I am a little concerned about pack costs, amount of free packs, and the general "entrance cost" to compete in MTG Arena when it launches.
I know WotC is a business and they want to make money - and I really do want them to make lots of money too - but I really hope they are generous with free packs in MTG Arena. There's currently 8 sets in the Standard format, and I think that's going to be very difficult for new players to get into, especially since you need multiple copies of various rares and mythics to make competitive decks, and cards from all of the sets to make a complete deck. I'm thinking, if they did what Hearthstone does and gave 3 free packs of each set, that would be extremely disappointing and would amount to almost nothing. I'm thinking they need to give at least 10 packs of every set to get people started, because even with that, your deck isn't going to compete in Standard anyway but at least you have a chance to go in a few directions with further investment as you target packs in the set that you know will assemble a deck.
Hearthstone is already experiencing a lot of problems related to this now - new players simply do not have the relevant cards for the last 6 expansions and the classic set to compete. Lately, decks require a lot of epics and legendaries to do well, especially in Ungoro and The Frozen Throne. Blizzard doesn't seem to be doing enough to solve this problem - they give you a paltry number of free packs to get you started, and I think the cost is extremely high. For example, I think the absolute rock-bottom minimum entry price for Hearthstone is $400, and this would let a new player obtain 60 packs in the most recent sets as well as the classic set. There's a good chance you still can't make any decks with all of those packs without some aggressive disenchanting and crafting. That's a pretty unreasonable starting cost for digital goods with no market value. Hearthstone gets away with it because they were the first to really dominate the market, it's based on Warcraft, and it's Blizzard (they get away with a lot of stuff other publishers wouldn't get away with due to past reputation).
To have a full collection in Hearthstone - or at least enough of a full collection to make every standard deck freely (which is very handy honestly as the meta shifts, and is required for tournament play), you probably need to realistically buy 180 packs of classic and 180 packs of the last 3 expansions. For me, in Canada, that's $1055.88 for only 1 years worth of cards - a pretty ridiculous price when you think about it, considering the cards have no market value, are not tradable, and are not physical in any way. In Paper Magic, I can make 2 of the top 3 decks - 4C Energy and W/U Gifts for example - for ~$330, and I can resell them after I am bored with them.
So, I really think WotC has to play attention to this new player experience and adjust costs accordingly, both at launch and as the game evolves, to compare well with Paper Magic as well as stick it to Blizzard. For example, paying even $400 to obtain a collection large enough to build 4C Energy and W/U Gifts would be quite unreasonable imho. If MTG Arena was much cheaper, I think WotC could compete with Blizzard. They will probably get many more converts, since lots of people are upset with Hearthstone due to the lack of free packs, how expensive it is to make decks, as well as the absurd levels of RNG when playing the game. If Magic Arena decided to charge $400-1000 as an entrance cost to make most standard decks, consider that it's far cheaper for current Hearthstone players like myself to just stick to Hearthstone since we've already invested a lot into that game.
Hearthstone has done a few things - like guaranteed no legendary duplicates - but MTG Arena can go a lot of further than that - perhaps going with non-dupes entirely. That, with lots of free packs or lots of auto-unlocked cards, would really make things better for new players, both at launch and as the game evolves.
Basically, I think MTG Arena should aim to be as accessible as possible. I think if WotC wants to take advantage of "whales", they can charge a fixed fee to foil a specific card, and that cost can scale with the rarity. For example, $1 to foil a common, $3 to foil an uncommon, $8 to foil a rare and $15-20 to foil a mythic. This doesn't affect accessibility or game play at all, and we already know players like Kibler and Kripparrian would probably foilize their entire decks.
I also think it's a good idea to support more modes than Standard - perhaps Pauper version of Standard, or modes that have a restriction on the number of rares and mythics you can have in a deck, or set-only modes for players who only purchased packs from a single set. Having these modes ensures new players don't get crushed in the Standard ranked mode, and more players is always going to make them more money in the end. Hearthstone should have done this years ago.
Personally, as someone who has a very large Hearthstone collection over the last 4 years (I can basically make every relevant deck), I would absolutely consider moving to MTG Arena if I could spend about $150-200 to obtain all of the relevant cards for Standard at launch, and another $75-150 as new sets are released during that year. I hope that's where WotC is at in terms of pricing. I don't think I would transition to MTG Arena if the total costs were more than that, as it's just cheaper for me to keep playing Hearthstone. There's just too many cards to obtain in too many sets for Standard in Magic, and I don't want to feel pressured to paying $1000 or more to obtain most of them, especially when I could buy the physical cards for that price (and probably a lot less).
So, those are my thoughts on this subject. Thank you very much for listening and hopefully we can have a good discussion.
Unfortunately, there's not much we can say right now, as the Beta is currently behind an NDA, so anyone who is currently playing can't say a whole lot about it. On top of that, they haven't released any details about how the final economy will actually work. There's rumblings that there may be some kind of tie in to real product; i.e. you buy a real box and you can redeem a code in it for a box online, but there's nothing concrete yet.
So, I'd say at this point, it's wait and see.
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I hope the real cost would be just for events and drafts, not obtaining cards. I think Eternal and Shadowverse have the right compromise for spenders and free players. You get the value for your money and at the same time you can get competitive decks for free within reasonable time invested.
I really hope they don't suffocate free content and at the same time doesn't give value for money. That's the worse combination.
They could have buy a nonfoil complete set for $40~60ish (basically the price of a full game, I could see $99 but no more than that) if they won't use a craft system (and don't shower us with packs), a system where you can foil cards for a fee, lot of cosmetics like full art, special animations, avatars, sleeves, and battlefields. Also, they could have event deck style packs (Eternal and Shadowverse have these and they are good value overall, specially Shadowverse with special sleeve and art for key cards).
They really need to keep population high in order to compete with the other established cardgames and also be a gateway to paper MTG. They could link the paper and MTGArena with codes for packs or promos and also give online coupons to buy sealed products. That could be a really nice selling point that other card games besides Pokemon/YuGiOh can offer.
WotC can do a lot of stuff without being EA/Activision greedy, but something says that the CEO in charge is the type of guy who doesn't give a damn and it's milking MTG like no tomorrow judging by what happened to 2017 releases. I will not be surprised that MTGArena will not release with an adequate UI and menus, very poor value for money for your purchase except for drafts, and barely be better than HS for free players.
I hope the real cost would be just for events and drafts, not obtaining cards.
Something tells me, with the packs costing 1000 Silver/gold that this will never happen Hearthstone charges for packs as well as Arena, and you don't even get to keep the cards in your arena decks - you just get a random pack afterwards, with possible upside depending on how well you did. I think WotC is looking to make money, so I don't expect them to give the cards away for free.
They could have buy a nonfoil complete set for $40~60ish (basically the price of a full game, I could see $99 but no more than that) if they won't use a craft system (and don't shower us with packs), a system where you can foil cards for a fee, lot of cosmetics like full art, special animations, avatars, sleeves, and battlefields. Also, they could have event deck style packs (Eternal and Shadowverse have these and they are good value overall, specially Shadowverse with special sleeve and art for key cards).
I think fixed prices for a set is a great idea... however, the "gambling" and random excitement to opening packs would go away, and I'm pretty sure that aspect of the game makes WotC more money, even though I've grown to think it's exploitative, especially when they are digital goods that have no market value at all.
However, the best way to implement this idea indirectly is to simply prevent pulling duplicates from packs once you have a completed playset, so there is a finite number of packs you have to buy in order to have a full collection. I dunno if $40-60 would be a good idea. For an expansion, I simply do not mind paying $60 every 4 months - that's completely reasonable to me - but if MTG Arena launches with 8 sets in total, then that's still $320-480, plus another $120-180 for 3 more expansions). This is definitely cheaper than buying a full collection in Hearthstone for today's Standard, but not by as much as you would think. I think spending $600 for the first year of an unproven game is quite a bit of a gamble for pretty much everybody.
As much as I think $600 for the first year would be too much, my gut instinct is telling me it'll be $1200 or more, and $600 is already high enough to drive me away, as I don't have a ton of time to "grind". If I have time to play, then I want to spend that time to play the decks that interest me, which means not playing decks I don't like over and over again just to grind gold and just paying for the packs. I am not against paying, but $600 is really not justifable for me. As expensive as Hearthstone is, you did not need to spend anywhere near $400 when it launched. You do now of course, but not at launch
I was fortunate enough to start early, so I have all of the cards and the "upkeep" cost isn't that big of a deal - about $480/year ($160 every 4 months), which would be less than the hypothetical cost of $600 to start MTG Arena. If WotC is really serious about attracting players - especially those who already bought into Hearthstone (and let's face it, that's quite a few of the ~50 million players playing that game), then they need to offer all of the cards at launch + expansions during the first year for under $480.
I hope WotC considers this carefully. I really do. It's very easy for greed to mess this up for them. If they were smart business people, they would do 2 things:
1. Drastically decrease the cost of playing the game, and making it incredibly accessible for people to play and compete and create decks
2. Emphasize the game's higher skill cap and lower RNG compared to its competition.
You can be fairly sure WotC will look at Heartstone A LOT to make adjustments, they already fairly copy/paste the ideas instead of actually making some good new on their own, they want to play it save, and it will for sure cut them.
They are going to mess Arena up. There is absolutely no way they are going to succeed with the kind of financial skulduggery they've been reduced to over the last couple of years and this is especially true once the PC / Console gaming crowd gets involved. They're going to get torn to shreds on just the loot box nature of randomized card packs alone and people are already falling out of favor with Activision Blizzard with Overwatch / Hearthstone.
I mean, it's one thing to post the odds of pulling a rare or mythic from a pack, but it goes to all new heights once people realize that only a few of the mythics and rares are actually desirable, which then makes it so the odds on the booster pack are a bit misleading.
Basically, if I recall for dragons maze the odds of pulling a mythic was 1/8, and there were 11 mythics in the set, so the chances of getting a Voice of Resurgence was 1/88. That's perfectly fine if all the mythics were actually playable, but lets take something like Hour of Devastation that only has The Scarab God or bust. Now it's 12 mythics and only one actually sees play in any kind of major competitive deck, so that's 1/96 that a person pulls a useful card for constructed from the mythic slot. Also, people need multiples, so that makes it even worse than the grind people were doing in Battlefront 2 from EA.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
@Katie Do you currently play Magic Online? If not, why not? It meets all the requirements you have. Standard deck prices are in the low hundreds. Cards are tradable and salable so it costs much less than the sum of the individual decks you buy/trade into. Leagues exist for playing with prizes on the line, or if all you want to do is play casually, you can play for free as much as you want in the Open Constructed area. I see you have a Hearthstone background, but why wait for Arena when Magic Online provides everything you're asking for?
@Katie Do you currently play Magic Online? If not, why not? It meets all the requirements you have. Standard deck prices are in the low hundreds. Cards are tradable and salable so it costs much less than the sum of the individual decks you buy/trade into. Leagues exist for playing with prizes on the line, or if all you want to do is play casually, you can play for free as much as you want in the Open Constructed area. I see you have a Hearthstone background, but why wait for Arena when Magic Online provides everything you're asking for?
I'd wait on suggesting MTGO until Arena is out of Beta. That's basically asking someone to go play on an aging system that is regarded by many as a necessary evil vs something that is actually preferable. Also, I don't like the way the legal text is written for MTGO given the kind of economy that has been established for that game. Right now there is a sort of loophole in the legal text that makes it so you technically own the starter decks and sealed products, but then there's the cards and those would require a case in court to establish ones ownership. Basically, hearthstone doesn't have the same legal issues wizards has with MTGO and the digital secondary market as they built hearthstone to never have a secondary market.
Let me put it this way: In wizards eyes when someone buys a digital card from a digital trader bot, neither the person in question who bought the card nor the trader bought actually own the card or any object of worth, and the person buying just gave fiat currency for the privilege of using the card... which the bot doesn't own, WoTC technically is the owner of the digital object... but that only works if it doesn't have an actual real world value, which it does. However, to prove that it would have to go through our legal system, which is extremely unfriendly in scenarios like this.
Has anyone else read this and made sense of it yet?
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well all companies are here for money of course, how they do it is the question. Comparing other cardgames, not just HS, they all give some bones to new and veteran players alike in some form. It can be cosmetics or cards. Even HS which is stingy compared to Eternal, Shadowverse, and other card games gives some free cards upon completion of quests or just login in some special periods. WotC will need to adopt those practices in other to compete directly with them and bring nonMTG players into their fold.
They can make a killing in other ways rather than just selling packs.
Now the idea of selling sets, some cardgames sell complete sets at reasonable price (compared to complete games), so even if you are paying up to let's say $100 per set, you kinda need to compare it to buying a game. A set comes every 3 months or so, so even at this high rate it would be reasonable. Ideally I would say $40 because it was 39.99 in that game. 320 for 8 complete sets isn't that bad IMO because that cost will be divided (supposedly) in a year or so. Also, you have to consider that in my mind going free is a viable option. In that game (I don't recall the name), getting most of the cards via free play was very viable. My idea is having both ways viable, free or pay.
Also, they could have a big bundle for early adopters. Like $100 gets all current sets during the launching period. Another idea could be some subscription to access all cards and gets some free drafts/events per week/month. Probably pretty deal for dedicate Standard players who need to grind for practice purposes. They can do a lot of promotions to really standout compared to the competition. Shadowverse gave 45 plus a gazillion more packs per each time they got a download milestone during its release period. That really caught a lot of attention of potential customers.
Now the idea of duplicates, I don't think they need to bother with that much if we can get packs easily. In Eternal and Shadowverse, where grinding packs is easy, getting extra duplicates is fine and probably desirable initially. In HS this is bad because legendary drop rates are bad and you can have only one. Even opening the same legendary as golden and normal would be a bad feeling. In MTG you can use 4 of the same cards. Shadowverse you can use 3 of the same and Eternal 4 of the same. Getting duplicates isn't an issue if grinding for mats to create cards is easy. They make money selling drafts, cosmetics, foil makers, and bundles. Judging at Shadowverse numbers, they make a killing without being greedy.
Another thing they could adopt is Japanese style login rewards. You get free stuff just for login in. For my experience, even if you just login and not play any game for achievements/quests, you get enough to make a tier deck. WotC needs to feed free players as well because player population is really important for big spenders as well.
Another way to help free players is having some other system besides quest system. Eternal has monthly ranking rewards and achievements. Shadowverse has them as well plus a generous campaign reward system. Eternal gives stuff for playing their really useful tutorial as well. Other game may have puzzles or challenges that give rewards. Another thing Arena needs is a really good tutorial. They may give free foils of key commons and uncommons that way (and/or just ingame currency as well). Even stingy HS has Tavern Brawl and Adventures. WotC should look for these systems as well.
Hopefully they just don't try to match HS greedy way. HS can get away with that because Blizzard expands and dominates the market. I don't think Arena can do that. They need to look at other successful HS competitors like Shadowverse and be at least as generous as them.
Another thing WotC got horribly wrong with MTGO is the way you open packs. Opening packs is one of most important experiences TCG players can feel and in MTGO is very underwhelming. All digital cardgames opening packs is a very exciting experience. WotC really needs to nail this in Arena.
There are two areas that Arena can do way better than their competition: game modes and linking it with paper product. Even without older sets, they could have Pauper/Peasant, Commander, Mormir, and so on. If you have a lot of gameplay options, making the purchase experience higher than the competition justifiable. I think most people would be fine in buying stuff if the gameplay experience is the best in the market and MTG allows that.
Also they could link paper products with Arena. Instead of having those useless promotional backs in the tokens, they could give codes for either ingame currency or pack for Arena. The booster box and other sealed products could give something special too. This would also increase the perceived value of physical products. Also, they could give big Arena spenders codes or whatever that could be redeemed as physical products or discounts. This would be a nice way to attract new players to physical MTG as well. Both ways will give a favorable perception to whatever Arena will cost.
Although they have this advantage over digital products, one thing they can't do as well is balancing. Because of the ties with paper MTG they can't freely make balance changes to cards (they can but they probably won't just to maintain this integrity). Because of this, they need to be generous IMO. I don't know much about Pokemon and YuGiOh online, but for what I've seen they are pretty generous compared to the absurdly priced MTGO. MTGO gets away with that because it's an experience on its own (however bad it really is). They can't do that with Arena because it won't be much different than other digital card games.
Of course those are all just ideas (not mine, just observation from Arena and MTG competitors in general). In the end if they nail the interface and reward system for new players would be enough for me. Both things are stuff that WotC never nailed properly in the past.
They are going to mess Arena up. There is absolutely no way they are going to succeed with the kind of financial skulduggery they've been reduced to over the last couple of years and this is especially true once the PC / Console gaming crowd gets involved. They're going to get torn to shreds on just the loot box nature of randomized card packs alone and people are already falling out of favor with Activision Blizzard with Overwatch / Hearthstone.
I mean, it's one thing to post the odds of pulling a rare or mythic from a pack, but it goes to all new heights once people realize that only a few of the mythics and rares are actually desirable, which then makes it so the odds on the booster pack are a bit misleading.
Basically, if I recall for dragons maze the odds of pulling a mythic was 1/8, and there were 11 mythics in the set, so the chances of getting a Voice of Resurgence was 1/88. That's perfectly fine if all the mythics were actually playable, but lets take something like Hour of Devastation that only has The Scarab God or bust. Now it's 12 mythics and only one actually sees play in any kind of major competitive deck, so that's 1/96 that a person pulls a useful card for constructed from the mythic slot. Also, people need multiples, so that makes it even worse than the grind people were doing in Battlefront 2 from EA.
Exactly. I know WotC will not let you pay $ to craft the individual cards - they are going to do this in packs. And with 8 standard-legal sets, that's an insane number of packs you have to open to get your playables. It really will cause me to avoid Arena if they do not handle this properly.
Well all companies are here for money of course, how they do it is the question. Comparing other cardgames, not just HS, they all give some bones to new and veteran players alike in some form. It can be cosmetics or cards. Even HS which is stingy compared to Eternal, Shadowverse, and other card games gives some free cards upon completion of quests or just login in some special periods. WotC will need to adopt those practices in other to compete directly with them and bring nonMTG players into their fold.
I think it's a bit of a myth that Hearthstone is really "bad" for players. It wouldn't take that much money for a person to craft some very good decks, like Prince Rogue (it only has 3 legendaries). This isn't *that* dissimilar to something like Eternal. And the upper-limit every year in Hearthstone is $480 - that will let you create every tier 1, 2 and 3 deck. Compare to this to Eternal, and a complete collection for the last 3 sets would cost about $5000. Yes, it's true Eternal gives out a lot of new packs, but with the insane number of legendaries available, and requiring up to 4 of the best ones, you will be opening thousands of packs in order to get the legendaries ones you want. You have to craft everything in eternal, and you probably should disenchant aggressively in order to create Eternal decks. In Hearthstone, there is a lot less need for disenchanting, which means you probably shouldn't disenchant anything. This is actually a big advantage, because you can't predict the metagame, and dust/shiftstone is too damn expensive to burn 75% of it just to recraft something you already had.
320 for 8 complete sets isn't that bad IMO because that cost will be divided (supposedly) in a year or so.
If that was the entry fee for Arena to participate in Standard and take it seriously, then yes, I'm in for $320. I have a strong gut feeling it will never be that low, but if they want to do something unconventional and consumer-friendly for a change, I will be on board.
Now the idea of duplicates, I don't think they need to bother with that much if we can get packs easily. In Eternal and Shadowverse, where grinding packs is easy, getting extra duplicates is fine and probably desirable initially.
In Eternal, there's so many legendaries and cards, the no-duplicate feature just wouldn't make any sense... there's something like 130 legendaries in the 3 booster box sets. I already did the math, and if you wanted playsets of everything, it would cost $4750 or something - I'd have to find the exact amount... I did it a few days ago.
Even opening the same legendary as golden and normal would be a bad feeling.
You cannot get duplicate legendaries - even golden duplicates - in Hearthstone unless you have all of the legendaries in the set first. This has been the case in the last 2 expansions. Because of this, at least you have a good idea how far away you are from getting the cards you need, and that's about $180 per expansion. I think $180 is too much honestly - Arena has to be go much lower than that - but the one good thing Hearthstone has done is ensure you don't get dupes of the most expensive cards, making your packs worth a lot more on average.
To be frank the entire games industry has been doing this for the last couple of years now. The cost up front people pay to get into a game like Call of Duty is only a fraction of the total cost of the game. For CoD there's usually two map packs that cost as much as an expansion, which also doesn't include all the cosmetic DLC they throw at people. As a result the cost of a AAA video game is typically over a hundred dollars for the entire thing. Total War: Warhammer 2 is probably one of the most outrageous of the group as the cost to get access to all the content is 130 usd on steam. That is with the Steam Sale cutting out the costs on the older content by 66%, so good luck getting into that game outside of the steam sale without going to G2A or some third party that sells keys.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I mean I'd love to just be able to go buy the cards I want for some set amount of currency because pack opening rng is stupidly annoying and it holds back my ability to build the deck I want if I only have 1 of a key build around card.. for example in duels with the 2 of a rare restriction made deck building terrible because so many rares were so build around.
I honestly think the best way to do it would be... Intro decks.
Intro decks built around the set mechanics could just give you a nice little bump towards getting key uncommons (not opening uncommons is the worst) and some marquee rares. I wouldn't expect them to have the best cards, but hopefully playable ones. It would also just allow new players who aren't deck builders to just dump money in and get a deck.
I heard about the possible return of the event decks, or something similar, to paper magic I'd like to see them in this game as well. you can have them be worth plenty of currency but then you'll have the option of saving up for a deck or open random things.
There's zero chance wizards is going to allow people to trade singles unless they control the system somehow. The company has legal reasons to avoid the system established in mtgo as they can't even retire that game without a possible law suit.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
@Katie Do you currently play Magic Online? If not, why not? It meets all the requirements you have. Standard deck prices are in the low hundreds. Cards are tradable and salable so it costs much less than the sum of the individual decks you buy/trade into. Leagues exist for playing with prizes on the line, or if all you want to do is play casually, you can play for free as much as you want in the Open Constructed area. I see you have a Hearthstone background, but why wait for Arena when Magic Online provides everything you're asking for?
MTGO is not free to play. It also costs $10 just to get an account. Simply put I'm not going to spend money to use a program that is horrendous when all other card games on the market are free.
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Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy. Check out the Shop Thread
@Katie Do you currently play Magic Online? If not, why not? It meets all the requirements you have. Standard deck prices are in the low hundreds. Cards are tradable and salable so it costs much less than the sum of the individual decks you buy/trade into. Leagues exist for playing with prizes on the line, or if all you want to do is play casually, you can play for free as much as you want in the Open Constructed area. I see you have a Hearthstone background, but why wait for Arena when Magic Online provides everything you're asking for?
MTGO is not free to play. It also costs $10 just to get an account. Simply put I'm not going to spend money to use a program that is horrendous when all other card games on the market are free.
I believe that the informed customer is always right, and that people are right to abide by their own preferences. If that's how you feel about the program, then it's not right for you. But "free to play" is not relevant to OP's concerns. I was talking to this Katie OP, who explicitly stated how much she was willing to and expected to pay yearly. She also listed some expected grievances, like not being able to buy cards directly. MTGO fits her budget and fulfills her list of desirable features, with a bonus of allowing her to cash out of the system via redemption or third party like Cardhoarders.
Frankly I want a "service" package. where I pay $10 or $20 a month for unlimited drafting/play for that time frame. No packs, no prizes, just unlimited authorized tournment play.
I'm going to be that guy...
Why are you even talking about heartstone? A little whike back the world champion admitted to winning because of sheer luck. I'm sorry but I'd rather not play a game that is randomly distributed cards via shuffle then get random effects on top of that. Thats just too much.
Shadow Era is a much better game by miles and miles. Only real downfall there is the lengthy time of sets. Game is shifting ownership so hopefully that will change shortly.
But it's free to play. Has guilds, has tournaments, world championshios, etc.
I seriously doubt WotC would ever allow people to eBay digital cards ever again.
That means the players will either have access to an in-game auction house that players use to buy, and sell the cards with the in-game currency OR, far more likely, we will just have an in-game system where we craft/create the cards we want by destroying the cards we have but do not want.
Booster Packs contain eight cards: 5 commons, 2 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic. The Gem-price is not yet determined, but it won't be tied to paper booster packs.
Draft Packs contain 14 cards like paper, except the basic land is removed.
Individual cards can be earned through play. A system where players receive up to 30 per day is being tested.
Wildcards are special cards that can appear in boosters at any rarity. Each Wildcard has a rarity (common, uncommon, etc) and can be exchanged for any other card of the same rarity.
The Vault is the mechanic to deal with duplicates. Every time you would open a fifth version of a card, it fills the Vault meter. Once full, you can open the Vault for a reward. At this time the rewards are Wildcards.
Note that there is no trading.
EDIT: In addition, I really find MTGO unbearable since I started playing again. Its like the last 6-9 months its even worse, and my computer is way over spec.
EDIT: In addition, I really find MTGO unbearable since I started playing again. Its like the last 6-9 months its even worse, and my computer is way over spec.
No, Standard only.
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I know WotC is a business and they want to make money - and I really do want them to make lots of money too - but I really hope they are generous with free packs in MTG Arena. There's currently 8 sets in the Standard format, and I think that's going to be very difficult for new players to get into, especially since you need multiple copies of various rares and mythics to make competitive decks, and cards from all of the sets to make a complete deck. I'm thinking, if they did what Hearthstone does and gave 3 free packs of each set, that would be extremely disappointing and would amount to almost nothing. I'm thinking they need to give at least 10 packs of every set to get people started, because even with that, your deck isn't going to compete in Standard anyway but at least you have a chance to go in a few directions with further investment as you target packs in the set that you know will assemble a deck.
Hearthstone is already experiencing a lot of problems related to this now - new players simply do not have the relevant cards for the last 6 expansions and the classic set to compete. Lately, decks require a lot of epics and legendaries to do well, especially in Ungoro and The Frozen Throne. Blizzard doesn't seem to be doing enough to solve this problem - they give you a paltry number of free packs to get you started, and I think the cost is extremely high. For example, I think the absolute rock-bottom minimum entry price for Hearthstone is $400, and this would let a new player obtain 60 packs in the most recent sets as well as the classic set. There's a good chance you still can't make any decks with all of those packs without some aggressive disenchanting and crafting. That's a pretty unreasonable starting cost for digital goods with no market value. Hearthstone gets away with it because they were the first to really dominate the market, it's based on Warcraft, and it's Blizzard (they get away with a lot of stuff other publishers wouldn't get away with due to past reputation).
To have a full collection in Hearthstone - or at least enough of a full collection to make every standard deck freely (which is very handy honestly as the meta shifts, and is required for tournament play), you probably need to realistically buy 180 packs of classic and 180 packs of the last 3 expansions. For me, in Canada, that's $1055.88 for only 1 years worth of cards - a pretty ridiculous price when you think about it, considering the cards have no market value, are not tradable, and are not physical in any way. In Paper Magic, I can make 2 of the top 3 decks - 4C Energy and W/U Gifts for example - for ~$330, and I can resell them after I am bored with them.
So, I really think WotC has to play attention to this new player experience and adjust costs accordingly, both at launch and as the game evolves, to compare well with Paper Magic as well as stick it to Blizzard. For example, paying even $400 to obtain a collection large enough to build 4C Energy and W/U Gifts would be quite unreasonable imho. If MTG Arena was much cheaper, I think WotC could compete with Blizzard. They will probably get many more converts, since lots of people are upset with Hearthstone due to the lack of free packs, how expensive it is to make decks, as well as the absurd levels of RNG when playing the game. If Magic Arena decided to charge $400-1000 as an entrance cost to make most standard decks, consider that it's far cheaper for current Hearthstone players like myself to just stick to Hearthstone since we've already invested a lot into that game.
Hearthstone has done a few things - like guaranteed no legendary duplicates - but MTG Arena can go a lot of further than that - perhaps going with non-dupes entirely. That, with lots of free packs or lots of auto-unlocked cards, would really make things better for new players, both at launch and as the game evolves.
Basically, I think MTG Arena should aim to be as accessible as possible. I think if WotC wants to take advantage of "whales", they can charge a fixed fee to foil a specific card, and that cost can scale with the rarity. For example, $1 to foil a common, $3 to foil an uncommon, $8 to foil a rare and $15-20 to foil a mythic. This doesn't affect accessibility or game play at all, and we already know players like Kibler and Kripparrian would probably foilize their entire decks.
I also think it's a good idea to support more modes than Standard - perhaps Pauper version of Standard, or modes that have a restriction on the number of rares and mythics you can have in a deck, or set-only modes for players who only purchased packs from a single set. Having these modes ensures new players don't get crushed in the Standard ranked mode, and more players is always going to make them more money in the end. Hearthstone should have done this years ago.
Personally, as someone who has a very large Hearthstone collection over the last 4 years (I can basically make every relevant deck), I would absolutely consider moving to MTG Arena if I could spend about $150-200 to obtain all of the relevant cards for Standard at launch, and another $75-150 as new sets are released during that year. I hope that's where WotC is at in terms of pricing. I don't think I would transition to MTG Arena if the total costs were more than that, as it's just cheaper for me to keep playing Hearthstone. There's just too many cards to obtain in too many sets for Standard in Magic, and I don't want to feel pressured to paying $1000 or more to obtain most of them, especially when I could buy the physical cards for that price (and probably a lot less).
So, those are my thoughts on this subject. Thank you very much for listening and hopefully we can have a good discussion.
Regards,
Katie
So, I'd say at this point, it's wait and see.
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I really hope they don't suffocate free content and at the same time doesn't give value for money. That's the worse combination.
They could have buy a nonfoil complete set for $40~60ish (basically the price of a full game, I could see $99 but no more than that) if they won't use a craft system (and don't shower us with packs), a system where you can foil cards for a fee, lot of cosmetics like full art, special animations, avatars, sleeves, and battlefields. Also, they could have event deck style packs (Eternal and Shadowverse have these and they are good value overall, specially Shadowverse with special sleeve and art for key cards).
They really need to keep population high in order to compete with the other established cardgames and also be a gateway to paper MTG. They could link the paper and MTGArena with codes for packs or promos and also give online coupons to buy sealed products. That could be a really nice selling point that other card games besides Pokemon/YuGiOh can offer.
WotC can do a lot of stuff without being EA/Activision greedy, but something says that the CEO in charge is the type of guy who doesn't give a damn and it's milking MTG like no tomorrow judging by what happened to 2017 releases. I will not be surprised that MTGArena will not release with an adequate UI and menus, very poor value for money for your purchase except for drafts, and barely be better than HS for free players.
Something tells me, with the packs costing 1000 Silver/gold that this will never happen Hearthstone charges for packs as well as Arena, and you don't even get to keep the cards in your arena decks - you just get a random pack afterwards, with possible upside depending on how well you did. I think WotC is looking to make money, so I don't expect them to give the cards away for free.
I think fixed prices for a set is a great idea... however, the "gambling" and random excitement to opening packs would go away, and I'm pretty sure that aspect of the game makes WotC more money, even though I've grown to think it's exploitative, especially when they are digital goods that have no market value at all.
However, the best way to implement this idea indirectly is to simply prevent pulling duplicates from packs once you have a completed playset, so there is a finite number of packs you have to buy in order to have a full collection. I dunno if $40-60 would be a good idea. For an expansion, I simply do not mind paying $60 every 4 months - that's completely reasonable to me - but if MTG Arena launches with 8 sets in total, then that's still $320-480, plus another $120-180 for 3 more expansions). This is definitely cheaper than buying a full collection in Hearthstone for today's Standard, but not by as much as you would think. I think spending $600 for the first year of an unproven game is quite a bit of a gamble for pretty much everybody.
As much as I think $600 for the first year would be too much, my gut instinct is telling me it'll be $1200 or more, and $600 is already high enough to drive me away, as I don't have a ton of time to "grind". If I have time to play, then I want to spend that time to play the decks that interest me, which means not playing decks I don't like over and over again just to grind gold and just paying for the packs. I am not against paying, but $600 is really not justifable for me. As expensive as Hearthstone is, you did not need to spend anywhere near $400 when it launched. You do now of course, but not at launch
I was fortunate enough to start early, so I have all of the cards and the "upkeep" cost isn't that big of a deal - about $480/year ($160 every 4 months), which would be less than the hypothetical cost of $600 to start MTG Arena. If WotC is really serious about attracting players - especially those who already bought into Hearthstone (and let's face it, that's quite a few of the ~50 million players playing that game), then they need to offer all of the cards at launch + expansions during the first year for under $480.
I hope WotC considers this carefully. I really do. It's very easy for greed to mess this up for them. If they were smart business people, they would do 2 things:
1. Drastically decrease the cost of playing the game, and making it incredibly accessible for people to play and compete and create decks
2. Emphasize the game's higher skill cap and lower RNG compared to its competition.
That's all they have to do.
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I mean, it's one thing to post the odds of pulling a rare or mythic from a pack, but it goes to all new heights once people realize that only a few of the mythics and rares are actually desirable, which then makes it so the odds on the booster pack are a bit misleading.
Basically, if I recall for dragons maze the odds of pulling a mythic was 1/8, and there were 11 mythics in the set, so the chances of getting a Voice of Resurgence was 1/88. That's perfectly fine if all the mythics were actually playable, but lets take something like Hour of Devastation that only has The Scarab God or bust. Now it's 12 mythics and only one actually sees play in any kind of major competitive deck, so that's 1/96 that a person pulls a useful card for constructed from the mythic slot. Also, people need multiples, so that makes it even worse than the grind people were doing in Battlefront 2 from EA.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I'd wait on suggesting MTGO until Arena is out of Beta. That's basically asking someone to go play on an aging system that is regarded by many as a necessary evil vs something that is actually preferable. Also, I don't like the way the legal text is written for MTGO given the kind of economy that has been established for that game. Right now there is a sort of loophole in the legal text that makes it so you technically own the starter decks and sealed products, but then there's the cards and those would require a case in court to establish ones ownership. Basically, hearthstone doesn't have the same legal issues wizards has with MTGO and the digital secondary market as they built hearthstone to never have a secondary market.
Let me put it this way: In wizards eyes when someone buys a digital card from a digital trader bot, neither the person in question who bought the card nor the trader bought actually own the card or any object of worth, and the person buying just gave fiat currency for the privilege of using the card... which the bot doesn't own, WoTC technically is the owner of the digital object... but that only works if it doesn't have an actual real world value, which it does. However, to prove that it would have to go through our legal system, which is extremely unfriendly in scenarios like this.
Has anyone else read this and made sense of it yet?
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well all companies are here for money of course, how they do it is the question. Comparing other cardgames, not just HS, they all give some bones to new and veteran players alike in some form. It can be cosmetics or cards. Even HS which is stingy compared to Eternal, Shadowverse, and other card games gives some free cards upon completion of quests or just login in some special periods. WotC will need to adopt those practices in other to compete directly with them and bring nonMTG players into their fold.
They can make a killing in other ways rather than just selling packs.
Now the idea of selling sets, some cardgames sell complete sets at reasonable price (compared to complete games), so even if you are paying up to let's say $100 per set, you kinda need to compare it to buying a game. A set comes every 3 months or so, so even at this high rate it would be reasonable. Ideally I would say $40 because it was 39.99 in that game. 320 for 8 complete sets isn't that bad IMO because that cost will be divided (supposedly) in a year or so. Also, you have to consider that in my mind going free is a viable option. In that game (I don't recall the name), getting most of the cards via free play was very viable. My idea is having both ways viable, free or pay.
Also, they could have a big bundle for early adopters. Like $100 gets all current sets during the launching period. Another idea could be some subscription to access all cards and gets some free drafts/events per week/month. Probably pretty deal for dedicate Standard players who need to grind for practice purposes. They can do a lot of promotions to really standout compared to the competition. Shadowverse gave 45 plus a gazillion more packs per each time they got a download milestone during its release period. That really caught a lot of attention of potential customers.
Now the idea of duplicates, I don't think they need to bother with that much if we can get packs easily. In Eternal and Shadowverse, where grinding packs is easy, getting extra duplicates is fine and probably desirable initially. In HS this is bad because legendary drop rates are bad and you can have only one. Even opening the same legendary as golden and normal would be a bad feeling. In MTG you can use 4 of the same cards. Shadowverse you can use 3 of the same and Eternal 4 of the same. Getting duplicates isn't an issue if grinding for mats to create cards is easy. They make money selling drafts, cosmetics, foil makers, and bundles. Judging at Shadowverse numbers, they make a killing without being greedy.
Another thing they could adopt is Japanese style login rewards. You get free stuff just for login in. For my experience, even if you just login and not play any game for achievements/quests, you get enough to make a tier deck. WotC needs to feed free players as well because player population is really important for big spenders as well.
Another way to help free players is having some other system besides quest system. Eternal has monthly ranking rewards and achievements. Shadowverse has them as well plus a generous campaign reward system. Eternal gives stuff for playing their really useful tutorial as well. Other game may have puzzles or challenges that give rewards. Another thing Arena needs is a really good tutorial. They may give free foils of key commons and uncommons that way (and/or just ingame currency as well). Even stingy HS has Tavern Brawl and Adventures. WotC should look for these systems as well.
Hopefully they just don't try to match HS greedy way. HS can get away with that because Blizzard expands and dominates the market. I don't think Arena can do that. They need to look at other successful HS competitors like Shadowverse and be at least as generous as them.
Another thing WotC got horribly wrong with MTGO is the way you open packs. Opening packs is one of most important experiences TCG players can feel and in MTGO is very underwhelming. All digital cardgames opening packs is a very exciting experience. WotC really needs to nail this in Arena.
There are two areas that Arena can do way better than their competition: game modes and linking it with paper product. Even without older sets, they could have Pauper/Peasant, Commander, Mormir, and so on. If you have a lot of gameplay options, making the purchase experience higher than the competition justifiable. I think most people would be fine in buying stuff if the gameplay experience is the best in the market and MTG allows that.
Also they could link paper products with Arena. Instead of having those useless promotional backs in the tokens, they could give codes for either ingame currency or pack for Arena. The booster box and other sealed products could give something special too. This would also increase the perceived value of physical products. Also, they could give big Arena spenders codes or whatever that could be redeemed as physical products or discounts. This would be a nice way to attract new players to physical MTG as well. Both ways will give a favorable perception to whatever Arena will cost.
Although they have this advantage over digital products, one thing they can't do as well is balancing. Because of the ties with paper MTG they can't freely make balance changes to cards (they can but they probably won't just to maintain this integrity). Because of this, they need to be generous IMO. I don't know much about Pokemon and YuGiOh online, but for what I've seen they are pretty generous compared to the absurdly priced MTGO. MTGO gets away with that because it's an experience on its own (however bad it really is). They can't do that with Arena because it won't be much different than other digital card games.
Of course those are all just ideas (not mine, just observation from Arena and MTG competitors in general). In the end if they nail the interface and reward system for new players would be enough for me. Both things are stuff that WotC never nailed properly in the past.
Exactly. I know WotC will not let you pay $ to craft the individual cards - they are going to do this in packs. And with 8 standard-legal sets, that's an insane number of packs you have to open to get your playables. It really will cause me to avoid Arena if they do not handle this properly.
I think it's a bit of a myth that Hearthstone is really "bad" for players. It wouldn't take that much money for a person to craft some very good decks, like Prince Rogue (it only has 3 legendaries). This isn't *that* dissimilar to something like Eternal. And the upper-limit every year in Hearthstone is $480 - that will let you create every tier 1, 2 and 3 deck. Compare to this to Eternal, and a complete collection for the last 3 sets would cost about $5000. Yes, it's true Eternal gives out a lot of new packs, but with the insane number of legendaries available, and requiring up to 4 of the best ones, you will be opening thousands of packs in order to get the legendaries ones you want. You have to craft everything in eternal, and you probably should disenchant aggressively in order to create Eternal decks. In Hearthstone, there is a lot less need for disenchanting, which means you probably shouldn't disenchant anything. This is actually a big advantage, because you can't predict the metagame, and dust/shiftstone is too damn expensive to burn 75% of it just to recraft something you already had.
Yeah, I'd rather they charge for foiling, as I started in my original post to make some good return and make the game very accessible.
If that was the entry fee for Arena to participate in Standard and take it seriously, then yes, I'm in for $320. I have a strong gut feeling it will never be that low, but if they want to do something unconventional and consumer-friendly for a change, I will be on board.
In Eternal, there's so many legendaries and cards, the no-duplicate feature just wouldn't make any sense... there's something like 130 legendaries in the 3 booster box sets. I already did the math, and if you wanted playsets of everything, it would cost $4750 or something - I'd have to find the exact amount... I did it a few days ago.
That actually makes Hearthstone a lot cheaper.
You cannot get duplicate legendaries - even golden duplicates - in Hearthstone unless you have all of the legendaries in the set first. This has been the case in the last 2 expansions. Because of this, at least you have a good idea how far away you are from getting the cards you need, and that's about $180 per expansion. I think $180 is too much honestly - Arena has to be go much lower than that - but the one good thing Hearthstone has done is ensure you don't get dupes of the most expensive cards, making your packs worth a lot more on average.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I honestly think the best way to do it would be... Intro decks.
Intro decks built around the set mechanics could just give you a nice little bump towards getting key uncommons (not opening uncommons is the worst) and some marquee rares. I wouldn't expect them to have the best cards, but hopefully playable ones. It would also just allow new players who aren't deck builders to just dump money in and get a deck.
I heard about the possible return of the event decks, or something similar, to paper magic I'd like to see them in this game as well. you can have them be worth plenty of currency but then you'll have the option of saving up for a deck or open random things.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
MTGO is not free to play. It also costs $10 just to get an account. Simply put I'm not going to spend money to use a program that is horrendous when all other card games on the market are free.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
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I believe that the informed customer is always right, and that people are right to abide by their own preferences. If that's how you feel about the program, then it's not right for you. But "free to play" is not relevant to OP's concerns. I was talking to this Katie OP, who explicitly stated how much she was willing to and expected to pay yearly. She also listed some expected grievances, like not being able to buy cards directly. MTGO fits her budget and fulfills her list of desirable features, with a bonus of allowing her to cash out of the system via redemption or third party like Cardhoarders.
Why are you even talking about heartstone? A little whike back the world champion admitted to winning because of sheer luck. I'm sorry but I'd rather not play a game that is randomly distributed cards via shuffle then get random effects on top of that. Thats just too much.
Shadow Era is a much better game by miles and miles. Only real downfall there is the lengthy time of sets. Game is shifting ownership so hopefully that will change shortly.
But it's free to play. Has guilds, has tournaments, world championshios, etc.
That means the players will either have access to an in-game auction house that players use to buy, and sell the cards with the in-game currency OR, far more likely, we will just have an in-game system where we craft/create the cards we want by destroying the cards we have but do not want.
Booster Packs contain eight cards: 5 commons, 2 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic. The Gem-price is not yet determined, but it won't be tied to paper booster packs.
Draft Packs contain 14 cards like paper, except the basic land is removed.
Individual cards can be earned through play. A system where players receive up to 30 per day is being tested.
Wildcards are special cards that can appear in boosters at any rarity. Each Wildcard has a rarity (common, uncommon, etc) and can be exchanged for any other card of the same rarity.
The Vault is the mechanic to deal with duplicates. Every time you would open a fifth version of a card, it fills the Vault meter. Once full, you can open the Vault for a reward. At this time the rewards are Wildcards.
Note that there is no trading.
EDIT: In addition, I really find MTGO unbearable since I started playing again. Its like the last 6-9 months its even worse, and my computer is way over spec.
Spirits
No, Standard only.