MTG Arena General Discussion

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Originally Posted by jmlima

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.

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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

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew

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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...
....

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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.

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

Why does the upkeep step not exist?

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Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce

Why does the upkeep step not exist?

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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

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

This is beyond funny:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/...already_begun/

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

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Originally Posted by jmlima

This is beyond funny:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/...already_begun/

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

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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https://dotesports.com/news/how-to-c...d-in-mtg-arena

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

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

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Originally Posted by PirateKing

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

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https://www.magicarenacardlist.com/

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

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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/...irely_useless/

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Originally Posted by 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/...irely_useless/

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Wizards sets the bar even higher.

Alchemy is still going well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co...e_digitalonly/

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Originally Posted by jmlima

Alchemy is still going well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co...e_digitalonly/

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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..."

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

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..."

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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.

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Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

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.

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

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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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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The latest update wasn't very stable, no

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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

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Originally Posted by Zoid

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by jmlima

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.

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

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Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Rob Hack

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.

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

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