I go on sporadically and it feels like every time I go on, there are fewer events in the events list and the events take longer to start. Does this indicate that Magic Online is slowly dying?
Please say it is. I hate Magic Online. I get suckered in every few weeks/months because I think, this time will be different. But nope. Every time, it's just the typical mana flood/mana screw while waiting for an actually interesting game to occur. My last round I lost 0 - 2 by drawing 14 lands to my opponents 7 in the first game (yes, he basically had an entire extra hand of playable cards to work with) and then in the second game drawing 10 lands to his 5. What a pointless waste of time. No one can win when they spot their opponent 5 - 7 playable cards.
I just want Magic Online to die so that I am never tempted to waste my time on it again. Is it dying? Please say it's dying.
It has been dying ever since they switched to version 4. There are just fewer people playing. In V3, they used to be able to fire three drafts per format (8-4, 4-3-2-2, and Swiss) regularly, now new formats get 8-4 and 6-2-2-2 swiss leagues. Constructed events do even worse. Oh yeah, its also a terrible memory hog. Fewer options that fire less regularly, fewer people in the casual rooms, all because V4 is still trash. It looks cooler, and it finally has leagues, but in every other way its inferior to V3. I just had half my decks disappear! **** this *****ty client.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
There are fewer events because of leagues! They have replaced most constructed and sealed events/queues with leagues. Last week they replaced all of the swiss drafts with a draft league. They are reducing play options by trying to force everyone into league play.
There are fewer events because of leagues! They have replaced most constructed and sealed events/queues with leagues. Last week they replaced all of the swiss drafts with a draft league. They are reducing play options by trying to force everyone into league play.
There were already fewer events firing with reduced event offerings before leagues debuted.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I play regularly on MTGO and I don’t share OP’s opinion about the “typical mana flood/screws”. It happens sometimes because that’s part of the game, but pinning it to MTGO is a bit unfair.
You misunderstood. I was not pinning mana flood/screw to magic online. I think it's an intrinsic part of the flawed game that is magic. But since the only form of magic I play or will ever play is magic online, having it die will to me mean that magic has died, and I would love that.
BTW I am the OP of this topic, I've created many throw away accounts for posting on these forums as I can't be bothered to recover passwords that I always forget. Balunu = hohoboy7 = Herfle = bji_until_I_quit_again = bji = who knows who else.
Why do you come to a forum, obviously dedicated to people who enjoy Magic, to say you’d love it had died?
Why do you even play the game, if you hate it so much?
I’m going to probably regret having asked these questions, but I don’t get you.
Venting a bit. I have dealt with varying levels of "addiction" to this game over the years. During the original Ravnica block, I couldn't stop myself, and ended up spending $3,000+ that year on drafts and creating some serious friction with my wife. Wasn't worth it.
During Return to Ravnica, I actually got a separate debit card at my work address and put cash on it every month so that I could play without my wife ever knowing I was spending the money. Stayed "late at work" with my laptop a couple of nights a week so that I could play Magic. Driving home at 3 am knowing I had to get up at 7 to take my kids to school, I hated myself over and over again. Wasn't worth it.
These days I tend to go on Magic Online once every three weeks or so, with the remembered excitement of cracking packs and thinking about how awesome the decks I will make will be, quickly leading to frustration and anger as mana screw and flood inevitably rule the experience (yet again). Still, I join a few more events almost in defiance of the terrible experience I am having. By the end of the evening I've once again uninstalled Magic Online vowing never to play again. Wait a few more weeks, lather, rinse, repeat.
Honestly it would be much easier for me if this game didn't exist. I can keep it out of my consciousness for a couple of weeks but it always returns. Usually it's spoiler seasons and the curiosity of seeing what the new set will be like that brings back my illogical enthusiasm to play this game again, when deep down inside I know I will just hate the experience. I think that the magic design and development team do an absolutely incredible job of finding new and interesting mechanics, styles, themes, and ways to balance the game, every set, which makes it easy to get interested again. But despite my hopes, it never works out to be worth it.
I just wish the game would go away, and have been wishing that for many years. I actually get excited to think that maybe other online games and the general trend of gaming (as well as Wizards' incompetence at developing software) will cause a snowballing loss of player base leading to the dissolution of the online game.
At least at this point I've managed to work it down to a slow bleed; I only spend maybe $40/month on Magic now ...
...
Venting a bit. I have dealt with varying levels of "addiction" to this game over the years. During the original Ravnica block, I couldn't stop myself, and ended up spending $3,000+ that year on drafts and creating some serious friction with my wife. Wasn't worth it...
I recommend that you avoid alcohol and gambling. Those addictions can be much worse on a marriage. Perhaps get some professional help?
...
Venting a bit. I have dealt with varying levels of "addiction" to this game over the years. During the original Ravnica block, I couldn't stop myself, and ended up spending $3,000+ that year on drafts and creating some serious friction with my wife. Wasn't worth it...
I recommend that you avoid alcohol and gambling. Those addictions can be much worse on a marriage. Perhaps get some professional help?
Thanks for your concern. Those things aren't a problem for me (sincerely; I rarely ever drink (socially once or twice a year), and gambling genuinely doesn't interest me). Magic somehow is unique in the way it tickles a compulsion for me. I can live with my Magic "addiction", it would just be easier for me if I didn't have to, that's all. I've actually asked Wizards customer service to lifetime ban me, but they won't/can't.
There are fewer events because of leagues! They have replaced most constructed and sealed events/queues with leagues. Last week they replaced all of the swiss drafts with a draft league. They are reducing play options by trying to force everyone into league play.
Leagues used to be so much better back in the old days, because of tiebreaker matches. You could play a huge number of tiebreaker matches if you wanted to, which was a fantastic way to evaluate a deck better (you could see how it actually performed over many many matches, instead of just three variance filled matches). Now the leagues are just time extended "normal" swiss events with only three matches to play. How sucky.
It used to be that the standard advice for new players was "join a league so that you can practice". But I guess that matters less now because there are so few new players joining the game ...
Tie-breaker matches was also the most terrible thing about the old leagues. Didn't matter how good you or your deck was, you needed a team of players playing the same account 24x7 to climb the tie-breaker ladder.
Tie-breaker matches was also the most terrible thing about the old leagues. Didn't matter how good you or your deck was, you needed a team of players playing the same account 24x7 to climb the tie-breaker ladder.
1) I never found that to be true
2) Even if it was, I'd trade an occasional minor incremental prize difference for being able to get much more play value out of the tickets I put into the system, every time and twice on Sundays.
The leagues used to be big enough (not sure how big the new leagues get, but the old ones used to be 128 or 256 players if I recall correctly) and the prizes distributed for large enough placing ranges (i.e. 32nd - 64th place) that you would only infrequently be on the boundary of a prize tier such that tiebreakers would matter. Keep in mind that the leagues went for I think 5 weeks with 5 points matches per week. That gives a range of 0-25 all the way up to 25-0 for points totals, which gives quite a bit of granularity in standings.
However, I expect that they could fairly easily address at least part of your concern by making the tiebreakers be by tiebreaker win percentage (minimum say 10 tiebreaker matches over 5 weeks), instead of totals. Then you wouldn't elevate your tiebreaker ranking by playing more, but instead by winning more. That would have the unfortunate effect though of depressing people's interest in entering tiebreaker matches though, since once they hit a favorable tiebreaker win % they wouldn't want to risk it. And since I value getting more play time per dollar than I do losing fewer dollars per event, I wouldn't like that.
I'm fine with the new leagues for sealed deck play (not for drafts). I only ever use leagues to help learn cards when a new set is released. After I'm comfortable with the set, I switch drafts.
Being 9th place in the old leagues and grinding lots of matches to try to get to 8th for three more packs (or getting to 4th for 9 more packs) wasn't fun for me. And, even if I was at 9th, I'd have to keep working on my tie breakers or start dropping in the rankings. It was definitely a low-cost method for playing unlimited matches.
More details and opinions about the old leagues in this article.
Here were the old payouts:
1st - 27 packs
2nd - 21 packs
3rd - 4th 15 packs
5th - 8th 9 packs
9th - 16th 6 packs
17th - 32nd 3 packs
33rd - 64th 2 packs
65th - 128th 1 pack
129th - 256th no prize
Well, if you were getting above 10th place in leagues with any regularity, you were way above my level at the time and leagues probably weren't meant for you. That being said, leagues provided lots of play time per dollar. High payouts with lower play times (which is what you were looking for) provide more event entries per dollar. I guess you have to decide what you like better, entering events or playing Magic.
Also, how do leagues help you learn cards when a new set is released? Don't leagues give you the same number of matches per dollar as regular swiss draft or sealed queues? Are you saying that you play leagues when there are no sealed events otherwise available at the start of the block? Or do leagues provide some other learning benefit that I am not understanding?
Thanks for the pointer to the article, it was very interesting, and matched my recollection, except that at the time I was not sophisticated enough to realize that playing tiebreakers was more likely to pit me against the better decks as the week wore on. I just played because I enjoyed it. And once again, the VERY simple fix of just making tiebreaker ranking based on tiebreaker win percentage instead of total number of tiebreaker wins (with a minimum tiebreaker game count) would go a very, very long way towards eliminating most of the problems that you and the person who wrote that article identified.
Listen, you don’t hate the game. What you hate is what others make you feel when you play it.
And you know what? You shouldn’t feel bad for playing the game. You shouldn’t feel bad for doing things you love, as long as that doesn’t harm anyone else, and in your case, you weren’t harming anyone.
So what if you’ve spent 3 grand in a year playing Magic? What’s that compared to how much money you made in that year? Don’t they take enough from you already? Aren’t you allowed to spend some of your earned money in the things you like doing just because you’re a parent and married now? Is marriage and parenthood a death sentence now? Don’t you matter anymore in that equation?
Have you ever thought that maybe if your family accepted your love for Magic you wouldn’t have to act and feel like a criminal and your compulsive behavior might not even have existed?
But it is what it is. They would never understand you, so I think you’re going to have to keep being a closeted Magic player. But that doesn’t make you a bad person, as much as others would like you to think you are.
So you shouldn’t hate yourself nor the game, something that over the years has brought you so much more excitement and enjoyment than the frustration you mention.
...I guess you have to decide what you like better, entering events or playing Magic.
Also, how do leagues help you learn cards when a new set is released? Don't leagues give you the same number of matches per dollar as regular swiss draft or sealed queues? Are you saying that you play leagues when there are no sealed events otherwise available at the start of the block? Or do leagues provide some other learning benefit that I am not understanding?
You can always build a deck with your own cards and play an unlimited amount for free if all you are optimizing for is "playing Magic".
The old leagues were much better for learning a set because of the unlimited play potential.
Both old and new leagues are better for me than a sealed queue when learning new cards. This is because I can completely change my deck between rounds. I can also spend as much time deck constructing and play my matches whenever I want. Friendly leagues let me add packs after three rounds, getting a bit more play time with the same card pool. Friendly prizes kind of suck, but I don't worry about prizes until I feel competitive.
...I guess you have to decide what you like better, entering events or playing Magic.
Also, how do leagues help you learn cards when a new set is released? Don't leagues give you the same number of matches per dollar as regular swiss draft or sealed queues? Are you saying that you play leagues when there are no sealed events otherwise available at the start of the block? Or do leagues provide some other learning benefit that I am not understanding?
You can always build a deck with your own cards and play an unlimited amount for free if all you are optimizing for is "playing Magic".
The only problem there is that you can't play against people who are also playing their own limited decks; I would like to play against people who have decks of roughly the same power level, and of the same format, and the easiest way to guarantee that is to play in a sealed event like a league or a swiss sealed.
However, my point was mostly about the argument that leagues were bad because you had to play alot of tiebreakers if you wanted to increase your chance of getting the best possible prize.
For any event you enter, presumably the primary reason you are entering is to play the format of that event. It's also possible to enter events I guess because you want to collect cards and think it's the most economical way to do that. I'll leave that motivation out of consideration for the moment. But let's just assume that you're entering basically because you want to play Magic. Surely you're not entering to try to make money, because that would probably be the most inefficient way to make money possible.
OK so given that you have entered the event because you want to play the type of Magic featured in the event, the more play time of that type you get for your dollar, the more cost effective the event is. Three factors then enter into the cost effectiveness: 1) how much it cost to enter the event, 2) how much you win from the event, and 3) how much play time you get.
(1) and (2) can really be combined into the net cost of the event. You cannot change (1), but you can increase (2) which will reduce the net cost. And the total play time divided by the net cost gives you the cost per unit play time, which is, assuming again that playing Magic is what you're really trying to do, the number you should be trying to minimize.
The thing about leagues is, you could increase the denominator of that equation immensely, to a degree so much further than any other limited format event, that it would be basically impossible to get a better "cost per unit play time" for a sealed event in any other way. The amount that you can lower your net cost by winning more packs, thus decreasing the numerator of that equation, is absolutely miniscule in comparison.
This is why I don't think it makes much sense to talk about extra tiebreaker rounds as a bad thing. They give you an opportunity to vastly increase the denominator. Leave the numerator alone, who cares about that. Anyone who doesn't enjoy playing tiebreaker matches but just does it to try to increment their pack win is foolish in my opinion, because you're going to spend many hours of your personal time for a few dollars of extra prize. That's like hitting yourself repeatedly with a hammer just because someone is willing to pay you $3/hour to do it. If you're looking at that $3 as "free money" then you're really leaving some important parts of the equation out.
Another factor here is that some people truly do value entering events to a larger degree than I do. This is because "entering events" comes with the "crack packing thrill" and the variability of being able to play with more decks than playing the same deck many times in a league would. Also there's the whole drafting process, which itself is worth quite a bit to alot of people. For those people, leagues would not be as great a value. This is why I said you have to decide if entering events is worth more than playing magic. It's a bit flippant, but it really means, how do you balance the enjoyment of the different parts of the play experience?
I think of people who play in 8-4 queues as those who most enjoy the drafting process, because on average they're going to be playing many fewer matches with the decks they build, than people who enter swiss queues. Their events will also on average be of shorter duration, making the cost per unit play time higher. There's always the dream that they'll come out way ahead because they can win 8-4s a majority of the time. Maybe that works out for some people, some of the time, but I suspect that in the vast majority of cases, that's only for short stretches that can be attributed to luck variance. Even the worst drafter is going to win three 8-4s in a row and feel like a champ if they enter enough events.
Not sure if it's dying but as a new player to paper MTG, I pumped $45 into Draft leagues today for MTGO...what a complete waste of money. The interface is terrible. I used Mindbender twice and screwed it up both times. I Imprisoned my own ******* land with Imprisoned the Moon even though I clicked his card. What a joke. I won't dump another dime into that thing.
The interface provides lots of tips and prompts helping you with each step in playing a spell and choosing targets. However, these are useless unless they are read. I guess you could argue that the interface should be able to differentiate between a good play and a stupid play. Then it could prompt you for confirmation if you try something stupid?
There have been bugs in the past where the prompt text is incorrect. Fortunately, they document this in their bug blog and fix them pretty quickly.
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Please say it is. I hate Magic Online. I get suckered in every few weeks/months because I think, this time will be different. But nope. Every time, it's just the typical mana flood/mana screw while waiting for an actually interesting game to occur. My last round I lost 0 - 2 by drawing 14 lands to my opponents 7 in the first game (yes, he basically had an entire extra hand of playable cards to work with) and then in the second game drawing 10 lands to his 5. What a pointless waste of time. No one can win when they spot their opponent 5 - 7 playable cards.
I just want Magic Online to die so that I am never tempted to waste my time on it again. Is it dying? Please say it's dying.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
There were already fewer events firing with reduced event offerings before leagues debuted.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
BTW I am the OP of this topic, I've created many throw away accounts for posting on these forums as I can't be bothered to recover passwords that I always forget. Balunu = hohoboy7 = Herfle = bji_until_I_quit_again = bji = who knows who else.
Why do you come to a forum, obviously dedicated to people who enjoy Magic, to say you’d love it had died?
Why do you even play the game, if you hate it so much?
I’m going to probably regret having asked these questions, but I don’t get you.
Venting a bit. I have dealt with varying levels of "addiction" to this game over the years. During the original Ravnica block, I couldn't stop myself, and ended up spending $3,000+ that year on drafts and creating some serious friction with my wife. Wasn't worth it.
During Return to Ravnica, I actually got a separate debit card at my work address and put cash on it every month so that I could play without my wife ever knowing I was spending the money. Stayed "late at work" with my laptop a couple of nights a week so that I could play Magic. Driving home at 3 am knowing I had to get up at 7 to take my kids to school, I hated myself over and over again. Wasn't worth it.
These days I tend to go on Magic Online once every three weeks or so, with the remembered excitement of cracking packs and thinking about how awesome the decks I will make will be, quickly leading to frustration and anger as mana screw and flood inevitably rule the experience (yet again). Still, I join a few more events almost in defiance of the terrible experience I am having. By the end of the evening I've once again uninstalled Magic Online vowing never to play again. Wait a few more weeks, lather, rinse, repeat.
Honestly it would be much easier for me if this game didn't exist. I can keep it out of my consciousness for a couple of weeks but it always returns. Usually it's spoiler seasons and the curiosity of seeing what the new set will be like that brings back my illogical enthusiasm to play this game again, when deep down inside I know I will just hate the experience. I think that the magic design and development team do an absolutely incredible job of finding new and interesting mechanics, styles, themes, and ways to balance the game, every set, which makes it easy to get interested again. But despite my hopes, it never works out to be worth it.
I just wish the game would go away, and have been wishing that for many years. I actually get excited to think that maybe other online games and the general trend of gaming (as well as Wizards' incompetence at developing software) will cause a snowballing loss of player base leading to the dissolution of the online game.
At least at this point I've managed to work it down to a slow bleed; I only spend maybe $40/month on Magic now ...
I recommend that you avoid alcohol and gambling. Those addictions can be much worse on a marriage. Perhaps get some professional help?
Thanks for your concern. Those things aren't a problem for me (sincerely; I rarely ever drink (socially once or twice a year), and gambling genuinely doesn't interest me). Magic somehow is unique in the way it tickles a compulsion for me. I can live with my Magic "addiction", it would just be easier for me if I didn't have to, that's all. I've actually asked Wizards customer service to lifetime ban me, but they won't/can't.
Leagues used to be so much better back in the old days, because of tiebreaker matches. You could play a huge number of tiebreaker matches if you wanted to, which was a fantastic way to evaluate a deck better (you could see how it actually performed over many many matches, instead of just three variance filled matches). Now the leagues are just time extended "normal" swiss events with only three matches to play. How sucky.
It used to be that the standard advice for new players was "join a league so that you can practice". But I guess that matters less now because there are so few new players joining the game ...
1) I never found that to be true
2) Even if it was, I'd trade an occasional minor incremental prize difference for being able to get much more play value out of the tickets I put into the system, every time and twice on Sundays.
The leagues used to be big enough (not sure how big the new leagues get, but the old ones used to be 128 or 256 players if I recall correctly) and the prizes distributed for large enough placing ranges (i.e. 32nd - 64th place) that you would only infrequently be on the boundary of a prize tier such that tiebreakers would matter. Keep in mind that the leagues went for I think 5 weeks with 5 points matches per week. That gives a range of 0-25 all the way up to 25-0 for points totals, which gives quite a bit of granularity in standings.
However, I expect that they could fairly easily address at least part of your concern by making the tiebreakers be by tiebreaker win percentage (minimum say 10 tiebreaker matches over 5 weeks), instead of totals. Then you wouldn't elevate your tiebreaker ranking by playing more, but instead by winning more. That would have the unfortunate effect though of depressing people's interest in entering tiebreaker matches though, since once they hit a favorable tiebreaker win % they wouldn't want to risk it. And since I value getting more play time per dollar than I do losing fewer dollars per event, I wouldn't like that.
Being 9th place in the old leagues and grinding lots of matches to try to get to 8th for three more packs (or getting to 4th for 9 more packs) wasn't fun for me. And, even if I was at 9th, I'd have to keep working on my tie breakers or start dropping in the rankings. It was definitely a low-cost method for playing unlimited matches.
More details and opinions about the old leagues in this article.
Here were the old payouts:
1st - 27 packs
2nd - 21 packs
3rd - 4th 15 packs
5th - 8th 9 packs
9th - 16th 6 packs
17th - 32nd 3 packs
33rd - 64th 2 packs
65th - 128th 1 pack
129th - 256th no prize
Also, how do leagues help you learn cards when a new set is released? Don't leagues give you the same number of matches per dollar as regular swiss draft or sealed queues? Are you saying that you play leagues when there are no sealed events otherwise available at the start of the block? Or do leagues provide some other learning benefit that I am not understanding?
Thanks for the pointer to the article, it was very interesting, and matched my recollection, except that at the time I was not sophisticated enough to realize that playing tiebreakers was more likely to pit me against the better decks as the week wore on. I just played because I enjoyed it. And once again, the VERY simple fix of just making tiebreaker ranking based on tiebreaker win percentage instead of total number of tiebreaker wins (with a minimum tiebreaker game count) would go a very, very long way towards eliminating most of the problems that you and the person who wrote that article identified.
And you know what? You shouldn’t feel bad for playing the game. You shouldn’t feel bad for doing things you love, as long as that doesn’t harm anyone else, and in your case, you weren’t harming anyone.
So what if you’ve spent 3 grand in a year playing Magic? What’s that compared to how much money you made in that year? Don’t they take enough from you already? Aren’t you allowed to spend some of your earned money in the things you like doing just because you’re a parent and married now? Is marriage and parenthood a death sentence now? Don’t you matter anymore in that equation?
Have you ever thought that maybe if your family accepted your love for Magic you wouldn’t have to act and feel like a criminal and your compulsive behavior might not even have existed?
But it is what it is. They would never understand you, so I think you’re going to have to keep being a closeted Magic player. But that doesn’t make you a bad person, as much as others would like you to think you are.
So you shouldn’t hate yourself nor the game, something that over the years has brought you so much more excitement and enjoyment than the frustration you mention.
Yours truly
Dr. Phiend
The old leagues were much better for learning a set because of the unlimited play potential.
Both old and new leagues are better for me than a sealed queue when learning new cards. This is because I can completely change my deck between rounds. I can also spend as much time deck constructing and play my matches whenever I want. Friendly leagues let me add packs after three rounds, getting a bit more play time with the same card pool. Friendly prizes kind of suck, but I don't worry about prizes until I feel competitive.
The only problem there is that you can't play against people who are also playing their own limited decks; I would like to play against people who have decks of roughly the same power level, and of the same format, and the easiest way to guarantee that is to play in a sealed event like a league or a swiss sealed.
However, my point was mostly about the argument that leagues were bad because you had to play alot of tiebreakers if you wanted to increase your chance of getting the best possible prize.
For any event you enter, presumably the primary reason you are entering is to play the format of that event. It's also possible to enter events I guess because you want to collect cards and think it's the most economical way to do that. I'll leave that motivation out of consideration for the moment. But let's just assume that you're entering basically because you want to play Magic. Surely you're not entering to try to make money, because that would probably be the most inefficient way to make money possible.
OK so given that you have entered the event because you want to play the type of Magic featured in the event, the more play time of that type you get for your dollar, the more cost effective the event is. Three factors then enter into the cost effectiveness: 1) how much it cost to enter the event, 2) how much you win from the event, and 3) how much play time you get.
(1) and (2) can really be combined into the net cost of the event. You cannot change (1), but you can increase (2) which will reduce the net cost. And the total play time divided by the net cost gives you the cost per unit play time, which is, assuming again that playing Magic is what you're really trying to do, the number you should be trying to minimize.
The thing about leagues is, you could increase the denominator of that equation immensely, to a degree so much further than any other limited format event, that it would be basically impossible to get a better "cost per unit play time" for a sealed event in any other way. The amount that you can lower your net cost by winning more packs, thus decreasing the numerator of that equation, is absolutely miniscule in comparison.
This is why I don't think it makes much sense to talk about extra tiebreaker rounds as a bad thing. They give you an opportunity to vastly increase the denominator. Leave the numerator alone, who cares about that. Anyone who doesn't enjoy playing tiebreaker matches but just does it to try to increment their pack win is foolish in my opinion, because you're going to spend many hours of your personal time for a few dollars of extra prize. That's like hitting yourself repeatedly with a hammer just because someone is willing to pay you $3/hour to do it. If you're looking at that $3 as "free money" then you're really leaving some important parts of the equation out.
Another factor here is that some people truly do value entering events to a larger degree than I do. This is because "entering events" comes with the "crack packing thrill" and the variability of being able to play with more decks than playing the same deck many times in a league would. Also there's the whole drafting process, which itself is worth quite a bit to alot of people. For those people, leagues would not be as great a value. This is why I said you have to decide if entering events is worth more than playing magic. It's a bit flippant, but it really means, how do you balance the enjoyment of the different parts of the play experience?
I think of people who play in 8-4 queues as those who most enjoy the drafting process, because on average they're going to be playing many fewer matches with the decks they build, than people who enter swiss queues. Their events will also on average be of shorter duration, making the cost per unit play time higher. There's always the dream that they'll come out way ahead because they can win 8-4s a majority of the time. Maybe that works out for some people, some of the time, but I suspect that in the vast majority of cases, that's only for short stretches that can be attributed to luck variance. Even the worst drafter is going to win three 8-4s in a row and feel like a champ if they enter enough events.
There have been bugs in the past where the prompt text is incorrect. Fortunately, they document this in their bug blog and fix them pretty quickly.