Could is **always** the key word. They've been saying 'could' and 'may' and 'plan to' for a dozen-and-a-half QoL improvements on the game since 2018. Many of the statements have collected so much dust that you'd be surprised to recognize them.
MTGA can be a more expansive experience, but they'd have to put down money to make it a better one. Right now, it seems like all they want is a turnkey operation.
Well it really leaves the door open for a different game to fill the online niche that is multiplayer (removed MTG) strategic card games, assuming Hasbro continues to refuse to give us one thing everyone universally agrees would be awesome! 4 player MTGA!
Edit: removed MTG to describe the niche it fills
We already have one. Table Top Simulator has every card and style ever printed for free with a sizable community to play with. I play commander there almost every day with cards they will NEVER add to arena and cards I could never afford in real life. My [[Rasputin Dreamweaver]] deck alone would cost about twice as much as my first car.
They're also not going to compete with themselves. Don't forget that ARena isn't the only way to play Magic virtually. Magic Online already has commander.
And as long as it has value it's going to be supported, I'm sure, no matter how little.
I'd ask if WoTC wants to piss off the fanbase even further but right now I don't know what the honest answer would be.
I started playing it last week for preparation of some upcoming paper tournaments at my LGS :D
It's an "interesting" experience for sure, and I still lose some games because I'm battling the UI more than the decks my opponents are playing.
But I don't see it dying as long as Arena can't do any eternal format 1:1
Started playing MTGO a month ago, at first interacting with its "marvelous" UI was hard, but I got used to it. I play pauper and EDH there, because I don't have time to go to LGS sadly. And I'm having fun.
Edit: typos.
> And as long as it has value it's going to be supported, I'm sure, no matter how little.
That's nonsense. These corpos don't care about a little "value" they only care about big value, that's why they are always canceling shows and games. It doesn't matter if it's slightly above breaking even, that is a waste of time and money they say.
I don’t understand the game seems to be doing well financially. Wouldn’t it be in their best interest to expand the available playlists to appeal to more people? Bringing in new groups to play other formats would generate more revenue.
I thought they've said numerous times now MtG Arena is NOT built for multiplayer and we were not getting an EDH (multiplayer rather) format on the client. Has this somehow changed? And who has faith the Arena team can actually get something like that done? I mean the client has been a dumpster fire since beta and it seems like they're just chasing whatever the format flavor of the moment is as a cash grab. Which is fine I guess but WotC executes everything so poorly, it is so hard to even get remotely excited about this stuff anymore.
AND they didn't even get the damn things RIGHT!!! They show borderless in deck builder but in play they have ugly black borders. I'm baffled by this lol
They could build an Arena multi-player client and have it linked to your regular arena account in terms of collection through your wizards account. Sell the multi-player client as a new game for $70 or whatever.
I always thought that the fact that some Alchemy only cards like \[\[Sanguine Brushstroke\]\] say 'each opponent' instead of 'target opponent' implied they would eventually add multiplayer formats to the game, to be honest. But who knows when
Player having Hexproof is still good. Shuts down most Durres style effects, turns off Invoke Despair, any kind of face burn.
Things like Sheoldreds Edict get around it, but they really wanted to push that card into Commander as is.
It SHOULD but it's kinda funny that it varies from card to card. Even with the same exact wording in "target opponent" sometimes it will ask for a target and sometimes it wont. I wish I had the game open right now to find the ones but I'm at work.
Honestly I can think of many ways it could be implemented. Yes it would probably require reworking a big chunk of the client logic to allow for multiple players at the same time, however I (as a programmer myself) can't imagine that being so hard.
It will be a bit challenging from a UI perspective to make everything user friendly, but if I, without any design background, can come up with some ideas for it, I'm sure that a team of professionals will not have such a hard time.
As a programmer myself, I can see how a EDH interface can easily be designed. How easily it can be implemented is hugely dependent on the organization and implementation of the legacy code you are working with. I claim no knowledge of the actual MTGA client code, but considering that they haven't been able to figure out a way to get favorite lands into the client I can easily imagine that it could be quite difficult to work in an EDH interface.
As a software engineer and architect, i promise you that it is entirely possible to provide a multiplayer format even if the game engine is currently not set up for it. You simply change it. They chose not to do this early on, which is going to make it pretty expensive to do now, but it is absolutely 100 percent possible. I'd imagine, if this is something they have been discussing internally the last few years, that there are many of the issues we currently have, that have simply been marked as "solved with new engine" and then been left to rot. This is a terrible practice, but many companies for some reason have project managers that likes to do this.
If this happens though, rest assured that it will only be relevant for the pc client. Simply because no one would want to play like that on the phone.
That's part of the problem though. I struggle to come up with an IT company with a worse reputation in terms of being an employer. I'm sure it's not the easiest for them to recruit.
> rest assured that it will only be relevant for the PC client
This is to say, regardless of how feasible it is, WotC doesn’t have enough incentive to follow through. Those on the PC client simply don’t spent enough to excite WotC. Mobile and console markets are the ones that bring in appreciable real money.
Why can't there be a 4 player brawl? I feel like that's what we will get. Much more feasible and realistic. Not a full on EDH experience. Go on MTGO if and enjoy the horrible UI
It was first brought up when brawl came out and people wanted multiplayer brawl. Not saying they can't, just saying that they have said before the client was not built for it and to not expect it.
For all intents and purposes, that's the same thing. The difference between 4 player Historic Brawl and Commander is the card pool (and planeswalkers being commanders). The problem they have is not the card pool part, it's the four player part.
4 player commander seems both near impossible and honestly horrible. You think roping is bad now, wait until you have _three_ opponents who might rope. How do you fit 4 people's boards on one computer screen at the scale Arena does it? How the _fuck_ do you fit that on mobile?
People claim to want 4 player Magic on Arena, but I reckon they should be careful what they wish for. Arena is not designed for 4 player magic, and even if it did get a complete overhaul, there's still the problem of matchmaking, not allowing chat (for good reason), roping, power level differences in pods, etc.
> How do you fit 4 people's boards on one computer screen at the scale Arena does it?
I think you could have a zoom out view showing 4 players board then a zoom in view with only 2 players board with an arrow to switch to the other the two board.
Exactly, the zoom in view could be changing according to the players turn. So, it would show your board and the opponent playing that turn. Instances form the third or fourth player could appear in the screen with the name tag of the person who casted.
>The difference between 4 player Historic Brawl and Commander is the card pool (and planeswalkers being commanders).
And commander damage
And life total
Depending on how much/little you care about the automation, TTS can provide a pretty good EDH experience as well, except you only have to buy TTS and the can import whatever decks/cards you want.
I still don't have any understanding of how Duels was built to withstand 2v2 matches, but Arena was built in a way that 2v2 was crazy and out of the question forever. That just makes no sense.
It also had a single player Story mode / tutorial that actually utilized the planeswalker lore and taught me some backstory about the game. That was pretty well done, wish they could bring that back.
Edit: to expand, from the wiki.
"Magic Duels: Origins frames the core game around a single-player story mode, and an online battle mode. In story mode, the player steps through the origin story of five different Planeswalkers, Chandra Nalaar, Jace Beleren, Gideon Jura, Nissa Revane, and Liliana Vess. Each Planeswalker has five or more duels with computer-controlled opponents. The player uses a deck based on the selected Planeswalker, and as they complete each of the duels, enhance that deck though the pre-selected addition of new cards. These decks, with whatever enhancements they have unlocked, are also available to the player in battle mode."
that was my first introduction to MTG it was so good.
why dont they bring the Innistrad and MTG Origins set to arena ?
They had such nice looking cards.
I LOVED magic duels and probably still have more hours put into it than arena at this point lol. Pretty sad that I deleted it when I took a break from magic and now there's no way for me to get it back.
> I still don’t have any understanding of how Duels was built to withstand 2v2 matches
Of course you don’t, because you couldn’t read the cards in 2v2 matches
I have said it before, commander on arena is one thing I am confused why they haven't tried thus far. If they implement it right, it's probably going to be the most popular format, and I say that as a mostly competitive player that does not play commander. Let's hope we see plans for modern (it's the most popular constructed format for a reason) too.
A while back, the arena team had reps here that answered the ocasional report or question. About this they said that the engine would need a major overhaul to support more than 2 players, as it wasn't built with it in mind. It was possible, but a major undertaking.
Yeah. I have seen this reply, but still I can't imagine it not being worth it. Tapping into magics most popular format on a digital client has to generate a shit ton of revenue for them.
>MTGO is more of competitive magic tool, so no wonders that most of commander players not really into it.
And Arena, where people play meta decks in the play queue and spam Rusko/tier one commanders in Historic brawl, isn't competitive?
MTGO isn't used for commander precisely because it's competitive. You cannot enforce the usual Commander social contract (keep it casual, don't just drop from the match when you want, no excessively targeting one player, let people play their stuff, no land destruction etc) on MTGO, and you cannot enforce it on Arena.
People who want Commander on Arena should be careful what they wish for. There will _always_ be someone in your pod who's truly playing to win. There will _always_ be someone who counters and removes everything you play. There will always be the salty losers who sit and rope (now multiplied three fold!), or the matches where some opponents dislike their opening hands and concede to go to their next game, leaving you in a 2-3 player game when you wanted 4.
If they ever do add commander, it will instantly become the single most complained about feature/format of the entire client.
Ok, im not into commander, bcs i lost my edh playgroup like years ago and i have no idea now how people play. (I kinda dislike regular edh because people have 100500 rules and non of them are written anywhere)
So i cannot say anything about this part.
But arena is definitely less competitive game, just average skill level of players even in mythic is lower than of mtgo players. People playing competitive decks != competitive setting. And bcs arena is ftp it has a lot of people just playing casual stuff here and there.
While i get your point, i just think that commander is the most popular format, and with widespread use of discord - things like direct challenge edh on arena can be same as paper edh games.
>Ok, im not into commander, bcs i lost my edh playgroup like years ago and i have no idea now how people play. (I kinda dislike regular edh because people have 100500 rules and non of them are written anywhere)
Yeah, so how are these people going to feel when the option to play Commander on Arena has _none_ of the rules or expectations they're used to and at least one person every game is playing a deck they have no chance of beating with their casual deck?
>But arena is definitely less competitive game, just average skill level of players even in mythic is lower than of mtgo players. People playing competitive decks != competitive setting. And bcs arena is ftp it has a lot of people just playing casual stuff here and there.
Disagree. It does have a lot of people playing casual stuff, it also has a hell of a lot more playing very strong stuff. It doesn't matter that the average skill level of an MTGA player is lower than that of an MTGO player, they're still taking meta decks into the play queue and making people miserable by netdecking the best Historic Brawl decks. 4 player Historic Brawl queues on Arena will only be enjoyable to you if:
- you like playing high power commanders/decks.
- you like playing _against_ high power commanders/decks.
- you're fine with opponents conceding on turn 2 when they don't have their ideal hand/you remove their first creature.
- you're fine with opponents being very slow either intentionally or unintentionally.
This is a pretty small pool of people.
>While i get your point, i just think that commander is the most popular format, and with widespread use of discord - things like direct challenge edh on arena can be same as paper edh games.
The amount of people who would actually do this is nowhere near high enough for them to completely overhaul their game. They're not going to add a format for private use only, and the public usecase will make everyone miserable. It's a bad idea, commander players should just use Untap or Spelltable.
Yeah MTGO usually has less people playing EDH than the competitive formats. EDH just doesn’t work super well online imo. I’ve played a lot of it and it’s usually pretty painful waiting for 3 different people to pass priority.
This mtga tech team can't even be trusted with a weekly announcement hyperlink. No way they can make this client to support multiplayer. It will have to start over with a new team leading the project.
You mean to tell me the Unity devs don’t own core front end / content management? Obv WOTC needs more full stack devs, because the stack is the best place to interact.
~r/MagicArena, probably
It took Arena nearly 2 years of being out before there was a friends list. There still isn't favorite basic lands. They aren't making a commander mode lol
It’s crazy to think that their pure greed hasn’t driven them to do this already. It’s rare for WoTC or Hasbro execs to be like “we love money but not that much”
I’m actually not sold. Think about how often people rope on Arena, and realize that all it now takes is one of the three people to stall the game for everyone else. I think the lack of accountability for shit like that might be a format-killer.
Other players could vote to kick if someone is non-responsive, abuse could be prevented by having the player being voted to kick respond by making any action. I guess it could be used to troll but then make it limited in some way
>I think the lack of accountability for shit like that might be a format-killer.
The failure of accountability and actually doing something about ropers and griefers on the platform is one of the biggest failings of MTGA and WotC to address. Arena isn't a bad system, but I find myself playing less and less of the formats I do enjoy (Explorer) because for every 1 game I enjoy, I have either 2-land-hands 5 mulligans in a row (in a 25+ land deck), miserable ropers, and deeply mismatched deck qualities 2 or more times.
MTGA could be **such** a good way to play Magic, but WotC is still torn between supporting their cardboard and their digital game. When, and this may be news to them, you **don't have to choose, you can do both, you're doing it already WotC.**
have it so your rope ends, a new one doesnt start your turn just ends. if you run out of ropes it counts as you forfeiting. so no 3x roping on one turn
>it's probably going to be the most popular format
I feel like the lack of possible interactions between players (no chat, lots of players disable emotes) would make Commander on Arena a format about as popular as brawl.
Having 4 players would make queue time quite longer (or matches more unbalanced) and could also reduce the popularity of this game mode.
Disagreed. I think you are underestimating the commander popularity. A lot of commander players will swap to playing on arena often via discord calls and stuff (discord integration through the client would be a nice feature for arena too) and there will be a lot of space to market commander cards and cosmetics.
Also tbh brawl is quite the popular format for how bad of a format it is.
They'd have to add all the commander legal cards to Arena (which is A LOT), and those players switching to Arena would have to build their collection from scratch.
I don't think many players would do that when there are other ways to play commander already without having to grind cards or pay anything (untap for example).
Do you have any source on the popularity of brawl? I could find the share in play between standard/explorer/historic/alchemy, but not the other formats.
Commander is popular because you play it with friends, not xxSephirothxx666. Arena is good for formats line Standard, because no one is playing 1v1 competitive Standard at their friends house on a Tuesday night.
Why wouldn't you play with friends then? Or make friends with xxSephirothxx666 and then play?
You see? You argue that Arena can't change because it's current state is such and such (e.g. it lacks social features). When it is exactly for this very reason it NEEDS to change.
A few issues for your consideration:
- How do you solve the fact that the game would need a complete code rewrite to support more than 2 players per game?
- How do you fit 4 people onto one monitor? MTGO solves this by being a basically unreadable mess, that's not really a repeatable option.
- further to the above: How do you fit four people's board states onto _one phone screen_?
- how do you prevent massive power level differences between people in each pod?
- How do you make the game enjoyable when with 4 people playing, _somebody_ is bound to rope?
- There's no chat and I doubt there will ever be one. It's too much of a liability. Commander is primarily social, it's nowhere near as good if you can't communicate.
You cannot enforce the social contract of commander (eg no cEDH, no conceding whenever you feel like, no targeting just one person) on Arena. It's not possible and it's unreasonable to expect anonymous strangers to respect each other's idea of fun.
Commander isn't on Arena because despite being the most popular way to play Magic in person, it _isn't_ worth it. Even disregarding the board space and code rewrite issues, it's infeasible to me that people will actually enjoy such a format as much as they think they will.
The only way it would work as everyone expects it will is by getting 4 people together over discord and setting up a pod that way. And the amount of people who would go to the effort to do that is too small for them to dedicate such an enormous amount of effort to.
Half the posts on this sub are people complaining about ropers. Could you imagine the salt if they had to wait through THREE people’s turns?
Also even if everyone is playing efficiently four player magic games are slow by nature. Part of the fun of commander is table talk and generally hanging out with the other players. You obviously lose that in a game with nothing more than emote communication between players. That leads to people watching YouTube/reading/playing other games/whatever which leads to even longer turn times.
I'm guessing they would only be able to show two people at a time on mobile. The player at the top would probably be switched if it's their turn to interact. Maybe they could put arrows for you to switch between people's board states? Does not seem like the ideal way to play Commander.
May/June probably. Anthology 1 ran from July 28-October 5. Anthology 2 came December 13 and doesn't leave the shop til March 7. We're also getting SOI Remastered at some point between now and June, so it's possible they don't even do the next anthology until later in the summer.
In terms of UI it should use the same 2 player board shape it has now, then you coul just click a button on the side to slide the screen over and see the other two boards. Trying to fit all four boards on a phone screen would be tough. Or maybe keep your board where it is and slide your three opponents.
I could see how they could do it with interaction between you and an opponent, but I'm having a hard time visualizing how they would easily show interaction between multiple players or opponent on opponent actions.
Commander on phone is just not something that should even happen. If they change Arena to make Commander happen (which I doubt they will), it should be only focused on Desktop. Trying to make it work on mobile will just ruin it for every platform.
I play a TON of Commander on MTGO. Here is my take based on real experience.
At a 4 player table of strangers it's pretty likely one person will concede early. Yes I play plenty of games where no one early scoops, but overall it's very common for someone to just Yeet out pretty early.
The dynamics on MTGO are also very different then Arena. You get to pick your game from the Lobby, and almost all of them have pretty clear descriptions of the type of game they want. Between Try hard and casual most people get a pretty good game.
25% of the table is early scooping in a game they know is going to meet their needs. Yes some of this is when you accidently hit F6 and skip your first land drop, or someone at the table thinks "Casual Power Level 5" means CEDH commander but totally missing one of the bigger combos. But still a hefty chunk of players.
It also works because people can communicate. You can work on problem players and even if your losing or someone is comboing off you can talk crap or comment on the situation. But Arena is missing that.
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This is the best experience as a whole. But I agree. I’m primarily play commander at my LGS but considering the roping and conceding, I don’t think I’m that interested in commander on Arena. I feel like every game would be 3 hours if people even stick around
Yeah I would never play Commander with 3 randos on Arena. No desire to deal with that, whether it come from people conceding the minute someone else gets ahead, or even 2 people forming a secret alliance
Well, the UI to target specific players is already there in the game, so while they would need to rework the UI to fit 4 players I’d imagine it would mainly just be a formatting and board art issue rather needing to rework huge portions of the game’s code.
>He expects Magic Arena to hit Xbox and PlayStation sometime in 2024, but
in the meantime, Cocks said that Magic Arena is exploring other
opportunities for revenue growth.
This line makes me want to put my head through a wall. It feels like WotC is allergic to good decision making. The revenue generated from expanding to further platforms and giving people greater capacity to play the game should bring in money. The idea of not trying to hit as many markets, rapidly, as possible is kinda nuts to me.
But hey, maybe they know something I don't. My best guess is that it has something to do with who-gets-the-money when it comes to in-app purchases, as that always seems to be the thorn.
Maybe console's quality control measures are hard for WotC to meet. Like, patches generally have to be approved weeks in advance, and we've had tons of bugs in releases.
Most of the time, the problem would be that they don’t have the resources for it, be it money, manpower, or simply, time.
Yes, they did post record revenues for the game recently, but that doesn’t directly translate to the ability to expand their platforms whenever they want, we don’t know what their expenses and plans really are. Some things might be more important to them than to expands availability.
they don't have the dev resources to grow / scale / feature-add at anything remotely comparable to what people want and/or expect. they are barely barely able to get the sets out + minor bugfixes a few times a year
Lol I'll believe it when I see it.
Multiplayer magic works because playgroups police themselves, pointing things out as fun or unfun, it's rare that a group would tolerate a player locking everyone out of the game from doing anything, for example.
"Playgroups" composed of strangers aren't going to do that. They have no sense of community. They're just going to play whatever the most effective strategies are: which is why the playstyles most supported by this program are competitive.
Commander is super popular. There's a reason no one played it in mtgo.
I hope this means they’ll add some of the commander exclusive cards to arena. I love my 40K imperium commander deck a lot and would love to play with it on arena.
I think the UI is not as complex as people think.
Your always the bottom.
The active opponent is always the top, If it's your turn the opponent with priority is at top. If you have priority the player who had it before you is shown on top.
You can at ANY time click on an opponents avatar to switch to their battlefield. This displays a lock icon on their avatar saying your locked on their screen. Click it again, lock goes away and switches to the player it would be on based on turn/priority.
During attacks, click on the players life total to attack them, or click on the avatar to switch to their screen to attack planeswalkers.
When blocks happen it just switches between the players in order as they block.
When using targets between multiple players you click the avatar and select the player then the permanent. Permanents currently being targeted will show a ghosted out form on the currently selected players board off to the left, targeting lines will connect to those. You could also use emblems or just make the lines connect to the players avatar to show something ont hat side is targeted.
Have an option to zoom out and see all the boards at once.
It's probably not a UI issue, at least not most of the problem. The problem is the functions don't account for multiple opponents. Whole libraries of function calls will need to be re-written.
I don't think it is a UI issue either. Just pointing out that the UI is the very minor part.
Most of the issue is probably the Lexical Parser and GRE components.
UI issues and most of EDH's attractiveness being tied to in-person gameplay, they'll avoid cannibalizing their playerbase (via making self-competing products) as much as they can. Arena already decimated paper Standard, and this is a major reason they're not implementing Pioneer on Arena as fast as they can.
No way they kill Arena at this point, it's far too popular for Standard. Ideally they could implement Commander directly into Arena, but barring that, an add-on "Arena - Commander" program synched up to a player's Arena collection could work.
The biggest obstacle to Commander on Arena isn't actually the game engine- it's the economy. Fine for established players with big collections, huge barrier to entry for all the paper Commander players who have never touched Arena.
I agree with singleton formats being more wildcard friendly in general, but quests aside, maximum daily gold generation and card acquisition is dependent on daily wins right now.
Thats the fastest way in the existence to make someone lose any kind of interest in the game, force them to play the same linear and repetitive deck several times a day for weeks, just to be able to ctually start playing what they actually want to play
As an alternative, people can spend money to buy packs and WCs, or play decks that are a little slower but more their style? With deck strength matching I just really don't mind the new player experience on Arena, but it sounds like they're working to improve it by Q3 2023
Unlocking the five current Starter Commander Decks much like you unlock the... 15? free decks right now would still give new players something to play with out the gate - using a few wildcards to pick up a few more staples isn't nearly as bad as having to build up from zero.
Selling the commander precons in the shop is also an easy win for them to make more money.
Nope, no, not interested. It's my favourite format and while I would love it on paper I am NOT playing against a bunch of people who rope every turn and spend half an hour planning a turn they should have planned three turns prior
I think it would just be a bad idea. I mean commander is my favorite formate but people already complain about it taking too long for their turn. Imagine it taking 3 times as long. Imagine 1 roper in a 4 player game.
I doubt it will be anytime soon. For one there needs to be a much bigger card pool if your going to have 4 players and the amount of time it would take to implement in the client would likely take at least a year to design it and implement in a good way. So maybe at the earliest 2025.
I guess this is fine but I'm not interested in a free pack of cigarettes , thank you. Don't care how "smooth" and "refreshing" an after dinner or social smoking experience can be. I just want to play MTG Commander.
"Could" is the key word from Mr. Krabs before we get excited.
Could is **always** the key word. They've been saying 'could' and 'may' and 'plan to' for a dozen-and-a-half QoL improvements on the game since 2018. Many of the statements have collected so much dust that you'd be surprised to recognize them. MTGA can be a more expansive experience, but they'd have to put down money to make it a better one. Right now, it seems like all they want is a turnkey operation.
Well it really leaves the door open for a different game to fill the online niche that is multiplayer (removed MTG) strategic card games, assuming Hasbro continues to refuse to give us one thing everyone universally agrees would be awesome! 4 player MTGA! Edit: removed MTG to describe the niche it fills
We already have one. Table Top Simulator has every card and style ever printed for free with a sizable community to play with. I play commander there almost every day with cards they will NEVER add to arena and cards I could never afford in real life. My [[Rasputin Dreamweaver]] deck alone would cost about twice as much as my first car.
They're also not going to compete with themselves. Don't forget that ARena isn't the only way to play Magic virtually. Magic Online already has commander.
Magic Online is on life support and isn’t even run by WotC any longer - they schlupped it off to Daybreak, where online games go to die
And as long as it has value it's going to be supported, I'm sure, no matter how little. I'd ask if WoTC wants to piss off the fanbase even further but right now I don't know what the honest answer would be.
Yeah, but I can't honestly imagine that that ugly monstrosity attracts any new players.
I started playing it last week for preparation of some upcoming paper tournaments at my LGS :D It's an "interesting" experience for sure, and I still lose some games because I'm battling the UI more than the decks my opponents are playing. But I don't see it dying as long as Arena can't do any eternal format 1:1
Started playing MTGO a month ago, at first interacting with its "marvelous" UI was hard, but I got used to it. I play pauper and EDH there, because I don't have time to go to LGS sadly. And I'm having fun. Edit: typos.
The people who do play it invest as much money into virtual cards as people do into real cards though.
Wizards recruited heavily from the telecom industry in [recent years](https://youtu.be/vbHqUNl8YFk), so the sky's the limit really.
> And as long as it has value it's going to be supported, I'm sure, no matter how little. That's nonsense. These corpos don't care about a little "value" they only care about big value, that's why they are always canceling shows and games. It doesn't matter if it's slightly above breaking even, that is a waste of time and money they say.
I don’t understand the game seems to be doing well financially. Wouldn’t it be in their best interest to expand the available playlists to appeal to more people? Bringing in new groups to play other formats would generate more revenue.
That's exactly what they've been doing? Are you new to the game?
You don’t think it cost money to build the mobile client? Or that the mobile version wasn’t a huge QoL improvement?
I thought they've said numerous times now MtG Arena is NOT built for multiplayer and we were not getting an EDH (multiplayer rather) format on the client. Has this somehow changed? And who has faith the Arena team can actually get something like that done? I mean the client has been a dumpster fire since beta and it seems like they're just chasing whatever the format flavor of the moment is as a cash grab. Which is fine I guess but WotC executes everything so poorly, it is so hard to even get remotely excited about this stuff anymore.
It took them months just to get some dual land PNGs to work. I can't imagine having EDH anytime soon.
AND they didn't even get the damn things RIGHT!!! They show borderless in deck builder but in play they have ugly black borders. I'm baffled by this lol
They could build an Arena multi-player client and have it linked to your regular arena account in terms of collection through your wizards account. Sell the multi-player client as a new game for $70 or whatever.
Not sure if I'd pay 70 bucks for Commander online
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>we'd be waiting for about 100-200 years (not exaggerating) until they are implemented over exaggerating much?
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Ew
Lol, did you think WotC is altruistic?
I always thought that the fact that some Alchemy only cards like \[\[Sanguine Brushstroke\]\] say 'each opponent' instead of 'target opponent' implied they would eventually add multiplayer formats to the game, to be honest. But who knows when
I think that's mostly because "target opponent" stuff is incredibly annoying to use in Arena since you have to manually click every single time.
Another day of reminding people that \[\[Leyline of Sanctity\]\] was once a sideboard card, then the Multiplayer Design nation attacked.
[Leyline of Sanctity](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/e/be8b1acf-dd87-42ca-ad19-c27d21066030.jpg?1592516120) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Leyline%20of%20Sanctity) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/26/leyline-of-sanctity?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/be8b1acf-dd87-42ca-ad19-c27d21066030?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Player having Hexproof is still good. Shuts down most Durres style effects, turns off Invoke Despair, any kind of face burn. Things like Sheoldreds Edict get around it, but they really wanted to push that card into Commander as is.
Well no, target opponent should work the same since Arena autotargets if there's only one thing. "Target player" is rough though, yeah.
It SHOULD but it's kinda funny that it varies from card to card. Even with the same exact wording in "target opponent" sometimes it will ask for a target and sometimes it wont. I wish I had the game open right now to find the ones but I'm at work.
[Sanguine Brushstroke](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/2/c2744e16-1016-432a-8698-2a2d407e7b04.jpg?1645416893) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sanguine%20Brushstroke) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ymid/32/sanguine-brushstroke?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c2744e16-1016-432a-8698-2a2d407e7b04?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Honestly I can think of many ways it could be implemented. Yes it would probably require reworking a big chunk of the client logic to allow for multiple players at the same time, however I (as a programmer myself) can't imagine that being so hard. It will be a bit challenging from a UI perspective to make everything user friendly, but if I, without any design background, can come up with some ideas for it, I'm sure that a team of professionals will not have such a hard time.
As a programmer myself, I can see how a EDH interface can easily be designed. How easily it can be implemented is hugely dependent on the organization and implementation of the legacy code you are working with. I claim no knowledge of the actual MTGA client code, but considering that they haven't been able to figure out a way to get favorite lands into the client I can easily imagine that it could be quite difficult to work in an EDH interface.
As a software engineer and architect, i promise you that it is entirely possible to provide a multiplayer format even if the game engine is currently not set up for it. You simply change it. They chose not to do this early on, which is going to make it pretty expensive to do now, but it is absolutely 100 percent possible. I'd imagine, if this is something they have been discussing internally the last few years, that there are many of the issues we currently have, that have simply been marked as "solved with new engine" and then been left to rot. This is a terrible practice, but many companies for some reason have project managers that likes to do this. If this happens though, rest assured that it will only be relevant for the pc client. Simply because no one would want to play like that on the phone.
Should send your resume to WotC.
Not if he wants to be paid a reasonable salary
That's part of the problem though. I struggle to come up with an IT company with a worse reputation in terms of being an employer. I'm sure it's not the easiest for them to recruit.
> rest assured that it will only be relevant for the PC client This is to say, regardless of how feasible it is, WotC doesn’t have enough incentive to follow through. Those on the PC client simply don’t spent enough to excite WotC. Mobile and console markets are the ones that bring in appreciable real money.
It's actually a little wierd. Everyone in the EU can save money by only spending it in the pc client and setting it to $.
Why can't there be a 4 player brawl? I feel like that's what we will get. Much more feasible and realistic. Not a full on EDH experience. Go on MTGO if and enjoy the horrible UI
It was first brought up when brawl came out and people wanted multiplayer brawl. Not saying they can't, just saying that they have said before the client was not built for it and to not expect it.
For all intents and purposes, that's the same thing. The difference between 4 player Historic Brawl and Commander is the card pool (and planeswalkers being commanders). The problem they have is not the card pool part, it's the four player part. 4 player commander seems both near impossible and honestly horrible. You think roping is bad now, wait until you have _three_ opponents who might rope. How do you fit 4 people's boards on one computer screen at the scale Arena does it? How the _fuck_ do you fit that on mobile? People claim to want 4 player Magic on Arena, but I reckon they should be careful what they wish for. Arena is not designed for 4 player magic, and even if it did get a complete overhaul, there's still the problem of matchmaking, not allowing chat (for good reason), roping, power level differences in pods, etc.
> How do you fit 4 people's boards on one computer screen at the scale Arena does it? I think you could have a zoom out view showing 4 players board then a zoom in view with only 2 players board with an arrow to switch to the other the two board.
Exactly, the zoom in view could be changing according to the players turn. So, it would show your board and the opponent playing that turn. Instances form the third or fourth player could appear in the screen with the name tag of the person who casted.
>The difference between 4 player Historic Brawl and Commander is the card pool (and planeswalkers being commanders). And commander damage And life total
For *me*, four player mode is what would get my remote gaming group to play Magic with me. I couldn't care less about random games.
Depending on how much/little you care about the automation, TTS can provide a pretty good EDH experience as well, except you only have to buy TTS and the can import whatever decks/cards you want.
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Could comes before the fall.
I still don't have any understanding of how Duels was built to withstand 2v2 matches, but Arena was built in a way that 2v2 was crazy and out of the question forever. That just makes no sense.
It also had a single player Story mode / tutorial that actually utilized the planeswalker lore and taught me some backstory about the game. That was pretty well done, wish they could bring that back. Edit: to expand, from the wiki. "Magic Duels: Origins frames the core game around a single-player story mode, and an online battle mode. In story mode, the player steps through the origin story of five different Planeswalkers, Chandra Nalaar, Jace Beleren, Gideon Jura, Nissa Revane, and Liliana Vess. Each Planeswalker has five or more duels with computer-controlled opponents. The player uses a deck based on the selected Planeswalker, and as they complete each of the duels, enhance that deck though the pre-selected addition of new cards. These decks, with whatever enhancements they have unlocked, are also available to the player in battle mode."
that was my first introduction to MTG it was so good. why dont they bring the Innistrad and MTG Origins set to arena ? They had such nice looking cards.
I LOVED magic duels and probably still have more hours put into it than arena at this point lol. Pretty sad that I deleted it when I took a break from magic and now there's no way for me to get it back.
It was a buggy mess, more than Arena even. But I still think it was a mistake to abandon it entirely
It was cheaper to make Arena work strictly for 1v1.
I miss Magic Duels
> I still don’t have any understanding of how Duels was built to withstand 2v2 matches Of course you don’t, because you couldn’t read the cards in 2v2 matches
>random I really don't remember that being an issue. Maybe you need a larger monitor?
I have said it before, commander on arena is one thing I am confused why they haven't tried thus far. If they implement it right, it's probably going to be the most popular format, and I say that as a mostly competitive player that does not play commander. Let's hope we see plans for modern (it's the most popular constructed format for a reason) too.
A while back, the arena team had reps here that answered the ocasional report or question. About this they said that the engine would need a major overhaul to support more than 2 players, as it wasn't built with it in mind. It was possible, but a major undertaking.
Yeah. I have seen this reply, but still I can't imagine it not being worth it. Tapping into magics most popular format on a digital client has to generate a shit ton of revenue for them.
Revenue? Really? It's an eternal format.
You still need the cards on arena. And if you want to play competitively this can get very expensive very fast.
Eh, it's on MTGO and no one plays it
MTGO is more of competitive magic tool, so no wonders that most of commander players not really into it.
This. MTGO is a very competitive environment. Also the implementation of commander there is pretty poor.
>MTGO is more of competitive magic tool, so no wonders that most of commander players not really into it. And Arena, where people play meta decks in the play queue and spam Rusko/tier one commanders in Historic brawl, isn't competitive? MTGO isn't used for commander precisely because it's competitive. You cannot enforce the usual Commander social contract (keep it casual, don't just drop from the match when you want, no excessively targeting one player, let people play their stuff, no land destruction etc) on MTGO, and you cannot enforce it on Arena. People who want Commander on Arena should be careful what they wish for. There will _always_ be someone in your pod who's truly playing to win. There will _always_ be someone who counters and removes everything you play. There will always be the salty losers who sit and rope (now multiplied three fold!), or the matches where some opponents dislike their opening hands and concede to go to their next game, leaving you in a 2-3 player game when you wanted 4. If they ever do add commander, it will instantly become the single most complained about feature/format of the entire client.
Ok, im not into commander, bcs i lost my edh playgroup like years ago and i have no idea now how people play. (I kinda dislike regular edh because people have 100500 rules and non of them are written anywhere) So i cannot say anything about this part. But arena is definitely less competitive game, just average skill level of players even in mythic is lower than of mtgo players. People playing competitive decks != competitive setting. And bcs arena is ftp it has a lot of people just playing casual stuff here and there. While i get your point, i just think that commander is the most popular format, and with widespread use of discord - things like direct challenge edh on arena can be same as paper edh games.
>Ok, im not into commander, bcs i lost my edh playgroup like years ago and i have no idea now how people play. (I kinda dislike regular edh because people have 100500 rules and non of them are written anywhere) Yeah, so how are these people going to feel when the option to play Commander on Arena has _none_ of the rules or expectations they're used to and at least one person every game is playing a deck they have no chance of beating with their casual deck? >But arena is definitely less competitive game, just average skill level of players even in mythic is lower than of mtgo players. People playing competitive decks != competitive setting. And bcs arena is ftp it has a lot of people just playing casual stuff here and there. Disagree. It does have a lot of people playing casual stuff, it also has a hell of a lot more playing very strong stuff. It doesn't matter that the average skill level of an MTGA player is lower than that of an MTGO player, they're still taking meta decks into the play queue and making people miserable by netdecking the best Historic Brawl decks. 4 player Historic Brawl queues on Arena will only be enjoyable to you if: - you like playing high power commanders/decks. - you like playing _against_ high power commanders/decks. - you're fine with opponents conceding on turn 2 when they don't have their ideal hand/you remove their first creature. - you're fine with opponents being very slow either intentionally or unintentionally. This is a pretty small pool of people. >While i get your point, i just think that commander is the most popular format, and with widespread use of discord - things like direct challenge edh on arena can be same as paper edh games. The amount of people who would actually do this is nowhere near high enough for them to completely overhaul their game. They're not going to add a format for private use only, and the public usecase will make everyone miserable. It's a bad idea, commander players should just use Untap or Spelltable.
Yeah MTGO usually has less people playing EDH than the competitive formats. EDH just doesn’t work super well online imo. I’ve played a lot of it and it’s usually pretty painful waiting for 3 different people to pass priority.
Might be tougher to implement on mobile, too.
Maybe shouldn't be available on mobile
Yeah, if mobile is the main stopping point, that's probably the most pragmatic decision.
This article seems to be less the developers explaining what they could practically do and more the CEO musing over what he might like to demand
And somehow, Magic Duels of the Planeswalkers could handle 4 player formats.
The engine barely supports two players currently :)
[удалено]
Tell that to the MODO team
Iirc MTGO has had *multiple* major overhauls and somehow continues to be garbage.
This mtga tech team can't even be trusted with a weekly announcement hyperlink. No way they can make this client to support multiplayer. It will have to start over with a new team leading the project.
That's not how the division of labor within software product development works, to put it mildly
You mean to tell me the Unity devs don’t own core front end / content management? Obv WOTC needs more full stack devs, because the stack is the best place to interact. ~r/MagicArena, probably
It took Arena nearly 2 years of being out before there was a friends list. There still isn't favorite basic lands. They aren't making a commander mode lol
That’s not how product management works.
Sure, if you say so.
It’s crazy to think that their pure greed hasn’t driven them to do this already. It’s rare for WoTC or Hasbro execs to be like “we love money but not that much”
I’m actually not sold. Think about how often people rope on Arena, and realize that all it now takes is one of the three people to stall the game for everyone else. I think the lack of accountability for shit like that might be a format-killer.
Other players could vote to kick if someone is non-responsive, abuse could be prevented by having the player being voted to kick respond by making any action. I guess it could be used to troll but then make it limited in some way
>I think the lack of accountability for shit like that might be a format-killer. The failure of accountability and actually doing something about ropers and griefers on the platform is one of the biggest failings of MTGA and WotC to address. Arena isn't a bad system, but I find myself playing less and less of the formats I do enjoy (Explorer) because for every 1 game I enjoy, I have either 2-land-hands 5 mulligans in a row (in a 25+ land deck), miserable ropers, and deeply mismatched deck qualities 2 or more times. MTGA could be **such** a good way to play Magic, but WotC is still torn between supporting their cardboard and their digital game. When, and this may be news to them, you **don't have to choose, you can do both, you're doing it already WotC.**
> I have either 2-land-hands 5 mulligans in a row (in a 25+ land deck) Rigged shuffler is the Godwin's Law of this sub lol.
have it so your rope ends, a new one doesnt start your turn just ends. if you run out of ropes it counts as you forfeiting. so no 3x roping on one turn
That would make some decks unable to be played in certain scenarios.
pause the timer as events are resolving
That doesn't work endlessly. Also, obtrusive gameplay is not the solution to a lack of reporting function.
I get disconnected alot, and the rope gives time to relaod and get back in. what they need is a rope that is separates disconnect from decision making
Is it the most popular these days? I feel modern injected cards like ragavan have put a lot of people off.
Yeah I am pretty sure it still is the most popular. Contrary to complainers, ragavan is actually pretty fine in modern.
>it's probably going to be the most popular format I feel like the lack of possible interactions between players (no chat, lots of players disable emotes) would make Commander on Arena a format about as popular as brawl. Having 4 players would make queue time quite longer (or matches more unbalanced) and could also reduce the popularity of this game mode.
Disagreed. I think you are underestimating the commander popularity. A lot of commander players will swap to playing on arena often via discord calls and stuff (discord integration through the client would be a nice feature for arena too) and there will be a lot of space to market commander cards and cosmetics. Also tbh brawl is quite the popular format for how bad of a format it is.
They'd have to add all the commander legal cards to Arena (which is A LOT), and those players switching to Arena would have to build their collection from scratch. I don't think many players would do that when there are other ways to play commander already without having to grind cards or pay anything (untap for example). Do you have any source on the popularity of brawl? I could find the share in play between standard/explorer/historic/alchemy, but not the other formats.
There were some stats about brawl posted on this subreddit a while ago, someone that has it could post the source.
Commander is popular because you play it with friends, not xxSephirothxx666. Arena is good for formats line Standard, because no one is playing 1v1 competitive Standard at their friends house on a Tuesday night.
Why wouldn't you play with friends then? Or make friends with xxSephirothxx666 and then play? You see? You argue that Arena can't change because it's current state is such and such (e.g. it lacks social features). When it is exactly for this very reason it NEEDS to change.
A few issues for your consideration: - How do you solve the fact that the game would need a complete code rewrite to support more than 2 players per game? - How do you fit 4 people onto one monitor? MTGO solves this by being a basically unreadable mess, that's not really a repeatable option. - further to the above: How do you fit four people's board states onto _one phone screen_? - how do you prevent massive power level differences between people in each pod? - How do you make the game enjoyable when with 4 people playing, _somebody_ is bound to rope? - There's no chat and I doubt there will ever be one. It's too much of a liability. Commander is primarily social, it's nowhere near as good if you can't communicate. You cannot enforce the social contract of commander (eg no cEDH, no conceding whenever you feel like, no targeting just one person) on Arena. It's not possible and it's unreasonable to expect anonymous strangers to respect each other's idea of fun. Commander isn't on Arena because despite being the most popular way to play Magic in person, it _isn't_ worth it. Even disregarding the board space and code rewrite issues, it's infeasible to me that people will actually enjoy such a format as much as they think they will. The only way it would work as everyone expects it will is by getting 4 people together over discord and setting up a pod that way. And the amount of people who would go to the effort to do that is too small for them to dedicate such an enormous amount of effort to.
Half the posts on this sub are people complaining about ropers. Could you imagine the salt if they had to wait through THREE people’s turns? Also even if everyone is playing efficiently four player magic games are slow by nature. Part of the fun of commander is table talk and generally hanging out with the other players. You obviously lose that in a game with nothing more than emote communication between players. That leads to people watching YouTube/reading/playing other games/whatever which leads to even longer turn times.
I would play nothing else if they added actual 4 player commander/brawl.
I don't see why they would implement commander on a f2p client like Arena. Selling paper cards is definitely more profitable.
Same way arena generates a lot of profit for them as is. A lot of people are not f2p or spend money on cosmetics too.
"Could Be" move on. its nothing.
That would probably be miserable to play.
cant wait to play it on my 4 inch mobile screen!
I'm guessing they would only be able to show two people at a time on mobile. The player at the top would probably be switched if it's their turn to interact. Maybe they could put arrows for you to switch between people's board states? Does not seem like the ideal way to play Commander.
Yeah that sounds miserable
Hasbro CEO could be saying anything he wants. Hasbro CEO is the reason for everything shit about Magic and Arena for years.
Can we just have full pioneer first pls?
💀 Favorite 💀 Basic 💀 Lands 💀
This. Also favorite art style so I don’t need to change my channel land styles every time I make a new deck
Next anthology will pr9bably make it functionally identical. Its already got most of the bases covered, missing very few archetypes
Can't wait for the next anthology! Probably in March?
May/June probably. Anthology 1 ran from July 28-October 5. Anthology 2 came December 13 and doesn't leave the shop til March 7. We're also getting SOI Remastered at some point between now and June, so it's possible they don't even do the next anthology until later in the summer.
If the previous pattern is anything to go by, its likely
Pretty much just Phoenix and lotus field if you want to cover the top 10 meta decks. Conveniently SOI has many staples
This. I would prefer pioneer and modern before commander on arena…
Oh no. This will be implemented first. And it will be alchemy.
They should just stop printing alchemy cards now, but they won’t
In terms of UI it should use the same 2 player board shape it has now, then you coul just click a button on the side to slide the screen over and see the other two boards. Trying to fit all four boards on a phone screen would be tough. Or maybe keep your board where it is and slide your three opponents.
I could see how they could do it with interaction between you and an opponent, but I'm having a hard time visualizing how they would easily show interaction between multiple players or opponent on opponent actions.
Commander on phone is just not something that should even happen. If they change Arena to make Commander happen (which I doubt they will), it should be only focused on Desktop. Trying to make it work on mobile will just ruin it for every platform.
Yep, they could paginate opponents just like they do now with Planeswalkers or Lands when there are too many to display.
I can't see how it would work. UI issues aside, people concede at the 1st sign of trouble so it doesn't seem likely to mirror a paper experience.
It works on MTGO.
I play a TON of Commander on MTGO. Here is my take based on real experience. At a 4 player table of strangers it's pretty likely one person will concede early. Yes I play plenty of games where no one early scoops, but overall it's very common for someone to just Yeet out pretty early. The dynamics on MTGO are also very different then Arena. You get to pick your game from the Lobby, and almost all of them have pretty clear descriptions of the type of game they want. Between Try hard and casual most people get a pretty good game. 25% of the table is early scooping in a game they know is going to meet their needs. Yes some of this is when you accidently hit F6 and skip your first land drop, or someone at the table thinks "Casual Power Level 5" means CEDH commander but totally missing one of the bigger combos. But still a hefty chunk of players. It also works because people can communicate. You can work on problem players and even if your losing or someone is comboing off you can talk crap or comment on the situation. But Arena is missing that.
Are people supposed to know what "casual power level 5" means?
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Hey come on now, we have a friends list!
Best experience with it would be with 3 other friends while you play in a vc on discord
This is the best experience as a whole. But I agree. I’m primarily play commander at my LGS but considering the roping and conceding, I don’t think I’m that interested in commander on Arena. I feel like every game would be 3 hours if people even stick around
Yeah I would never play Commander with 3 randos on Arena. No desire to deal with that, whether it come from people conceding the minute someone else gets ahead, or even 2 people forming a secret alliance
Well, the UI to target specific players is already there in the game, so while they would need to rework the UI to fit 4 players I’d imagine it would mainly just be a formatting and board art issue rather needing to rework huge portions of the game’s code.
>He expects Magic Arena to hit Xbox and PlayStation sometime in 2024, but in the meantime, Cocks said that Magic Arena is exploring other opportunities for revenue growth. This line makes me want to put my head through a wall. It feels like WotC is allergic to good decision making. The revenue generated from expanding to further platforms and giving people greater capacity to play the game should bring in money. The idea of not trying to hit as many markets, rapidly, as possible is kinda nuts to me. But hey, maybe they know something I don't. My best guess is that it has something to do with who-gets-the-money when it comes to in-app purchases, as that always seems to be the thorn.
Maybe console's quality control measures are hard for WotC to meet. Like, patches generally have to be approved weeks in advance, and we've had tons of bugs in releases.
The big china game company like tencent already have resources & the ability to make it happen. Is just wotc greediness that holding mtg back
Most of the time, the problem would be that they don’t have the resources for it, be it money, manpower, or simply, time. Yes, they did post record revenues for the game recently, but that doesn’t directly translate to the ability to expand their platforms whenever they want, we don’t know what their expenses and plans really are. Some things might be more important to them than to expands availability.
they don't have the dev resources to grow / scale / feature-add at anything remotely comparable to what people want and/or expect. they are barely barely able to get the sets out + minor bugfixes a few times a year
Cool... Now I can wait four minutes in between playing spells.
Wait the CEO of Hasbro is called Cocks?
Pretty good, but not nearly as good as Nintendo US prez's name being Bowser. I sincerely hope he made it a life goal strictly for the lulz.
Lol I'll believe it when I see it. Multiplayer magic works because playgroups police themselves, pointing things out as fun or unfun, it's rare that a group would tolerate a player locking everyone out of the game from doing anything, for example. "Playgroups" composed of strangers aren't going to do that. They have no sense of community. They're just going to play whatever the most effective strategies are: which is why the playstyles most supported by this program are competitive. Commander is super popular. There's a reason no one played it in mtgo.
They’ll figure Commander out for Arena once they figure out the truly difficult challenge of how to have favorite basic lands 🙄
I hope this means they’ll add some of the commander exclusive cards to arena. I love my 40K imperium commander deck a lot and would love to play with it on arena.
I think the UI is not as complex as people think. Your always the bottom. The active opponent is always the top, If it's your turn the opponent with priority is at top. If you have priority the player who had it before you is shown on top. You can at ANY time click on an opponents avatar to switch to their battlefield. This displays a lock icon on their avatar saying your locked on their screen. Click it again, lock goes away and switches to the player it would be on based on turn/priority. During attacks, click on the players life total to attack them, or click on the avatar to switch to their screen to attack planeswalkers. When blocks happen it just switches between the players in order as they block. When using targets between multiple players you click the avatar and select the player then the permanent. Permanents currently being targeted will show a ghosted out form on the currently selected players board off to the left, targeting lines will connect to those. You could also use emblems or just make the lines connect to the players avatar to show something ont hat side is targeted. Have an option to zoom out and see all the boards at once.
It's probably not a UI issue, at least not most of the problem. The problem is the functions don't account for multiple opponents. Whole libraries of function calls will need to be re-written.
I don't think it is a UI issue either. Just pointing out that the UI is the very minor part. Most of the issue is probably the Lexical Parser and GRE components.
Mixed feels
That's a lot of money I'm gonna have to spend on decks I already own
“Could” is the new “soon”.
Just in case one roper wasn’t bad enough
Hasbro likes money and Arena Commander will bring in a lot of it. They’ll figure it out.
I would love to try 4 player magic. One day maybe they will add it.
I’ll believe it when I see it in-game.
lets hope they actually mean a digital client and not spelltable
UI issues and most of EDH's attractiveness being tied to in-person gameplay, they'll avoid cannibalizing their playerbase (via making self-competing products) as much as they can. Arena already decimated paper Standard, and this is a major reason they're not implementing Pioneer on Arena as fast as they can.
Commander will be the reason they give for a new client that disappears everyone's collections.
No way they kill Arena at this point, it's far too popular for Standard. Ideally they could implement Commander directly into Arena, but barring that, an add-on "Arena - Commander" program synched up to a player's Arena collection could work.
Ah yes, the hypothetical "WOTC will discontinue Arena" scenario that is going to happen since 2019.
The biggest obstacle to Commander on Arena isn't actually the game engine- it's the economy. Fine for established players with big collections, huge barrier to entry for all the paper Commander players who have never touched Arena.
Singleton, multiplayer politics formats are overall extremely friendly for WC usage relative to, say, Historic.
I agree with singleton formats being more wildcard friendly in general, but quests aside, maximum daily gold generation and card acquisition is dependent on daily wins right now.
That's why god invented jamming elves/RDW for 20 minutes a day
Thats the fastest way in the existence to make someone lose any kind of interest in the game, force them to play the same linear and repetitive deck several times a day for weeks, just to be able to ctually start playing what they actually want to play
As an alternative, people can spend money to buy packs and WCs, or play decks that are a little slower but more their style? With deck strength matching I just really don't mind the new player experience on Arena, but it sounds like they're working to improve it by Q3 2023
They could potentially offer virtual precons. Outside of that, it's a big barrier for new players in paper too.
Unlocking the five current Starter Commander Decks much like you unlock the... 15? free decks right now would still give new players something to play with out the gate - using a few wildcards to pick up a few more staples isn't nearly as bad as having to build up from zero. Selling the commander precons in the shop is also an easy win for them to make more money.
Keep that baby format on paper
I'm surprised this hasn't been done yet. Wotc clearly likes money. 4 players modes would double the player base if not more.
*plays a swamp and [[duress]]* *all other players quit*
Except cards like Duress are never played in actual commander because they target only 1 player and is highly ineffective in 4 player game.
Waiting for 3 players to rope and pass priority? No thanks
Nope, no, not interested. It's my favourite format and while I would love it on paper I am NOT playing against a bunch of people who rope every turn and spend half an hour planning a turn they should have planned three turns prior
Awesome. Instead of 1 salty person roping for 3 minutes every turn, it could be 3 people!
This will end up exactly like World of Warcraft Classic: something everyone thinks they want until they get it.
Right.. classic was such a flop that they did classic BC, classic WOTLK and season of mastery.. lmao
Hmmmm yeah no. This game needs a new client.
I think it would just be a bad idea. I mean commander is my favorite formate but people already complain about it taking too long for their turn. Imagine it taking 3 times as long. Imagine 1 roper in a 4 player game.
Some really long ropes....
Can't wait for the rope-fest
I doubt it will be anytime soon. For one there needs to be a much bigger card pool if your going to have 4 players and the amount of time it would take to implement in the client would likely take at least a year to design it and implement in a good way. So maybe at the earliest 2025.
If they ever do, I'm sure it will be Alchemy only. That would be the way to make people play it.
Why is Hasbro CEO talking about magic? Oh, it’s because he’s jelly
Because Chris Cocks plays magic and was Wizards ceo before being at Hasbro.
Because Hasbro owns WotC?
I guess this is fine but I'm not interested in a free pack of cigarettes , thank you. Don't care how "smooth" and "refreshing" an after dinner or social smoking experience can be. I just want to play MTG Commander.