fun" category and I enjoy MTGO well enough. I mostly play in the tournament practice rooms and I rarely do dailies. I don't have fun playing at FNMs or the local legacy events anymore. I'm sure most of the folks are nice people but as I get older, I'm relating to the local players less and less. I don't mean to imply that they are bad people, it's probably a lot more me and them. In addition, I don't like keeping up with all the new cards in Type 2 and having to buy new decks if it's noneternal.

I think the best part for me about MTGO is that I can grab a few games before bed or on a Sunday morning. It's hard to dedicate an entire Saturday afternoon or Friday evening to going out to play magic.

I do have a local play group and I do enjoy that but losing an entire evening during the week between work, family, and other responsibilities make MTGO a lot more convenient.

Also, if it was not for it, I would not get a lot of play time in before going to events a few times a year. I know I can play on cocktrice, but the fact that MTGO manages the rules, has helped me understand how the game functions better.

But, with all that said and done, WOTC choices that push people away from online play makes me unhappy, even though I don't plan to sell out.

[MGB]

It seems like a lot of you are missing the point. MTGO had the same problem as cockatrice in that you'll always get a bunch of random players testing new ideas. Sometimes it's fun to test against a mono red control deck in legacy, but often I just want to get away from that and get some good testing in. When you play for 2 event tickets ($2 equivalent) it weeds out the new playtesting idea decks and 100% of the time in my experience you play against an actual good deck. Whether the player is bad doesn't really matter, and I found MTGO players in vintage at least to be more experienced than in real life games.

If you want to playtest on Cockatrice/XMage and don't want to play against Tier 2 decks, it's pretty simple - put that note in your game (something like "Tier 1 only please"), and then if someone joins with a deck that you don't want to playtest against, simply tell them you'd rather playtest only against the handful of tier 1 decks, and then if they switch decks, play them, and if they don't, just boot them from your game.

I don't see why you need to pay entry fees for Dailies just to playtest against Tier decks. Additionally, if you have a friend online who you know is a solid player with knowledge of multiple decks, the fact that every card is accessible on Cockatrice/XMage means that you can arrange a playtesting session of several matches with that friend and playtest ANY deck you want against any other deck. You aren't limited by the fake arbitrary "collections" that MTGO imposes on its users.

The other point is that MTGO enforces the obscure rules you wouldn't necessarily remember and cockatrice doesn't. For a Source tournament, that shouldn't be an issue, but I don't want to spend my nice quiet night at home trying to explain stack trigger order to someone when it could all just be done for me. MTGO was pretty great at that too.

98% of decent Legacy players know 98% of the rules that you would encounter in your average Legacy game, from my experience. But if it's still a problem, just don't play the ones with very spotty rules knowledge, or play XMage, which keeps track of all rules for you just like MTGO.

[porcupinetreeman]

I would say I fall into the "Playing for Fun" category and I enjoy MTGO well enough. I mostly play in the tournament practice rooms and I rarely do dailies. I don't have fun playing at FNMs or the local legacy events anymore. I'm sure most of the folks are nice people but as I get older, I'm relating to the local players less and less. I don't mean to imply that they are bad people, it's probably a lot more me and them. In addition, I don't like keeping up with all the new cards in Type 2 and having to buy new decks if it's noneternal.

I think the best part for me about MTGO is that I can grab a few games before bed or on a Sunday morning. It's hard to dedicate an entire Saturday afternoon or Friday evening to going out to play magic.

I do have a local play group and I do enjoy that but losing an entire evening during the week between work, family, and other responsibilities make MTGO a lot more convenient.

Also, if it was not for it, I would not get a lot of play time in before going to events a few times a year. I know I can play on cocktrice, but the fact that MTGO manages the rules, has helped me understand how the game functions better.

But, with all that said and done, WOTC choices that push people away from online play makes me unhappy, even though I don't plan to sell out.

I'm in the same boat as this guy. I also live too far to travel to a legacy tournament and I don't like to dedicate that much time to tournaments. I think MTGO will only grow in popularity just like the physical game has. I'm not selling my pixel collection either.

I did try Magic Workstation for a long time, but was sick of all the dumb people and bad decks. MTGO has much better players and you can't cheat.

[Barook]

98% of decent Legacy players know 98% of the rules that you would encounter in your average Legacy game, from my experience. But if it's still a problem, just don't play the ones with very spotty rules knowledge, or play XMage, which keeps track of all rules for you just like MTGO.

How does XMage compare to Cockatrice? Just googling it for the reddit thread, there seem to be still quite a few bugs.

[Barook]

Sorry for the double post, but this is important:

How am I going to handle the sale of my collection in the upcoming tax declaration next year? Under additional income? If so, is a proof of the wire transfer enough or do I need a bill? If so, what infos need to be on the bill to prevent the German ministry of finance from complaining?

[jrsthethird]

Sorry for the double post, but this is important:

How am I going to handle the sale of my collection in the upcoming tax declaration next year? Under additional income? If so, is a proof of the wire transfer enough or do I need a bill? If so, what infos need to be on the bill to prevent the German ministry of finance from complaining?

I don't know, but you might want to change your sig now. ;)

[Ogh!]

Sorry for the double post, but this is important:

How am I going to handle the sale of my collection in the upcoming tax declaration next year? Under additional income? If so, is a proof of the wire transfer enough or do I need a bill? If so, what infos need to be on the bill to prevent the German ministry of finance from complaining?

Since your hobby MtG is clearly "Liebhaberei", the sale of your collection is not to be declared in your "Einkommensteuererklärung".

(I'm not a certified tax accountant and am thus commenting on the basis of uncertified knowledge.)

[Phelix]

Ogh is correct.

This also applies to cars and other property.


in other news, MTGO seems to be dying in terms of legacy and vintage. Heaps of people dumping collections now. Some vendor even refused to buy my stuff because they already bought too much lately.

[Barook]

Thanks guys, good to know.

People selling their Eternal stuff isn't too suprising. DEs have by far the worst EV now, 8-mans don't exist for said formats anymore and 2-mans suck. Even if they reintroduce 8-mans, the changes suck too much to be worth it.

@jrsthethird: I'll change my sig when I see it fit, probably with Cockatrice stuff if it becomes a thing.

Edit:
On other news, the announcement stream of the new Hearthstone expansion had over 200+k viewers.

What had MTGO to offer? Two game-breaking bugs, with one being any card that reveals stuff crashing your opponent, costing them shitloads of time (Counterbalance anyone?).

[menace13]

Ogh is correct.

This also applies to cars and other property.


in other news, MTGO seems to be dying in terms of legacy and vintage. Heaps of people dumping collections now. Some vendor even refused to buy my stuff because they already bought too much lately.

Or they offer substantially less than what you would have received just a week ago or so. A friend got his collection appraised last year at around 20k. He wanted a quote today and got offered around 7k.

[Barook]

Or they offer substantially less than what you would have received just a week ago or so. A friend got his collection appraised last year at around 20k. He wanted a quote today and got offered around 7k.

MM15 nuked the value of alot of staples. It would take a while for them to recover. So it isn't just the fire sale of collections. Power was also still worth alot more than it is now due to repeated VMA drafts.

Compared to earlier this week, I would get 400$ less now than before. I made a sound decision to sell at that point.

[menace13]

MM15 nuked the value of alot of staples. It would take a while for them to recover. So it isn't just the fire sale of collections. Power was also still worth alot more than it is now due to repeated VMA drafts.

Compared to earlier this week, I would get 400$ less now than before. I made a sound decision to sell at that point.

True. Doesn't really apply to friend's collection much though. He paid 2k for foil power, and only a few cards in MM15 that had value were lost. Namely Bob, Goyf, Clique, Mox Opal? Nothing else in there that really consisted of his collection. His collection is mostly all of the Legacy and Vintage foils.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Power has dropped a lot in the last year. Look at something like https://mtgowikiprice.com/card/vma/7/mox-pearl a random mox. Its value has dropped to 1/3 what it was for a month or so right when VMA was still big. The same trend has happened for almost all vintage power.

[supremePINEAPPLE]

Yeah the less important p9 pieces have gone down a lot. I got a full set during the original upswing and sold them right around the peak and re-bought into power a few months ago for quite a bit cheaper.

I think it's definitely past the window to sell for now. It feels a lot like when dailies were turned off where we just have to wait it out until things stabilize if you don't want to take a big loss. At least there is the illusion of comfort in that things have always calmed down in the past no matter how colossally they seem to have fucked up...

[Nocley]

Looks like they stealth nerfed the update to make Legacy/Vintage Dailies now 8 man minimum, 3 rounds, 6 tix:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/MTGO/art...ges-2015-07-20

Scroll to the bottom.

Better? Worse? Than Monday's original changes?

[Barook]

http://magic.wizards.com/en/MTGO/art...vintage-pauper

They actually changed the Eternal/Paper dailies back to 6 tix, now with only 8 player minimum requirements. The downside? Only 3 rounds (for better or worse) and still terrible prizes.

[supremePINEAPPLE]

Good sign that they are paying attention to the outcry at least. I really like 3 round dailies but only because I have trouble finding time for a 4 rounder.

I'm really hoping there is something they aren't talking about planned that makes player points useful to people who don't want to play limited to try and convert them into tickets/cards.

[mishima_kazuya]

The eV from my very rough assumptions for these new Vintage/Legacy DE is the same as an on-demand Constructed 8-man queue.

Nevertheless, WoTC still gets a higher rake from these prize changes for all events now. Unless someone from Hasbro meddles with the Digital Department, MODO needs to start shrinking before we see changes that favor players.

[jrsthethird]

MTG Goldfish had a decent analysis of the changes:

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/...n-magic-online

After having just bought into MTGO and building two decks, there's no way I'm selling. I'm disappointed my cards lost value, but on the bright side, I can pick up new stuff for significantly cheaper now. Just gotta figure out what deck to try next.

Also, I'm glad they listened to the outcry and changed the Eternal Dailies.

[Julian23]

The MTGGoldfish article is by far the best article I have read on the whole #PlayPointsGate thing.