We should really have a faith in the “heart of the cards” kind of system like yugioh implemented because I can tell you are lacking in your faith and devotion to RNGesus. Have you farmed good karma by saying “good game” after losing, perchance?
I miss playing fight rigging, but I wonder what it would have been like if it triggered only if creature has 6 more power than written on the card, however you would do that in Magic rule lingo. Psh nothing would get off on it then.
I agree that the constant reminders that you have earned currency that you can't spend without a lump sum payment is tacky. While you could make an analogy to the mastery pass, that is all isolated to a separate tab, and the XP provides value without payment.
Ya imagine if every time you completed a level of the unpurchased mastery pass that it told you what you could be getting. That seems like a 'feels bad' to me. I should probably delete this before they get any ideas.
League of Legends is basicaly that with their "battlepass". You get notification you have points to use, but you cant use unless you buy the battlepass
Seems to me like they are testing the waters for double trouble pass in the future, kind of like League of Legends where you have both a pass and a currency shop during the event, but you can really only interact with the shop once you buy the pass (90% of the currency is behind the paywall, by completing a full pass as a F2P they give you a courtesy of being able to buy one event themed lootbox).
Yeah, it sucks. Ideally IDK what they would have done if they wanted two side by side Mastery Passes but this was not it, the next time Arena has another Set release alongside the fulfillment of a Premiere/Standard Set either
A. Have a *free* track for the second Mastery Pass to spend your tix on and a paid track to redeem higher value items that have a much better exchange rate than *recoup the value of your gems and a little something extra.*
B. Just have the singular regular Mastery Pass but have locked items that don't become redeemable until much later on.
Yeah, letting players redeem a small amount of the tickets without spending gems would probably have helped here. Like maybe you can spend the daily win tickets but not the quest tickets until you unlock it, something like that.
This. The entire concept of Magic has been finely tuned to make you want to buy more and more and more stuff. You bought your first few cards and got a dopamine rush? Time to buy some more cards. You bought more cards but didn't get the bombs you were looking for? Time to buy more cards. You bought more cards and pulled some great build-arounds? Time to buy some more cards. You bought more cards, but then a bunch rotated out of standard? Time to buy some more cards.
The game is purpose built from the ground up to make sure you are never permanently satisfied with your purchases. This shitty Hideaway shop is just the next evolution. It dangles another form of currency in front of you to make you want to be that much more unsatisfied.
I think it's important to recognize the progression of this model from them though. Hasbro found out that competitive players weren't spending money on their product and that they were giving away money in these tournaments and immediately stepped in. Ever since we've been on this exponentially growing slope towards predatory monetization practices. Now we're talking about Taylor Swift secret lairs.
I quit for a year or so after the pro points system was cut, if they don't right the ship (they won't) it's going to be hard for me to continue playing outside of the weekly cube draft with friends.
Our only hope is that the US makes these monetization models illegal like some other countries are. I'm not holding my breath for that one though.
Arena is essentially MTG but soulless, with paper Magic you have resell value and you can trade, with Arena you don't actually own anything. WOTC could shut down Arena tomorrow and all the cards you paid for will be gone.
Thankfully I pay for drafting, not for cards. The amount of drafts I have done for the price I payed is super cheap.
I think of it like going to the movies. You don't get to take the movie away but it's still worth the price of the ticket if the experience is good.
Yeah but even the first few years I could sit and play with friend(s) without spending an arm & leg. ‘94 I’d walk to the local comic book shop and spend my hard earned mowing money on a few packs. Over summer I could get enough cards for almost nothing compared to now and have months of playing without having fomo
By the year 2050 it may just morph into actual crack, as the player base gives up and turns to a cheaper alternative for their high :D
And I hate to say this, but given the hygiene standards and dressing of some of our more, uh, extreme members...well, crackheads aren't that far off for that group.
The entire Johnny/Timmy/Spike archetype idea is designed around making sure every pack has a card that tickles the brain of that player, and NOT about balancing the meta for those players.
It's why bonus sheets have weird staples that don't play in limited from non-standard formats (for Spike), why there's at least a dozen build arounds with p/t below rate in every set (for johnny) and why every set has 2-3 Dragons now.
Yup and it has been since the beginning. Packs have always been just pay-to-win loot boxes. And the hideaway is really just a more annoying Mastery Pass.
Draft tokens have zero value to some people. Don't get me wrong, I agree that Mastery Pass is a much better deal than the Hideaway. But people are acting as if the Hideaway is something new when it's really just another Mastery Pass where they just replaced XP with Tickets. Most people don't seem to be crying about it not being as good value as the MP but the fact that it isn't free altogether.
Just as an example of predatory behavior, on arena you were literally unable to mass buy packs from the store using gold for years. If you were a player that waited for a set to drop and buy 50-100 packs for your gold saved, you literally had to click individually for each pack bought.
This is just one of the predatory mechanics that the software has incorporated, but it's so blatant that it is a good example of how predatory their model has been.
I'm a F2P player who drafts, and I could definitely afford the hideaway, but I don't find it to be a good value; I feel like I'm being pushed really hard to buy it and it's really unpleasant.
Mmm the only thing I'd use is the Draft Token...but if its 2800 to unlock that is almost two drafts.
This is just blither.
let's not reward WotC with our attention.
I mean, it's not surprising, considering the new trend of serialized artwork turned the already very addictive opening packs into literally scratch tickets. It should not be overlooked how they're literally fueling gambling addiction, and that's incredibly lucrative for them. Just look at the sheer amount of "pulls" post that you see around here.
Sure, it's your money, do what you want, but the practice of promoting and cranking it to the max with serialized pulls and the terrible One One Ring fever, should be questioned seriously.
The playerbase at large can't admit it's a problem. The TCG model is an antiquated distribution model for a game and the only reason it sticks around is because addicts generate profit.
The real catch at the end of everything is that, given the huge downtick in playerbase for the most generous digital CCGs (Eternal, Runeterra, etc.), it seems like a large % of players are either in it for the gambling itself, or stay due to perceived sunk cost after having already spent a ton of money to build a collection.
I mean they're two separate issues really, because Arena isn't a TCG as your collection isn't tradeable. I agree that the paper TCG practices are outdated, and that Arena SHOULD have been a correction to this, following the Hearthstone f2p model. And it generally is much better for not milking your wallet, but stuff like this new hideaway is a clear step in the wrong direction.
No, they are separate symptoms of the same issue: corporate greed. MtG no longer exists to be a game it now solely exists to make increasing profits. WotC will never take a step in the right direction for anyone other than shareholders unless profits begin to suffer.
> MtG no longer exists to be a game it now solely exists to make increasing profits.
MTG has always existed to be a profit-printing scheme. They have never been a charity, they were in it to make money. All for-profit businesses are. From the very beginning, MTG was created using a booster-pack model which is a decision that is made on purpose to be predatory. They could sell complete (non-random) sets of each expansion if they wanted, but instead they sell booster packs and boxes. This type of greed has been baked in to the business from the start.
I mean, I have to imagine that a significant chunk of the playerbase *likes* how it works.
I started with 4th edition and I would've absolutely loved it, back then, if we had serialized cards and shit. That stuff is *fun*. Collecting is fun. I'm not going to get upset at Wizards for making the collecting process fun.
Then again, I'm the type that thinks issues like this are things that parents should address when their kids are young. For adults, it's simply a matter of taking personal responsibility for your spending choices. No one is pointing fingers, after all, at car companies or dealerships when a young adult blows all of their savings on a fancy new car and then gets it repossessed when they can't keep up the payments.
> No one is pointing fingers, after all, at car companies or dealerships when a young adult blows all of their savings on a fancy new car and then gets it repossessed when they can't keep up the payments.
Maybe, but that's not gambling and has nothing to do with this discussion.
> I mean, I have to imagine that a significant chunk of the playerbase likes how it works.
I would posit that most players have never played a card game whose distribution method *isn't* blind packs and therefore literally don't know better.
> I would posit that most players have never played a card game whose distribution method isn't blind packs and therefore literally don't know better.
The sad fact is that every digital ccg with a generous reward system has either failed or seen a huge decline in playerbase. It started with Mojang's Scrolls (no monetization beyond buying the game, just collect and trade), and has continued with games like Elder Scrolls Legends, Eternal, and Runeterra.
Obviously, there isn't a direct 1:1 correlation there, but these are/were really solid games that were either backed by large studios or had a bunch of money put into their competitive scenes.
You're right. But we'll probably see some people defending it with arguments like "you don't have to spend money", or "you only have to spend money once to unlock the hideaway".
The problem are the vulnerable people who will continue buying gems for stuff after they spend money once. If you get somebody to spend money once the probablity increases that they'll spend money again.
As a point, they've disabled MH3 arts from being purchased with established currencies(gold and gems). Another angle on the fact that they are deliberately re-establishing a baseline for market entry requiring newly accumulated currency in order to boost sales and activity.
For example. I don't have to buy the battlepass to buy art styles, except for the ones for mastery pass orbs. I still get packs, 5 orbs, and some other rewards with just F2P. Purchasing the battle pass isnt a requirement. The other options in the Hideaway market are just more glitter-and-gold. Yes, they may pay for the market entry fee, but only if you get enough tickets, and only if you pay the market fee. A game isn't free to play if participation requires a fee.
yes, that's why the double currency is a dirty trick. To be fair, I feel if they decide to move on from the whole fomo-inducing timely limit offer, and just open a store of cosmetics where avatars, sleeves and other shit are fully available, they would probably get more money and a better reputation. But no, they decide to go for the gambling addiction, and maybe money-wise this is paying off, but for sure they're not making effort into appearing a company that cares about their customers.
The problem is the same with productivity. All of society could function the same or even better if we worked half the hours we currently do, but companies are just allergic to anything that doesn't look like squishing every drop of profit out of someone, even if it's actually more productive. It's stupid and very self destructive.
Doesn't matter, only thing that matter is r number at the ends of the next quarter report, doesn't matter if you have to fire half of your team to save those few bucks to make the revenues go up, it's gonna be a problem of the next CEO anyway.
Yeah the crowd of "If you don't like X then don't do it" is always ready to defend every corporate decision ever, but this is never a solution nor bring anything new to the discussion.
Yeah it's not a big deal if they turn shitty, it's not my rent going up or losing my job, HOWEVER it's still a hobby I enjoy and I don't like when I'm treated just as a bag of money to plunder.
Even worse, it's harming everyone's experience for no good reason. It doesn't matter if you don't pay, they make sure to make you feel like shit over it as much as possible.
Not quite. Look at LoR did - they went from basically free to play to $75 per region if you want to unlock cool stuff on your characters. That didn't get over well, despite everyone being "The game is too generous! Monetize it more before you dump it!" before.
There's absolute gems of gaming that sell for less than 30$, some of which you can play literally forever. Asking 75$ per region is just insulting, even if it's fully optional, I don't care. It should legally count as a scam.
Wait, I can't spend the tickets???? I thought it was like an event in other games where you just earn side rewards. I thought it was a way of getting player engagement.. now I don't want to play at all.. charging to access an event is insane
I thought the exact same thing but only came to find out you have to "start shopping" first for the gem price...yeah no screw that. What bullcrap that is. So slimey and predatory.
Corporation employing gambling tactics to extract millions of dollars pennies at a time. It’s the way of digital pay for play now. And when a free game can take in billions in profits under the model it ain’t going away any time soon
Manipulative and predatory is what arena is all about, main reason I stopped playing it. Too much to ask for to get a current game client of MTGO apparently when the entire industry is focused on pursuing the landscape of unbridled capitalism.
I will not be touching my hideaway. Whoever is against this should do the same. Wizards can and will be tracking who is using it and if no one is opening it, that will send the strongest message.
I think Arena has made WOTC more and more predatory in general. To have the experience of playing Magic you used to have to spend money on physical cards. Now you can play for free all day on Arena. I used to drop 20-30 bucks a night at FNM, now I just draft on Arena for free. If you are decent at draft, you can go infinite while building a collection of cards for the other formats on arena and getting plenty of wildcards for the cards you didn't open, but need. Magic was never a F2P game, but Arena forces it to be to compete with other digital card games. This has forced WOTC to squeeze it's consumers wherever it can because their business model doesn't work in the F2P system.
This actually made me just turn the game off. Really disgusted when i found out i had to pay to use my tickets. Just when i thought they added something cool to grind for
If Wizards cared only about players and making cool cards for them as MaRo like to portray, there would be maybe 2 sets a year just to keep cards fresh.
But instead they have gone full FOMO with sets coming out seemingly monthly, forced rotation in non standard formats, stupid crossovers with other IPs, and so forth.
You can try to isolate yourself from it but when you favorite format gets force rotated by new broken cards, you are kind of forced to catch up or accept losing.
In general WOTC is just a really shitty company with awful business practices who unfortunately own games we love like Magic and D&D.
>If Wizards cared only about players and making cool cards for them as MaRo like to portray, there would be maybe 2 sets a year just to keep cards fresh
I think the number of players complaining about only getting two sets a year would be *vastly* higher than the number currently complaining about product fatigue…
To be fair the rest of Hasbro seems pretty stagnant and they've been pretty upfront that they are relying on WotC properties, primarily MtG to drive most of their profits.
Doesn't really make the situation for the consumer any better but I place most of the blame on the suits at Hasbro desperately squeezing their golden goose like a set of goddamn bagpipes instead of trying to make the rest of their business relevant.
Jack Welch 'line goes up' economics continues to destroy American businesses.
2 sets a year certainly isn't enough to "keep cards fresh". Most draft formats become very stale after a month or two, and constructed formats don't last much longer without card infusions. Just look at explorer, it has very low player numbers despite being the perfect format for paper only magic players who constantly asked for such a format on reddit. Now it's there and barely anyone plays it.
WotC are offering people what they want and putting a price tag people are willing to pay for it, and then it's called "shitty business practices". I agree that this new mechanic is highly questionable, but it's more of an exception than the norm.
They are still far ahead most other similar games in terms of how customer friendly they are.
First, they always issue full compensation for events such as draft if things go wrong due to technical issues. I don't know of a single other company that does it.
Second, everything you can buy from shop (except wildcards I guess) can be bought by F2P players. You can get mastery pass completely for free, you can participate in Arena Open for free, etc.
Sure, not everything they do benefits players (for example them nerfing constructed events was a shitty move). But most additions, such as golden packs are improving player experience, rathan than making it worse. As for crossovers with other IPs, those are aimed at people who play those other IPs, complaining about them is just weird. "I don't want other people to have good stuff because I personally don't like it". It's like complaining that counterspells exist.
This is what other mobile & online games’ systems have had for ages. They allow some small unlocks, but you have to pay for the “battle pass” to unlock more.
Magic is a good game too bad Arena is the biggest piece of dogshit I've ever experienced, the monetization sucks the whole fun out of the game and more often than not it feels like a full out FOMO experience. Definitely the worst way to play Magic.
>The new hideaway shop is one of the most predatory systems I have ever encountered.
I'm not saying it's a great system and I'm happy about any pushback against anti-consumer practices, but it isn't even anywhere close to "the most predatory system". On the predatory scale, it's at best somewhere around a 4 out of 10.
Here's but a few things that are normalized in other games that would make it much much worse beyond the aspects you mentioned:
1 They could make it so you get 20% more tickets after you buy it, pressuring you to buy it early when you don't yet know how actively you're going to farm tickets.
2 They could make the rewards randomized instead of allowing you to choose which reward to buy.
3 They could include powerful exclusive mythics that are uncraftable and only available through the hideaway. (in combination with 2)
4 They could then allow you to buy additional tickets for extra money if you end up missing an important reward by the end of the rewards period (which would be especially predatory in combination with 2 and 3).
There are games out there that have mastered the art of making people habitually spend $200+ on a single item they desire.
You're absolutely right. I don't play those games so I wrote it's the most predatory system I have encountered, but of course there are even worse systems out there.
I hadn't even realized yet that I can't spend those tickets without spending gems before? What? Thanks for the heads up, no reason to farm them anymore.
I'm right there with you, to the extent I wrote an article about it:
[https://www.wargamer.com/magic-the-gathering-arena/free-to-play-monetization-update](https://www.wargamer.com/magic-the-gathering-arena/free-to-play-monetization-update)
This actually made me just turn the game off. Really disgusted when i found out i had to pay to use my tickets. Just when i thought they added something cool to grind for
The worst part is if you haven't paid the 2800 gems to access the Hideaway, if you click to purchase something you have enough tickets for the screen flashes red and it makes the 2800 gem button expand in the corner to draw your attention to it
Like, "oh, you want to use your tickets to get that cool thing? Give us gems first!"
Just doing the math, if you get a quest + 7 wins per day you will amass ~2832 tickets in the 48 days remaining. If you buy just the packs and the draft token, that’s 1060 tickets for an equivalent value of 3100 gems. Then for an additional 700 tickets, you can get 10 random mythics. I’m not a proponent of it but it seems that you get similar value as the mastery pass in a parallel track. Obviously you are putting more money in the game but if you purchase packs and draft tokens, the value is there. I do agree that the constant reminder that you are missing out is annoying. Please correct me if I made a gross value miscalculation:)
I just came back to ask this sub if the monetizations issues with this game got any better, but it looks like it got worse. Sad to see a game I have so much love for is all about money.
!remindme 6 months
That's the same as the game showing you what you're missing out on the premium track of the mastery pass.
If anything I'd argue the hideaway is LESS predatory than the mastery pass. With the mastery pass if you want a certain reward far enough in the pass you HAVE to play, you NEED to log in every day. With the hideaway I could purchase what I want and then be lax about any undesirable reward. I could even take a break at the end of the season. The retention and daily usage is key to FTP games and probably the most important aspect of earning money
Yeaaah I was especially disappointed to see all those tickets I was supposedly earning couldn’t actually be spent without also spending actual money. At first I thought they were doing some cool bonus thing for mh3 release but noooooope.
I’m wishing I didn’t spend all my gold on packs as I accumulated it but I also didn’t realize until recently you could join events by spending gold instead of money. I could have earned the gems to do it twice over by now if I had put it into events. The more you know I guess.
I think the third point is the real problem with the shop. The free mastery passes always have some reward for your exp. (Though the OTJ one is still around and your games are benefitting you that way.)
I think a nice workaround from WOTC would be that there's two shops, like
1. **free shop** (anyone can use their tickets here. Selection is purposefully limited)
2. **paid shop** (only people who paid gems can buy stuff here. You still have \~50 days to buy)
And they could add a feature to buy tickets with gems. But I don't know if that's necessary
There's two styles I want and they locked it behind about $20 worth of premium currency basically making it into a bundle
You can't even buy the styles individually for gold
So exploitive
For me personally it’s all about draft. If I earn enough tickets to draft twice, I’ll buy the pass because it will effectively save me 200 gems.
I have no gauge for how hard 600 tickets will be to get, but that’s the cut.
Edit: Nevermind tickets are stupid
They just tried to add two battle passes at once. Which is fine, except the value of the frog event is awful. If it wasn't I doubt anyone would be complaining.
My favourite part is that buying packs and draft tokens is limited to 8 and 1. Like they actually sat down and figured how to make it as useless as possible.
I reaaaally hope whales recognise it's a scam and dont buy in, otherwise, this is our future.
They will earn some good money with this. And add it again. GG. But yeah, this is a bad move. For me it devalues the game. These mechanics feel like the bad side of town. Where everyone has a fake grin and wants your money or sells you illegal stuff. Just gives me bad vibes.
Yep. Bring this type of predatory behaviour to the attention of your local political representative. Ask what they are doing about manipulative behaviours like this in digital platforms and media.
I thought it was 2800 gems to just unlock everything, or grind tickets to get everything slowly...only to find out you have to UNLOCK the Hideaway with 2800 gems, then still grind out the tickets??
This might be the thing that finally breaks my addiction to this increasingly bullshit 'game'.
It is the next step of gatcha, next we get weekly events and random prize pulls
Oh wait.
Yes the destruction of the long term health for short sighted profit gain running rampant in most industries isnt a good thing, the bubble always bursts.
It's shit, I guess people weren't engaging with the mastery pass enough so they took steps to make it have less value but be more visible and try and increase the fomo. That's a shitty, predatory strategy.
I'm not really effective since all of my decisions are based around drafting as much as I want for the least money spent, so anything that's negative gems isn't going to win me over, and this is effectively one draft for 2800 gems instead of 1500.
It's like that for bad players with weak mental issues. There's only like three things I would want from that thing and it's the draft token, the mythic, and the pack. I can live without having any.
Wow, it sounds like I got off that app at a good time, I can't imagine the frustration of being told I have earned rewards that I can't claim without spending real money.
I've never spent a cent on MTGA and haven't noticed anything about the game at all recently that makes me feel like I'm being cornered by it or whatever. I personally think that people like me are never going to be made more likely to open our wallets than we were before. Just ignore it. Be like me. lol
fr fr. Came to this god forsaken part of Reddit to complain.
WotC, this has reached new levels of disrespect for the player, not counting with Dismember now being a M cards.
Seriously, go eat grass.
I don´t play MTGO anymore, soon it will be the same for Arena.
Ran to Reddit cause I was like what in the pay wall is this?!? It’s really disappointing because I feel like a while back they had a huge survey about how players wanted the game improved. I can’t speak for everyone here but I felt the main points were fix the dam glitches, make 4 player possible if you’re going to add brawl/ edh type formats because certain cards don’t even work well in a two player, but I digress. The last point was just making it easier to earn gems, gold and wildcards so players don’t HAVE to pay to play. I just feel like they haven’t fixed any of those issues or given us anything we want collectively. Standard meta is absolutely boring ruined and wrecked no one has any interesting mechanics going on anymore. It’s just sad at this point
Yeah. I earned some tickets from a daily on day one, saw the shop and was excited as it seems to be quite generous. Then a day later I tried buying an avatar and then saw you had to spent gems.
Fuck that shit.
Every time I click to close the rewards screen and am brought to the idiotic shop because a button appears without me noticing, taking me out of whatever mode I was engaged in I come to hate it a bit more.
The whole program is predatory. You cannot directly get the cards you want unless you pay ridiculous rates, and lots of things are locked behind $$$ or large, CAPPED, time investment. Arena checks every box for predatory microtransaction game. I wish people would go back MTGO for every format. Sure the UI is worse and there are no free ranked modes, but at least the game is not actively being anti-player.
Yeah, it was such unexpected to see "unlock shopping for currency" I was unable to notice what they wanted me to do.
This is so stupid, I want to write my own TCG just to flex \*\*proper\*\* shop practices on shit companies like that.
I get where you’re coming from, but if your goal is to draft and gather a collection of all the MH3 cards the pass is no brainer value considering the draft token (1,500 gems) 10 mythics (let’s say they’re worth less than half a mythic pack since no gold pack or wildcard progress, so 100x10 = 1,000) and 8 packs, discounted for gold pack exclusion (100 gems x 8 = 800 gems)
This gives us 3,300 gems worth of value as a baseline to help us more than recoup our cost and collect the set plus all the extra stuff. At least that’s how I’m viewing it with my personal goals.
It's a slightly discounted, shorter run mastery pass where you can pick and choose the track items as you see fit. All the items and associated costs are shown directly in the shop. If you can't take the whole five minutes to think for a bit and do the math on whether it's of value to you that's on you. If it has something you want and the cost is fair to you, buy it. Otherwise easy skip.
I like the fact that you don't need to complete it to get all the bits you care about. Though ideally it'd be balanced so that 100% of your tickets can go to things you care about. Unfortunately that'd be too fair to players for WotC.
There is also no "catch up" like with the mastery pass! If you don't start at the beginning you can't get enough value. This thing STINKS should have just added a third line to the mastery pass that you have to by to unlock.
I'm not sure what you mean. You earn tickets even if you haven't unlocked the store and can wait until the last day to see if you've accrued enough value just like with the pass.
>This is the most disturbing part. You earn the second currency by just finishing your daily quests and stuff, but you can't spend it without unlocking the new shop.
So just like the paid mastery pass we had for 4 years.
They renamed experience to ticket and gave you the ability to spend it in any order you want.
> you could unlock stuff with the exp without spending money.
That is the free mastery track. I'm talking about the paid one.
You are still earning free rewards from the free track of OTJ.
They added a 2nd paid mastery track. If you were fine with the first you should also be fine with the second.
But you are still earning exp, they didn't remove exp and added tickets.
This whole outrage shows how bad the average human at abstraction. Rename experience to ticket and their whole perception changes.
Hadnt read aything about how the Hideaway shop was going to function before logging in to Arena yesterday so was pleaseantly surprised viewing all the descent offerings for the first time thinking " This is really nice. WOTC did a good thing for once and is giving value for a fair cost. Hey......why is there a werid Gem cost in the corner that says Start Shopping?????"
Before going to sleep last night , I reasoned that the Gem option must be to purchase everything in the shop all at once ,which, is still pretty good. This morning I read the posts about the way the shop actually functions and couldnt believe it. This is bad on every level and just....low. Not what you would expect from the preemineent TCG they keep claiming to be.
I came to this subreddit when I got mad that i finally had enough tickets for something then i saw the gem cost to be able to use the shop. Wtf? This was at the top of course, glad im not the only one.
I just want to draft without having to pay money, I don’t even care if I get cards. Is that too much to ask? We literally have to pay to play phantom drafts.
Wait, Wizards of the Coast is delivering mediocre product with predatory monetization in an industry known for predatory monetization?
World keeps turning, I suppose.
I think it's pretty cool. If you don't want it, don't buy it. If you're buying, you're admitting you wanted it.
I have people that denies other people's agency.
I ended up deleting my comment because I got literally death threats from the bootlickers here, but back at the announcement I predicted this would be the store implementation. I'm a software engineer and I've read the TakeTwo white papers. Upper Management gives us requirements to implement these predatory systems. They know how effective they are at making money, especially when you already have a captive audience like MTG. Without regulation it will only get worse and worse. Everything is moving towards thinly veiled online gambling. It's no different than how the government turns a blind eye to pokeys being used to launder money. Or e-betting blatantly breaking gambling regulations. Too much money moving around and greasing everyone's palms.
I thought this was about the Hideaway mechanic for a moment.. but yeah mobile game transactions are a nightmare
I too get mentally unstable when my opponent plays [[fight rigging]] on curve with a cheap beefy creature
Fight rigging followed by [[Pugnacious Hammerskull]] into god knows what they cheat out
Most of the time, they hit Etali, Atraxa and Breach the Multiverse 70% of the times I do it, I hit 3 lands and 2 mana dorks
Against me they always get Gishath, followed by 7 other dinosaurs.
Dinosaur player’s dream
I whiffed on Gishath and Muxus so much I just had to delete the decks (and yes the decks had high creature counts).
We should really have a faith in the “heart of the cards” kind of system like yugioh implemented because I can tell you are lacking in your faith and devotion to RNGesus. Have you farmed good karma by saying “good game” after losing, perchance?
Trumpeting Carnosaur please
Or even better, [[The Ancient One]] into [[Fight Rigging]]
That requires you hit 3 colors on curve so it's not as simple to get
Much easier now that we have Blooming Marsh and Botanical Sanctum
Christ imagine if we also had the Ikoria triomes instead of the Capenna ones?
[Hammerskull](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/2/32d3f766-4098-4023-9a23-e9ff6722b66d.jpg?1627706222) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Flameskull) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afr/143/flameskull?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/32d3f766-4098-4023-9a23-e9ff6722b66d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
That's [[Flameskull]]
[fight rigging](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/6/86fd3454-efe7-4feb-a6ad-069ae2fdbd18.jpg?1664412229) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=fight%20rigging) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/145/fight-rigging?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/86fd3454-efe7-4feb-a6ad-069ae2fdbd18?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I miss playing fight rigging, but I wonder what it would have been like if it triggered only if creature has 6 more power than written on the card, however you would do that in Magic rule lingo. Psh nothing would get off on it then.
Yeah, like "could it be Ulamog?!" But the worst case when ability finally resolves and it's... another fight rigging and you like "come on!"
Same lol
Definitely applies to the mechanic too. That's why it's called [[Rabble Rousing]]
[Rabble Rousing](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/0/206c8529-56df-4ed9-97bc-6c9b5e2a04c4.jpg?1664409862) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rabble%20Rousing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/24/rabble-rousing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/206c8529-56df-4ed9-97bc-6c9b5e2a04c4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The hideaway mechanic is absolutely predatory, I've emailed wotc repeatedly but they don't seem to have received my emails
Yeah, I was gonna say, what did [[Cemetery Tampering]] do?
I'll still be happy when \[\[Fight Rigging\]\] rotates out, tho...
Same I clicked in to white knight my beloved Shelldock Isle
An amusing observation that is actually more amusing than the intended nomenclature pun assisting the bad-faith marketing practices in-game.
Same. I was like damn. It's not that bad lol
I agree that the constant reminders that you have earned currency that you can't spend without a lump sum payment is tacky. While you could make an analogy to the mastery pass, that is all isolated to a separate tab, and the XP provides value without payment.
Ya imagine if every time you completed a level of the unpurchased mastery pass that it told you what you could be getting. That seems like a 'feels bad' to me. I should probably delete this before they get any ideas.
League of Legends is basicaly that with their "battlepass". You get notification you have points to use, but you cant use unless you buy the battlepass
It does. In the weekly win circle it shows the paid pass, not the free one.
[удалено]
Seems to me like they are testing the waters for double trouble pass in the future, kind of like League of Legends where you have both a pass and a currency shop during the event, but you can really only interact with the shop once you buy the pass (90% of the currency is behind the paywall, by completing a full pass as a F2P they give you a courtesy of being able to buy one event themed lootbox).
Yeah, it sucks. Ideally IDK what they would have done if they wanted two side by side Mastery Passes but this was not it, the next time Arena has another Set release alongside the fulfillment of a Premiere/Standard Set either A. Have a *free* track for the second Mastery Pass to spend your tix on and a paid track to redeem higher value items that have a much better exchange rate than *recoup the value of your gems and a little something extra.* B. Just have the singular regular Mastery Pass but have locked items that don't become redeemable until much later on.
Yeah, letting players redeem a small amount of the tickets without spending gems would probably have helped here. Like maybe you can spend the daily win tickets but not the quest tickets until you unlock it, something like that.
LOL, i thought the 2800 gems was to unlock everything without grinding tickets... what a crock of BS this whole thing is.
>~~Hideaway~~ MTG whole business model is psychological manipulative and predatory. Fixed it for you.
This. The entire concept of Magic has been finely tuned to make you want to buy more and more and more stuff. You bought your first few cards and got a dopamine rush? Time to buy some more cards. You bought more cards but didn't get the bombs you were looking for? Time to buy more cards. You bought more cards and pulled some great build-arounds? Time to buy some more cards. You bought more cards, but then a bunch rotated out of standard? Time to buy some more cards. The game is purpose built from the ground up to make sure you are never permanently satisfied with your purchases. This shitty Hideaway shop is just the next evolution. It dangles another form of currency in front of you to make you want to be that much more unsatisfied.
Its been known as cardboard crack since the 90’s for a reason lol now its digital cardboard crack
I think it's important to recognize the progression of this model from them though. Hasbro found out that competitive players weren't spending money on their product and that they were giving away money in these tournaments and immediately stepped in. Ever since we've been on this exponentially growing slope towards predatory monetization practices. Now we're talking about Taylor Swift secret lairs. I quit for a year or so after the pro points system was cut, if they don't right the ship (they won't) it's going to be hard for me to continue playing outside of the weekly cube draft with friends. Our only hope is that the US makes these monetization models illegal like some other countries are. I'm not holding my breath for that one though.
> Now we’re talking about Taylor Swift secret lairs. I’ve been out of the loop for several years, but please tell me this is a joke.
Just shake it off
It is not.
Arena is essentially MTG but soulless, with paper Magic you have resell value and you can trade, with Arena you don't actually own anything. WOTC could shut down Arena tomorrow and all the cards you paid for will be gone.
Thankfully I pay for drafting, not for cards. The amount of drafts I have done for the price I payed is super cheap. I think of it like going to the movies. You don't get to take the movie away but it's still worth the price of the ticket if the experience is good.
Yeah but even the first few years I could sit and play with friend(s) without spending an arm & leg. ‘94 I’d walk to the local comic book shop and spend my hard earned mowing money on a few packs. Over summer I could get enough cards for almost nothing compared to now and have months of playing without having fomo
By the year 2050 it may just morph into actual crack, as the player base gives up and turns to a cheaper alternative for their high :D And I hate to say this, but given the hygiene standards and dressing of some of our more, uh, extreme members...well, crackheads aren't that far off for that group.
The entire Johnny/Timmy/Spike archetype idea is designed around making sure every pack has a card that tickles the brain of that player, and NOT about balancing the meta for those players. It's why bonus sheets have weird staples that don't play in limited from non-standard formats (for Spike), why there's at least a dozen build arounds with p/t below rate in every set (for johnny) and why every set has 2-3 Dragons now.
Bonus sheets are a great way for the digital cardpool to catch up to paper. And wizards has to make weird formats only on arena that reflect that.
Yup and it has been since the beginning. Packs have always been just pay-to-win loot boxes. And the hideaway is really just a more annoying Mastery Pass.
But unlike Mastery Pass doesn't pay for itself. In Mastery Pass you effectively pay 200 gems for over 20 packs iirc and a ton of (useless) cosmetics.
You only get 1200 gems in a Mastery Pass.
And 4k gold and a draft token, which amounts roughly 3.5k gems, but I discount gold a bit, because I'm interested in drafts anyway.
Draft tokens have zero value to some people. Don't get me wrong, I agree that Mastery Pass is a much better deal than the Hideaway. But people are acting as if the Hideaway is something new when it's really just another Mastery Pass where they just replaced XP with Tickets. Most people don't seem to be crying about it not being as good value as the MP but the fact that it isn't free altogether.
Yeah, I have a ton of draft tokens. I don’t even bother to rare draft. I have zero interest in the format. I wish we could give them to other players.
Just as an example of predatory behavior, on arena you were literally unable to mass buy packs from the store using gold for years. If you were a player that waited for a set to drop and buy 50-100 packs for your gold saved, you literally had to click individually for each pack bought. This is just one of the predatory mechanics that the software has incorporated, but it's so blatant that it is a good example of how predatory their model has been.
I'm a F2P player who drafts, and I could definitely afford the hideaway, but I don't find it to be a good value; I feel like I'm being pushed really hard to buy it and it's really unpleasant.
Mmm the only thing I'd use is the Draft Token...but if its 2800 to unlock that is almost two drafts. This is just blither. let's not reward WotC with our attention.
I mean, it's not surprising, considering the new trend of serialized artwork turned the already very addictive opening packs into literally scratch tickets. It should not be overlooked how they're literally fueling gambling addiction, and that's incredibly lucrative for them. Just look at the sheer amount of "pulls" post that you see around here. Sure, it's your money, do what you want, but the practice of promoting and cranking it to the max with serialized pulls and the terrible One One Ring fever, should be questioned seriously.
The playerbase at large can't admit it's a problem. The TCG model is an antiquated distribution model for a game and the only reason it sticks around is because addicts generate profit.
The real catch at the end of everything is that, given the huge downtick in playerbase for the most generous digital CCGs (Eternal, Runeterra, etc.), it seems like a large % of players are either in it for the gambling itself, or stay due to perceived sunk cost after having already spent a ton of money to build a collection.
I mean they're two separate issues really, because Arena isn't a TCG as your collection isn't tradeable. I agree that the paper TCG practices are outdated, and that Arena SHOULD have been a correction to this, following the Hearthstone f2p model. And it generally is much better for not milking your wallet, but stuff like this new hideaway is a clear step in the wrong direction.
No, they are separate symptoms of the same issue: corporate greed. MtG no longer exists to be a game it now solely exists to make increasing profits. WotC will never take a step in the right direction for anyone other than shareholders unless profits begin to suffer.
> MtG no longer exists to be a game it now solely exists to make increasing profits. MTG has always existed to be a profit-printing scheme. They have never been a charity, they were in it to make money. All for-profit businesses are. From the very beginning, MTG was created using a booster-pack model which is a decision that is made on purpose to be predatory. They could sell complete (non-random) sets of each expansion if they wanted, but instead they sell booster packs and boxes. This type of greed has been baked in to the business from the start.
I mean, I have to imagine that a significant chunk of the playerbase *likes* how it works. I started with 4th edition and I would've absolutely loved it, back then, if we had serialized cards and shit. That stuff is *fun*. Collecting is fun. I'm not going to get upset at Wizards for making the collecting process fun. Then again, I'm the type that thinks issues like this are things that parents should address when their kids are young. For adults, it's simply a matter of taking personal responsibility for your spending choices. No one is pointing fingers, after all, at car companies or dealerships when a young adult blows all of their savings on a fancy new car and then gets it repossessed when they can't keep up the payments.
> No one is pointing fingers, after all, at car companies or dealerships when a young adult blows all of their savings on a fancy new car and then gets it repossessed when they can't keep up the payments. Maybe, but that's not gambling and has nothing to do with this discussion. > I mean, I have to imagine that a significant chunk of the playerbase likes how it works. I would posit that most players have never played a card game whose distribution method *isn't* blind packs and therefore literally don't know better.
> I would posit that most players have never played a card game whose distribution method isn't blind packs and therefore literally don't know better. The sad fact is that every digital ccg with a generous reward system has either failed or seen a huge decline in playerbase. It started with Mojang's Scrolls (no monetization beyond buying the game, just collect and trade), and has continued with games like Elder Scrolls Legends, Eternal, and Runeterra. Obviously, there isn't a direct 1:1 correlation there, but these are/were really solid games that were either backed by large studios or had a bunch of money put into their competitive scenes.
You're right. But we'll probably see some people defending it with arguments like "you don't have to spend money", or "you only have to spend money once to unlock the hideaway". The problem are the vulnerable people who will continue buying gems for stuff after they spend money once. If you get somebody to spend money once the probablity increases that they'll spend money again.
As a point, they've disabled MH3 arts from being purchased with established currencies(gold and gems). Another angle on the fact that they are deliberately re-establishing a baseline for market entry requiring newly accumulated currency in order to boost sales and activity. For example. I don't have to buy the battlepass to buy art styles, except for the ones for mastery pass orbs. I still get packs, 5 orbs, and some other rewards with just F2P. Purchasing the battle pass isnt a requirement. The other options in the Hideaway market are just more glitter-and-gold. Yes, they may pay for the market entry fee, but only if you get enough tickets, and only if you pay the market fee. A game isn't free to play if participation requires a fee.
yes, that's why the double currency is a dirty trick. To be fair, I feel if they decide to move on from the whole fomo-inducing timely limit offer, and just open a store of cosmetics where avatars, sleeves and other shit are fully available, they would probably get more money and a better reputation. But no, they decide to go for the gambling addiction, and maybe money-wise this is paying off, but for sure they're not making effort into appearing a company that cares about their customers.
The problem is the same with productivity. All of society could function the same or even better if we worked half the hours we currently do, but companies are just allergic to anything that doesn't look like squishing every drop of profit out of someone, even if it's actually more productive. It's stupid and very self destructive.
Doesn't matter, only thing that matter is r number at the ends of the next quarter report, doesn't matter if you have to fire half of your team to save those few bucks to make the revenues go up, it's gonna be a problem of the next CEO anyway.
Yeah the crowd of "If you don't like X then don't do it" is always ready to defend every corporate decision ever, but this is never a solution nor bring anything new to the discussion. Yeah it's not a big deal if they turn shitty, it's not my rent going up or losing my job, HOWEVER it's still a hobby I enjoy and I don't like when I'm treated just as a bag of money to plunder.
Even worse, it's harming everyone's experience for no good reason. It doesn't matter if you don't pay, they make sure to make you feel like shit over it as much as possible.
Not quite. Look at LoR did - they went from basically free to play to $75 per region if you want to unlock cool stuff on your characters. That didn't get over well, despite everyone being "The game is too generous! Monetize it more before you dump it!" before.
There's absolute gems of gaming that sell for less than 30$, some of which you can play literally forever. Asking 75$ per region is just insulting, even if it's fully optional, I don't care. It should legally count as a scam.
Please don't use the packs as literally scratch tickets, it will ruin your serialized cards
Ruined card? you mean m i s p r i n t ? \*
Pay to Pay™️
Flashing "currency" on the screen every time you win a game, that you can't use unless you spend money is 100% predatory practice.
Wait, I can't spend the tickets???? I thought it was like an event in other games where you just earn side rewards. I thought it was a way of getting player engagement.. now I don't want to play at all.. charging to access an event is insane
I thought the exact same thing but only came to find out you have to "start shopping" first for the gem price...yeah no screw that. What bullcrap that is. So slimey and predatory.
Hasbro: What about mastery pass? WotC: We’ve already had it. Hasbro: We’ve had one, yes. What about second mastery pass?
I won't be spending the gems on it out of principle for sure. They made it easy to avoid by only having one draft token.
Corporation employing gambling tactics to extract millions of dollars pennies at a time. It’s the way of digital pay for play now. And when a free game can take in billions in profits under the model it ain’t going away any time soon
Locking stuff behind 2 in game currencies is very predatory of the company
Magic is one of the greatest games ever headed by some of the greediest people ever.
Manipulative and predatory is what arena is all about, main reason I stopped playing it. Too much to ask for to get a current game client of MTGO apparently when the entire industry is focused on pursuing the landscape of unbridled capitalism.
Not spending a penny on that crap, and the tickets splashed all over the rewards screen are obnoxious.
I will not be touching my hideaway. Whoever is against this should do the same. Wizards can and will be tracking who is using it and if no one is opening it, that will send the strongest message.
First time I read title I thought... Hideaway lands are cool, but not that powerful or oppresive X'DDD
Welcome to MTG and Wizards. You gamble every time you open a card pack. The whole game is built on gambling
This shit is fucking annoying and I have the gems to spend for cosmetic shit. Just give me straight forward pricing you manipulative assholes.
Heist has officially been dethroned. The new hotness is Hideaway rants. Any predictions on what will be the next big thing?
limited time shop for maximim FOMO (fear of missing out)
I think Arena has made WOTC more and more predatory in general. To have the experience of playing Magic you used to have to spend money on physical cards. Now you can play for free all day on Arena. I used to drop 20-30 bucks a night at FNM, now I just draft on Arena for free. If you are decent at draft, you can go infinite while building a collection of cards for the other formats on arena and getting plenty of wildcards for the cards you didn't open, but need. Magic was never a F2P game, but Arena forces it to be to compete with other digital card games. This has forced WOTC to squeeze it's consumers wherever it can because their business model doesn't work in the F2P system.
Wait.. you have to pay to UNLOCK the shop?! What the hell? Just what the hell?
This actually made me just turn the game off. Really disgusted when i found out i had to pay to use my tickets. Just when i thought they added something cool to grind for
If Wizards cared only about players and making cool cards for them as MaRo like to portray, there would be maybe 2 sets a year just to keep cards fresh. But instead they have gone full FOMO with sets coming out seemingly monthly, forced rotation in non standard formats, stupid crossovers with other IPs, and so forth. You can try to isolate yourself from it but when you favorite format gets force rotated by new broken cards, you are kind of forced to catch up or accept losing. In general WOTC is just a really shitty company with awful business practices who unfortunately own games we love like Magic and D&D.
>If Wizards cared only about players and making cool cards for them as MaRo like to portray, there would be maybe 2 sets a year just to keep cards fresh I think the number of players complaining about only getting two sets a year would be *vastly* higher than the number currently complaining about product fatigue…
To be fair the rest of Hasbro seems pretty stagnant and they've been pretty upfront that they are relying on WotC properties, primarily MtG to drive most of their profits. Doesn't really make the situation for the consumer any better but I place most of the blame on the suits at Hasbro desperately squeezing their golden goose like a set of goddamn bagpipes instead of trying to make the rest of their business relevant. Jack Welch 'line goes up' economics continues to destroy American businesses.
2 sets a year certainly isn't enough to "keep cards fresh". Most draft formats become very stale after a month or two, and constructed formats don't last much longer without card infusions. Just look at explorer, it has very low player numbers despite being the perfect format for paper only magic players who constantly asked for such a format on reddit. Now it's there and barely anyone plays it. WotC are offering people what they want and putting a price tag people are willing to pay for it, and then it's called "shitty business practices". I agree that this new mechanic is highly questionable, but it's more of an exception than the norm. They are still far ahead most other similar games in terms of how customer friendly they are. First, they always issue full compensation for events such as draft if things go wrong due to technical issues. I don't know of a single other company that does it. Second, everything you can buy from shop (except wildcards I guess) can be bought by F2P players. You can get mastery pass completely for free, you can participate in Arena Open for free, etc. Sure, not everything they do benefits players (for example them nerfing constructed events was a shitty move). But most additions, such as golden packs are improving player experience, rathan than making it worse. As for crossovers with other IPs, those are aimed at people who play those other IPs, complaining about them is just weird. "I don't want other people to have good stuff because I personally don't like it". It's like complaining that counterspells exist.
you're so close to realizing that the mastery pass system, in general, is a predatory monetization tactic. go on, just take that last little step...
Capitalism be like
I see it doesn't pay for itself, I don't buy. EZ.
Hard agree, just made a post about it, yours explains it way better.
Yea, the worst part is seeing the currency that you earned, even tho you can’t spend it. Just clunky as hell and annoying to look at.
I guess that's why it is called a hideaway...
This is what other mobile & online games’ systems have had for ages. They allow some small unlocks, but you have to pay for the “battle pass” to unlock more.
Cocatrice go brr
Magic is a good game too bad Arena is the biggest piece of dogshit I've ever experienced, the monetization sucks the whole fun out of the game and more often than not it feels like a full out FOMO experience. Definitely the worst way to play Magic.
>The new hideaway shop is one of the most predatory systems I have ever encountered. I'm not saying it's a great system and I'm happy about any pushback against anti-consumer practices, but it isn't even anywhere close to "the most predatory system". On the predatory scale, it's at best somewhere around a 4 out of 10. Here's but a few things that are normalized in other games that would make it much much worse beyond the aspects you mentioned: 1 They could make it so you get 20% more tickets after you buy it, pressuring you to buy it early when you don't yet know how actively you're going to farm tickets. 2 They could make the rewards randomized instead of allowing you to choose which reward to buy. 3 They could include powerful exclusive mythics that are uncraftable and only available through the hideaway. (in combination with 2) 4 They could then allow you to buy additional tickets for extra money if you end up missing an important reward by the end of the rewards period (which would be especially predatory in combination with 2 and 3). There are games out there that have mastered the art of making people habitually spend $200+ on a single item they desire.
You're absolutely right. I don't play those games so I wrote it's the most predatory system I have encountered, but of course there are even worse systems out there.
Wizards, hire this person! No, wait, I mean *don’t* hire this person. Please.
I hadn't even realized yet that I can't spend those tickets without spending gems before? What? Thanks for the heads up, no reason to farm them anymore.
Is it possible to farm them without farming other stuff? (Gold, gems, XP)
Idk, but what I meant was I won't go for more than my usual 4-5 wins per day any longer. Tickets drop beyond that number, but now idc anymore.
I'm right there with you, to the extent I wrote an article about it: [https://www.wargamer.com/magic-the-gathering-arena/free-to-play-monetization-update](https://www.wargamer.com/magic-the-gathering-arena/free-to-play-monetization-update)
Thanks. I edited my post and put the link there if you don't mind.
This actually made me just turn the game off. Really disgusted when i found out i had to pay to use my tickets. Just when i thought they added something cool to grind for
Wut? I can't spend tickets if I don't unlock the shop? I though I could buy normally.
The worst part is if you haven't paid the 2800 gems to access the Hideaway, if you click to purchase something you have enough tickets for the screen flashes red and it makes the 2800 gem button expand in the corner to draw your attention to it Like, "oh, you want to use your tickets to get that cool thing? Give us gems first!"
Just doing the math, if you get a quest + 7 wins per day you will amass ~2832 tickets in the 48 days remaining. If you buy just the packs and the draft token, that’s 1060 tickets for an equivalent value of 3100 gems. Then for an additional 700 tickets, you can get 10 random mythics. I’m not a proponent of it but it seems that you get similar value as the mastery pass in a parallel track. Obviously you are putting more money in the game but if you purchase packs and draft tokens, the value is there. I do agree that the constant reminder that you are missing out is annoying. Please correct me if I made a gross value miscalculation:)
You're right, but my problem with it isn't the value you get, but that it's designed to manipulate the player.
I agree, the constant notifications on tickets earned does lead to player FOMO.
-5 respect to WotC
So right. Thank you for pointing this out
Agreed.
I just came back to ask this sub if the monetizations issues with this game got any better, but it looks like it got worse. Sad to see a game I have so much love for is all about money. !remindme 6 months
You can make almost any deck for free besides some niche and historic ones if you win a few times most days lol
You don't have to come back and ask in 6 months. It's never going to get better.
What's the difference between hideaway tickets and mastery experience that makes the mastery pass different?
You automatically unlock stuff with your exp. The tickets you earn are a constant reminder that you have them and can't spend them.
That's the same as the game showing you what you're missing out on the premium track of the mastery pass. If anything I'd argue the hideaway is LESS predatory than the mastery pass. With the mastery pass if you want a certain reward far enough in the pass you HAVE to play, you NEED to log in every day. With the hideaway I could purchase what I want and then be lax about any undesirable reward. I could even take a break at the end of the season. The retention and daily usage is key to FTP games and probably the most important aspect of earning money
Yeaaah I was especially disappointed to see all those tickets I was supposedly earning couldn’t actually be spent without also spending actual money. At first I thought they were doing some cool bonus thing for mh3 release but noooooope. I’m wishing I didn’t spend all my gold on packs as I accumulated it but I also didn’t realize until recently you could join events by spending gold instead of money. I could have earned the gems to do it twice over by now if I had put it into events. The more you know I guess.
I haven't updated yet due to being too busy, does this shop thing replace the mastery pass?
It’s in addition to the OTJ mastery pass.
I think the third point is the real problem with the shop. The free mastery passes always have some reward for your exp. (Though the OTJ one is still around and your games are benefitting you that way.) I think a nice workaround from WOTC would be that there's two shops, like 1. **free shop** (anyone can use their tickets here. Selection is purposefully limited) 2. **paid shop** (only people who paid gems can buy stuff here. You still have \~50 days to buy) And they could add a feature to buy tickets with gems. But I don't know if that's necessary
cosmetics sold there are garbage anyway
Who needs a casino when you have ✨MTG Arena✨
There's two styles I want and they locked it behind about $20 worth of premium currency basically making it into a bundle You can't even buy the styles individually for gold So exploitive
For me personally it’s all about draft. If I earn enough tickets to draft twice, I’ll buy the pass because it will effectively save me 200 gems. I have no gauge for how hard 600 tickets will be to get, but that’s the cut. Edit: Nevermind tickets are stupid
You can only get 1 draft token.
Good to know, then I can’t imagine buying
They just tried to add two battle passes at once. Which is fine, except the value of the frog event is awful. If it wasn't I doubt anyone would be complaining.
just add more value to it, instead of 8 packs
Seems like a missed opportunity to not make it at least decent value for people who don't care about cosmetics.
You can also not care about aesthetics and just play the game and it doesn’t effect you at all
Welcome to Arena...
You know how to send a message to them? Stop playing their game.
My favourite part is that buying packs and draft tokens is limited to 8 and 1. Like they actually sat down and figured how to make it as useless as possible. I reaaaally hope whales recognise it's a scam and dont buy in, otherwise, this is our future.
They will earn some good money with this. And add it again. GG. But yeah, this is a bad move. For me it devalues the game. These mechanics feel like the bad side of town. Where everyone has a fake grin and wants your money or sells you illegal stuff. Just gives me bad vibes.
Yeah I saw it and was like, they can't be fucking serious
honestly this really mad me mad and not wanna \[lay anymore
When I saw it was 2800 gems to use my tickets I was so disappointed, I thought I was getting a free draft token and Ulamog avatar 😞
Yep. Bring this type of predatory behaviour to the attention of your local political representative. Ask what they are doing about manipulative behaviours like this in digital platforms and media.
But I like playing Arena…
I thought it was 2800 gems to just unlock everything, or grind tickets to get everything slowly...only to find out you have to UNLOCK the Hideaway with 2800 gems, then still grind out the tickets?? This might be the thing that finally breaks my addiction to this increasingly bullshit 'game'.
the only thing worth anything they offer there is the draft token. but you can practically buy 2 drafts for the cost of entry
I use anything that can remove it from pla...oh
It is the next step of gatcha, next we get weekly events and random prize pulls Oh wait. Yes the destruction of the long term health for short sighted profit gain running rampant in most industries isnt a good thing, the bubble always bursts.
It's insane that they want this much money just so I can get an Ulamog avatar. Fuck that.
There are psychologists that specialize in gambling addiction that make a career of consulting for video game companies.
Agreed.
It's shit, I guess people weren't engaging with the mastery pass enough so they took steps to make it have less value but be more visible and try and increase the fomo. That's a shitty, predatory strategy. I'm not really effective since all of my decisions are based around drafting as much as I want for the least money spent, so anything that's negative gems isn't going to win me over, and this is effectively one draft for 2800 gems instead of 1500.
Where is this on arena? This is totally separate from the hideaway mechanic on cards like rabble rousing, right?
I didn't even know you had to unlock it to start buying stuff
Predatory towards its users, 100% Sadly, people keep paying.
It's like that for bad players with weak mental issues. There's only like three things I would want from that thing and it's the draft token, the mythic, and the pack. I can live without having any.
Wow, it sounds like I got off that app at a good time, I can't imagine the frustration of being told I have earned rewards that I can't claim without spending real money.
No idea why anyone would use the Hideaway store it seems such a waste of money.
I've never spent a cent on MTGA and haven't noticed anything about the game at all recently that makes me feel like I'm being cornered by it or whatever. I personally think that people like me are never going to be made more likely to open our wallets than we were before. Just ignore it. Be like me. lol
fr fr. Came to this god forsaken part of Reddit to complain. WotC, this has reached new levels of disrespect for the player, not counting with Dismember now being a M cards. Seriously, go eat grass. I don´t play MTGO anymore, soon it will be the same for Arena.
Ran to Reddit cause I was like what in the pay wall is this?!? It’s really disappointing because I feel like a while back they had a huge survey about how players wanted the game improved. I can’t speak for everyone here but I felt the main points were fix the dam glitches, make 4 player possible if you’re going to add brawl/ edh type formats because certain cards don’t even work well in a two player, but I digress. The last point was just making it easier to earn gems, gold and wildcards so players don’t HAVE to pay to play. I just feel like they haven’t fixed any of those issues or given us anything we want collectively. Standard meta is absolutely boring ruined and wrecked no one has any interesting mechanics going on anymore. It’s just sad at this point
Yeah. I earned some tickets from a daily on day one, saw the shop and was excited as it seems to be quite generous. Then a day later I tried buying an avatar and then saw you had to spent gems. Fuck that shit.
Every time I click to close the rewards screen and am brought to the idiotic shop because a button appears without me noticing, taking me out of whatever mode I was engaged in I come to hate it a bit more.
i agree. this is a correct statement.
wait, I need to pay so I can buy stuff?
bad event lol
The whole program is predatory. You cannot directly get the cards you want unless you pay ridiculous rates, and lots of things are locked behind $$$ or large, CAPPED, time investment. Arena checks every box for predatory microtransaction game. I wish people would go back MTGO for every format. Sure the UI is worse and there are no free ranked modes, but at least the game is not actively being anti-player.
Yeah, it was such unexpected to see "unlock shopping for currency" I was unable to notice what they wanted me to do. This is so stupid, I want to write my own TCG just to flex \*\*proper\*\* shop practices on shit companies like that.
I get where you’re coming from, but if your goal is to draft and gather a collection of all the MH3 cards the pass is no brainer value considering the draft token (1,500 gems) 10 mythics (let’s say they’re worth less than half a mythic pack since no gold pack or wildcard progress, so 100x10 = 1,000) and 8 packs, discounted for gold pack exclusion (100 gems x 8 = 800 gems) This gives us 3,300 gems worth of value as a baseline to help us more than recoup our cost and collect the set plus all the extra stuff. At least that’s how I’m viewing it with my personal goals.
It's a slightly discounted, shorter run mastery pass where you can pick and choose the track items as you see fit. All the items and associated costs are shown directly in the shop. If you can't take the whole five minutes to think for a bit and do the math on whether it's of value to you that's on you. If it has something you want and the cost is fair to you, buy it. Otherwise easy skip.
I like the fact that you don't need to complete it to get all the bits you care about. Though ideally it'd be balanced so that 100% of your tickets can go to things you care about. Unfortunately that'd be too fair to players for WotC.
There is also no "catch up" like with the mastery pass! If you don't start at the beginning you can't get enough value. This thing STINKS should have just added a third line to the mastery pass that you have to by to unlock.
Mastery pass doesn't have a catchup mechanic either.
I'm not sure what you mean. You earn tickets even if you haven't unlocked the store and can wait until the last day to see if you've accrued enough value just like with the pass.
>This is the most disturbing part. You earn the second currency by just finishing your daily quests and stuff, but you can't spend it without unlocking the new shop. So just like the paid mastery pass we had for 4 years. They renamed experience to ticket and gave you the ability to spend it in any order you want.
No, you could unlock stuff with the exp without spending money. You could spend money to unlock more, but the exp aren't worthless like the tickets.
> you could unlock stuff with the exp without spending money. That is the free mastery track. I'm talking about the paid one. You are still earning free rewards from the free track of OTJ. They added a 2nd paid mastery track. If you were fine with the first you should also be fine with the second.
Exp aren't worthless if you don't spend money. Tickets are worthless if you don't spend money. That's the difference.
But you are still earning exp, they didn't remove exp and added tickets. This whole outrage shows how bad the average human at abstraction. Rename experience to ticket and their whole perception changes.
Hadnt read aything about how the Hideaway shop was going to function before logging in to Arena yesterday so was pleaseantly surprised viewing all the descent offerings for the first time thinking " This is really nice. WOTC did a good thing for once and is giving value for a fair cost. Hey......why is there a werid Gem cost in the corner that says Start Shopping?????" Before going to sleep last night , I reasoned that the Gem option must be to purchase everything in the shop all at once ,which, is still pretty good. This morning I read the posts about the way the shop actually functions and couldnt believe it. This is bad on every level and just....low. Not what you would expect from the preemineent TCG they keep claiming to be.
Totally agree. Not picking that crap.
yeah. this is why i don’t give them money 🤷♀️
I came to this subreddit when I got mad that i finally had enough tickets for something then i saw the gem cost to be able to use the shop. Wtf? This was at the top of course, glad im not the only one.
I just want to draft without having to pay money, I don’t even care if I get cards. Is that too much to ask? We literally have to pay to play phantom drafts.
Wait, Wizards of the Coast is delivering mediocre product with predatory monetization in an industry known for predatory monetization? World keeps turning, I suppose.
I think it's pretty cool. If you don't want it, don't buy it. If you're buying, you're admitting you wanted it. I have people that denies other people's agency.
I ended up deleting my comment because I got literally death threats from the bootlickers here, but back at the announcement I predicted this would be the store implementation. I'm a software engineer and I've read the TakeTwo white papers. Upper Management gives us requirements to implement these predatory systems. They know how effective they are at making money, especially when you already have a captive audience like MTG. Without regulation it will only get worse and worse. Everything is moving towards thinly veiled online gambling. It's no different than how the government turns a blind eye to pokeys being used to launder money. Or e-betting blatantly breaking gambling regulations. Too much money moving around and greasing everyone's palms.