just to be clear, all of those comments were about limited (sealed specifically). They haven't said anything about changing constructed payouts to my knowledge.
just to be clear, all of those comments were about limited (sealed specifically). They haven't said anything about changing constructed payouts to my knowledge.
And you don't think constructed dailies wont return in a couple of months with a new payout that is worse than what we had?
As for the grinders, I agree that it is not the most responsible thing to depend on MTGO for income. However, I still feel bad for when it gets pulled out from under them.
I'm not sure if this will be good or bad in the long run for MTGO. We will see in the next couple of months. I know I shouldn't, but part of me keeps thinking when events come back there will be something worse for players. The only thing that really bothers me about how WOTC has done this is cancelling MOCS season 12. I think it is unfair to give 4 weeks to qualify for something and then cancel it 2 weeks in when people have been grinding to qualify for half of the season already.
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Standard: Zombies, AntiTusk Vampires, BUG Graveyard, Bant Hexproof, UR Storm Delver Modern: Storm, Jund, Ghast Blaster, Elf Warriors Legacy: RUG Cascade, Imperial Painter, Affinity, Dredge, Elves, Merfolk, Pox, Dragon Stompie, Goblins, ANT, Belcher Classic: Delver, Dredge, Jacerater Draft: I will draft basically any format online (other than Masques) Pauper: MTGO's #1 most handsome Pauper Storm player
This just seems like a ton of childish nonsense. If people actually read the end user agreement they would realize that WotC can pull anything and everything that they want at anytime. Grinding to make a living is one of the most foolish things you could do. If these grinders are any good they could try their hand at real events. If you don't have any around you then I'm sorry but find another source of income. Blaming individuals for the failings of a large company is insane.
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In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
And you don't think constructed dailies wont return in a couple of months with a new payout that is worse than what we had?
I think that's a VERY real possibility. but people were pasting in comments and talking about official discussion on payouts that had nothing to do with constructed. Right now, anything about the future of dailies once/if they return is pure speculation.
The one thing that stuck out in my mind the most was this from Worth though it did not directly say it:
That is from the regular boards when the Theros release / pre-release stuff was different than previous ones. So I am not sure what all was being said on Reddit where I guess the post was originally from.
If it was really about grinders they could have kept the total prize payout the same and just spread it out so it was flatter. What they did in reality is make it a bit flatter and pocketed a fair amount themselves. They are just trying to improve their margins.
If it was really about grinders they could have kept the total prize payout the same and just spread it out so it was flatter. What they did in reality is make it a bit flatter and pocketed a fair amount themselves. They are just trying to improve their margins.
The margins are fine, they are basically slapping every mtgo player who actually knows what EV means in the face. The other half are numb to it all.
I'm an American from a relatively good background, by American standards. Having said that, I think those of you who keep parroting "OMG people support their FAMILIES with MTGO? LOL get a job" are kind of missing the issue, for whatever its worth.
Some people may be supporting their family or their life off of MTGO because they have no better alternative in their country. MTGO players come from all over the world. When you picture in your head "guy whose sole source of income is MTGO" you probably picture a fat white guy who eats a lot of fast food, is a bachelor, and maybe lives with his parents. Perhaps instead it is a guy from a more impoverished country where, as other people have stated, the US dollar is worth more. In such a case, maybe it isn't such a piece of **** move to feed your family or your own mouth off of MTGO.
To be clear, because I live in America and I know the economy here isn't actually that bad, I have absolutely no sympathy for the fat unemployed American guy in his parent's basement who can no longer rely on MTGO for income. But I can't speak for other countries. I know enough to know there are countries in this world where certain people may literally not be able to get a job that will make more US dollars than they make grinding MTGO.
I'm not sure what to make of this one that Sperling shared on Twitter, I thought these kinds of analogies were typically frowned upon (though I'm not American, so I'm not up on all the terms used over there)
I'm not hosting the pic, so I wont embed it, but its from a facebook conversation.
I don't get why people are upset that there are others who make a living playing MTGO. There are plenty of paper Magic players, judges, tournament organizers, shop owners, alterists, and R&D staff who rely on Magic as their source of income. What's the difference between relying on a paper game and a digital game to produce a living?
I'm very upset at how the MTGO staff has been handling this. I've put hard earned money into MTGO, and now I can't even play with the cards I bought? It really makes me want to sell off my collection and wait until Hearthstone's wide release comes out. Seriously, I don't see myself ever putting more money into MTGO if I know that it could get shut down at any time.
What the guys over at WotC need to do is fire everyone in the MTGO department. The current team is doing everything wrong. They need to start over from scratch, building a new, modern server and client instead of something that looks like it should be installed from floppy discs and that crashes every weekend. This could take years to implement, but the longer they wait on this, the worse it'll be. In the meantime, restore the daily events. Daily events have been working out reasonably, at least well enough that we don't mind playing. We enjoy the game enough that we can deal with the problems that occur every few dailies. Please, let us play with the cards that we've already purchased.
I'm an American from a relatively good background, by American standards. Having said that, I think those of you who keep parroting "OMG people support their FAMILIES with MTGO? LOL get a job" are kind of missing the issue, for whatever its worth.
Some people may be supporting their family or their life off of MTGO because they have no better alternative in their country. MTGO players come from all over the world. When you picture in your head "guy whose sole source of income is MTGO" you probably picture a fat white guy who eats a lot of fast food, is a bachelor, and maybe lives with his parents. Perhaps instead it is a guy from a more impoverished country where, as other people have stated, the US dollar is worth more. In such a case, maybe it isn't such a piece of **** move to feed your family or your own mouth off of MTGO.
To be clear, because I live in America and I know the economy here isn't actually that bad, I have absolutely no sympathy for the fat unemployed American guy in his parent's basement who can no longer rely on MTGO for income. But I can't speak for other countries. I know enough to know there are countries in this world where certain people may literally not be able to get a job that will make more US dollars than they make grinding MTGO.
People see the point, but even if your not from the USA, being fully invested into one thing that obviously isnt going to stick around forever is a bad idea. To wake up every day and really believe playing an online game for a living, a game that is owned by a company who has a policy to where they reserve the right to change anything at any given time is just super risky.
Im not trying to tell anybody how to live but if you see this more than a short term opportunity to make money, your asking for trouble. It doesnt matter if your from Africa or Australia, it was not going to last forever.
People see the point, but even if your not from the USA, being fully invested into one thing that obviously isnt going to stick around forever is a bad idea. To wake up every day and really believe playing an online game owned by a company who has a policy to where they reserve the right to change anything at any given time is just bad no matter where you live.
Im not trying to tell anybody how to live but if you see this more than a short term opportunity to make money, your asking for trouble.
You can be fired from any job you work at for reasons outside of your control. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't take that job.
You can be fired from any job you work at for reasons outside of your control. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't take that job.
Yeah, but you have to work there first to get fired. Making your livelihood off mtgo is making money off a company that isn't actually employing you, so you have no say when your job goes away. In a job you're actually hired for at least you can call for some sort of review or rally the other workers if everyone is laid off together with no notice. With mtgo you are completely powerless and don't even get two weeks notice. It's the epitome of an unstable job.
You see that's actually crazy to do (with no back up plan) and are just playing devil's advocate, right?
Some jobs do seem more stable than others though, and most jobs involve acquiring certain skills or experience that helps you get other jobs.
Not directed at you, but to me trying to support a family off of an internet card game seems selfish.
Thats exactly what I was going to say. Jobs build your own net value as well. Its not just a matter of getting a job for getting income, but its also being a valuable member of the world. You get more jobs when people know you are a valuable person that they can not go without. The whole reason why people pay others to do things is because things need to be done the world. Needs and demands need to be met. The world needs people to do things to function.
Plus theres things like retirement and social security that you build towards and potential advancement in a business. That is why MTGO is bad too because it doesnt come with any sort of benefits like stocks, 401k or health insurance, which means if you get sick or have a family emergency, your totally screwed.
So what's going on here is that certain people make their living off of an online game notorious for its bugs and glitches are angry that the game has inevitably gone down because of the aforementioned bugs and glitches. Without jumping into the "get a real job" argument, I would call it irresponsible if you consider MTGO your job yet hadn't been preparing for this moment for a long time.
If people can make a living swinging bats and throwing balls, then I see no reason why people shouldn't be able to make a living slinging cards with silly pictures on them. If there's a market there, then why not? There's plenty of people making a living grinding online poker, so why not online magic? I'm a scrub who dumps a ton of money into the game for enjoyment, but I don't begrudge those who have found a way to make a buck out of it.
Anybody who has lost out as a result of this has my sympathy. It doesn't matter if it's your sole source of income or a supplementary one. Because the reality is people aren't losing money because playing magic professionally is ridiculous, they're losing money because the client can't support the game. Losing money because Hasbro can't or won't make an online client that works has to suck, whether you have a real 9 to 5 or not.
Where do those people come from?
Seriously.
Everyone sees the state of the program and should be happy that they finally at least try to address the problems, but at the same time should be somewhat concerned the the wotc like approach to the situation.
The people blaming this on Kibler are probably the same peopel that claim that v4 is a significant update to v3 and such things ...
The problem is them 'fixing' it is just making the beta a bit better and adding other phantom events that nobody wants. They need to scrap the beta, and restart with a developer with a strong track record and build for the long haul.
The problem is them 'fixing' it is just making the beta a bit better and adding other phantom events that nobody wants. They need to scrap the beta, and restart with a developer with a strong track record and build for the long haul.
They brought in outside help to get development going smoother, so there's that. We'll see if they get more aggressive with their changes, though.
1. People blaming Kibler and getting mad at LSV seriously need to stop. If I was a player who was just about to top 8 the mocs and I get booted from a program that historically has gone down before in big events, I have a right to write an article about said program and strive for change of that product. However I am not the person who designed a faulty program and was ok with it constantly crashing because dumbasses still played with the archaic program. People getting mad at Brian Kibler should also be mad at themselves for not giving Hasbro an incentive to invest the funds needed to keep there cash cow afloat. There was seriously no reason what-so-ever for the MTGO client to be improved if people kept playing the broken product on a financial level for Hasbro. Getting mad at LSV because he is not sympathetic to the person supporting his family on MODO is asinine.
2. People making money on MODO I get. Seriously I do. It makes sense to make a living on it if you can and you have no other prospects. But here is the thing. You knew the risks of doing it before the dailies started to crash. You are piggybacking off of someone else's hard work and if you can take advantage of it then good. But you compound the problem when you keep piggy backing on a person who has rickets and throw more wait on its back by keeping up with the grind. Eventually the legs are going to collapse and the only people you should be mad at is yourself by not preparing for the possible outcome of said collapse.
3. This is where the Symphathy argument comes in. Should I be sympathetic that someone's livlihood has collapse yes I should. Should I expect MTGO to have let me know ahead of time with an announcement longer than a couples days notice, yes I should. But should I overlook the fact that these grinders took a risk in trying to live this way No. This leads to my last argument.
4. The whole sports argument. People are bringing up the fact that if people can get paid to swing a bat, they can get paid to play MTGO. To an extent that is true. But it is also true that all those athletes are taking huge risks to there bodies for playing said sports and if they get hurt, it was of there own decision to do so. But here is the real difference between MTGO GRINDERS and Athletes. Athletes are sacrificing for a system that literally has HUNDREDS of years of being a stable (financially) endeaver for the few athletes that actually make it big. Sports has been going on for years and very rarely in the history of sports that the sport altogether crashes and there livelihood is taken from them, without them putting themselves in said position. MTGO does not have that history of stability. People made a decision to sacrifice for a system that had history of falling apart, and rather then try to provide a safety net under the hire wire act, they ran onto the hire wire with extra weight on there backs hoping the line wouldn't snap because there was no net to break there fall.
This all goes back to Kiblers Argument that we all should uninstall MTGO because ultimately Wizards was at fault, but we all compounded the problem.
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"Some call it a Habit, Cardboard Crack Addict
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
Yea, those are MTG Bars. What can I say, I am a dork
It's not only about grinders.
There are many thousands of tickets on trading bots. That's legit trading bussiness and a lot of money someone's going to lose if the MTGO goes down the drain.
And besides traders each card on MTGO has some value, the less people play MTGO the less they cost. Everyone loses, not just grinders.
[..]This is like getting up on monday morning getting ready for your job, and then you read in the newspaper that you are fired.
It's nothing like that, they weren't employed and so they weren't fired. WoTC has no obligation to them other than as users.
Did they screw the users? Absolutely! If it has come to this is because the solution is not ready (they are in over their heads and the money people probably didn't budge, blah blah).
Some people refering to shutting down events as "solution" is quite strange... this is obviously to nip new crashes in the bud while they scramble for a server update in a panic.
This is WoTC's **** up through and through. I hope some higher up's head rolls. Randy Buehler was (undeservedly) fired for much much less, in my opinion.
Even if you don't care about the grinders who make a living playing MTGO, I'm still astonished that WotC cares this little about their playerbase that they would do this. They're essentially putting all of the cards that we paid for on hold until Daily Events are back up. What would be so bad about leaving Dailies up? Some reason queues are fine for us, but Dailies aren't? It just makes no sense. If they're going to get rid of Dailies, at least give us queues with the same payout. I'd like to see something like a 16 player Swiss event where 4-0 gets you 11 packs and 3-1 gets you 6.
Even if you don't care about the grinders who make a living playing MTGO, I'm still astonished that WotC cares this little about their playerbase that they would do this. They're essentially putting all of the cards that we paid for on hold until Daily Events are back up. What would be so bad about leaving Dailies up? Some reason queues are fine for us, but Dailies aren't? It just makes no sense. If they're going to get rid of Dailies, at least give us queues with the same payout. I'd like to see something like a 16 player Swiss event where 4-0 gets you 11 packs and 3-1 gets you 6.
The way I understand it they took away all events with more than 8 players because the servers couldn't handle it. This included daily events. The average daily event had 50-60 players easy. With that amount they were taking in 300-400 tickets for constructed tournaments and paying out 1-2 packs per player.
With the new queues they can't push up the payout to much becuse they would be taking a loss. They do need to increase it some. Right now the payout isn't even worth playing in the new sealed queues. At 3-0 you basically get 1-2 packs. At 2-1 you take a loss.
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And you don't think constructed dailies wont return in a couple of months with a new payout that is worse than what we had?
I'm not sure if this will be good or bad in the long run for MTGO. We will see in the next couple of months. I know I shouldn't, but part of me keeps thinking when events come back there will be something worse for players. The only thing that really bothers me about how WOTC has done this is cancelling MOCS season 12. I think it is unfair to give 4 weeks to qualify for something and then cancel it 2 weeks in when people have been grinding to qualify for half of the season already.
Modern: Storm, Jund, Ghast Blaster, Elf Warriors
Legacy: RUG Cascade, Imperial Painter, Affinity, Dredge, Elves, Merfolk, Pox, Dragon Stompie, Goblins, ANT, Belcher
Classic: Delver, Dredge, Jacerater
Draft: I will draft basically any format online (other than Masques)
Pauper: MTGO's #1 most handsome Pauper Storm player
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
I think that's a VERY real possibility. but people were pasting in comments and talking about official discussion on payouts that had nothing to do with constructed. Right now, anything about the future of dailies once/if they return is pure speculation.
If it was really about grinders they could have kept the total prize payout the same and just spread it out so it was flatter. What they did in reality is make it a bit flatter and pocketed a fair amount themselves. They are just trying to improve their margins.
The margins are fine, they are basically slapping every mtgo player who actually knows what EV means in the face. The other half are numb to it all.
Some people may be supporting their family or their life off of MTGO because they have no better alternative in their country. MTGO players come from all over the world. When you picture in your head "guy whose sole source of income is MTGO" you probably picture a fat white guy who eats a lot of fast food, is a bachelor, and maybe lives with his parents. Perhaps instead it is a guy from a more impoverished country where, as other people have stated, the US dollar is worth more. In such a case, maybe it isn't such a piece of **** move to feed your family or your own mouth off of MTGO.
To be clear, because I live in America and I know the economy here isn't actually that bad, I have absolutely no sympathy for the fat unemployed American guy in his parent's basement who can no longer rely on MTGO for income. But I can't speak for other countries. I know enough to know there are countries in this world where certain people may literally not be able to get a job that will make more US dollars than they make grinding MTGO.
I'm not hosting the pic, so I wont embed it, but its from a facebook conversation.
http://content.screencast.com/users/sperlingucla/folders/Jing/media/be3013e9-0b4f-4373-93ae-4dd41aa6209b/2013-11-13_1839.png
I'm very upset at how the MTGO staff has been handling this. I've put hard earned money into MTGO, and now I can't even play with the cards I bought? It really makes me want to sell off my collection and wait until Hearthstone's wide release comes out. Seriously, I don't see myself ever putting more money into MTGO if I know that it could get shut down at any time.
What the guys over at WotC need to do is fire everyone in the MTGO department. The current team is doing everything wrong. They need to start over from scratch, building a new, modern server and client instead of something that looks like it should be installed from floppy discs and that crashes every weekend. This could take years to implement, but the longer they wait on this, the worse it'll be. In the meantime, restore the daily events. Daily events have been working out reasonably, at least well enough that we don't mind playing. We enjoy the game enough that we can deal with the problems that occur every few dailies. Please, let us play with the cards that we've already purchased.
You can find me on MTGO. My username is gereffi.
People see the point, but even if your not from the USA, being fully invested into one thing that obviously isnt going to stick around forever is a bad idea. To wake up every day and really believe playing an online game for a living, a game that is owned by a company who has a policy to where they reserve the right to change anything at any given time is just super risky.
Im not trying to tell anybody how to live but if you see this more than a short term opportunity to make money, your asking for trouble. It doesnt matter if your from Africa or Australia, it was not going to last forever.
You can be fired from any job you work at for reasons outside of your control. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't take that job.
You can find me on MTGO. My username is gereffi.
Some jobs do seem more stable than others though, and most jobs involve acquiring certain skills or experience that helps you get other jobs.
Not directed at you, but to me trying to support a family off of an internet card game seems selfish.
EDH:
UBGThe MimeoplasmUBG
Yeah, but you have to work there first to get fired. Making your livelihood off mtgo is making money off a company that isn't actually employing you, so you have no say when your job goes away. In a job you're actually hired for at least you can call for some sort of review or rally the other workers if everyone is laid off together with no notice. With mtgo you are completely powerless and don't even get two weeks notice. It's the epitome of an unstable job.
You see that's actually crazy to do (with no back up plan) and are just playing devil's advocate, right?
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=9733836#post9733836
Thats exactly what I was going to say. Jobs build your own net value as well. Its not just a matter of getting a job for getting income, but its also being a valuable member of the world. You get more jobs when people know you are a valuable person that they can not go without. The whole reason why people pay others to do things is because things need to be done the world. Needs and demands need to be met. The world needs people to do things to function.
Plus theres things like retirement and social security that you build towards and potential advancement in a business. That is why MTGO is bad too because it doesnt come with any sort of benefits like stocks, 401k or health insurance, which means if you get sick or have a family emergency, your totally screwed.
Anybody who has lost out as a result of this has my sympathy. It doesn't matter if it's your sole source of income or a supplementary one. Because the reality is people aren't losing money because playing magic professionally is ridiculous, they're losing money because the client can't support the game. Losing money because Hasbro can't or won't make an online client that works has to suck, whether you have a real 9 to 5 or not.
The problem is them 'fixing' it is just making the beta a bit better and adding other phantom events that nobody wants. They need to scrap the beta, and restart with a developer with a strong track record and build for the long haul.
They brought in outside help to get development going smoother, so there's that. We'll see if they get more aggressive with their changes, though.
EDH:
UBGThe MimeoplasmUBG
1. People blaming Kibler and getting mad at LSV seriously need to stop. If I was a player who was just about to top 8 the mocs and I get booted from a program that historically has gone down before in big events, I have a right to write an article about said program and strive for change of that product. However I am not the person who designed a faulty program and was ok with it constantly crashing because dumbasses still played with the archaic program. People getting mad at Brian Kibler should also be mad at themselves for not giving Hasbro an incentive to invest the funds needed to keep there cash cow afloat. There was seriously no reason what-so-ever for the MTGO client to be improved if people kept playing the broken product on a financial level for Hasbro. Getting mad at LSV because he is not sympathetic to the person supporting his family on MODO is asinine.
2. People making money on MODO I get. Seriously I do. It makes sense to make a living on it if you can and you have no other prospects. But here is the thing. You knew the risks of doing it before the dailies started to crash. You are piggybacking off of someone else's hard work and if you can take advantage of it then good. But you compound the problem when you keep piggy backing on a person who has rickets and throw more wait on its back by keeping up with the grind. Eventually the legs are going to collapse and the only people you should be mad at is yourself by not preparing for the possible outcome of said collapse.
3. This is where the Symphathy argument comes in. Should I be sympathetic that someone's livlihood has collapse yes I should. Should I expect MTGO to have let me know ahead of time with an announcement longer than a couples days notice, yes I should. But should I overlook the fact that these grinders took a risk in trying to live this way No. This leads to my last argument.
4. The whole sports argument. People are bringing up the fact that if people can get paid to swing a bat, they can get paid to play MTGO. To an extent that is true. But it is also true that all those athletes are taking huge risks to there bodies for playing said sports and if they get hurt, it was of there own decision to do so. But here is the real difference between MTGO GRINDERS and Athletes. Athletes are sacrificing for a system that literally has HUNDREDS of years of being a stable (financially) endeaver for the few athletes that actually make it big. Sports has been going on for years and very rarely in the history of sports that the sport altogether crashes and there livelihood is taken from them, without them putting themselves in said position. MTGO does not have that history of stability. People made a decision to sacrifice for a system that had history of falling apart, and rather then try to provide a safety net under the hire wire act, they ran onto the hire wire with extra weight on there backs hoping the line wouldn't snap because there was no net to break there fall.
This all goes back to Kiblers Argument that we all should uninstall MTGO because ultimately Wizards was at fault, but we all compounded the problem.
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
There are many thousands of tickets on trading bots. That's legit trading bussiness and a lot of money someone's going to lose if the MTGO goes down the drain.
And besides traders each card on MTGO has some value, the less people play MTGO the less they cost. Everyone loses, not just grinders.
Did they screw the users? Absolutely! If it has come to this is because the solution is not ready (they are in over their heads and the money people probably didn't budge, blah blah).
Some people refering to shutting down events as "solution" is quite strange... this is obviously to nip new crashes in the bud while they scramble for a server update in a panic.
This is WoTC's **** up through and through. I hope some higher up's head rolls. Randy Buehler was (undeservedly) fired for much much less, in my opinion.
You can find me on MTGO. My username is gereffi.
The way I understand it they took away all events with more than 8 players because the servers couldn't handle it. This included daily events. The average daily event had 50-60 players easy. With that amount they were taking in 300-400 tickets for constructed tournaments and paying out 1-2 packs per player.
With the new queues they can't push up the payout to much becuse they would be taking a loss. They do need to increase it some. Right now the payout isn't even worth playing in the new sealed queues. At 3-0 you basically get 1-2 packs. At 2-1 you take a loss.