MTG Arena General Discussion

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Originally Posted by Barook

Also loved this exchange:

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The most scary part about this whole disaster is that WotC/Hasbro might nuke MTGO out of the blue of Arena isn't working out, with the idea that forcing players onto the platform to make it succeed. Given their lack of vision and common sense, it's a real possibility.

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Nuking mtgo in the foreseeable future would be akin to digital suicide. Arena is a replacement for the 'duels of the planeswalker' games that were an annual affair, and it will be years before they ever get a cardpool to allow for modern let alone real eternal formats. Not to mention the 'paying money for pixels you dont own' issue that will inevitably come up once any transition begins, it was easy for them to ignore it for the other games they killed, but a lot of people have serious amounts of money in their online 'collection'.

Another part of the QA said that they're going to make a new non-rotating format on Arena. Almondkat on I guess. Not surprising, but I wonder if they'll translate that into paper too.

I did find it funny that Arena originally said there wasn't going to be crafting because they don't want players to have the feel-bad of destroying their collection to make a rare that underperforms...but now you have all the grind that goes into one Wild Card, and you can still have those same feelbads. Except now it's a completely sunk cost, the economy is way worse, so the risk is much higher.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

I'd really like Arena to succeed (because try as I might, MTGO just doesn't feel like magic), but this doesn't sound promising. Playing "marginally better than sealed" quality decks is just not gonna do it for me.

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They really need to give people who spent money to unlock cards in “Magic Duels” access to all the cards they unlocked in Arena as well (or atleast an equivalent number of tokens that they can use to unlock cards in arena.

They should do the same with MTGO players.

That’s the only way us Duels players will consider switching over to Arena. Otherwise we will all just stick with Duels.

Arena will flop if digital magic players don’t get the magic cards they bought in other venues transferred over to Arena

It’s a reasonable thing to do. Give the people that bought digital cards in your previous iteration access to those same cards in your New iteration.

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Originally Posted by Captain Hammer

It’s a reasonable thing to do. Give the people that bought digital cards in your previous iteration access to those same cards in your New iteration.

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Isn't that WotC's entire shady digital business model? Making you buy the same shit you already own over and over again? :eyebrow:

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Originally Posted by Claymore

Another part of the QA said that they're going to make a new non-rotating format on Arena. Almondkat on I guess. Not surprising, but I wonder if they'll translate that into paper too.

I did find it funny that Arena originally said there wasn't going to be crafting because they don't want players to have the feel-bad of destroying their collection to make a rare that underperforms...but now you have all the grind that goes into one Wild Card, and you can still have those same feelbads. Except now it's a completely sunk cost, the economy is way worse, so the risk is much higher.

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Evan Erwin was on-spot with this tweet:

https://twitter.com/misterorange/sta...63278576734209

Until you have 4 copies of a card, you make no progress. And boy, the first Standard rotation is going to be a shitshow.

It's just kind of impressive. You're watching this HUGE car crash in slow mo and everybody but the driver can see it coming, and they're even yelling at the driver "hey man, you're gonna wreck!" and the driver is all like "nah fam, this is cool".
The game is flat out unplayable for the F2P crowd unless you just really, really, really love playing bad precons. I mean, I've seen Sealed Decks that were better than some of the pre-sets you get.

Just an update from the Beta. They nerfed the Vault. Again.
It's like they're actively trying to sabotage the game at this point.

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Originally Posted by morgan_coke

Just an update from the Beta. They nerfed the Vault. Again.
It's like they're actively trying to sabotage the game at this point.

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Indeed. Since the last reboot, I keep collecting wildcards to see how I could get by playing all quests, etc. I still do not have enough Mythic / Rares to build a standard T1 deck .

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Originally Posted by morgan_coke

Just an update from the Beta. They nerfed the Vault. Again.
It's like they're actively trying to sabotage the game at this point.

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They did? What did they change this time? I'm suprised there wasn't a major outcry yet.

I don't think the update is quite out yet https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/26191.

Morgan might be referring to an in-game update though and I haven't been able to log in for about a week so I may have missed it. Supposedly the big economy post is out later today so I'm sure we'll have plenty to roll our eyes at then.

They nerfed pack progress from 4% to 3.3%. Draft packs do not count for packs opened.

To cover this, 5th+ copy Mythics went from 1% to 1.1%.

I am not making any of that up.

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Originally Posted by morgan_coke

They nerfed pack progress from 4% to 3.3%. Draft packs do not count for packs opened.

To cover this, 5th+ copy Mythics went from 1% to 1.1%.

I am not making any of that up.

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Do they really think that an increase by 0.1% Vault progression is going to make the feel bads from wasting mythics go away? And they nerfed pack progression by 17.5% at the same time?

It amazes me how deep they can have their heads in their asses at times.

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Originally Posted by morgan_coke

They nerfed pack progress from 4% to 3.3%. Draft packs do not count for packs opened.

To cover this, 5th+ copy Mythics went from 1% to 1.1%.

I am not making any of that up.

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Being not familiar with "pack progress" and the refered "5th+ copy mythics", could someone elaborate for a dummy like me?

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

Being not familiar with "pack progress" and the refered "5th+ copy mythics", could someone elaborate for a dummy like me?

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The Vault progress is one of the most important things in Arena, when you complet 100% you get 1 mythic, 2 rares, 3 uncommon wild cards, that you can change for any card of the dame rarity. Wild cards is what matters, since there isn't trade or dust, is the only gmway to you truly get the cards you want.
When you get the 5th copy of some card, you get an ridiculosly small increasment in your vault, instead of the card:
1.1% for mythic
0.7% for rares (I think)
0.3% for uncommons
0.1% for commons
You need to get 90 5th+ copies of mythic rares to trade the vault reward.

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Originally Posted by procobrito

The Vault progress is one of the most important things in Arena, when you complet 100% you get 1 mythic, 2 rares, 3 uncommon wild cards, that you can change for any card of the dame rarity. Wild cards is what matters, since there isn't trade or dust, is the only gmway to you truly get the cards you want.
When you get the 5th copy of some card, you get an ridiculosly small increasment in your vault, instead of the card:
1.1% for mythic
0.7% for rares (I think)
0.3% for uncommons
0.1% for commons
You need to get 90 5th+ copies of mythic rares to trade the vault reward.

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Ah, pack progress and the 5th copy value increase refer to the vault fill progress. Gotcha. Have many thanks

I'm playing Arena now after like 10 years of not playing Magic.

I don't get what their design goal is for Arena. It's more expensive that paper or the existing digital platform and because of things like adding animations and voiceovers they clearly don't intend to add the entire cardpool any time soon so it can't be a Magic Online replacement. Is it literally just to sucker some Hearthstone people in for a year and get $200 out of them? I mean it sort of worked - I've been playing Hearthstone for the last three years, but as a free player, and I won't be paying into Arena without some clarity about the future of the platform, and I doubt many other people will be either, besides the psychos who spend a thousand dollars on any Magic product in existence.

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Originally Posted by Y The Alien

I'm playing Arena now after like 10 years of not playing Magic.

I don't get what their design goal is for Arena. It's more expensive that paper or the existing digital platform and because of things like adding animations and voiceovers they clearly don't intend to add the entire cardpool any time soon so it can't be a Magic Online replacement. Is it literally just to sucker some Hearthstone people in for a year and get $200 out of them? I mean it sort of worked - I've been playing Hearthstone for the last three years, but as a free player, and I won't be paying into Arena without some clarity about the future of the platform, and I doubt many other people will be either, besides the psychos who spend a thousand dollars on any Magic product in existence.

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Last quarter Hearthstone made $440 million. MTGO made $250 million.

Arena is aimed squarely at the shareholders who want that mobile money, but it's run and designed by idiots who don't understand how to make it profitable.

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Originally Posted by morgan_coke

Last quarter Hearthstone made $440 million. MTGO made $250 million.

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Correction: MTG made roughly 250 million as a whole, including Paper. Even the old 40% of MtG's revenue number (which would be ~100 million $) is quite outdated and from times before MTG entered its Golden Age.

Take these numbers with a grain of salt, though.

Realistically, MTGO's revenue might be a bit higher than that, but I can't see it surpassing 50$ million - and that's pretty generous. That's how shitty their digital department is ever since they've had competition.

Yeah Hearthstone didn't make $440 million dollars in a quarter either. Hearthstone's total yearly revenue was about $400 million in 2016 and about $215 million in 2017, according to analysis. That being said I'm just not sure why a push for the casual market wasn't done in, say, a revamp to the existing digital platform's interface and visuals, rather than a whole new client.

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Originally Posted by Y The Alien

Yeah Hearthstone didn't make $440 million dollars in a quarter either. Hearthstone's total yearly revenue was about $400 million in 2016 and about $215 million in 2017, according to analysis. That being said I'm just not sure why a push for the casual market wasn't done in, say, a revamp to the existing digital platform's interface and visuals, rather than a whole new client.

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Because the existing MTGO client cannot operate outside PCs. It's based on .net, casual market means mobile gaming, that needed a new platform, they can barely keep MTGO running without bugs let alone port the entire thing to a new engine, so they decided on the path of least resistance.

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Originally Posted by jmlima

Because the existing MTGO client cannot operate outside PCs. It's based on .net, casual market means mobile gaming, that needed a new platform, they can barely keep MTGO running without bugs let alone port the entire thing to a new engine, so they decided on the path of least resistance.

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Given how blatantly they rip off Hearthstone, it seems more like an attempt to appease shareholders who want the Hearthstone bucks more than anything else.