MTG Arena General Discussion

[Wrath of Pie]

They really made a client worse than mtgo
Did you expect anything less?

I'm fully convinced that this (https://www.pointandclickbait.com/2018/11/thats-the-good-stuff/) is their philosophy at this point.

[jmlima]

Oh man, those particle effects when you cast that planeswalker, just.. wow, I mean, what else can be said? Sublime... and when it drops to 10 fps, I can really enjoy each moment like the living painting it was designed to be!

Well, one of the way of screwing people playing in mobile devices or in devices of low power is just to trigger the maximum number of animated crap you can, that usually clogs their device and gets the clock ticking when they should be doing something and cannot because their device is unresponsive. If you have one of those animated avatars or whatever they are called, you will sometimes see a losing opponent triggering the avatars animation for a while to try to do this.

[jmlima]

They really made a client worse than mtgo

I wouldn't say that, not because of the updates. In all fairness to them, this seems to be the price to pay for using unity as a base. Hearstone, when I used to play it, also had this issue.

[jmlima]

5 gig has to be some real content, right? Right?

You would guess so, yet... I think it's mostly down to all of the new store stuff:

https://mtgarena-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406895153556-Patch-Notes-2021-9-0

[Wrath of Pie]

You would guess so, yet... I think it's mostly down to all of the new store stuff:

https://mtgarena-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406895153556-Patch-Notes-2021-9-0

I got too distracted by this more recent patch note:


Fixed a typo in the Cascade hanger. We had "it's" instead of "its". I only hope we have the opportunity to earn back your trust.

[Zoid]

I got too distracted by this more recent patch note:


MTG Arena had a recent update. We encourage users to update the app manually from their respective app store before playing. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Real production value here.

It's a real clown shoes development.
They push for mobile with a game that is not made for mobile (or even digital for that matter) while clogging up the client with shit skins, animations, and what not.
I'm convinced that there is no real plan here but buzzwords and concepts suits picked up from other successful things and the devs are force to implement all of that.
Absolutely pathetic.

Edit:

This kinda fell under the table:


Five digital-only cards are being rebalanced:

Davriel's Withering and Davriel, Soul Broker's third ability now only affect "target creature an opponent controls."
Faceless Agent is now 2/2 (from 2/1).
Sarkhan, Wanderer to Shiv's second ability is now +1 (from +0).
Subversive Acolyte now costs 1B (from BB), is 2/3 (from 2/2), and had the toughness increases from becoming Human or Phyrexian reduced by 1.

[TsumiBand]

Yeah I knew they'd fuck around with nerfing/buffing digital-only cards. Idk if Magic players have as much tolerance for it as other gamers, we've endured some of this schlock before and I guess in a way we still have to deal with functional errata with stuff like Waylay but like, changing mana costs and actually rewriting effects that weren't misprints aren't the usual Magic errata. I'm curious how it'll land with other players.

[Wrath of Pie]

Probably could care less, given other games do that stuff all the time.

[jmlima]

Probably could care less, given other games do that stuff all the time.

Only (sort of) complaint I've seen was someone wanting wildcards because of the changes.

[TsumiBand]

Only (sort of) complaint I've seen was someone wanting wildcards because of the changes.

See, this seems valid to me as they're so fundamentally different from other cards in the game, and this is why there's going to be problems.

All other cards are essentially guaranteed to read as-is because of their physical counterparts, so they're either legal for play or they aren't. Digital-only cards, not having that restriction but still being compared to the rest of the Magic cards in the same game, are under a Ship of Theseus scrutiny whenever they get rebalanced. How much of a card you can change before it's "functionally banned" is a debate that Arena could have entirely avoided, but now it gets to fuck with on the regular, but only with a particular subset of cards, precisely because it decided to try and do this Hearthstone shit. lol?

Like for my part it means that I just don't even fuck with those cards, they don't go in my Historic Brawl decks and I just won't play them. I'm not keen on having tech in my deck that's subject to continual "refinement", it's hella frustrating and it's one of the things that led me to uninstall Hearthstone. On a long enough time line it just turns into a de facto ban list as things get nuked from orbit into less and less playable states.

[Zoid]

Only (sort of) complaint I've seen was someone wanting wildcards because of the changes.

There are a million times more valid reasons to demand more wild cards for other things like:

Treating the same card as multiple cards in your collection because it's a different set/picture and opening more than 4.
Not being able to up or downgrade wildcards while you need at least 40 rares these days to build any 75 playable pile.
.....

[TsumiBand]

There are a million times more valid reasons to demand more wild cards for other things like:

Treating the same card as multiple cards in your collection because it's a different set/picture and opening more than 4.
Not being able to up or downgrade wildcards while you need at least 40 rares these days to build any 75 playable pile.
.....

These are all true too, I really wish there were more ways of acquiring wildcards/being able to convert cards to wildcards. Like if you're gonna be that little kid that goes "nah blue is cheating" yet you always manage to get blue mythics you ought be able to dust them for rare wildcards or some junk idk

[Zoid]

These are all true too, I really wish there were more ways of acquiring wildcards/being able to convert cards to wildcards. Like if you're gonna be that little kid that goes "nah blue is cheating" yet you always manage to get blue mythics you ought be able to dust them for rare wildcards or some junk idk

But you can just buy more packs :)

There's also "the vault" which is also a huge scam.

Realistically, if it were any other game without the brand, arena would be dead.
The know people are hopelessly addicted to the game and abuse that.
Since there's enough idiots who buy every garbage they shelve out, it doesn't matter if they push a few ones away if they make it up in revenue.
Prepare to be even more robbed in the future.

[Wrath of Pie]

Is it bad that this (https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/American_Dream_events#More_Buns_for_the_People) is the first thing I thought of with this discussion? (For those unfamiliar, it's an extremely rare EU4 event that basically mocks the people who want all the DLC content for free... and EU4 has a lot of DLC.)

[TsumiBand]

But you can just buy more packs :)

There's also "the vault" which is also a huge scam.

Realistically, if it were any other game without the brand, arena would be dead.
The know people are hopelessly addicted to the game and abuse that.
Since there's enough idiots who buy every garbage they shelve out, it doesn't matter if they push a few ones away if they make it up in revenue.
Prepare to be even more robbed in the future.

Fortunately I've been steeped in f2p gaming and budget Legacy for long enough that I can set goals for building dumb Eternal/Historic decks that won't be subject to the fickle nature of Standard - and accepting that my W/L ratio will just be what it is- but yeah anybody that gives a shit about the Standard meta is asking for trouble.

It's still total stupidity that wildcards are supposed to be a catch-all stand-in both for dusting and the social aspect of trading, when in reality Arena has neither.

[jmlima]

...
It's still total stupidity that wildcards are supposed to be a catch-all stand-in both for dusting and the social aspect of trading, when in reality Arena has neither.

For ex, I have around 500 common / uncommon wildcards, why can't I convert them to other rarity or do anything useful with them?

[Zoid]

For ex, I have around 500 common / uncommon wildcards, why can't I convert them to other rarity or do anything useful with them?

You can craft all commons and UCs of the most recent set to speed up your vault progress ;)

But yeah it sucks major ass.
I have had more mythic wildcards than rare ones for the longest time.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

You can craft all commons and UCs of the most recent set to speed up your vault progress ;)

But yeah it sucks major ass.
I have had more mythic wildcards than rare ones for the longest time.
Same, lands are rare and most util creatures are rare so I craft maybe five mythics for a deck but every list I see has 20-30 rares

[Zoid]

Same, lands are rare and most util creatures are rare so I craft maybe five mythics for a deck but every list I see has 20-30 rares

That has been their sales policy for a long time now but arena really shows it.
If cards in paper are still cheap then you don't really care but in arena everything is essentially worth the same.
Playable commons and ucs seem more like an afterthought for limited or an accident then deliberate.
That's also why I stopped playing standard - it being terrible doesn't help - a stick to singleton and 1-2 historic decks.
Considering how rainbow certain decks are, 100 card singleton costs you on average less rares than some of the 75 in historic.

[Wrath of Pie]

Uncommons and commons being mostly focused for limited purposes is deliberate.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Yeah that's basically NWO philosophy which is what, 15+ years old now?
Arena just rubs it in because it makes all rares equal in price

[TsumiBand]

That Crimson Vow launch was pretty rough.

Maybe I'm soft on stuff like this after becoming a developer in recent years and going "oh fuck, yeah, you can't just say 'just release code with no bugs in it 4head', this shit is actually somewhat complicated", like I feel like I should have a stronger consumer-side opinion? It's annoying but I'm not gonna spike my phone over it.

[Zoid]

That Crimson Vow launch was pretty rough.

Maybe I'm soft on stuff like this after becoming a developer in recent years and going "oh fuck, yeah, you can't just say 'just release code with no bugs in it 4head', this shit is actually somewhat complicated", like I feel like I should have a stronger consumer-side opinion? It's annoying but I'm not gonna spike my phone over it.

There's a difference between "code without bugs" and "it at least compiles :cry:".
It's just industry standard now to release whatever is pushed at the end of the day without more than 5 min of testing.
The next few days are hotfixing the top threads on the subreddit.
Saves on QA staffing and people buy things anyway.

I can see the "front line" dev side with lots of tough deadlines and nasty bugs because of rushed code.
Management is really at fault here as well as the consumer for not punishing these practices.

[TsumiBand]

There's a difference between "code without bugs" and "it at least compiles :cry:".
It's just industry standard now to release whatever is pushed at the end of the day without more than 5 min of testing.
The next few days are hotfixing the top threads on the subreddit.
Saves on QA staffing and people buy things anyway.

I can see the "front line" dev side with lots of tough deadlines and nasty bugs because of rushed code.
Management is really at fault here as well as the consumer for not punishing these practices.

Yeah, I get the sense that industry standards are miles apart between the kind of dev I am, and what game development expects and requires. Whenever I hear Casey Muratori or Jonathan Blow talk shop about the way programming is supposed to be, I go "okay, I literally can't do 90% of what you do with the tools at my job and if I ever wrote the kind of code you guys like, my team would reject that pull request so fucking fast"

The lack of QA is pretty inexcusable regardless of the product.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

It was a Windows update that broke it though right?

[Zoid]

It was a Windows update that broke it though right?

Isn't that an even bigger failure?

[TsumiBand]

It was a Windows update that broke it though right?

On my Android phone? :/

I mean if their servers are running Windows, big yikes

[jmlima]

Down again, best comment on reddit: 'this is why everyone comes here to find out if anyone else is having the same error. the status page is useless other than finding out if the bug is probably related to an update'

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/qywjl3/is_mtga_down/

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Yeah it was down again this morning and their server status thing is manually updated so it still showed green

[TsumiBand]

It seems to be up and running again, but they still haven't patched the issue that keeps me from getting more than 3 wins in Limited formats

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

It seems to be up and running again, but they still haven't patched the issue that keeps me from getting more than 3 wins in Limited formats

I'm stock pulling tokens until they fix that

[TsumiBand]

I'm stock pulling tokens until they fix that

To be fair, the issue exists in Paper Magic as well

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

To be fair, the issue exists in Paper Magic as well

No one's played paper magic in years

[jmlima]

No one's played paper magic in years

Speaking of not playing, after about 2 years recently started MTGO and, boy, there are a lot less people playing. Less people in every single room and league. Even some of the premium events that were within hours of starting were about 10% of the maximum numbers... I wonder if that particular economy was not totally twisted by the fact that the renting bots buy everything that they can loan if the prices would not be down to peanuts.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Speaking of not playing, after about 2 years recently started MTGO and, boy, there are a lot less people playing. Less people in every single room and league. Even some of the premium events that were within hours of starting were about 10% of the maximum numbers... I wonder if that particular economy was not totally twisted by the fact that the renting bots buy everything that they can loan if the prices would not be down to peanuts.
That's actually pretty interesting, the effect of loan bots on card prices. If I was still in school I'd even pitch it as a research topic. Now you have be genuinely curious!

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Lol, alchemy

[jmlima]

Lol, alchemy

For those not knowing what this is about, essentially, they are making a digital only standard format with cards that can be 're-balanced' at a moment's notice. Note, historic is now officially a rotating format (and you'll get no wildcards when your deck core is 're-balanced' and your deck stops working):

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/r7j74x/mtg_arena_introducing_alchemy_a_new_digitalonly/

Edit to say, WotC also noted that this is being done in lieu of putting resources into bringing Pioneer to Arena...

[Zoid]

For those not knowing what this is about, essentially, they are making a digital only standard format with cards that can be 're-balanced' at a moment's notice. Note, historic is now officially a rotating format (and you'll get no wildcards when your deck core is 're-balanced' and your deck stops working):

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/r7j74x/mtg_arena_introducing_alchemy_a_new_digitalonly/

Edit to say, WotC also noted that this is being done in lieu of putting resources into bringing Pioneer to Arena...

So it seems like this is the fix to "we can't be bothered to print balanced cards".

I suppose it makes sense since arena doesn't depend on the purchase of individual cards so much and they want people to keep playing.

[jmlima]

...

I suppose it makes sense since arena doesn't depend on the purchase of individual cards so much and they want people to keep playing.

Actually, it does. Outside draft, the only reason to buy packs is to get wildcards to allow you to craft the cards you want, it's indirect, but it's still a form of card purchase.

[Zoid]

Actually, it does. Outside draft, the only reason to buy packs is to get wildcards to allow you to craft the cards you want, it's indirect, but it's still a form of card purchase.
Yeah but that doesn't rely on the demand for very specific cards, as all cards have the same "value".
For paper busted cards are used to drive sales.
Win for WotC in both cases.

[jmlima]

It's also interesting that (apparently) its news to WotC that historic players would not rebalanced of cards:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MtGHistoric/comments/r7u88l/maros_response_to_the_question_if_nerfed_cards/

[theillest]

"We heard you'd like to play digital magic, with the paper card set, on a modern client. Can I interest you in a predatory economy, digital-only cards, drastic & fundamental changes to the game, and a buggy client?"

[TsumiBand]

What a load of donkey jizz.

I *just fucking crafted* a Chariot for my Historic Brawl deck too.

As if I needed another brick to build this wall, but the fact that MaRo went "hunh, that's interesting? An Historic format with the real cards as-printed, you say? We hadn't thought of that, I'll relay it to my top men" just further shows he's a totally smoothbrained figurehead and Blogatog is a honeypot for Timmies that think there might be anyone left at WotC who would be motivated by speeches about the heart of the cards. Of course the point is to make the non-rotating formats more profitable, don't do that tech support "we'll pass your suggestion to our engineers" bullshit, just call it what it is. What a chode.

[Wrath of Pie]

Alchemy basically gives the appearance that they really want far more frequent Standard-legal set releases (because it gets stale quicker than their release cycle) but they can't justify it because they release enough paper product as it is, so instead they go with Arena-only card errata.

Arena's core audience is likely actually in favor of this move, interestingly enough.

[jmlima]

...

Arena's core audience is likely actually in favor of this move, interestingly enough.

If they had only made those edited cards for standard, yes, because they made them also for historic, then it heavily polarized the audience, the historic twitter is a real sh^&storm and most of the audience are really, really unhappy.

[Wrath of Pie]

If they had only made those edited cards for standard, yes, because they made them also for historic, then it heavily polarized the audience, the historic twitter is a real sh^&storm and most of the audience are really, really unhappy.
Historic players are not the core audience.

[TsumiBand]

Historic players are not the core audience.

Here's the thing, is I have no idea who their core audience is from either a gameplay or a money standpoint.

First of all, gameplay - where Arena beats the living shit out of the rest of the mobile TCGs I've ever tried is pure selection of formats. Last time I tried Heathstone there were, like, two constructed formats, one limited, and whatever the poorly balanced clown fiesta coin flip Tavern Brawl event was. Shadowverse had some different formats going for it but it had the downside of being fucking Shadowverse. Arena has like eight? ten? constructed formats to choose from and a couple of different limited formats at any given time, plus whatever event is going on. They obviously make an effort to at least have the illusion of choice on their app, so for them to suddenly go "well we reserve the right to dick with Historic if we want" is beyond disingenuous, I don't care what CYA is in their Terms of Service regarding digital access and user rights and whatever else. It's lousy.

Second, Financials - this game is a stupid game to whale on. A little money here and there I can understand, but a true whale has better shit to buy than cosmetics on Arena. When I say whale I don't mean to throw some pittance at whenever mom and dad decide you've done well in math class and bumped your allowance up to $25 a week or whatever, I mean like the kind of whales that actually make mobile gaming a worthwhile endeavor for gaming companies to engage in, the kind where the floor starts at $10k a year and keeps rising. The kind where you hope that of your 1.5% of users that actually spend, of the 2% of *those* users, you actually land a $100k megalodon that gives your app a reason to exist. I can't figure out why or how MtG Arena could ever attract that kind of spender. There isn't enough product to justify that kind of expense. You can buy a whole set of everything on Arena for far less than that. You couldn't hook that whale unless maybe you pushed the rest of Magic's backlog to Arena. The *only* place for all that money to go would be like... cosmetics, and maybe Limited, but I'm having a really hard time believing there's that much meat on those bones that you can attract users to spend that kind of money to fuck around in Limited. Maybe I'm underestimating what drafting means to certain people.

So like, if they can't understand the impact of the decision from the gameplay perspective, and the financials are already tenuous because when they "alchemize" a card you get both copies and can still choose to play old Standard anyway so you're not actually forcing rotating format players to change a goddamn thing - and whales *still* have no reason to spend more - I'm just not sure who it serves to neglect to implement a non-Alchemy Historic.

[Wrath of Pie]

Core audience is likely the newer players that don't understand or care how Magic has historically operated (as a side effect, don't care about paper Magic either), so they are confused by the concept of bans rather than what Alchemy is aiming for because most of the other games out there have a similar philosophy.

Welcome to the new world of Magic: the Video Gaming.

[TsumiBand]

Core audience is likely the newer players that don't understand or care how Magic has historically operated (as a side effect, don't care about paper Magic either), so they are confused by the concept of bans rather than what Alchemy is aiming for because most of the other games out there have a similar philosophy.

Welcome to the new world of Magic: the Video Gaming.

This just seems like a giant non sequitur to me for the reasons I stated but sure, cater to the people with 12-second memories that spend $30 once on a starting player intro pack and go "yeah no not for me"

I must be getting old. Fuck this. I actually just want pancakes and Tums and to forget this entire discussion is a thing

[Wrath of Pie]

This just seems like a giant non sequitur to me for the reasons I stated but sure, cater to the people with 12-second memories that spend $30 once on a starting player intro pack and go "yeah no not for me"

I must be getting old. Fuck this. I actually just want pancakes and Tums and to forget this entire discussion is a thing

I don't like this reality either, but it's not like they really need my precious dollars.

On the other hand, pancakes are delicious, can't argue that.

[TsumiBand]

I don't like this reality either, but it's not like they really need my precious dollars.

On the other hand, pancakes are delicious, can't argue that.

We did have pancakes for dinner. Pancakes and bacon. My wife and daughter put strawberries and Cool Whip on their pancakes. I only put syrup on mine; I have nothing against fruit and cream, I've just never preferred them on pancakes.

[Zoid]

Somehow a discussion on pancakes is more positively engaging than anything wizzards has shat out the last decade.

I thought the audience for arena is people who want to play standard but can't or can only play 1-2 times a week.
To get the top decks you need to buy enough backs to get the (wild)cards.
Standard being a general dumpster fire doesn't really help.
Interestingly, they introduced a lot of formats, but don't do shit to maintain them.

But yeah, the disenfranchisement is real.
The if I wasn't so addicted to this game and had actual access to my card pool I'd probably sold out a while ago.
In the past, they at least only fucked over parts of the community, while now, everyone is taking it up the ass in some way.

[jmlima]

...

I thought the audience for arena is people who want to play standard but can't or can only play 1-2 times a week.
...

I can only speak from what I see and saw since I have no insider knowledge but, certainly from the time of the beta, most people in there kept moaning and asking about drafts, not when would the standard experience be phenomenal. A second close was the bunch of people moaning and asking about older sets being added. The standard discussion was mostly on how crappy it was at the time and what could people play on arena when standard was crap.

Right back at the start a lot of people even had this crazy illusion that WotC were secretly working to add modern, etc to it and did not say anything to keep milking MTGO. Only when release date came and it became obvious what arena really was did most people clock that arena was essentially for the video game players, not necessarily for MTG hard-core players, they wanted the short-span play quickly put some money on cosmetics crowd. Looking at it like this, Alchemy makes perfect sense since the new players want things to keep changing, they have no vested interest in formats like historic , etc. Unfortunately for WotC, formats like historic and brawl proved far more popular than they clearly ever expected or even desired (remember, historic was added under duress and so was brawl) and the fact they were forced to concede to player's wishes on these tells you that they are now a big driver on arena. I fully expect a climb back on the alchemy-historic connection, but it will only be done (again) under duress so it will be through gritted teeth and take its time.

[jmlima]

BTW, pancakes are good, but blueberry with maple syrup.

[Zoid]

I can only speak from what I see and saw since I have no insider knowledge but, certainly from the time of the beta, most people in there kept moaning and asking about drafts, not when would the standard experience be phenomenal. A second close was the bunch of people moaning and asking about older sets being added. The standard discussion was mostly on how crappy it was at the time and what could people play on arena when standard was crap.

Right back at the start a lot of people even had this crazy illusion that WotC were secretly working to add modern, etc to it and did not say anything to keep milking MTGO. Only when release date came and it became obvious what arena really was did most people clock that arena was essentially for the video game players, not necessarily for MTG hard-core players, they wanted the short-span play quickly put some money on cosmetics crowd. Looking at it like this, Alchemy makes perfect sense since the new players want things to keep changing, they have no vested interest in formats like historic , etc. Unfortunately for WotC, formats like historic and brawl proved far more popular than they clearly ever expected or even desired (remember, historic was added under duress and so was brawl) and the fact they were forced to concede to player's wishes on these tells you that they are now a big driver on arena. I fully expect a climb back on the alchemy-historic connection, but it will only be done (again) under duress so it will be through gritted teeth and take its time.

One of WotC's biggest problem is that they continuously fail to identify and understand their audience.
The only time that worked is for commander.
For everything else, they fail so they just throw things at the wall and see what sticks.

I was thinking more along the lines of people who can't get their fix IRL so they have to play online but don't want to play MTGO.
Historic had to be added because they were dumb enough to think that people wouldn't be upset if their old cards couldn't be used anymore.
Anyone with a brain would have seen that coming.
As for Brawl, that seemed necessary on their part since they wanted to push that stillborn format but nobody outside of arena wanted to play it.
However, they don't manage it which is why Brawl and especially Historic Brawl suck ass.


Pancakes with sauce hollandaise and white asparagus.

[TsumiBand]

I can only speak from what I see and saw since I have no insider knowledge but, certainly from the time of the beta, most people in there kept moaning and asking about drafts, not when would the standard experience be phenomenal. A second close was the bunch of people moaning and asking about older sets being added. The standard discussion was mostly on how crappy it was at the time and what could people play on arena when standard was crap.

Right back at the start a lot of people even had this crazy illusion that WotC were secretly working to add modern, etc to it and did not say anything to keep milking MTGO. Only when release date came and it became obvious what arena really was did most people clock that arena was essentially for the video game players, not necessarily for MTG hard-core players, they wanted the short-span play quickly put some money on cosmetics crowd. Looking at it like this, Alchemy makes perfect sense since the new players want things to keep changing, they have no vested interest in formats like historic , etc. Unfortunately for WotC, formats like historic and brawl proved far more popular than they clearly ever expected or even desired (remember, historic was added under duress and so was brawl) and the fact they were forced to concede to player's wishes on these tells you that they are now a big driver on arena. I fully expect a climb back on the alchemy-historic connection, but it will only be done (again) under duress so it will be through gritted teeth and take its time.

This is a pretty insightful take. I'm a fairly recent Arena player (June of this year) so I didn't realize how much pressure needed to be applied to make Historic happen. I only just learned of the 2-to-1 wildcard crafting thing, I'm glad I missed that nonsense. It sounds like they thought Arena was going to be a Standard-only app, but players hated that idea, and they've been drug kicking and screaming into supporting older formats ever since.

Come to think of it, that whole "supporting older formats under protest" shouldn't really surprise me. It's comforting to know they have a history of capitulation when it comes to giving players a place to play their old cards. I suppose I'll just hang tight.

It also does make a certain kind of sense to offer the "Magic: the Hearthstoning" crowd an adjustable format that sees more shake-ups than a set which relies on paper Magic printings can provide. We talk about metagames a lot in Magic, and for better or worse, the TCG video game meta has rebalancing acts. For Magic to not offer this in some kind of way would probably lose a lot of players that have never known anything else.

Another interesting idea that I came across while reading endless screeds about this whole kerfuffle is that Arena enables way more in-game time than the typical paper player will ever actually have. It sucks when you lose to a meta deck every Friday at FNM; it sucks way more when you lose to that same meta deck when you login over lunch, after work, before bed, etc. The competitive meta used to only exist at, like, events - now it exists 24/7. That gets tiresome as fuck, but for paper Magic players to have to suffer bans just because Arena players are terminally online is equally dumb, because they're not banging their head against Mono Green but once a week. This is maybe the only good solve for that problem. (Maybe?)

[Zoid]

It also does make a certain kind of sense to offer the "Magic: the Hearthstoning" crowd an adjustable format that sees more shake-ups than a set which relies on paper Magic printings can provide. We talk about metagames a lot in Magic, and for better or worse, the TCG video game meta has rebalancing acts. For Magic to not offer this in some kind of way would probably lose a lot of players that have never known anything else.
The question is more why arena ever needed to be a 1:1 port of paper in the first place (which already existed) instead of something else with the IP that is more accessible to casuals.


The competitive meta used to only exist at, like, events - now it exists 24/7. That gets tiresome as fuck, but for paper Magic players to have to suffer bans just because Arena players are terminally online is equally dumb, because they're not banging their head against Mono Green but once a week. This is maybe the only good solve for that problem. (Maybe?)
That is absolutely false.
MTGO has been shaping the meta much more than paper could ever do.
The big paper events were just when people noticed and adjusted.
The arena crowd is at least loud enough so that bans might happen a bit earlier.
But bans are mostly based on if the set has sold enough so it's on the paper players.
In arena you can at least go next game instead of wasting time to go to a paper event only to play against the same 3 decks and get blasted the whole day.

[jmlima]

The question is more why arena ever needed to be a 1:1 port of paper in the first place (which already existed) instead of something else with the IP that is more accessible to casuals.
...

I think there was always a tension between intention and outcome. They ended duels , kept mtgo and motored on with arena. Duels was the casual-vaguely-related-to-MtG game. MTGO was the online port of the paper game. Arena was (IMHO) intended to fit an in-between role between MTGO and Duels. They wanted something that would help bring MtG (the brand) to an whole new audience, in a simpler and more 21st century way. That's obviously the original intent behind Arena supporting solely standard and draft. They clearly saw Arena as an advertisement for MtG the brand, more than anything else. Why would they use their primary online advertisement means to make popular formats where 99% of players would not be able to get the paper cards? Because this is the other tension, paper / online, and I think they are far, far from having solved that one. They are continuously edging towards de-coupling, but every step is met with dismay by one or another segment of players.

Arena is only making this murkier. They will now have 3 ways to play standard / draft (paper / MTGO / arena) and two types of standard (paper / MTGO / arena and alchemy). At some point, a decision will be made as to what is more important as a revenue stream. It's inevitable. The problem they are creating is that (with Arena) the obviously angled at bringing MtG in full to the e-sports arena. Every new playing mode inside Arena pulverizes the streamers (and the revenue from that) a bit more, leading to less streamers. I can see this ending with all premier play inside Arena being only draft and one of the standard modes as a way of re-focusing the minds into what WotC considers as important for the online play.

[TsumiBand]

The question is more why arena ever needed to be a 1:1 port of paper in the first place (which already existed) instead of something else with the IP that is more accessible to casuals.


That is absolutely false.
MTGO has been shaping the meta much more than paper could ever do.
The big paper events were just when people noticed and adjusted.
The arena crowd is at least loud enough so that bans might happen a bit earlier.
But bans are mostly based on if the set has sold enough so it's on the paper players.
In arena you can at least go next game instead of wasting time to go to a paper event only to play against the same 3 decks and get blasted the whole day.

That's probably a fair point about MTGO and I have no idea why but I constantly forget it even exists. Seems a lot of the dialog I've been seeing has also totally pasted over MTGO as well. Their user base seems to be 10x Arena's. I haven't even attempted to use it for almost 20 years, and just based on what little peripheral conversation I now recall about MTGO the first thing I associate with it is "my event didn't fire". Maybe that's not useful.

MTGO at least has the virtue of being a PC client in a space suddenly full of mobile-first apps; it's a different product for a different player. Maybe my real problem is me and I should quit trying to find anything but predatory nonsense in the Google Play store.

[jmlima]

...Their user base seems to be 10x Arena's. I haven't even attempted to use it for almost 20 years, and just based on what little peripheral conversation I now recall about MTGO the first thing I associate with it is "my event didn't fire". Maybe that's not useful.....

Re-installed recently and was absolutely amazed at how few players there were, including leagues and premier events just about to reach their time to fire. This when compared to when I sold out which was the day of Arena's public release.

[TsumiBand]

Re-installed recently and was absolutely amazed at how few players there were, including leagues and premier events just about to reach their time to fire. This when compared to when I sold out which was the day of Arena's public release.

See, and here's the thing - I've never had an issue getting into an Arena limited event. I'm sure the queue is entirely different, in fact I guarantee it is not at all like a proper game of draft as I can logout and come back and keep playing my deck until I get my 3 losses (which for me takes not-very-long, I'm a garbage Limited player). MTGO events probably require the same thing a real 8-player in-person draft require, plus the requisite issues that go into keeping a stable internet connection.

And for as much as mobile gaming gears itself to be insidious, I have to admit it's convenient as fuck to have a Magic the Gathering button on my phone. The ease of being able to jump in, have a BO1 game and jump out no matter where I am* is pretty great. Maybe MTGO can do this as well, but it doesn't have a phone client.

* - too bad I'm on T-Mobile and there's literally a hole in their coverage that perfectly outlines the state I live in. I actually have pretty shit reception, but that's a carrier issue, not an Arena issue

[Ace/Homebrew]

I have to admit it's convenient as fuck to have a Magic the Gathering button on my phone. The ease of being able to jump in, have a BO1 game and jump out no matter where I am* is pretty great.
This has been the appeal to me, especially in the current reality where an unwashed mouth-breather can get you sick. Before Alchemy was a conversation, I decided I wouldn't spend more money on Arena except for the Mastery Pass. That's after spending probably close to $300 on a core of Red Historic decks and a harem of Historic Brawl decks.

I'm concerned about Alchemy, but hopeful that the raised fists of a million angry keyboard warriors will lobby for my interests and a Classic Historic will emerge and let me continue my sub-game of 'How Big Can I Get My Hand With Rielle' while facing another Tatyova or GW Enchantress clone...


***while I'm on the subject, they need to find a better method to display hands of over 20 cards.

[TsumiBand]

This has been the appeal to me, especially in the current reality where an unwashed mouth-breather can get you sick. Before Alchemy was a conversation, I decided I wouldn't spend more money on Arena except for the Mastery Pass. That's after spending probably close to $300 on a core of Red Historic decks and a harem of Historic Brawl decks.

I'm concerned about Alchemy, but hopeful that the raised fists of a million angry keyboard warriors will lobby for my interests and a Classic Historic will emerge and let me continue my sub-game of 'How Big Can I Get My Hand With Rielle' while facing another Tatyova or GW Enchantress clone...


***while I'm on the subject, they need to find a better method to display hands of over 20 cards.

Agreed on all counts. Especially the last point, I've lost a game to the shitty UI of having half my 100-card deck in my hand, and judging by the opponent's brazen tapping out to make the play that made it happen, they knew full-well it would cause enough of an issue for their opponent that it was a safe play. I hate that I still wonder if I had drawn removal somewhere in those 45-ish cards. I hate that I roped instead of getting to pick the 7 cards I'd keep end-of-turn. It blows losing to the UI.

[jmlima]

...

I'm concerned about Alchemy, but hopeful that the raised fists of a million angry keyboard warriors will lobby for my interests and a Classic Historic will emerge and let me continue my sub-game of 'How Big Can I Get My Hand With Rielle' while facing another Tatyova or GW Enchantress clone...
....

I wouldn't put my faith on that, at all. I think (and it's a first) WotC finally learnt how to ride the internet pile-up, which is to have some junior staff make a few vague statements, keep doing whatever it is they intended to do and wait for the inevitable disappearance of the original angry mob, to be replaced by the half-a-dozen faithful that will be left preaching to one another.

If this is the case, then we may be entering a new era of 'if you're not happy, there are a lot more that are' by WotC. Think we've reached the 'take it or leave it' stage.

[TsumiBand]

Feels like such a mistake to me. Arena is probably the slickest way to play Magic on computer, perhaps not the most in-depth but certainly the most fluid. Having no avenue for an "Eternal-ish" format that reads just like paper Magic is... bothersome

[Ronald Deuce]

Why does the upkeep step not exist?

[TsumiBand]

Why does the upkeep step not exist?

I think you just have to set a stopper or be in Full Control mode? Not sure, I am currently playing such little kid technology that playing things during an upkeep would be like breaking the sound barrier on a tricycle - possible but highly unlikely

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Unless an ability uses the stack arena won't automatically stop on the upkeep.
You can set the stop manually (like on mtgo) by clicking the the icon to the left of the desired player. I think it's a dot?
There's another one in the far right to put a stop on the end step

[jmlima]

This is beyond funny:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/rbpmsl/its_already_begun/

Cards amended before they are even released. Rarity not part of card's image...

[TsumiBand]

This is beyond funny:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/rbpmsl/its_already_begun/

Cards amended before they are even released. Rarity not part of card's image...

Ehhhhhh

To be fair I don't give a shit about the digital-only cards actually existing in certain formats, I just want to play a Historic format where they aren't present, lol. As long as they do that, they can print digital cards that force both players to play a subgame of The Adventures of Lolo 3, only to decide that's too broken and change the whole card to a 1/2 with horsemanship for :3::g:. Who cares.

Also, to an extent, this isn't entirely new or stupid. Cards have even been banned/restricted before they're released, or needed errata due to pants-on-head fuckups in the wording - you got your Wormfang Crabs, your French Scorched Rusalkas, you got that White non-creature that was printed with power and toughness for some reason that I can't remember the name - so like, dumb stuff like this is the least of my own concerns.

[TsumiBand]

I realize it's a little bit like enjoying the sides when the main course is undercooked but this update is actually decent from a certain perspective. I like how the navigation is cleaner in the sidebar, it's more taps but it's less clutter, and it still saves your last format choice so it's not really a ton of taps if you're just logging in to play little kid Historic decks.

Speaking of which, I had to update my really bad Teferi deck to include the rebalanced Wizard Class card and I just straight-up removed the new Luminarch Aspirant from all decks which contained him, pretty sure that guy is dead now. Never did draw the new Wizard Class. Also my Teferi deck sucks, it draws guys when I need answers and gives me land when I need guys.

I would still really love to get a non-digital Historic format, I'm tired of playing against Tome of the Infinite. I said it would be a shit card to play against on initial spoil and I was right, dammit all. It feels really bad to lose to a mono-Blue deck because it got to break the color pie/color wheel/whatever we're calling it now, and cast Dark Ritual and Swords to Plowshares. I'm not fond of playing around these kinds of lines, that's a big reason I took a break from Hearthstone during the triple-class Discovery mechanic crap. It's a good example of the "bad RNG" that turns players off from digital TCGs; even if you're a dyed-in-the-wool digital-only TCG player chances are pretty high that you hate playing against this kind of crap. It's Mario Party RNG.

[jmlima]

I realize it's a little bit like enjoying the sides when the main course is undercooked but this update is actually decent from a certain perspective. I like how the navigation is cleaner in the sidebar, it's more taps but it's less clutter, and it still saves your last format choice so it's not really a ton of taps if you're just logging in to play little kid Historic decks.

Speaking of which, I had to update my really bad Teferi deck to include the rebalanced Wizard Class card and I just straight-up removed the new Luminarch Aspirant from all decks which contained him, pretty sure that guy is dead now. Never did draw the new Wizard Class. Also my Teferi deck sucks, it draws guys when I need answers and gives me land when I need guys.

I would still really love to get a non-digital Historic format, I'm tired of playing against Tome of the Infinite. I said it would be a shit card to play against on initial spoil and I was right, dammit all. It feels really bad to lose to a mono-Blue deck because it got to break the color pie/color wheel/whatever we're calling it now, and cast Dark Ritual and Swords to Plowshares. I'm not fond of playing around these kinds of lines, that's a big reason I took a break from Hearthstone during the triple-class Discovery mechanic crap. It's a good example of the "bad RNG" that turns players off from digital TCGs; even if you're a dyed-in-the-wool digital-only TCG player chances are pretty high that you hate playing against this kind of crap. It's Mario Party RNG.

The other problem with Tome of the Infinite is that you get to play cards that are not legal in historic. I'm not exactly sure if the randomness is enough to say something is ok to play out of the tome when it is not ok to play them in the format.

And they are really, really pushing Alchemy. The amount of free packs with this set is nothing I've ever seen before. Which kind of re-affirms my point that they are not going to reverse their decision re historic. In fact, I now think Standard will be far more stable than historic. Normal Standard's bans will be dictated by paper, so it will only be the really horrendous stuff, which is ok anyway. Alchemy Standard and by extent Historic's bans will be dictated on a whim according to perceptions of online play that are volatile as hell.

My quick take after an evening of play, Alchemy Bo1 standard is the same sh%$-fest as normal Bo1 standard.

They also seriously nerfed my brawl deck with the latest bans.

All in all, fu&^ this update.

[TsumiBand]

I think regardless of what they intended for Arena they need to acknowledge what it's become for a lot of people.

In a way it reminds me of how Zoom blew up over the pandemic and they were forced to update a ton of code because whether they were ready or not it had seen wide adoption and they found themselves running to catch up to a much larger user bases set of expectations.

Arena may have been intended to be a digital-first Standard-focused experiment, but similar to Zoom it was adopted by users with a different set of expectations, and instead of rolling with it they're trying to force their original intent.

[morgan_coke]

Alchemy is a deal breaker for me personally. They're just clearly taking the game in directions I don't like, and that's fine enough, I guess, but I'm not going to stick around and pay money for it. Wish I could see my Arena Account, it's got 4x of everything and bunches of wildcards.

Actually, hmm. Anyone know if you can change what email the account is linked to? That would be the key to letting me sell someone the login info.

[theillest]

Alchemy is a deal breaker for me personally. They're just clearly taking the game in directions I don't like, and that's fine enough, I guess, but I'm not going to stick around and pay money for it. Wish I could see my Arena Account, it's got 4x of everything and bunches of wildcards.

Actually, hmm. Anyone know if you can change what email the account is linked to? That would be the key to letting me sell someone the login info.
https://dotesports.com/news/how-to-change-email-and-password-in-mtg-arena

^explaination of how to change your email/PW. FWIW, it is against the ToS to transfer an arena account.

[PirateKing]

Is there a Gatherer type of database for the "edited" cards?

[jmlima]

Is there a Gatherer type of database for the "edited" cards?

https://www.magicarenacardlist.com/

Sets can be selected on the left hand side column (select 'Rebalanced')

[harbingerofthevoid]

I like how the navigation is cleaner in the sidebar, it's more taps but it's less clutter, and it still saves your last format choice so it's not really a ton of taps if you're just logging in to play little kid Historic decks.

Totally threw me off today. Had to do some play UB spells snd was sure, i have this historic UBg thing. Went a quick 5-0 then it clicked that my ranking thing never popped up. Stupid icons with no tooltip/help text. Was playing "fun" not ranked. Derp. Better UX? Sure. Good? Nope.

Was wondering why I kept running into rando 173 card piles of lol.

I am like I'm sure most are, that there's not a non-Alchemy historic.

[Zoid]

Arena has already too many formats/versions of formats to clutter the ui and fracture the player base.

Given how much they don't care about the brawl formats I wonder why they are still in the client.

I'll probably stay away from arena until they add "paper historic" back to the options as I don't want to play with cards that perpetually transform my dudes into frogs who seek random spell books.

[TsumiBand]

I don't understand offering more formats to be "fracturing the playerbase", do people make this argument for paper Magic as well?

I could maybe understand this argument as a strike against paper Magic when talking about demand for format staples but that's a non-issue in Arena; owning a single copy of a card lets you play that copy in as many decks as you can build, I'm not sure that adding or restoring a proper "non-digital non-rotating" format does anything besides attract people that might want to play that format.

[jmlima]

Who had on the arena sweepstake 'after our update you are now locked out of your account and we do not care' ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/rflta4/wizards_support_is_entirely_useless/

[Wrath of Pie]

Who had on the arena sweepstake 'after our update you are now locked out of your account and we do not care' ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/rflta4/wizards_support_is_entirely_useless/

Wizards sets the bar even higher.

[jmlima]

Alchemy is still going well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/rgaps4/mark_rosewater_the_idea_behind_the_digitalonly/

[TsumiBand]

Alchemy is still going well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/rgaps4/mark_rosewater_the_idea_behind_the_digitalonly/

Rosewater talks to players the way men that hate their wives explain the home finances. "Honey, the whole reason we have a savings account is..."

[Ronald Deuce]

Rosewater talks to players the way men that hate their wives explain the home finances. "Honey, the whole reason we have a savings account is..."

You're right, but in fairness to him, Arena is succeeding in that, whether we like it or not.

I started playing Arena, idk, a week ago, and it feels like a substantially different game from real MtG. And some amount of fun is being had, though I can't say I'm interested in spending any money on it at this juncture.

[TsumiBand]

You're right, but in fairness to him, Arena is succeeding in that, whether we like it or not.

I started playing Arena, idk, a week ago, and it feels like a substantially different game from real MtG. And some amount of fun is being had, though I can't say I'm interested in spending any money on it at this juncture.

I know that MaRo makes the claim that players feedback is different from wHaT wE tHiNk iT iS but I would like some player facing data to confirm that apart from Blogatog posts. The issue to leave Historic as-is (or as-was, whatever) is one of the biggest current issues on the Arena Bugs and Suggestions page and their social media is being swamped by players that hate it.

I get that message boards don't necessarily represent the majority but watching the occasional "whee I love Alchemy" posts get ratioed, and my own personal experience of much longer queue times in Historic Brawl, I'm not sure what else to assume except that people aren't really feeling it.

[jmlima]

I know that MaRo makes the claim that players feedback is different from wHaT wE tHiNk iT iS but I would like some player facing data to confirm that apart from Blogatog posts. The issue to leave Historic as-is (or as-was, whatever) is one of the biggest current issues on the Arena Bugs and Suggestions page and their social media is being swamped by players that hate it.

I get that message boards don't necessarily represent the majority but watching the occasional "whee I love Alchemy" posts get ratioed, and my own personal experience of much longer queue times in Historic Brawl, I'm not sure what else to assume except that people aren't really feeling it.

I think, certainly from my perspective what I think will be the ultimate decider is how frequent the changes to alchemized cards will be and how much they screw decks. Let's face it, wildcards in Arena have a substantial cost in time or money. This is not heartstone where there are no land cards and top rarities are restricted to either 1 or 2 of each card. This is MTG where a manabase can set you back 20 rares. So, when faced with a decision on how to use my wildcards, do I create a deck that is based on a certain card that, if the deck proves sufficiently popular, will be nerfed? This is a real concern here. Last thing they want is to empty Arena from all the players that have to make that type of choices to only keep those with money or time to spend. The MTGO'zation of Arena is not what they want, but it is very likely to be what they will get with this scheme.

One thing is for certain, looking at this year's festive schedule, they are going to push alchemy like hell, which means they are not about to reverse course on it.

[Ronald Deuce]

I will say that it's really, really, really good that none of the new Alchemical swills is legal in Legacy.

[TsumiBand]

I will say that it's really, really, really good that none of the new Alchemical swills is legal in Legacy.

Well, yeah, I mean - how do you implement perpetual effects in Legacy, or conjuring cards, or any of it at all?

I think the thing that's bugging me the most is that they don't even seem to think about *why* digital TCGs do this kind of randomization. They found out early in Hearthstone that when you take drawing land out of the equation your games play out very similarly. The RNG is there because they needed a way to keep a similar level of randomization, while having an alternative to the "draw land and play it" mana system of MTG. Since a ton of digital TCGs can skirt the mana issue in this way, they implement it in similar ways.

Alchemy just adds one more layer of RNG on top of that so you have all of the feelbads of random chance going one player's way and none of the upside involved in introducing that randomness. Imagine getting fucked on land while your opponent is just getting pure gas off of Tome of the Infinite in addition to just drawing normally. It's a very stupid situation to be in, and it ought to be opt-in across formats, not just jammed in because "all digital tcgs are doing it". Like if they wanted to go whole-hog with it they should have just had an Alchemy format that was also landless; it'd be derivative as hell, but it'd be honest, and maybe even tolerable.

[jmlima]

...
Alchemy just adds one more layer of RNG on top of that so you have all of the feelbads of random chance going one player's way and none of the upside involved in introducing that randomness. Imagine getting fucked on land while your opponent is just getting pure gas off of Tome of the Infinite in addition to just drawing normally. It's a very stupid situation to be in, and it ought to be opt-in across formats, not just jammed in because "all digital tcgs are doing it". Like if they wanted to go whole-hog with it they should have just had an Alchemy format that was also landless; it'd be derivative as hell, but it'd be honest, and maybe even tolerable.

I find even more stupid things like the fact that you cannot play Lightning Bolt, but you can play a card that each time it swings places 4 Lightning Bolts in your deck.

[Zoid]

Is it me or has arena been even buggier since they introduced alchemy?

I did their stupid sealed event just to drop out because my Jadar refused to make tokens after it did in the first game.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Is it me or has arena been even buggier since they introduced alchemy?

I did their stupid sealed event just to drop out because my Jadar refused to make tokens after it did in the first game.
The latest update wasn't very stable, no

[TsumiBand]

I've seldom had stability issues with the client. "Works on my machine", lel

I think adding named cards to a deck that's already Red is probably not the worst thing to play around, I mean you can plan for exactly what the card does and it's doing something Red already does. Some of these other effects where you're tutoring for random outside effects are more damaging to the game in terms of reasonably prepping for counterplay. Neither player really knows what Tome is gonna do, it could whiff horribly or give the player a huge advantage. The problem is it's being decided by luck, it's always going to roll in favor of one player and against the other. It's not a power level concern, it's just a stupid mechanic in a game that's already got enough rng.

That's why I keep comparing it to Mario Party/Mario Kart; it could be a banana peel or it could be a blue shell (and lol dammit, you're only supposed to get blue shells when you're behind, so it's worse than that) but whatever it is, neither player really gets to plan around it, you can either interact with Tome itself or you can't. Whatever pops out is whatever pops out, and someone's gonna feel bad, and we already know that that's shitty gameplay from all the other digital tcgs that tried to do things that way, so why Magic wants to replicate it makes no sense.

[Zoid]

I've seldom had stability issues with the client. "Works on my machine", lel

I think adding named cards to a deck that's already Red is probably not the worst thing to play around, I mean you can plan for exactly what the card does and it's doing something Red already does. Some of these other effects where you're tutoring for random outside effects are more damaging to the game in terms of reasonably prepping for counterplay. Neither player really knows what Tome is gonna do, it could whiff horribly or give the player a huge advantage. The problem is it's being decided by luck, it's always going to roll in favor of one player and against the other. It's not a power level concern, it's just a stupid mechanic in a game that's already got enough rng.

That's why I keep comparing it to Mario Party/Mario Kart; it could be a banana peel or it could be a blue shell (and lol dammit, you're only supposed to get blue shells when you're behind, so it's worse than that) but whatever it is, neither player really gets to plan around it, you can either interact with Tome itself or you can't. Whatever pops out is whatever pops out, and someone's gonna feel bad, and we already know that that's shitty gameplay from all the other digital tcgs that tried to do things that way, so why Magic wants to replicate it makes no sense.

One could almost say that RNG in games that aren't designed around it are bad.
Who knew?

[TsumiBand]

One could almost say that RNG in games that aren't designed around it are bad.
Who knew?

I think the opposite is true here and Magic's inherent randomness doesn't need another layer on top to "keep things interesting". We have to draw mana sources where most digital games do not; these other games can build decks that are pure gas. There's no mana screw in LoR or Hearthstone and mana denial is also near unplayable or non-existent, and with games like Hearthstone you also have hero powers which guarantee you'll at least be doing something on turn 2. Those games have to spam random effects in order to up the variance or else your matchups are essentially already decides.

Magic doesn't need this shit to keep the variance at an acceptable level, but the Arena devs either don't know that or don't care.

[Zoid]

I think the opposite is true here and Magic's inherent randomness doesn't need another layer on top to "keep things interesting". We have to draw mana sources where most digital games do not; these other games can build decks that are pure gas. There's no mana screw in LoR or Hearthstone and mana denial is also near unplayable or non-existent, and with games like Hearthstone you also have hero powers which guarantee you'll at least be doing something on turn 2. Those games have to spam random effects in order to up the variance or else your matchups are essentially already decides.

Magic doesn't need this shit to keep the variance at an acceptable level, but the Arena devs either don't know that or don't care.

The difference is that Magic is (was) designed around random draws but deterministic effects.
That is just the mechanics of how card games work.

Unless the game is designed for "play this card and lets see what RNG does with it" most players are going to have a bad time.
The only players who enjoy true randomness are the ones that are so bad they can't win consistently without RNG.

On that note has anyone played the valve digital TCG Artifact?
The original version had a bit too much RNG but was pretty solid.
Sadly people were throwing a fit because they expected a freemium game and not something like MTGO.
It also didn't lend itself to being easily watchable on Twitch.
A few devs actually redid the game a while ago which was imo much better but I still kind of lost interest.
At this point I'm close to giving it another try.

[Ronald Deuce]

I find even more stupid things like the fact that you cannot play Lightning Bolt, but you can play a card that each time it swings places 4 Lightning Bolts in your deck.

Yeah, that's the thing that irked me. That and the 2-mana tribal scaling (lol) ramp guy with Protection from Power Word: Kill.

[Rob Hack]

This has been the appeal to me, especially in the current reality where an unwashed mouth-breather can get you sick.

I don't like your post.

First of all don't disseminate the "Magic players are people of bad hygiene standards" meme, it stopped being funny two decades ago and you're just gratuitously rude.
There are mandatory face masks since the covid outbreak, so you shouldn't be able to discern any mouth-breather even if they'd try to mouth-breathe you to death. Not to mention that it's not really empathetic to mock someone's health issue.
Also, unless you are an octogenarian or severely immunocompromised, there's not much reason for your germophobia, I guess you won't die from omicron induced runny nose. And there are several safe and working vaccines available to boost your antibodies, too.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Also, unless you are an octogenarian or severely immunocompromised, there's not much reason for your germophobia, I guess you won't die from omicron induced runny nose. And there are several safe and working vaccines available to boost your antibodies, too.

You were doing so well! Why did you add this?

[H]

Alright, before I need to start editing and/or deleting posts, lets leave it there. Thanks.

[jmlima]

Well guys, see you all back in MTGO...

https://www.daybreakgames.com/news/daybreak-wotc-enter-license-agreement-mtgo

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/rmym78/daybreak_games_to_develop_and_publish_mtgo/

[TsumiBand]

Well guys, see you all back in MTGO...

https://www.daybreakgames.com/news/daybreak-wotc-enter-license-agreement-mtgo

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/rmym78/daybreak_games_to_develop_and_publish_mtgo/

This is not the high sign you think it is, Daybreak Games looks like one of those failed MMO dumping grounds, they maintain DDO for god's sake. This looks way more like WotC wants to move its in-house devs from MGTO and focus more on Arena.

[jmlima]

This is not the high sign you think it is, Daybreak Games looks like one of those failed MMO dumping grounds, they maintain DDO for god's sake. This looks way more like WotC wants to move its in-house devs from MGTO and focus more on Arena.

Well, on the other hand Hasbro has previous experience of doing this and things worked out more than all right. I guess the main point here is that the sudden demise of MTGO is not happening. For now.

[Ronald Deuce]

I just had to throw a game because this shitpile calling itself Magic doesn't have a fucking chat function, and infants don't do things on a schedule.

FUCK.

To my opponent, should you see this, I apologize for the poor sportsmanship.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I just had to throw a game because this shitpile calling itself Magic doesn't have a fucking chat function, and infants don't do things on a schedule.

FUCK.

To my opponent, should you see this, I apologize for the poor sportsmanship.
Just lol if your infant isn't the one playing

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

WOTC just tweeted that if you have Dracula lands in your deck; you can't sideboard.

[Zoid]

WOTC just tweeted that if you have Dracula lands in your deck; you can't sideboard.

Now that some good quality WotC stuff here.

Wasn't there a bug once on MTGO which only worked with the foil version of a card?

Just programming wise, no idea how it can be this bad.
Somehow these people have jobs.

[jmlima]

So, alchemy, that breath of fresh air, that saviour of the metagame, herald of a new standard, cannot operate as intended because... pros cannot adapt quickly to metagame changes...

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/s0s8lt/dragons_clerics_alchemy_and_the_state_of_pro/

In short, to introduce something new that nobody asked for, you piss a lot of people, get a really bad rep and then... you cannot make it work as intended and advertised because... reasons.

[jmlima]

That's actually pretty interesting, the effect of loan bots on card prices. If I was still in school I'd even pitch it as a research topic. Now you have be genuinely curious!

This guys touches on it more in detail than I could (TL;DR: He agrees that rental services are snookering MTGO's economy and details how, including relation with MTGA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdBdCWCjhZM

[TsumiBand]

Yeah at this point the only playable MTG mobile client is Puzzle Quest

[jmlima]

For those that had any doubts about the future direction of MTG, here's an admission that play preferences in Arena are now driving set design (in this instance Bo1 vs Bo3).

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/s6znc7/mark_rosewater_the_popularity_of_best_of_one_on/

[pettdan]

Now that some good quality WotC stuff here.

Wasn't there a bug once on MTGO which only worked with the foil version of a card?

Just programming wise, no idea how it can be this bad.
Somehow these people have jobs.

I've worked with some software that was full of technical debt. When programmers make bad decisions, over time this builds up and becomes a complicated nest of mistakes that would take a huge effort to sort out. Now, with the new management of MTGO, a new organization managing the programming at least, there can be some hope that the new managing organization has more competence on dealing with this situation. At wizards, I can imagine programming MTGO was very low on programmers' wish lists. For the new organization, it's what they do. That doesn't mean they can sort out all old sins of this program, but they can slowly start improving things by having good processes and perhaps more dedicated programmers. I'm speculating, of course.

[Ace/Homebrew]

For those that had any doubts about the future direction of MTG, here's an admission that play preferences in Arena are now driving set design (in this instance Bo1 vs Bo3).

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/s6znc7/mark_rosewater_the_popularity_of_best_of_one_on/
Context implies you think this is a bad thing, but isn't an increase in modal spells a... good thing?

[jmlima]

Context implies you think this is a bad thing, but isn't an increase in modal spells a... good thing?

IMHO, as good as the detail may be, the principle is pernicious from the POV of a table-top game.

Putting my design hat on, it will become increasingly difficult for them to conciliate those two realities since the two are based on totally different premises. The reason a lot of people play Bo1 has very little to do with MTG the game , and all with Arena the economy. In short, as time goes by, I think they will try that old mistake of trying to be everything to everyone and failing to please anyone.

Second thought for free, it starts to give credence to those that think MTG is moving from a table-top driven game, to a digitally driven game, ie, you previously had a digital model trying to re-create the table-top experience, in the future, you may have a table-top experience that is whatever is allowed by the digital experience.

[Zoid]

I've worked with some software that was full of technical debt. When programmers make bad decisions, over time this builds up and becomes a complicated nest of mistakes that would take a huge effort to sort out. Now, with the new management of MTGO, a new organization managing the programming at least, there can be some hope that the new managing organization has more competence on dealing with this situation. At wizards, I can imagine programming MTGO was very low on programmers' wish lists. For the new organization, it's what they do. That doesn't mean they can sort out all old sins of this program, but they can slowly start improving things by having good processes and perhaps more dedicated programmers. I'm speculating, of course.

From my very limited experience it seems programming nowadays is very different than in the past. There are many more tools available but programmers learn less about the math/algorithmic side of things. Given that available computing resources are so much more abundant, there is also little need to optimize.
Paired with constant deadline pressure that gives us constantly rushed out quick'n'dirty programming which rapidly falls apart.
I'm not exclusively blaming the programmers, I'm blaming the ecosystem they exist in.

Side rant: Given that so many things are now no longer coded but just trained neural networks, it really grinds my gears when people talk about algorithms in the media. Like facial recognicion algorithms being racist and what not. However, giving that this will become more and more important in training a NN and hiding it behind a UI, I don't expect the quality of programming in the industry to increase.


Context implies you think this is a bad thing, but isn't an increase in modal spells a... good thing?

It is a good thing but for very wrong reasons.
Again, Arena should have never been a 1-to-1 port of MtG but something else with the IP.
MtG is not designed for Bo1 with 60 cards and 4of's.

[Ace/Homebrew]

IMHO, as good as the detail may be, the principle is pernicious from the POV of a table-top game.

Putting my design hat on, it will become increasingly difficult for them to conciliate those two realities since the two are based on totally different premises. The reason a lot of people play Bo1 has very little to do with MTG the game , and all with Arena the economy. In short, as time goes by, I think they will try that old mistake of trying to be everything to everyone and failing to please anyone.

Second thought for free, it starts to give credence to those that think MTG is moving from a table-top driven game, to a digitally driven game, ie, you previously had a digital model trying to re-create the table-top experience, in the future, you may have a table-top experience that is whatever is allowed by the digital experience.
I understand your POV more now, thank you for clarifying.
The economy for Arena is dog shit, but I'm not sure it is driving the preference for Bo1 over Bo3. I'm not aware of any polling that has been done, so both of us are speaking anecdotally. The biggest appeal Arena has for ME is convenience and speed. The past few months of playing Arena has almost certainly allowed me to fire more games of Magic than 15+ years of paper MtG. Having young children means I may only have 10-15 minutes to myself at any given moment, and playing Bo1 lets me get my fix without any real concern that I'll have to drop out of a game I might have otherwise won.

Bo1 is also a good way to get in reps to make sure your main deck is where you want it. When I test in paper, it's normally several 'game 1s' followed by 1 or 2 'sideboard' games.
Outside of tournament Magic, Bo3 can be fairly cumbersome. If I'm paired against a bad matchup, I'd rather lose and move onto the next game than suffer through a sideboard game that doesn't significantly change my chances of winning.

Finally, I assume many Arena players log in to complete their quests for gold and XP and then log off. Bo1 accomplishes this just as well and possibly better than Bo3. So I get your grievance and the idea that Bo1 isn't 'really' Magic, but I'd challenge that it's popularity is mostly due to Arena's dog shit economy. (Edit - Although this may actually be an argument in support of your claim since the quests are directly related to gaining gold which is tied to the game's economy...)

I've also had to personally lower my pitchfork and walk back doomsday talk enough times that I've stopped rushing to judgement when I hear something that initially sounds bad to me. Personal examples are DFC and losing black borders. Turns out with the benefit of time and seeing how the changes ACTUALLY affect the game, I'm neutral on those matters and happy for additional design space to keep modifying the Kicker mechanic. If digital is driving design, and it results in designs I like... I'm okay with that.

Edit - Actually, reading through the replies to the message from MaRo, it supports that the popularity of Bo1 is driven by the lack of commitment of time required for traditional Bo3 gameplay. Still anecdotal, but at least it's not just my anecdotes. :smile:

[jmlima]

...

Edit - Actually, reading through the replies to the message from MaRo, it supports that the popularity of Bo1 is driven by the lack of commitment of time required for traditional Bo3 gameplay. Still anecdotal, but at least it's not just my anecdotes. :smile:

Won't argue anything but would make one point, Bo1 is a vastly different game from Bo3 and if digital and design becomes centred on Bo1, then something must give for paper that is strictly Bo3.

Quite honestly, this all boils down 100% to personal preferences. I hate with a passion these cards that totally break any colour pie and throw random effect on top of random effect, decreasing costs of 'invisible' cards and so on. I ended up loathing Heartsone due to this. So I fully accept this entirely taints my view of their decision making. If that's the digital game they want then so be it, it's not my game and I'll happily leave it to those that like it.

[Ace/Homebrew]

taints
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E4f-3_JWUAI2e1O.jpg

[Ronald Deuce]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E4f-3_JWUAI2e1O.jpg

This is to argumentation what playing Arena is to playing Magic.

That's not a criticism.

[jmlima]

Holy f*^&, it's not just new set releases look at the size of the bloody change list for alchemied cards:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/alchemy-rebalancing-january-27-2022

I'm certain all historic players will be delighted to see mini teferi back.

[Ronald Deuce]

Holy f*^&, it's not just new set releases look at the size of the bloody change list for alchemied cards:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/alchemy-rebalancing-january-27-2022

I'm certain all historic players will be delighted to see mini teferi back.

"Strong and stable."

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I'm just going to get blown out by some cars that works completely different and accept it

[jmlima]

nevermind

[TsumiBand]

When they actually roll-out the "true-to-tabletop" Eternal format they're promising in this latest announcement, I'll probably play again. If it supports Brawl/EDH. If not... ehhhh there better be a sick Kithkin deck in the format

[jmlima]

When they actually roll-out the "true-to-tabletop" Eternal format they're promising in this latest announcement, I'll probably play again. If it supports Brawl/EDH. If not... ehhhh there better be a sick Kithkin deck in the format

Still wonder what the bleeping heck is that format supposed to be. Seriously doubt it will be pioneer, or any other MTGO format, with them punting MTGO cannot believe the contract would allow them to now go and create a competitor.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Pioneer

[TsumiBand]

At the end of the day it's a f2p game and I don't own any of the shit in it, but I'll play it as long as it doesn't force me to keep up with Standard because that implies either a grind that I don't have time for or an expense I can't justify. For me to give a shit they must provide *some* format where my wildcard decisions aren't throttled by rotations. I honestly don't care which format it is. It can be a brand-new exclusive to Arena format, I don't give a fuck. It just needs to play like paper Magic and never rotate. It could be "Historic without the cards that don't exist IRL", that would be fine too. They could roll out format staples from Pioneer/Modern/Rainbow Stairwell/Legacy/etc in supplementary sets at any time. I don't care.

[Wrath of Pie]

They could roll out format staples from Pioneer/Modern/Rainbow Stairwell/Legacy/etc in supplementary sets at any time. I don't care.
I raise your Rainbow Stairwell with Tribal Wars.

[Purple Blood]

Still wonder what the bleeping heck is that format supposed to be. Seriously doubt it will be pioneer, or any other MTGO format, with them punting MTGO cannot believe the contract would allow them to now go and create a competitor.

I find it rather dubious for a variety of reasons. First, doubt they would cut a deal that allows third parties to dictate their format decisions. Second, doubt the other company would even want to have such control being that they lack expertise in that regard. Third, even if the first two points are false, I doubt they would care about a dead format like Pioneer anyway.

I read somewhere else that Arena is missing only about 60-ish cards from Pioneer staples. If that's the case, then it would be incredibly easy for them to get the meta on Arena.

[jmlima]

I find it rather dubious for a variety of reasons. First, doubt they would cut a deal that allows third parties to dictate their format decisions. Second, doubt the other company would even want to have such control being that they lack expertise in that regard. Third, even if the first two points are false, I doubt they would care about a dead format like Pioneer anyway.

I read somewhere else that Arena is missing only about 60-ish cards from Pioneer staples. If that's the case, then it would be incredibly easy for them to get the meta on Arena.

Just saying that because hasbro has previous released ip on licence but kept a side of it, in that instance they kept all digital rights to the ip. Funnily enough, the company that got the paper did not care about the digital, back then, fast forward to this age and they got snookered in their intent to even release a digital rulebook, even that turned into a major production.

[jmlima]

... It could be "Historic without the cards that don't exist IRL", that would be fine too. ...

They ruled that out.

[TsumiBand]

They ruled that out.

I still don't care

Also it was stupid to rule that out

[H]

So, we had a request for an Arena section and so it shall be: MTG Arena discussion (https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?87-MTG-Arena).

For now, I will leave this topic here so people can see this. In a while (I guess a week or so) I'll move this topic there. Feel free to create threads there for any of the Arena things you want to talk about (formats, issues, whatever). If anyone has something they'd like pinned there or locked, just let me know.

Any further concerns, just message me.

[jmlima]

Alchemy, a success story, ep 234:

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/tfhmpe/saffron_olive_our_youtube_audience_has_made_it/

[larsyk]

Alchemy, a success story, ep 234:

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/tfhmpe/saffron_olive_our_youtube_audience_has_made_it/

That's good