After a long, sometimes heated, but also productive discussion with Colt47, I'd say neither is a better value on it's face.
There are reasons that both mediums are superior to the other. The real question becomes, which should I spend my time and money on?
I'll start with the reasons I switched from paper standard Magic to Arena:
I was spending too much $ on standard decks.
I didn't have enough opportunities to actually play standard. My LGS is small, the only one serving a small population, and the events would not fire sometimes. My closest Magic friends don't play standard, so I couldn't play with them either.
Arena offered me a game of Magic whenever I wanted for free. Not something I could even come close to achieving otherwise.
Arena offered me rewards simply for playing Magic, which is what I wanted to do.
I ended up building a Tier 1 standard deck at the time, G/B explore midrange, for free after a few months of playing. This deck would have cost me over $200 to build in paper, something that was not in my budget.
I love playing limited Magic. Arena allows you to do this for free, and still get extra rewards back.
Why play paper though?
Well, it takes a lot of time and patience to build up a deck for free on Arena. If you want to play in the more competitive standard meta right away, just buying a deck will get you there much faster.
If you're an experienced player, you know how to build decks and/or net deck and respond to the meta. You are less likely to waste time and money buying cards you don't need.
If you love playing budget builds, you can build a deck cheap pretty quickly on paper. (Though your deck may or may not end up being competitive vs. the more costly decks.)
If you already have access to many paper standard players to play against for free, you'd want to maintain that time to play with friends who don't have Arena.
If you are very savy with trading/selling cards to switch out your deck. Colt47 mentioned Cardsphere which looks like a very legitimate trading site with extremely minimal fees. I haven't used it myself.
If you want to play at the highest level of competitiveness, most of those players still play paper for that level. (This will become more balanced in the future most likely. Wizards is paying pros to stream their Magic games and have anounced plans to have more competitive events on Arena eventually.)
Anyway, if you are a more casual player, or especially a new player, Arena should serve you as a much better and cheaper entry point to Magic then Paper Standard. Even if you're an experienced player who is low on cash (like me) I still believe Arena is for you. You'll end up saving $ by gaining experience playing limited for free when you have the resources, and can slowly craft a good deck for standard. The thing with Arena is, you will automatically play against your skill/deck level more often due to the ranking system then you would in paper.
I know a number of people who refuse to pick up arena, not because of their dislike for the format or the grind or even the gacha elements. They give it a hard pass because they enjoy the human interaction they get from playing face-to-face. As someone who has been very high on Arena (It's not perfect but it's far better than what I was prepared to expect when open beta started) I will concede that playing IRL still scratches an itch I can't get on Arena.
It's why I was at FNM tonight. It's why I'll continue to support both Paper and Arena until support for one or the other dries up locally. And it's why I don't think you should feel obligated to choose one over the other.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Both have their pros and cons: a list of what I see as the top3
Paper Magic
Pros:
- cards you own and can trade/sell if you no longer need them
- human interaction
- all the game formats you can imagine
Cons:
- card and deck management (sleeving, shuffling, dismantling and rebuilding decks and all the sort)
- cheaters
- limited playtime
Arena
Pros:
- automatic deck management
- automatic rules management
- you can play 24/7 save for server maintenance or connection issues
Cons:
- completely virtual and not redeemable cards (once the servers shut down or cards rotate out, you regain 0 money)
- small choice of formats and some closed beyond a literal paywall
- Extremely high perchentage of utterly toxic decks like Teferi-Nexus and variations of red deck wins.
I love playing on arena as a free player to pass some time and get my daily fix of MtG, but I would never pass away an occasion to play Commander with my friends due to Arena and if I had an LGS that was less than 1:30 hours away (by car) I would rather be there than at my PC.
In the end it all boils down to what kind of "value" you are looking for in your playtime.
Couple of notes, they are not deleting cards after they rotate anymore. They have announced that we keep all our cards as long as Arena is running. They are working an eternal format for Arena. They have announced that there will definitely be one after the first rotation happens, just not what it is yet.
I LOVE playing in person too. The human interaction is not to be missed. You actually don't have to miss out on that with Arena! (That is if you can get your friends into it.) My friends are all dragging their feet to play on starting an Arena account. However, you can play Arena in person, just bring your labtop and set up a player to player game. Now you have the best of both worlds. (Hopefully they'll let us set up our own draft pools someday too. That would be awesome!" This isn't feasible now as not that many Magic players are on Arena. This will change in the next year or so. I think it will be the norm. to have an Arena account by then.
I'm never giving up paper EDH. This comparison is more for comparing standard/casual paper to standard/casual Arena.
You can get a lot of stuff if you have the time to put in. Somehow I got into a particularly good Sealed streak and got seven events in starting at 4200 gems..
I can't do any more, but I have 1800 gems left.. Too many people either try to force 3 color, have no choice, or don't understand the power in consistency in sticking with 2 colors.
Arena is better for standard from a pure cost POV. I also enjoy farming limited.
One thing I hate about paper is not finding people to play with at my LGS when I have free time, and some times we don't reach 8 players to play modern.
Hello Penguin! If you are a good limited player you will find "going infinite" to be the norm. on gem costing events. I mean, I can't play forever with one entry, but I also make back at least half my entry cost, often times more. I'd be interested to see how much my average cost for a 1500 game draft actually works out to. I'm guessing my average cost after my winnings for one of those drafts to be like 200 gems or something.
login, if you have a bit of time and like playing limited, yeah the cost of a good standard deck does go down by quite a bit.
Value depends on what kinda player you are. If you just wanna experience the gameplay, of course Arena is unbeatable. Let's say you spend the price of a triple A game ($60). You get a lot of mileage in terms of hours played. You have the possibility of playing it for free too. As much I was critical of Arena, it's improving. It can only get better over time.
For the same amount, you probably won't get much of paper MTG unless you are a savvy trader as well (so playing can be on a sustainable budget or even on a surplus).
That being said, if collection, human interaction, and/or trading are stuff that you are interested in, I think Arena would be just a time waster. Every second you spend in Arena that could be spent on managing your collection/trading/playing in RL is just detrimental for paper experience. Sure you can manage both (I could say the same about any other game you play in parallel with paper MTG), but it just stunt your collection growth at the end. There is a sense of whatever you are doing with your collection is a real gain backed by numbers while other experiences are just subjective. I'm just adding this to the POV of playing paper MTG.
Also, having access to multiple formats in paper instead of being limited on what the system tells you can play is also something to be considered.
In the end it's all about quantifying your experience. Arena, you put money/time on it and the satisfaction will be more immediate and the cost sinking more controllable (in theory) while possibly free. Paper the satisfaction is more spread out over time and a bit erratic with valleys. The cost sinking is also high in terms of raw numbers (like most hobbies). However, if managed well, it can act like an investment or something that has some value when you wanna stop while in Arena, every resource dumped on it is basically "lost".
Also, you should consider that both can be complementary (even thou I said it otherwise on collecting prospective) and it's designed to have some synergy (at least WotC is adding some stuff like Arena bleeding on competitive MTG and codes for sealed products).
Also, you should consider that both can be complementary (even thou I said it otherwise on collecting prospective) and it's designed to have some synergy (at least WotC is adding some stuff like Arena bleeding on competitive MTG and codes for sealed products).
I Mostly agree with you, but talking about synergy is a bit of a stretch here, imo. It's mostly just a cross-selling marketing strategy.
Not to say it can't have benefits to play both in paper and arena. Personally, I don't get to play a lot of paper magic anymore since I moved away from my magic-playing friends to a pretty rural area without a real community. I still keep expanding my collection and updating decks, as it's a very enjoyable part of magic for me, but missed just playing the game. So, Arena is a great way to catch up on that.
Also, I was never really interested in standard, but with Arena's quite fair free to play model, I could quickly get some well-performing decks without investing a lot and rotation shouldn't hurt too much either.
I play both. I prefer real magic quite a bit. Not just the human interaction but most of the cons you speak of are actually pros imo. Shuffling, managing your deck, enforcing rules. That is part of magic. Arena is good if you are just f2p and wanna get some games in. I still prefer cockatrice/xmage for testing then real paper magic.
As jay suggested earlier, sitting across from a RL friend with laptops sounds absolutely horrible.
I Mostly agree with you, but talking about synergy is a bit of a stretch here, imo. It's mostly just a cross-selling marketing strategy.
Not to say it can't have benefits to play both in paper and arena. Personally, I don't get to play a lot of paper magic anymore since I moved away from my magic-playing friends to a pretty rural area without a real community. I still keep expanding my collection and updating decks, as it's a very enjoyable part of magic for me, but missed just playing the game. So, Arena is a great way to catch up on that.
Also, I was never really interested in standard, but with Arena's quite fair free to play model, I could quickly get some well-performing decks without investing a lot and rotation shouldn't hurt too much either.
Well I added "can" and "some". My critic about Arena is how WotC is lazy with its development in general which is reflected there. It's nothing like Pokemon which a lot people would hope for (maybe too much as Pokemon Online seems to not make that much, but at least WotC could give some bone to booster boxes and bundles). It's something there even thou it's very limited and timid to say the least. Still codes from Prerelease is nice.
About rotation in Arena, it's an interesting question they need to answer. After all you can't convert old assets into new ones, so I wanna see how a nonrotating format would affect Arena business model.
As a paper collector, Arena just gives me a time waster. I don't quite play it that much. If I wanna play Standard, I just play it locally (as I live in a good area for MTG). It baffles me that Arena still lacks some of the basics lot of other CCGs have even at beta stage like cosmetics. This would be a nonbrainer. Also, they could have incentives for collectors and completionists which would boost their bottomline.
I think Arena is a better value. Packs are cheaper, can easily get 3-4 free packs a day if not more. Also get free singles daily too. I spent $50 and have built two competitive decks that gave me almost out of platinum.
I think I got something like 6 free decks just competing the missions and most of them are actually fun to play and can win games early on.
Pros:
1- i’m busy with work & family so can't make it to FNM every week but if u have an hour I can fire up Arena for a few games.
2- Cost is less for me.
Cons
1-No trading/dusting can result in taking a long time or a lot of money to grind a deck compared to other digital card games.
2- No interact with other players. However, a large portion of MTG players are toxic so this is maybe a pro depending on you MTzg community.
3- No tournament play. Ladder is cool, events are cool but I miss actual tournament play.
4- potential for Wizards to pull the plug and you lose every dime you spent.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
There are reasons that both mediums are superior to the other. The real question becomes, which should I spend my time and money on?
I'll start with the reasons I switched from paper standard Magic to Arena:
I was spending too much $ on standard decks.
I didn't have enough opportunities to actually play standard. My LGS is small, the only one serving a small population, and the events would not fire sometimes. My closest Magic friends don't play standard, so I couldn't play with them either.
Arena offered me a game of Magic whenever I wanted for free. Not something I could even come close to achieving otherwise.
Arena offered me rewards simply for playing Magic, which is what I wanted to do.
I ended up building a Tier 1 standard deck at the time, G/B explore midrange, for free after a few months of playing. This deck would have cost me over $200 to build in paper, something that was not in my budget.
I love playing limited Magic. Arena allows you to do this for free, and still get extra rewards back.
Why play paper though?
Well, it takes a lot of time and patience to build up a deck for free on Arena. If you want to play in the more competitive standard meta right away, just buying a deck will get you there much faster.
If you're an experienced player, you know how to build decks and/or net deck and respond to the meta. You are less likely to waste time and money buying cards you don't need.
If you love playing budget builds, you can build a deck cheap pretty quickly on paper. (Though your deck may or may not end up being competitive vs. the more costly decks.)
If you already have access to many paper standard players to play against for free, you'd want to maintain that time to play with friends who don't have Arena.
If you are very savy with trading/selling cards to switch out your deck. Colt47 mentioned Cardsphere which looks like a very legitimate trading site with extremely minimal fees. I haven't used it myself.
If you want to play at the highest level of competitiveness, most of those players still play paper for that level. (This will become more balanced in the future most likely. Wizards is paying pros to stream their Magic games and have anounced plans to have more competitive events on Arena eventually.)
Anyway, if you are a more casual player, or especially a new player, Arena should serve you as a much better and cheaper entry point to Magic then Paper Standard. Even if you're an experienced player who is low on cash (like me) I still believe Arena is for you. You'll end up saving $ by gaining experience playing limited for free when you have the resources, and can slowly craft a good deck for standard. The thing with Arena is, you will automatically play against your skill/deck level more often due to the ranking system then you would in paper.
Time
Experience
Gameplay
Collection
To me? Arena.
Spirits
This. So much this.
I know a number of people who refuse to pick up arena, not because of their dislike for the format or the grind or even the gacha elements. They give it a hard pass because they enjoy the human interaction they get from playing face-to-face. As someone who has been very high on Arena (It's not perfect but it's far better than what I was prepared to expect when open beta started) I will concede that playing IRL still scratches an itch I can't get on Arena.
It's why I was at FNM tonight. It's why I'll continue to support both Paper and Arena until support for one or the other dries up locally. And it's why I don't think you should feel obligated to choose one over the other.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Paper Magic
Pros:
- cards you own and can trade/sell if you no longer need them
- human interaction
- all the game formats you can imagine
Cons:
- card and deck management (sleeving, shuffling, dismantling and rebuilding decks and all the sort)
- cheaters
- limited playtime
Arena
Pros:
- automatic deck management
- automatic rules management
- you can play 24/7 save for server maintenance or connection issues
Cons:
- completely virtual and not redeemable cards (once the servers shut down or cards rotate out, you regain 0 money)
- small choice of formats and some closed beyond a literal paywall
- Extremely high perchentage of utterly toxic decks like Teferi-Nexus and variations of red deck wins.
I love playing on arena as a free player to pass some time and get my daily fix of MtG, but I would never pass away an occasion to play Commander with my friends due to Arena and if I had an LGS that was less than 1:30 hours away (by car) I would rather be there than at my PC.
In the end it all boils down to what kind of "value" you are looking for in your playtime.
I LOVE playing in person too. The human interaction is not to be missed. You actually don't have to miss out on that with Arena! (That is if you can get your friends into it.) My friends are all dragging their feet to play on starting an Arena account. However, you can play Arena in person, just bring your labtop and set up a player to player game. Now you have the best of both worlds. (Hopefully they'll let us set up our own draft pools someday too. That would be awesome!" This isn't feasible now as not that many Magic players are on Arena. This will change in the next year or so. I think it will be the norm. to have an Arena account by then.
I'm never giving up paper EDH. This comparison is more for comparing standard/casual paper to standard/casual Arena.
I can't do any more, but I have 1800 gems left.. Too many people either try to force 3 color, have no choice, or don't understand the power in consistency in sticking with 2 colors.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
One thing I hate about paper is not finding people to play with at my LGS when I have free time, and some times we don't reach 8 players to play modern.
login, if you have a bit of time and like playing limited, yeah the cost of a good standard deck does go down by quite a bit.
For the same amount, you probably won't get much of paper MTG unless you are a savvy trader as well (so playing can be on a sustainable budget or even on a surplus).
That being said, if collection, human interaction, and/or trading are stuff that you are interested in, I think Arena would be just a time waster. Every second you spend in Arena that could be spent on managing your collection/trading/playing in RL is just detrimental for paper experience. Sure you can manage both (I could say the same about any other game you play in parallel with paper MTG), but it just stunt your collection growth at the end. There is a sense of whatever you are doing with your collection is a real gain backed by numbers while other experiences are just subjective. I'm just adding this to the POV of playing paper MTG.
Also, having access to multiple formats in paper instead of being limited on what the system tells you can play is also something to be considered.
In the end it's all about quantifying your experience. Arena, you put money/time on it and the satisfaction will be more immediate and the cost sinking more controllable (in theory) while possibly free. Paper the satisfaction is more spread out over time and a bit erratic with valleys. The cost sinking is also high in terms of raw numbers (like most hobbies). However, if managed well, it can act like an investment or something that has some value when you wanna stop while in Arena, every resource dumped on it is basically "lost".
Also, you should consider that both can be complementary (even thou I said it otherwise on collecting prospective) and it's designed to have some synergy (at least WotC is adding some stuff like Arena bleeding on competitive MTG and codes for sealed products).
I Mostly agree with you, but talking about synergy is a bit of a stretch here, imo. It's mostly just a cross-selling marketing strategy.
Not to say it can't have benefits to play both in paper and arena. Personally, I don't get to play a lot of paper magic anymore since I moved away from my magic-playing friends to a pretty rural area without a real community. I still keep expanding my collection and updating decks, as it's a very enjoyable part of magic for me, but missed just playing the game. So, Arena is a great way to catch up on that.
Also, I was never really interested in standard, but with Arena's quite fair free to play model, I could quickly get some well-performing decks without investing a lot and rotation shouldn't hurt too much either.
W(W/U)U Ephara - Flash & Taxes W(W/U)U || B(B/G)G Meren - Circle of Life B(B/G)G
RGW Marath - Ever shifting Wilds RGW || (U/R)C(W/B) Breya - Artificial Dominion (U/R)C(W/B)
UBR Becket Brass - take what you can, give nothing back UBR
As jay suggested earlier, sitting across from a RL friend with laptops sounds absolutely horrible.
TL;DR I prefer cardboard over virtual.
Well I added "can" and "some". My critic about Arena is how WotC is lazy with its development in general which is reflected there. It's nothing like Pokemon which a lot people would hope for (maybe too much as Pokemon Online seems to not make that much, but at least WotC could give some bone to booster boxes and bundles). It's something there even thou it's very limited and timid to say the least. Still codes from Prerelease is nice.
About rotation in Arena, it's an interesting question they need to answer. After all you can't convert old assets into new ones, so I wanna see how a nonrotating format would affect Arena business model.
As a paper collector, Arena just gives me a time waster. I don't quite play it that much. If I wanna play Standard, I just play it locally (as I live in a good area for MTG). It baffles me that Arena still lacks some of the basics lot of other CCGs have even at beta stage like cosmetics. This would be a nonbrainer. Also, they could have incentives for collectors and completionists which would boost their bottomline.
I think I got something like 6 free decks just competing the missions and most of them are actually fun to play and can win games early on.
Pros:
1- i’m busy with work & family so can't make it to FNM every week but if u have an hour I can fire up Arena for a few games.
2- Cost is less for me.
Cons
1-No trading/dusting can result in taking a long time or a lot of money to grind a deck compared to other digital card games.
2- No interact with other players. However, a large portion of MTG players are toxic so this is maybe a pro depending on you MTzg community.
3- No tournament play. Ladder is cool, events are cool but I miss actual tournament play.
4- potential for Wizards to pull the plug and you lose every dime you spent.