MTG Arena General Discussion

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Originally Posted by apple713

I agree that resources was the issue. MTGA helps with that because it is a significantly smaller project to undertake than MTGO, (lower startup costs). Additionally, it will generate cash flows while they finish developing. There are tons of cards they need to program into MTGO with the MTGA code and they can work on it while MTGA is generating cash flows.

I dont see the F2P model as something ideal for competitive magic. I see MTGA catering to a casual crowd and MTGO, after its been remade, taking over.

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Sounds like a lot of work requested for WotC to be put into an old software just to support Formats WotC knowingly doesnt care about and a shady secondary market they gain nothing from.

From a business perspective, there is next to no point putting work into MTGO after MTGA has been established. Judging from the financial development in MTGO in the last 3 weeks, I dont think people have much faith for MTGOs future and slowly cashing out as prices and user numbers decline.

You need tix to enter events, every event "destroys" tix as the price payout is lower than the total tix required to start it. Also trading with bots requires tix, which are bought directly from wotc. That's different from a normal market where cash is allowed. So if the market grows because people are buying more cards, are drafting etc. this means more cash for wotc. Compare this with the physical card market, where the financial gains for wotc from my purchases of old cards are indirect at best.

Yeah, i think the mtgo model will still be with us until the death of MTG. I will never play Arena unless i can buy exactly the cards i want up front. I don't care for collecting or opening boosters to slowly build a deck. I want a way to play paper mtg on the internet and MTGO gives me that (or at least close enough). It might not be that MTGO the client will remain, but i think the model that closely follow how paper magic works will remain. Hopefully an eventual replacement for MTGO will keep the collections, but i don't think Arena ever will be that replacement. Arena will be a f2p version of MTG.
The absolute worst thing that could happen is that they start to "dumb" down paper mtg to be better suited for online play, like removing some phases or removing some priority shifts. That would really annoy me.

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

Sounds like a lot of work requested for WotC to be put into an old software just to support Formats WotC knowingly doesnt care about and a shady secondary market they gain nothing from.

From a business perspective, there is next to no point putting work into MTGO after MTGA has been established. Judging from the financial development in MTGO in the last 3 weeks, I dont think people have much faith for MTGOs future and slowly cashing out as prices and user numbers decline.

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Arena really is the future and anybody how doubts it will be the focal point of digital magic moving forwards. Heck, as a competitive Legacy and Casual EDH player I just bought 20k gems for playing standard (obviously it helps that it is really great atm) and even draft (I never thought that) for the first time. Those formats are actually fun with the the speed of MTGA. I have actually not played legacy on mtgo because it feels like such a slug...

I doubt though that the decline of mtgo will be as rapid as you describe. Modern is still the most played format there and as long as their financal benefits from modern, legacy, cube and throwback drafts etc outweigh the additional resources the have to put into keeping mtgo up2date. I doubt we will see much improvement on the software but I will think newe cards will still be coded for quite some time. It will be interesting though how the economy develops if moving forward almost all of standard and current draft will happen on mtga. How will new cards get into the system because currently draft is the main way besides chest right?

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Originally Posted by Ahab

You need tix to enter events, every event "destroys" tix as the price payout is lower than the total tix required to start it. Also trading with bots requires tix, which are bought directly from wotc. That's different from a normal market where cash is allowed. So if the market grows because people are buying more cards, are drafting etc. this means more cash for wotc. Compare this with the physical card market, where the financial gains for wotc from my purchases of old cards are indirect at best.

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Sure but that percentage is really low right? I am too lazy too calculate it now but I have a win% in legacy barely above 50% and I very rarely need to buy tix and can actually exand my collection with what I win. (selling all chests to bots of course)

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Originally Posted by JosefK

Yeah, i think the mtgo model will still be with us until the death of MTG. I will never play Arena unless i can buy exactly the cards i want up front. I don't care for collecting or opening boosters to slowly build a deck. I want a way to play paper mtg on the internet and MTGO gives me that (or at least close enough). It might not be that MTGO the client will remain, but i think the model that closely follow how paper magic works will remain. Hopefully an eventual replacement for MTGO will keep the collections, but i don't think Arena ever will be that replacement. Arena will be a f2p version of MTG.
The absolute worst thing that could happen is that they start to "dumb" down paper mtg to be better suited for online play, like removing some phases or removing some priority shifts. That would really annoy me.

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IMo you will be the minorty moving forward. If legacy and edh were on arena I would instantly throw my money there. Arena is that replacement if you like it or not, it's not f2p (for competitive play). You can play Arena just like PaperMTG if you need to (full control mode), and when you play you will see that the speed up version is actually fine 90% of the time and improves the gaming experience so much.

I probably should try Arena before I talk about it :) But currently I really have zero interest in it so i guess I just stop talking instead :) Its cool to know that in 5 years we will have the answer!

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

Sounds like a lot of work requested for WotC to be put into an old software just to support Formats WotC knowingly doesnt care about and a shady secondary market they gain nothing from.

From a business perspective, there is next to no point putting work into MTGO after MTGA has been established. Judging from the financial development in MTGO in the last 3 weeks, I dont think people have much faith for MTGOs future and slowly cashing out as prices and user numbers decline.

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Digital MTG is actually the only way they can make money off of those eternal formats. There is a demand they can't meet in paper magic because of the reserve list.

As for the secondary market, if WOTC was smart, they would implement a store feature where WOTC was the only "bot" and the price was determined by pure supply and demand. A good implementation of what i'm referring to is the WoW token that exists in world of warcraft. No one complains about the price because it's 100% supply/demand driven.

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Originally Posted by JosefK

Yeah, i think the mtgo model will still be with us until the death of MTG. I will never play Arena unless i can buy exactly the cards i want up front. I don't care for collecting or opening boosters to slowly build a deck. I want a way to play paper mtg on the internet and MTGO gives me that (or at least close enough). It might not be that MTGO the client will remain, but i think the model that closely follow how paper magic works will remain. Hopefully an eventual replacement for MTGO will keep the collections, but i don't think Arena ever will be that replacement. Arena will be a f2p version of MTG.

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You hit the nail on the head here. MTG Arena can't be a competitive or even a real replacement for MTGO because people cannot buy the cards they want. They don't even have a reliable way to collect them. It's actually kinda sad that MTGA puts competitive magic so far out of reach for the majority of players. However, that is probably WOTC's plan. Use MTGA as a way to introduce players to magic without investing a bunch of money then once they are hooked, get them to play MTGO where then can drop big dollars buying decks and playing competitively.

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Originally Posted by JosefK

I probably should try Arena before I talk about it :) But currently I really have zero interest in it so i guess I just stop talking instead :) Its cool to know that in 5 years we will have the answer!

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If you have no interest in standard, I wouldn’t bother. It’s unlikely to have modern/legacy for a long time (if at all, although I’d guess they’d eventually want those formats to exist in it).

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Originally Posted by apple713

As for the secondary market, if WOTC was smart, they would implement a store feature where WOTC was the only "bot" and the price was determined by pure supply and demand.

-snip-

You hit the nail on the head here. MTG Arena can't be a competitive or even a real replacement for MTGO because people cannot buy the cards they want.

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So if they implement a shop into Arena to buy cards (even old ones) they can axe MTGO?

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Originally Posted by apple713

As for the secondary market, if WOTC was smart, they would implement a store feature where WOTC was the only "bot" and the price was determined by pure supply and demand. A good implementation of what i'm referring to is the WoW token that exists in world of warcraft. No one complains about the price because it's 100% supply/demand driven.

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They're digital objects, if you use supply and demand everything would be free because the supply is infinite.

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

So if they implement a shop into Arena to buy cards (even old ones) they can axe MTGO?

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Arena has Wildcards. They'd just sell wildcards rather than old cards or new cards, or any cards, and let players turn them into whatever they want. But it's more profitable for them to hide the wildcards behind RNG and nonsense and sell packs, so they do that instead.

Arena is probably going to be the main recruitment tool for MTG (similiar function Duels once had) that makes some money on the side instead the future of MTG. The current business model is way greedier than Hearthstone and HS already had the problem that their business model was way too greedy. Once the honeymoon phase is over, it's going to be a rude awakening for many players when they get 5th copies left and right that never amount to anything. That, and the still unresolved rotation problem.

It also depends alot on how Artifact turns out, but Valve probably shot themselves in the foot by pricing it at 20$ instead of being F2P.

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Originally Posted by JosefK

Yeah, i think the mtgo model will still be with us until the death of MTG. I will never play Arena unless i can buy exactly the cards i want up front. I don't care for collecting or opening boosters to slowly build a deck. I want a way to play paper mtg on the internet and MTGO gives me that (or at least close enough). It might not be that MTGO the client will remain, but i think the model that closely follow how paper magic works will remain. Hopefully an eventual replacement for MTGO will keep the collections, but i don't think Arena ever will be that replacement. Arena will be a f2p version of MTG.
The absolute worst thing that could happen is that they start to "dumb" down paper mtg to be better suited for online play, like removing some phases or removing some priority shifts. That would really annoy me.

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You mean like changing the rules on blood moon so it's easier to code online?

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Originally Posted by Fallen_Empire

You mean like changing the rules on blood moon so it's easier to code online?

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Was that really to make it easier to code online? I have no issues with that change anyways, the new rule feels a lot more intuitive to me. Isn't that how humility and etb effects always worked? Anyways, small rule changes like that is not what i'm afraid of, more on the scale of removing the draw step or even one of the main phases.

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Originally Posted by JosefK

Was that really to make it easier to code online? I have no issues with that change anyways, the new rule feels a lot more intuitive to me. Isn't that how humility and etb effects always worked? Anyways, small rule changes like that is not what i'm afraid of, more on the scale of removing the draw step or even one of the main phases.

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Those are already hard coded into MTGA so would take way more work on their part to remove than just leave in there. Strange thing to be afraid of.

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Originally Posted by Fallen_Empire

You mean like changing the rules on blood moon so it's easier to code online?

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Professional developer here: changing code requires more work than not changing code.

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Originally Posted by JosefK

Was that really to make it easier to code online?

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Maybe! But not if you already had a blood moon coded...

I've always suspected the combat and regeneration changes made for M10 had a lot to do with mtgo. Was this ever proven?

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Originally Posted by the Thin White Duke

I've always suspected the combat and regeneration changes made for M10 had a lot to do with mtgo. Was this ever proven?

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I don't know if you're trying to argue this from an ergonomics/"UX" perspective, or from an implementation difficulty perspective... Any problems with the latter should have been fully resolved with the 6th Edition rules update that introduced the concept of the stack.

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Originally Posted by colo

I don't know if you're trying to argue this from an ergonomics/"UX" perspective, or from an implementation difficulty perspective... Any problems with the latter should have been fully resolved with the 6th Edition rules update that introduced the concept of the stack.

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Agree. Isn't the stack actually roughly based on a literal computer stack? Magic card text is practically pseudocode.

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Originally Posted by Barook

Arena is probably going to be the main recruitment tool for MTG (similiar function Duels once had) that makes some money on the side instead the future of MTG. The current business model is way greedier than Hearthstone and HS already had the problem that their business model was way too greedy. Once the honeymoon phase is over, it's going to be a rude awakening for many players when they get 5th copies left and right that never amount to anything. That, and the still unresolved rotation problem.

It also depends alot on how Artifact turns out, but Valve probably shot themselves in the foot by pricing it at 20$ instead of being F2P.

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Wow the amount of pure negativity towards anything in all of your posts is really stunning.

Anyhow I don't really see why their model is so greedy? You do know that you get rare and mythic wild cards every xth pack so you will eventually get any card you want after a certain time. If you rotate the sets you are buying packs from it will be quite some time until you run into getting your 5th rare/mythic of anything. Any rarity below that really doesn't matter. So where are you getting 5th copies left and right?

As for rotation you can just store your wildcards and turn them into cards from new sets and your old cards will be playable in the new upcoming non-rotating format. Also the cards are not rotating for another year, why should they implement something for the people who only wanna play standard and have a bunch of useless cards after rotation now? They can easily implement dusting old cards into wild cards then.

Did you see twitch viewer numbers rising with mtga? Just look at JeffHogland. This is definitely the digital future of magic but obviously they will still milk the cash cow mtgo is as long as it's profitable.