Yikes, that was backwards. Meant Legacy first, then neither. Sorry.
My point was more about Arena, though, and to me it is still very much in show-me mode. As Barook said, the one thing that makes Magic unique is a robust in-person play experience, and almost everything they have done with the brand besides that has not "stuck." Even for all its faults, MTGO has been around for so long that it is practically entrenched in its market. But its initial competitors weren't the kinds of games that Arena is trying to compete with. Arena's competitors have an early-mover advantage; it would be like trying to go up against MTG with a paper card game now. The bet is that MTG's name recognition attached with a more Hearthstone-like play experience will create a hit. But, Hearthstone already exists.
I understand the anxiety and unease around Arena as it relates to entrenched players, but worrying about its impact right now isn't necessary, in my opinion. The biggest fear should be them unplugging MTGO but I think they would be incredibly stupid to do that, as it would be nothing but bad press and would alienate a large base of customers who they need to move on to the next thing in order for it to be anything remotely resembling a success.
You could make the case that four bannings in Standard in 13 months may lead Wizards to the conclusion that supporting a paper game with the effects set in ink is just not a tenable business strategy anymore, and it's just easier to go all digital and errata cards remotely. The money they would lose from no longer selling cards would be made up in lower operating costs, etc. But that's a fundamental re-working of their business model and there are a TON of other people who are affected by that -- not the least the network of game stores. There's going to be a long transition time between MTGO/the paper game and Arena, if there even is a transition, and hopefully they are not too stupid and myopic as to just bet on all new customers. Abruptly pulling support for MTGO and paper, and/or going away from their most popular format by far in Modern, would be a massive strategic error.
Most of our group started playing at the beginning of the 6th grade (Mirage/Tempest era - good times). I don't see any of those kids start playing Magic anymore. Competition has become alot harder.
I just imagined the horror of a Jacetice League cartoon.
One of the problems with Arena is that it prevents players from investing into MTGO further, given how non-chalantly the pulled the plug from Duels out of nowhere.
For Arena to succeed, it needs
a) a viable business with reasonable prices instead of maximum player gauging
b) a good, bug-light experience and
c) good Limited formats (very hit-and-miss) and a Standard that doesn't suck (currently not the case, see bannings).
They could just implement Ravnica-Lorwyn era Standards as permanent formats and their job would be done.A Standard that doesn't suck
Originally Posted by Lemnear
They have Garfield leading the next block. Let's see what happens.
Edit:
Is a set, and it's a standalone. First Dom standalone since Homelands... Rough set to follow that one. All those heavy hitters.
The last two sets where he was a guest designer were the original Ravnica and Innistrad. I have faith in him. If WotC still manages to fuck this up despite Garfield in the house, then Magic is into deep shit.
On a different note:
Magic: The Gathering Arena Closed Beta Gameplay
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
Numbers are subject to change, but let me get this straight, from what data we got from the video above and some people crunching the numbers on Twitter:
It's highly likely that Tier 1 Standard decks are more expensive to acquire on Arena than MTGO and you can neither resell them nor convert them into resources?
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So I guess you have to earn Wildcard boosters (1 mythic, 1 rare, 2 unc, 4 common) by filling up "the Vault". You fill up the Vault by completing quests, opening boosters, or turning in 5th cards. You don't need to turn in only rares to get rare wildcards, you can turn in only commons and still unlock a Wildcard booster. I assume you automatically turn in duplicate 5th cards.
Opening boosters can also have extra wildcards I assume. I haven't gotten to the part of the explanation of why mythic and rare have the same drop rate in a wildcard booster (1 each).
You can redeem a wildcard for any single card of that rarity.
So yeah, ultimately if you still open a bunch of U/W rares, you can't trade those for Mono Red rares.
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Oh, and you earn coins from quests/winning games, and coins are used to buy boosters. I assume you can buy gems or something straight up to buy boosters.
https://twitter.com/SaffronOlive/sta...47300369207297
Hilariously enough, it seems that they've even copied the dust ratios from Hearthstone to fill the Vault - except it's quite possible that you're going to need multiples of the same mythics instead of one legendary each.
Is Garfield actually leading design, or is he just on the design team? Lead design would be a major surprise, as while he's been on several design teams since the first sets, I think the last time he was lead designer was Arabian Nights. (of which he was actually the only designer)
I suspect the Arena economy was intentionally undershot for the initial reveal. Overshooting and then taking away f2p stuff tends to be hard on pr. That said, these numbers are not even close to sustainable.
I highly doubt it was intentionally undershot. I think they just copied the numbers from Hearthstone wholesale. A lot of these ratios were probably decided well in advance and before complaints about HS being ridiculously expensive and incredibly stingy towards new and F2P players became big. In fact, I suspect the monetization aspect probably predated most other elements in the design of the game, and that a big part of the justification for it was, "Blizzard can do it," and, "Players pay a lot of money for paper decks," without any real understanding of the fact that Blizzard is massively far ahead of every other non-mobile games company out there in its ability to build Skinner boxes.
I suspect what will happen is that these ratios will go live and the game will bomb because a ton of people will try it for the IP and realize it's too hard to get traction and build the decks they want, and they'll move to the plethora of other games out there that are more generous, or move back to MTGO to get a Magic experience that's more true to the dynamics of the paper game.
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