Arena Is Getting Worse, Again

Mtgo is playing a local game shop that pays directly to wizards, playing arena is playing a video game with a gotcha machanic.

Mana bases for mtg, digital or physical, should be the cheapest part of the game. Why is this a hard concept for people to understand, especially wotc. Instead of fetches, shocks, surveil lands, triomes being rare they should be commons and as plentiful as basic lands. The mana base for a magic deck is the barrier of entry for new players that want to play magic. People that want to play the game are willing to spend money on game pieces that aren't lands.

$50-ish is, like, a whole video game.

Are you telling me a playset of fetchlands on Arena costs about as much if not more than a physical EDH precon??

It's crazy how much Arena obfuscates the value of wild cards and their sources. Compared to crafting with dust and having that as your one system it becomes so opaque that if you want to measure it in its entirety you need to make an advanced spreadsheet. This is deliberate.

I hope Vince gives us an update when his first kid says "fuck". That will be comedic gold.

"where does the greed end?" Here's the fun thing, it doesn't

I live in South Africa and getting real pissed off with the price of Magic in general. I have a good job, a house and a car, but I'm literally getting priced out of competitive Magic. I play Modern, but the price of boosters are so absurd I have shifted to importing singles for my decks. Even that is becoming a bit absurd with the number of sets being pumped out and power creep devouring my collection. I bought multiple boxes of MH2, but MH3 is roughly 40% more per box. That's just too much. Maybe I just need to accept the fact that I'm a poor pleb that doesn't deserve to buy boosters.

My main problem with applying that Rosewater statement to digital is this: The boosters are always on the shelves in Arena. You don't have a "print run" of the cards. They're always there, always available. I understand needing to balance power for physical products to assure they all sell relatively well. In the digital format though, you're charging more for less work. Less time programming, less content put into the game, and for something that will always be on the shelves. I wouldn't be surprised to see them be a perpetually "On Sale" product just due to FOMO of the sale, and the general power level of Fetches in formats like timeless and historic.

I wanted to craft a desert, you know, the common that pings attackers, and saw that it was in the mythic slot. Have not really been excited to play arena since

Crazy that only Pokemon has got it right in terms of digital pricing and acquiring cards. Though they took out trading in the new client, they give you free starter meta decks, the battlepass is very worth it in value, and real boosters have digital redemption and can be bought at a fraction of the price on markets.

I quit Arena after the introduction Alchemy ruined a couple of my History decks I had just built. The constant BS of that platform just got to me.

I’m at getting ridiculous. I remember when booster boxes could comfortably be split by a play group now it’s 40-50 bucks. 😞

13:58 "When does it end?" It ends when people stop paying for it. Unfortunately, they won't, so it won't end soon.

Recently I started playing on MTG Online and I'm having a blast. The fact that I can just sell my cards and get the money back is huge.

1:54 desktop wallpaper checking in

I'm like 90% sure that "printing" the enemy fetchlands into Arena to sell at a markup is a cash grab that will end with actually adding the cards to an Arena set in a year or so to get the money now and later.

I've kind of stumbled onto your channel as of late, and as somehow who mainly plays Pokémon it's interesting to compare just how different the approaches of Magic Arena and TCG Live seem to be. In particular, TCG Live seems to pretty much eschew any notion of making money on the client itself - rather, they use the client to encourage people to go and play the game physically. The client gives you a bunch of pretty solid precons to start with, including most of the staples that your decks. The battle pass readily gives you a bunch of new toys to play with (a lot of packs of the current set, some packs from older sets, some full arts of meta-relevant cards, and a deck that you steadily build on throughout the pass), and the daily missions for the pass are easy to complete and give you more than enough currency to stop you getting bogged down for too long. The crafting system is really generous, and being able to redeem physical products is the icing on the cake (including fixed elements of things like prerelease kits or precon deck, booster packs, and even little nice extras like getting in game sleeves). The client is not perfect by any means - there's still a fair few bugs since the transition to TCG Live, and support for Expanded is very lacking (pre-Sun and Moon cards aren't implemented yet, so things like Expanded and Gym Leader Challenge don't really work all that well). The range of ways to play is rather limited (you have private games, a ladder for Standard, Standard and Expanded casual matches and that's it). But at its core, the client feels a lot more approachable and encouraging for newer players to quickly get up to speed with competitive level decks, and for competitive players to easily test and refine new decks before investing in physical product. I really don't think there's much scope to fundamentally change Arena at this point unfortunately, but the difference in direction is very interesting as a relative outsider to Magic.

I wish I could give my wildcards to my friends. I've mainly drafted the last couple years and already have a ton of Historic, Standard and Timeless decks while still having 80 some rare and 60 some mythic wild cards just not being used.

Arena is code. They could give it all for free with 0 cost. It’s all fixed costs. It’s only profit to determine prices.