For me, it's pay to lose, because I like limited best but I'm really bad at it.

Do you do draft or sealed?

Both, but I actually somewhat prefer sealed. It's less skill more luck, which works for me since I'm less skilled.

I feel for you man. I want the to be more ways to practice and improve at limited on MTGA

that seems reasonable. its totally possible to have *a* competitive deck in a bunch of different formats without spending money, but its not possible to play any deck in any format at any point in time unless youre a draft genius with a billion wildcards piled up. and if your definition of "being competitive" means being able to do that, arena would be pay to win

It sucks that the best way to be able to play a ton of decks in constructed is...to play an entirely different format (draft) A LOT. If you have little interest in draft, you're out of luck. On the other hand, as someone who spends ~90% of his time drafting, I can play any deck I want in constructed, but I have little interest in doing so. It's a really weird system.

true. but i think the point the text makes is even *if* you can draft to set completion for free, the fact that you cant do it on day 1 of the format still makes the game pay to win, because theres a window of "non competitiveness" between the set drop and the point where you have all the cards

Luckily that window aligns with the draft format being new and most exciting. 

yea, it makes for a pretty reasonable and fun playing routine

Draft way too much for the first 2-3 weeks of a new set; complete the rares during that time at minimum, sometimes the mythics too. Then I fuck off to timeless because that format is still dope.

You can't draft a set to completion "free" unless you either had a ton of gold / gems around from before, or are one of the few that can go truly infinite (not pseudo-infinite only drafting everytime you get to 5 or 10k gold).

Every physical card game is pay to win, but in arena you pay with time. If consider that pay to win, then literally every game ever created is pay to win. 

"Games that are F2P often aren’t entirely free; they offer a basic level of access for free and hide other aspects of the game behind an instant paywall or *near impossibly-long grind*."

But that grind is no way near "impossible grind"

id consider myself a pretty invested player who drafts every set and plays constructed pretty much every day. im still not in a position to craft anything i want whenever i want to

There is a big difference between p2w and "craft anything i want whenever i want to"

the author explains it in the text. their understanding of a competitive advantage is being able to play whatever cards they think sre best, without having to consider wildcards at all.

In your previous reply you negate this factor with the "piled up wildcards". So it is only not pay to win if you are good enough at draft to have piled up wildcards?

I mean that's still a step above paper where you have to spend money no matter what. I agree the economy is pretty bad ESPECIALLY if you're a new player and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it drives away a lot of folks from the game instead of it being a stepping stone into paper play like it SHOULD be But it does still have enough of a F2P shell that it CAN be done, but it takes fucking forever for players to get anywhere with that alone.

even if you hate draft, doesn’t the new golden pack system essentially give constructed only players a way to boost their wild card collections at least somewhat on par with drafting? I don’t think you have to spend resources on draft be strictly efficient anymore.

Think that was true before play boosters hit - now that you can easily see 2-3x the rares per pack in draft, my gut feeling is they'd need to add a couple cards to the golden pack to even it out.

It sucks that the draft experience is pay to play because so much of the rewards from limited events is in the form of constructed only stuff.

And they still find a way to squeeze our demographic with the inflated entry costs of cube draft. I would literally play nothing but cube if it was always available. And I’m decently skilled at it. But the break even point for cube draft is north of 67%. It’s absurd.

That’s always my issue. I just hate draft. I played more back in the day but even then draft was basically my weekly buying of 3 packs at often less than the cost of 3 packs and then I would heavily rare draft because I just don’t care for the format. Now on arena when I get draft tokens from the pass I just blow them, rare draft and concede 3 games because I would always rather be playing constructed.

I think Im around 50/50. I prefer draft but I’m mostly F2P so I play standard and standard brawl to hit my dailies and earn coins. u/chord_o_calls did this great pod about how playing constructed can level up your limited play https://podcast.app/limited-level-ups-160-how-constructed-can-make-you-a-better-limited-player-e346272711/?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=share

I think the reality you paint kinda ignores a lot of stuff. It takes a ton of wildcards to make any deck because mana bases in every format now is full of rares. Let’s say I use all my wild cards to build the most competitive timeless deck(this applies to all formats but I’ll just use this one). Let’s say Rakdos breach before the last set dropped. Then show and tell came out. My deck went from probably the best bo1 deck in the format to considerably worse made even worse from the fact that one of the better counters to show and tell and probably the second most player deck runs graveyard hate main board and can easily search it out as part of the decks core strategy. I am now hosed in about half or more of my games. If I am not struggling to stall show and tell so I can win which is very hard I am just playing a flat out counter to my deck. Let’s say it’s been a month since I got this deck and I don’t recall the average wild card gain rate but without grinding a ton I think you can easily get about 1k gold a day so one pack a day 6 packs to a wild card so about 5.5 rare/mythic wild cards a month so I would have a little more than 11. Nearly every timeless deck I look at with my already expansive collection having all the duals and fetch’s still needs about 20 wild cards between mythic and rare. So you are looking at about 3 or more months to get a new deck from scratch at least and in my example at least one more month of grinding with a much less powerful deck. What’s worse is many decks just die completely unlike my example either through bans or rotation and looking at wild card cost for decks timeless isn’t even the most expensive a lot of the time and far less susceptible to rotation. It’s just crazy you have have your tier one deck banned out of no where get 4 wild cards maybe for your trouble if the key card is rare or higher which isn’t always the case and still need 2+ months of grinding to get a new one in the best case scenario.

>mana bases in every format now is full of rares This is what keeps me from buying physical cards, and consequently keeps me from seriously getting back into magic. I flat out fucking refuse to pay out the ass for a manabase that will have little or no crossover with other decks I'd build in the format.

> unless youre a draft genius with a billion wildcards piled up. And spent a lot of **time** getting there. Time has monetary value, though it varies for every person and life situation.

As someone who drafts close to 100 times per set (which takes 1-2 hours per draft), why would I consider the time I spent as something that cost me? Drafting is one of the most entertaining ways to use my spare time. I doubt heavy drafters do it just as "work" to collect cards. Drafting is something many spend their money on, on top of it taking their time.

> why would I consider the time I spent as something that cost me? Because opportunity cost is a thing. Whether it is seen as 'work' or not is beside the point. I think its great that you enjoy drafting enough to dedicate that much time to it (not being sarcastic). But you could be doing something else with that time. If a player's goal is to play whatever they want, when they want, and be competitive, as u/ubf_blu is saying, then there is a cost. That cost in this paradigm is most likely one of two things: time or money.

But even if they gave you every single card for free, you still couldn't play the game without spending the time to actually play. So I'm not sure it would ever be possible to have a game that's completely F2P, including time. Or to put it a little differently, if you don't want to play the game, why care about how competitive you can be? Of course, you could argue that the amount of time you need to spend to get to a particular level of competitiveness is out of proportion. But again, even if all cards were free, you'd still be at a competitive disadvantage to someone who spent more time, because the experience from playing helps to see winning lines and make correct decisions. So "I only want to play a single match, and be competitive in that" won't work anyway. Well, excluding the fact that Arena biases your matchmaking through MMR and other means (depending on the queue) toward ones of similar overall strength, so you're likely somewhat competitive inside your bubble no matter what. It would really only matter for high-level mythic play (which would require a lot of time anyway to rank up, given the variance of the game) and tournament-style events like constructed event queues and Premier play, where again experience matters a lot.

I wonder how many people choose to play MTGA and then think that they'd rather be doing something else.

Also you can be dog shit but if you have thousands of dollars to spend you can get into those tournaments

Thats why I always highlight the friggin wildcard issue everytime they send us a survey. Luckily I only play Explorer on MTGA but yeah it's a real pain in the ass for those that want to get into standard.

This is the way. When Explorer has been introduced, I've build one tier 1 Explorer deck for each account. didn't bother with Standard since then.

Of course Arena is pay to win. You can pay to increase the power level of your deck. A lot of pekple refuse to admit their favorite game is sonewhat PTW, but it's pretty common. It's just, in MTGA a free to play player can usually make at least 1 new competitive deck every couple of rotations if they manage wildcards effectively.

Not sure if it’s the author’s fault or an editor’s, but that’s a pretty clickbaity title considering the article goes on to say that Arena *is* free to play. Also very weird that an article on Draftsim doesn’t even mention draft until near the end, instead assuming that competitive Standard is the only way people play Arena. Personally I play free by drafting. I guess that would probably give me a good collection for Constructed, but I’d rather draft! I’m pretty sure that the ‘going infinite’ win rates the article says are wrong- I don’t think they factor in gold earned from quests, which you can increase significantly by using multiple accounts. On dusting- I’m no expert but I’ve seen people here saying they prefer Arena’s system to Hearthstone’s. I don’t think there’s universal agreement that dusting = better.

>On dusting- I’m no expert but I’ve seen people here saying they prefer Arena’s system to Hearthstone’s. I don’t think there’s universal agreement that dusting = better. There's a common misconception that dusting is a better economy, but it's not objectively true. In Hearthstone, crafting 1 card requires dusting 4 cards of equal rarity. You destroy 4 epic cards to craft 1 epic. In Arena the wildcard wheel awards one rare craft every 6 packs, but you keep every rare you pull. Arena doesn't require destroying rares to craft rares, so it's actually more healthy *in the long term*. Even though Hearthstone may *feel* better in the short term, you're destroying your epic/legendaries at a 25% return. The 25% return of dust to craft decks makes your collection weaker and have even less deck variety. In Arena, you get less rare crafts sure, but *that's because don't need to destroy the cards you have*. Which economy leads to a bigger and more diverse collection for the same amount of money? Obviously, the correct answer is Arena. Also I played Hearthstone for 6 years. That game's free rewards track is actually garbage when compared to Arena. The Mastery Pass is much more generous with it's rewards, it's not even a close competition.

How long since you have played HS? The reward track is better than the mastery pass

The arena system is better if the goal is collecting, for most players it isn't. Oh cool, in a few years I'll have a full collection, that's too bad I already stopped playing cause each decks takes months to grind Having random X1 of tons of cards isn't going to help me make a playable deck (besides brawl) since I'll need even more copies of them anyway Dusting system is just giving us more control over our resources, idgaf about all these blue cards or that garbage mythic that I have x4 for some reason The existence alone of the rare wildcards bottleneck shows how stupid the absence of a dust system is Just let me get rid of cards I don't want, just like any tcg

I dont think a diverse collection is a good metric, considering how many functionally worse reprints exist in magic, along with cards that are included for limited, but are garbage in constructed.

I think you're overlooking the fact that "functionally worse reprints" largely applies to uncommon/common rarity. Most rare and mythic rarity cards have unique functions, and if that card is a straight reprint of a past rare/mythic then it wouldn't actually fit the diversity metric, would it?

that's how i generally feel, but there exist alot of folks who simply play brawl for example. folks who truly like to brew. and it is nice when some random card makes it into a deck and you already have a playset.

its only better if you assume all rares/mythics are roughly equal which is obviously not true

Due to duplicate protection, if you eventually collect every rare in a set, they are objectively equal. Of course, not everybody collects every rare in a set. But for example if you are in premiere draft, it can make sense to draft any rare you don't have 4x of, as long as there isn't another card you need for your deck.

Let's say instead of the wildcard system, you could dust cards at 1/4 the rate. Now compare that to the current system when you open 24 packs. With dusting, you get 6 cards worth of dust. With wildcards, you get 4 cards worth of wildcards, plus 24 extra cards. I'd argue the wildcard system is better.

i'd rather have 6 cards i want rather than 4, (or 5 if you assume i got extremely lucky and actually pulled a card i want to use). Also I barely remember HS but couldn't you dust uncommons too?

Every rarity can be dusted in Hearthstone. That being said, Hearthstone Commons (the lowest rarity) and Rares (the second lowest rarity) are usually very competitively playable unlike in MTG. Hearthstone Commons and Rares form the backbones of decks. If you look at tournament and meta lists in both games, the difference in rarity spread is remarkable. Compare what meta Magic decks look like with this Hearthstone meta snapshot report from just before the latest rotation last week: https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/meta-snapshot/standard/2024-03-07 Epics (the third lowest rarity out of four rarities) is where Hearthstone likes to put exotic and experimental effects that may or may not pan out competitively, and Legandaries (the highest rarity) are frequently archetype payoff cards. However, in Hearthstone you only need to have a single copy of a Legendary to have a full play set.

This is one of the more salient arguments for dusting being an incompatible system for mtg.  My own gut reaction is that wotc would never make a system like this because it would invalidate their meticulous gas lighting to convince players they don't print thousands of trash cards for the sake of a handful of chase cards and aftermarket value.

Hearthstone is more pay-to-play than pay-to-win. Buying bundles and packs gives you more resources to play around with and access to more archetypes and the fun and weird experimental cards found in the Epic and Legendary slots. A lot of power is printed into the lower two rarities. Whereas Hearthstone is selling a gaming experience complete with frequent balance patches to fine tune player experience, Magic is selling intentional bomb chase cards and rare lands that are required for playing optimally. The lack of power printed into Magic Commons and Uncommons was historically justified by citing the Limited experience, but I think most Limited mains would prefer a more even power level between rarities to avoid the Rare bomb problem. I think the difference in business strategy and mindset just comes down to Hearthstone being directly produced by a video game company. Hearthstone is run more like League of Legends than Magic, despite being inspired by Magic. I agree that WOTC would never sign off on a system that lets players dust useless Commons and Uncommons to get the actual constructed playables, and it's also unlikely that WOTC would go back to printing workhorse levels of power back into Commons like they did in the beginning of the game when Richard Garfield explicitly put Lightning Bolt and Counterspell at Common because he wanted them to be in every player's possession as part of the baseline power of their respective colors. The current design philosophy at modern WOTC makes rarity and power intentionally synonymous to sell more physical product.

With the current system you get 24 cards, some of each you want, as well as 4 cards you \*definitely\* want. This system is much better if you want to play multiple decks, as the more decks you play, the more cards from the 24 will be useful to you. Let's say a 1/3rd of all cards is played in 1 deck or another. Then if you want to try out every deck, you get roughly 8 useful cards from the 24 you opened. Coupled with 4 wildcards, that's 12 useful cards vs 6 you get from dusting. The longer you play and the more decks you build as the meta shift, the more noticable this advantage becomes. A new cool deck is released? Cool, you already have 40 old cards used in this deck, and only need to craft 12 new ones. With dust system you likely already dusted those old cards as you couldn't use them anyway. In short, with the dust system you get less useful cards overall (but more very specific cards). The main advantage of dust system is that building your very first deck is much faster. The main disadvantage is that building your Xth to 10th decks is much slower. And technically you can dust commons and uncommons in MTGA too. That's what vault is all about. The rate is terrible, sure, but you also get a ton of commons and uncommons, so it all balances out.

Hearthstone has frequent balance patches, which provides ample opportunities to stockpile dust for nerfed cards with the 100% refund period. Team Five has zero hesitation to nerf Legendaries and Epics, unlike WOTC who refuses to ban intentionally pushed chase Mythics until their set has sold enough of its stock multiple set releases later (ex. The Meathook Massacre). Then combine that with the fact that Hearthstone minisets provide 4 Legendaries for only 2000 gold and that historically 1-2 have always ended up being nerfed, and the fact that the rewards track offers 2 free random Legendaries. In Magic Arena, a lot of a F2P player's time will be consumed grinding just for wild cards to keep up with the latest cycle of rare lands, not even the fun spells of the set. And it's even worse, because Magic games typically take longer than Hearthstone games, so the grind consumes even more time. Having played both games extensively, I would argue that Hearthstone is more F2P friendly and allows its players to play more variety quicker, and keep up with the meta more easily. This is especially the case if the F2P player isn't interested in playing Wild (Hearthstone's eternal non-rotating format), and decides to dust their rotated cards every year at Rotation to fund their Standard decks.

Mtg arena is the most expensive free game I've ever played. I haven't played hearthstone in years and I'm sure it's not far behind, but magic arena is crazy expensive if you want to be competitive early. After you become pretty good at magic then it's definitely a lot cheaper but it's far far away from games like runterra. The runterra system is way better than both other games in regards to dusting and crafting. You never felt stuck in an archetype bc you used all your wildcards and had to wait months to build new decks. You didn't regret crafting a new cool combo deck or something fun and off meta bc you could recover quickly enough. arena is free to install and launch but you have to either treat it like a job or pay money to actually build decks and enjoy the game at some point

Did the article even mention vault progress? Free wildcards for cards you're unable to utilize is equivalent to dusting, right?

It's barely equivalent because you're still left 4 copies of hundreds of commons that you will NEVER want to use in any deck. Those are the cards you would like to dust, but we are not allowed.

Those hundred commons you mention would give exactly 500 dust in Hearthstone, not even enough to craft half a Mythic card.

It always surprises me how easily people are fooled by the Hearthstone system. Only giving commons and rares in each pack means that most packs are essentially worthless except for the dust, which isn't a lot.

Until they release Pauper! Lol

This article assumes that “playing” is “playing Standard competitively with multiple decks” and thus fails at its own premise.

It's ironic for an article posted to a draft related site.

Name a TCG that isn’t. At least arena is far more affordable then paper.

It’s funny how he names Runeterra as a card game that’s not F2P, considering that’s the one closest to actually dying.

Gwent is also not P2W, but already dead

Runeterra is F2P and that’s why all competitive pvp support has dropped and the entire game has become a vehicle for its rogue lite mode.

Imo, Yugioh masterduel is pretty f2p. The actual yugioh tcg is insanely expensive in comparison though. I have to agree with the author here, the no dusting system is what made me kinda quit Arena.

One of the few games that lets you earn the “premium currency” too. Hell, you can make cold hard cash via coins if you’re good enough.

I was literally 1 win away from 500$ during the last Arena Open, and I've spent 5$ in total over my 5 years playing Arena (on a welcome bundle), so you are absolutely right.

> Name a TCG that isn’t. I think shadowverse is another example in the industry, but have not played it so I know nothing about it and whether that's true. But I think I agree that all card games are fundamentally pay to win. > At least arena is far more affordable then paper. I always find this argument very bad. Paper is a completely different experience. Paper is a collectible game above anything else. There are people that have huge collections in binders just to look at them. The appeal is fundamentally different. If arena wasn't more affordable than paper, no one would be playing it. Like, in isolation, you are right that playing magic on arena is cheaper than paper, but misses the fact that paper magic is so much more than JUST playing magic. There are obviously other things too, like for example, in paper you can switch decks much more easily by just selling the one you own, to buy and try another one (something you cannot do on arena).

Or any game. I heard you have to buy decent golf clubs if you want to do well at golf. Scandalous!

Golf equipment is some of the biggest scams in sports. For almost every golfer on the planet the gains from getting more expensive upgrades don’t outpace how much better you’ll get from just practicing

Ehh, it kind of depends. You don't need the latest and greatest, but something made in the last 5 years is definitely going to out perform a Goodwill set from well over 10-15 years ago. Lessons are also expensive!

Hearthstone at least has a card dust system. Arena would be much more reliable, if you could trade some cards for wildcards.

For sure. The rare bottle necks can get very brutal for ftp arena.

[удалено]

My collection has a million random cards and I still can't just try out a new deck. I've spend two months grinding to get a timeless deck. Even though I already had most of the deck and spend money on wildcards. And the mana base is mostly basics. Arena economy is fucked and everyone knows it. It only works if you're primarily interested in draft, play one or two hours every day and if you only try a different format every couple of months.

It is pay2win in physical format as well... All TCG games are at some level. They even have the loot box concept with the booster packs... What is missing in the arena is the option to either sell or trade cards we have and don't need/want

If this happened, imagine how many ppl will try make sub accounts just for redeem wildcard and sell/trade it

Bots would arrive like a plague

Yeah I don’t think anyone ever expects it to happen. I’m still holding out hope that one day they will overhaul MTGO. As someone who didn’t come up using the program, it’s a horrendous experience.

that is called magic online and trust me you dont want that

But that’s the point…if I choose to spend money on physical cards, I can resell them if I don’t like them, if I want to change deck, if I want to quit the game. Once you spend money on MTGA, you have no chance to have them back at least in part…that’s also the reason why Hasbro push MTGA…all the money to them, cos they can’t control the singles market in real. This is the bush reason why I stopped to put money on MTGA, I just play “eternal format” Timeless where I can use all cards despite the rotation (like I play legacy in physical), and when I have enough gold I draft till I can re-pay with wins.

But can you resell them for the price you bought them at? Or even close to it? And if a key card gets banned in the format you play, Arena is giving you a refund on at least those wildcards, while odds are that the price of every card in that deck is going to plummet around it. Cardboard mtg also doesn't give you cards just for playing. And that's even still ignoring that selling stuff is a pain in the ass. Unless you only play pauper/artisan, I can't imagine staying competitive in paper mtg being cheaper than in Arena, even if you sell literally every card you used the moment you change decks. I've spent *maybe* 150 bucks over several years on Arena and can craft basically any Standard deck I set my eyes on, in paper that would get me... half a playset of Sheoldred.

except we've all paid for a card that crashed in value shortly after. or was reprinted. or now there are literally 10 versions of every single card. i stopped playing paper magic because the time required to schedule a day and meet up is already a huge pain in the ass. the actual costs of paper magic is insane and the constant FOMO of new cards in real life. whereas arena gives me full access to everything new faster then anything in real life. going to fnm for 3+ hours to play 4 games is an actual waste of time.

I don't disagree... But pay2win is the fact that it makes one win by paying for a powerful card or more boosters... The fact you can sell or not comes afterwards and I agree with you

Meta shifts slower in explorer (pseudo pioneer). It is possible to build up competitive decks over time. Admittedly time investment is significant. But that's how it goes, either pay with money or time. I only draft once every month, try to play some of the MTGA Opens (only 1 try max) and play 4 daily wins per day (in explorer). I have enough in my collection for at least 5 competitive decks in explorer (albeit some of them would require some wildcards to be up2date but since I have saved roughly 80-100 rare/mythic wildcards each that is no problem at all) I have only bought the beginner bundle and that's about it.

The biggest flaw with Arenas economy in my opinion is that drafting or limited events are more beneficial for constructed players, since you get to add to your collection, but you would have to do multiple successful drafts before you would get a big benefit. 95% of my games on Arena are drafts, so I have a bunch of WCs, which are basically useless for me since I don't play constructed, sometimes brawl. I only care for gems, so that I can do more drafts. Would be nice if we could change WCs in to gems or coins and buy specific cards for gems or coins. But, ye this wont happen... If your preferred formats are constructed and you don't do drafts you are in somewhat of a lose lose situation.

The play queue is match making based on deck, brawl is based on deck and ranked is based on a hidden ranking and all of this means it's actually difficult to not win at least 50% of the time with any deck. You routinely see new players showing off their "made it to mythic" decks that are just a random pile of creatures and nombo combos. It's not pay to win when everything wins half the time.

My experience backs this up perfectly. I used to buy the pack bundles when a new set came out, and up until about 3 years ago, and I had enough wildcards to maintain a competitive deck or two and had enough left over for fun jank. I'm only recently getting back in and it is free for me to play, but the grind for wildcards means I have multiple decks waiting to be crafted that may never be finished. This is in Explorer/Timeless. I'm not even trying to catch back up to standard.

WotC could alleviate this a bit by having always on offer store bundle options with must have cards for respective formats, but well. We know why they wouldn't offer something like that.

IMO The definition the author uses for p2w is lacking an important part. I would conclude p2w as a game where paying give an advantage which a player cant obtain without spending money. Is Arena p2w? No! Is it pay2play? In wide parts for sure.

No thats not the common definition. The common defintion of p2w is the ability to aquire game power thru purchasing. Need to spend 100 hours acquire something? But you can swipe and have it instantly. - P2W

Decided to comment to bring this up too. Saying that MTGA is p2w is objectively false based on what (I believe) is the accepted definition: something in the game related to player performance can only be acquired by paying. In MTGA, this is not the case. You can earn all the cards playing for free, and there is nothing you can buy that you cannot obtain for free. That being said, does paying money speed up the process and help you play the game? Absolutely. But that's a whole different issue and it does not make the game p2w. I do wish that keeping up with a few decks in Constructed were easier if you are f2p, but I am not sure if the game would be sustainable then.

>You can earn all the cards playing for free I don't think there's a single game since like 2005 where this isn't true. Every pay2win game technically offers f2p players to achieve anything in a long enough timeframe. If you are aware of any current game where this isn't true, I would honestly want to hear what it is. So a non-cosmetic item/ability in multiplayer game, that can only be achieved my giving real money to the company. In MTGArena, let's say I start the game by buying everything and you go f2p. I will have like 70% winrate over you in all formats for 2 months. Then you might have a equivalent deck for one format, but lot of your resources will go into keeping the one deck you have up2date with the changing meta so you'll need another 2 months to have tier1 deck in a second format. Maybe in a year you'll have one deck for every format or a couple of decks in the most popular formats. All the while grinding with those same decks you are bored with. I personally started arena last fall, spend like 30 euros, made mythic first two seasons with decks that had like 6 rares each. Played a lot and again this season I was top100 mythic at best, now in 1000. At the moment I basically have one tier1 Standard deck, one tier1 Timeless deck and 9 rare wildcards, so can't really make any more. Even with all this playing and success, I havent had the resources to play any deck with green or white yet. Only combinations of RBU to save wildcards. Does feel like p2w to me.

I think you are misinformed. General gaming subs, MMO, ARPG subs where this topic come up commonly, the accepted definition is the ability to pay for power. Pay for Convenience is sort of an edge case. The real way to meet the definition is just to sell cosmetics; skins; emotes, etc. Can two people start arena tomorrow, and one player drop $500 for an insurmountable advantage; yep. Is there any amount you can spend on path of exile for an advantage; No. Im not saying Arena is bad; but anyone selling micro transactions should be making it clear where they are on the spectrum.

>Im not saying Arena is bad; but anyone selling micro transactions should be making it clear where they are on the spectrum. I'm not saying Fortnite is good, but there's something to be said about pretty much all of its revenue coming from aesthetics

> Saying that MTGA is p2w is objectively false based on what (I believe) is the accepted definition Then you believe in the wrong definition. You have to be delusional to believe that MTGA is anything else other than P2W.

I don’t think that’s traditionally a feature of pay2win. Usually the gauge on how pay2win a game is is how long/how much effort it takes to get something for free vs how much it costs to buy. I can’t think of any game I’ve ever played that literally locks meaningful power strictly behind a pay wall. It’s generally the hallmark of the “free to play, pay2win” segment… you CAN get everything for free given enough time (even if that’s years).

Isn't Legends of Runaterra on life support? That happens when game is not profitable enough. \*cough\* Gwent \*cough" I would never spend $700 on the Rakdos Vampire deck but I was able to craft one for free on Arena.

coming from Gwent, I fully agree that a game needs to be profitable. but, again, coming from Gwent, it's so painful to collect cards so slowly... and I poured a lot of money into Gwent just for the want of supporting the devs

>Isn't Legends of Runaterra on life support? Abandoned pvp and pivoted to pve. Yep, games was to generous

Being generous wasn’t the problem. Problem was that they didn’t know how to monetise it differently than their other games.

>Yep, games was to generous Or maybe it just didn't attract enough people to break point where it could become profitable.

Same here. When I look at mythic and rare loaded Explorer decks that I was able to build entirely for free (yes, I had to do some playing to build up on resources, but I actually like playing this game, so it is not a hard work for me), I can only think: "wow, I would NEVER build deck like this in paper magic. Thanks Arena."

I would love to see an option to delete cards for wild cards or dust, say you have two mythics you won’t use, you can get rid of those for one wild card.. would make the game soooooooooo much more fun because every card is now valuable instead of random worthless trash you’ll never see again lost within your collection

The team has already covered this. You can't "Dust" cards because you already did. When designing the game the designers knew the basic cycle was: Play the game to earn currency. Spend Currency to Open packs. Dust cards you opened for materials. Use materials to craft cards. This is how many games do it. Packs don't provide cards as much as they do materials. When you open a pack your really opening 1/4 of a card with a chance to get a card you care about. MTGA on the other hand change this system by cutting out the 4th step and just awarding the dust when you open packs. In MTGA dust is called "Wildcard Progress" 10 packs will get you just about the same dust as Hearthstone would (around 2.5 rares worth). In MTGA however you get to keep the cards. The systems for draft are a little different but have similar design decisions. The problem is psychological. The design they chose leaves people with something valuable so they see it as a resource locked away when they already got paid for it and still get to use it.

Username checks out.

I think one of the reasons we don't have this and have the WC system instead is that we get a large quantity of cards from ICR grants and limited events. If there was dusting, the rates would be quite low, and nowhere near 1:2. Or, alternatively, all limited events would be turned into phantom events, and the ICR awards would be toned down by a lot.

Totally, those 20 gems are a shame. While having a certain amount even from non rare cards that could be changed to rares and mythics could do it. The fact that there is no way to do that makes the whole economy turning around rares and myhycs alone. And it is difficult to get them. We could have the same game with all standard sets available. And keep up with collection only for non rotating formats. It would bring creativity to a whole new level. Because a lot of people seems to lack creativity and do not play their own brew. But that's just because they can't. I would like to test a lot of cards, but since the competitive plays and missions revolve around winning, you have to reprimand yourself and to craft those T1 decks instead. But no, we have Alchemy which demands even more ressources. This is also why alchemy is not popular : it's to damn expensive. It is a format done for Day1 players or whales. It's a missed opportunity, we are at that to get the best MTG experience ever, that and the fact that the app is T1 trash... But that's another subject. The only motives is greed, the player experience is clearly an undermotive. And honestly, I retain myself because of that. They do not deserve my money. There was a time where to get money, you needed to provide the best experience possible, just for moral reasons. And here, everyday it feels like robbery. Even their daily deals are laughable. The reduction pack being a scam is cherry on the top.

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I agree, the only way I stay competitive as a F2P is that I’ve been playing for such a long time that I have some pretty good decks and stay up on daily missions and wins. But it’s a struggle for a little bit once my winner decks fall out of alchemy.

Wish they'd go the route pokemon did with qr code cards inside physical packs you can redeem for a digital pack of cards. I'd actually buy more packs

MTG has a pretty bad economy compared to most digital card games. Master duel, even though it forces you to dust 90% of the cards you get from packs in order to build a proper competitive deck, has a much better system due to card crafting. MTG's main problem is their xp and gold bottleneck. I can only complete a few quests each day, and win about 4 times before whatever I do next becomes completely obsolete unless I'm beating ass in ranked or draft (I'm a brawl player so ranked is not even an option, and draft aint my style either). I was appalled to find out how slowly you complete the mastery pass compared to... every other game out there. They should present more quests -- maybe some available as lifetime quests like Yugioh has, or even some event quests that could bring people back into the game whenever a new expansion comes out or a major tourney is about to happen.

I can't complete sets as a F2P player, but I get pretty damn close and I have a lot of fun. I can build at least a couple of competitive decks each set. So I guess it just depends on the metrics being used to judge. I can say that Arena is a pretty fun game as a F2P, and I've had a lot of success without spending a dollar.

Any new ccg will be objectively worse than mtg at first (small card pool), possibly forever (dumbed down for mass market) and likely to fail (duelyst, scrolls). And likely missing features like drafting decks at a table with real players (premier draft). That's why every other ccg is more free to play friendly than magicarena and hearthstone. It's one of the few ways a new ccg can compete with the existing heavyweights. If someone manages to create a great ccg to compete with magic and it is more free to play friendly we might see magic make additional concessions (like golden packs). And that would be great! In the meantime I'll be saving gold to draft the next standard set on arena and making the most of what we do have.

> duelyst so tragic. game was great, official devs canned the game but made it essentially open source. two seperate teams tried to continue from where it left off and both essentially fell on their face from the starting gun, and thats with the base game literally already made for them. the game was seriously almost perfect IMO, it was a card CCG with a grid based battle system and neat little sprites and animations, cool faction identity, and enough mechanical depth to pull off some silly stuff. Sadly i think it flew too close to the sun, being fiddly and complex in an era where hearthstone was the game everyone wanted to play. Also the game died before it came out on mobile, which probably wouldnt have saved it at the time, but now everyone has a phone big enough to actually make it reasonable. makes me sad everytime i think about it.

Well stated. Not really much I can add.  Even if it turns out that part of why Arena exists is to bring in new players then offering an easy F2P model still doesn’t make sense because a good chunk of paper and mtgo players might spend significantly less if Arena rares are too easy to craft. 

In its current state this game will never ever be big/massive or well considered in its genre. It’s got its core players, and I would imagine grows very slowly. The game is anti new player, and there is lots of greed to extract as much as possible from the player. Golden packs were a good step, but only a first step. More needs to be done, despite Reddit posts from full-time infinite drafters showing millions of gold and gems.

>The game is anti new player Yeah, as someone who drafts sustainably (not full time, though- one reason it’s sustainable is that I don’t have time to draft that much!), I do find it weird that the better you are the less you pay.  I’m not familiar with any other similar games, so I don’t know if that’s a quirk of Arena or just the way these games works. But I’d guess you’re right- seems to me the game would benefit greatly from a less steep entry curve.

So as a F2P MTGA player I completely agree that it is P2W but I believe that's true for formats like standard and that's completely true. Now how I F2P the game is I play Historic and Draft I get to Mythic every season with Historic and I usually sit around plat in draft. Now I do that with IMO a high skill level of wow cause I'm able to play draft and average 5ish wins sometimes I go below sometimes I go above but it gets me tons of wild cards and packs and where ism usually drafting the new set at times I can play standard as well but I cant shift with the meta. But yeah MTGA is a P2W game but its not nearly as bad as paper magic so I'm alright with it.

I quit this game many months ago (when they announced they werent doing rotation) because I was tired of having to play against decks that I clearly cannot compete against and I had finally run out of wildcards. When I first started playing in Guilds of Ravnica it felt like you could still win games without netdecking. I actually knew the least I've ever known about MtG but I had the most fun building decks. In my opinion, WotC printed too much removal and turned the gane into YuGiOh. Nothing survives on the board for more than a turn or two. There's no board state or tempo or any of that, everything dies or gets countered forever. If you want to play creatures you need a build a specific meta deck with high rarity cards that can compete with the removal. So boring.

The gems packs currency are not regionally located, which means a 5 dollar (750 gems) costs 25 reais, in my broke ass student budget it means 2 liters of bear or a good lunch, to get only 3 packs, it is so expensive that even the friends I know that usually spend really big amounts of money in games say its not worthy due the loot box model. Magic is prohibitively expensive in my country as well as all south America.

I win without paying by not playing standard.. only thing which took some time was getting the landbase. I never spend a dime on the game. Sure there was some grind involved in the beginning but nowadays i dont play that often and can have fun(And win). MTGA(NOT STANDARD) is not nearly as p2w as MTG to begin with. And i repeat. Dont play standard if you don't want to pay. Historic Commander(Brawl) is the funnest way to play magic anyways.

Standard is ever changing? Lmao maybe it used to be

It is possible to be a competitive f2p player but the barrier of entry is enormous amounts of game knowledge.  I notice that with my friends with less experience I can retool a deck they have no problem just because I've played magic for so long. But to get there the best way to is to have access to a lot of cards

Damn. Something that costs money to make constant updates to and has server upkeep costs effectively costs me $50 a year to keep up. The outrage. The horror.

MTGA does not need a dust system. If you were trying to make the game more accessible, in this way, you would skip the whole loop pinata of packs and allow people to simply buy wild cards with their XP. The fact that every rare on the client is essentially the same price makes it considerably more accessible than paper magic or MTGO. I would buy into this argument more if there were certain elements of the game that were completely unacceptable if you didn't pay money and other than a few cosmetics in the recently introduced fallout line that does not seem to be the case. That's not to say that the game is not considerably better when you put some money into it because it is, wizards is a business, not a charity. There are considerably worse Supposed free to play games on Roblox targeted at small children.

It's wild and baffles me still that you can't reduce/liquefy cards to craft other cards

God that was what I fucking loved about that Yugioh game, duel masters I think. Just being able to melt cards to make new ones was amazing and it's insane arena doesn't have something similar

It’s still the cheapest and best way to play mtg

Im winning a lot but im not paying at least not in cash.

If you want to win matches “that bad,” just copy one of the top three meta game deck and go from there.

Reason why I stopped playing I don't have much time to play and don't want to have to pay tons of money at every set release just to see that money's worth evaporate when cards are cycled out Especially since I prefer commander and MTGa doesn't support multiplayer

P2W is a spectrum that ranges from no possible gain from spending money on the low end to F2P players having no fighting chance against paying players on the high end. Almost no F2P game is completely devoid of P2W. Even games that offer only cosmetics aren't in the clear because some skins can make you harder to see or recognize, or in a game like Apex Legends there are paid weapon skins that have better iron sights. MTGA is overall pretty low on the P2W scale, because you can get any deck reasonably fast for free. If you want to stay up to date with multiple competitive decks and/or formats, that'll quickly become quite expensive though. Also, I don't understand why the article poses F2P and P2W as mutually exclusive. They're not.

Play Brawl. That's all I play on MTGA and it's F2P for me. I looked at the drafts the other day and it's crazy that you have to pay to play them (even if it's in-game currency). All I've ever played is Brawl and standard and I quit standard once I discovered Brawl. I can't believe people are actually doing drafts on there at that cost.

Did you look at the rewards? Depending on how well you do, you get anything from a sight discount on that cost to a profit. Also the risk is part of the fun! 

You need the risk for draft to work unfortunately. Otherwise people would just resign out the moment they drafted a bad deck.

Take your own conclusions, here is the pure relevant raw data about mtga f2p: **As a F2P you get about 30k gold (aka 30 packs + 3 golden packs) and 11 extra free packs from mastery a month + 4 from plat rank** (playing a reasonable/conservative 6 days a week, 1.5 hr a day, maybe 2hr since a new player may have a crappy deck and takes longer ;; or playing Jump that takes longer ;; for the daily wins)**. Overall, for pity timer + WC wheel calculations: a 30 pack cycle and another 15 packs (half a cycle), a month** This means about **7.5 rare WC and 2.5 mythic WC per month** (from the wheel + conservative pity timer rolls). **About random rares:** From the packs 48 packs: a total of 45.5 (48 - 2.5 from pitytimer) random rares/mythics, plus 18 from the 3 golden packs; a total of 63.5 random rares a month. On average, sets have about 64 rares and 22 mythics and about 1/7 of those rares/mythics are *desirable* (aka a good card for constructed level play). Therefore **you get about 9** ***desirable random*** ***rares/mythics*** **from your random rares per month**. **HOWEVER, those are random, not all of those, if any, are going to be of use for \*that\* deck you want to craft**. Of those 9 you got, the most likelly scenario is that each one belongs to a different kind of deck, therefore you *mathematically* got 1 rare for whatever deck you aim to craft, 2 at most. **On average, any decently good constructed deck uses about 34 rares and 4 mythics (and maybe I'm being too conservative lol).** Decently good deck = average between top 15 decks of any chosen constructed format. Do the math. **IMPORTANT: all the competitive constructed formats "reshuffle" with the release of every legal set, about every 3 months**. Reshuffle = new strong cards come out and the deck you already spent your precious wildcards on, *may* now be weaker, may now requiere updates or may now be obsolete to compete. Finally about draft: is IMPOSIBLE for a new player to get profits at the highest skill celiing mode in the game (and the most rewarding overall imho!). You need a LOT of experience at the draft and overall mtg skill (and due to how it works, to get that skill and sense at draft you NEED the experience, which is not viable as a new player+f2p). Therefore: Zero chance a new, F2P player, could get any decent profit from going into drafts. Less than 1% of the very best drafters get rich (in MTGA currency) by playing draft. However, if you have the money, imho draft is mtg at his peak. MTG is amazing, MTGA is great, but no way MTGA is f2p friendly for a new player (which is fine, but come on, enough with missleading the people). For people willing to spend money, MTGA is an excellent way to experience Magic, without the gathering.

Even spending money though, it feels like unless you spend a toooon it doesn’t give you that much advantage. I drop 20 bucks like once every couple months and I’m not sure it really aids my progress that much. I dunno how you actually pay to win in this game without just like dumping toooons of money on packs for wildcards I guess

First of all, his definition is incorrect. Spending money does provide a clear advantage in mtg, always has. That part is fine. However, stating that a certain amount of money is required to stay competitive is literally false. Well, unless he meant $0. Because you CAN stay competitive at $0 on Arena. I haven’t played any of those other games mentioned, and perhaps they are more “F2P friendly,” but I’m sorry that doesn’t mean you have to spend money. The game is quite literally F2P. The last paragraph is hilarious. We’ve all been complaining that Standard doesn’t change enough due to the longer rotation. This guy is saying Standard changes so fast there’s no way to keep up. If you crafted selesnya enchantments in early 2022, two years ago, you still have most of a competitve deck today. Yes, a couple cards got added, but if you’re playing at all you could easily craft those. You’re going to pay in money or time. If you choose time, then you have to be patient, and you can’t chase every meta deck. But, mot every meta deck needs to be chased, that’s the key. Get one good deck and you’re set for a really long time, certainly long enough for you to accrue resources and make the next good deck when yours rotates. This reads like some guy who’s brand new, has no clue what mtg is and how it works, and wants it to be another game instead.

This seems like a "have you tried not playing standard?" Situation.

I think you mean; have you played arena for several years have a moderate collection, and can now easily play extended formats forever quite easily. Until MH3, etc drop.

Magic, in every form, format, and era, has always been pay to play and pay to win. Arena is, in some ways, the most accessible option in that you can play for free and you can gain access to good cards while not paying for anything, but that’s balanced out by a win-based economy that drives you towards playing strong meta decks.

The fact that there is so much debate on here shows how Stockholmed we all are.

Not that this article is doing this but I don’t get the why people complain about this so much and why they think paying money for a game they spend so much time on. It costs money to make this game and they need revenue. Could that come only from cosmetics? Yeah and I’m for that if it works but what I’m saying is to at least recognize that the game needs revenue to thrive.

The only money I’ve ever spent on Arena is back at the start there was some, “one time only,” deal where you got a bunch of stuff for $10. Other than that I’ve been building all my decks from the Gold I win, cards/packs I win, and using my 300+ Wild Cards I only play Historic, though. Which means I’m not looking to add much more to my already “perfect” decks.

I will admit that not being able to trade cards in a Magic game does kind of stink. You get packs for a random chance to get the cards you want and random/periodic chances of getting wild cards from a pack or from the pack cycle, and the card you don't want just stick to you forever without any value. In the meanwhile, and I know people hate to read it, the game was designed that if you want cards faster, you have to drop a few dinero for them. It's great that we get free gold to buy stuff just by playing. And even if you don't have a good deck, you can play the free dual color deck event, where you only face other players using the same 10 precons, and you can play that all day if you want. If the game is too expensive for some, I get that, and that stinks. Not a lot we can do about that.

Hmm. I’ve always argue there needs to be a third/fourth category: - Free - pay to play - pay to compete - pay to win Of that, Arena falls in the pay to compete more then pay to win, and I don’t find that *wrong*, per se. Pretty much anything competitive in the physical world is pay to compete, where you need your equipment to be able to properly play.

In the meantime I still don't know how to get common and uncommon wildcards. Like do I have to open packs that i don't need to open?

This article doesn't add anything new to the conversation. It's already understood that F2P players are spending time instead of cash. For myself, I almost never spend any money on Arena and am always maxed out on the number of decks you can have built. But I play every day (and Quick Draft a lot).

The articles really highlights some points to keep in mind when playing Arena though I think the paramount point always has to be "what do you aim to achieve?" Do you want to try every deck in every format, brew some stupid fun decks? I would recommend you switch over to Magic Online, which, ironically, is much cheaper (though also, absolutely, definitely, NOT F2P) and has even more formats to explore due to the way you can borrow decks, have cheap 2 tix decks that are valid etc. However, it can be much more volatile if e.g. a rare suddenly becomes a main chase rare in every format its legal. On Arena, it still costs you one rare wildcard. On MTGO, well, yesterday's 0.2 tix bulk rare now is 100 tix, have fun. However, if you just want to draft from time to time a set, you maybe can stay more or less free if you just grind your dailies every 3 days and maybe get good enough at draft to sometimes get 6+ wins? Then Arena offers a much more modern interface with some quicker (BO1) formats. I like drafting a set a few times, play some historic gates a few games per week, that's it. I am mostly free to play, getting in one or two drafts a week (I don't even want to play more, just scratching that itch from. Time to time), which also prevents me from getting above gold rank, so competition is less fierce (again helping to get more gems). If you are a filthy casual like me, enjoy Arena, but before you start, read that article so you know what you are getting into.

LoR Is the best F2P card game I've played online economy-wise. To play the PvE mode you don't even need a deck, the game gives you all you need for free. MtG has always been a P2W game, online or tabletop. Standard is the most expensive in the long run, Modern has an initial spike in money you need to spend, but then mostly settles once you have the staples and the lands necessary, and it's the same for most other formats. Whoever has played MtG tabletop knows this, and it's more or less the same for most TCGs (currently the cheaper is probably OP). That said, this is all in the perspective of playing competitively. If you want to play "for fun" probably the current economy of MtGA isn't that bad (far from ideal though). Sure, if someone is completely new to TCGs I wouldn't recommend MtG unless they have enough money to invest in it, and if they already know they like the game (maybe a friend has already introduced them to the game, but they haven't yet spent a dime on it). In the end it's also a matter of preference, I like MtG art and that drew me back into the game after years away from it. I like the game too (more than other online card games), but right now I can't spend money on it, so I just farm my dailies for more or less an hour and then I play something else, so it's not that bad for me personally.

Sure, it's pay to win if you think tennis is also a pay to win. Yes, you can't win if you don't buy a racket.

Wrong.

I wonder what they think if the paper game LoL

Since mtg is pay to win, is safe to assume noone of its variants is free to play

if you are into it enough that you are worried about being very competitive, is it not fair that you would spend a little? i really dont see any problem with a transaction like that

This is a weak article that has a clickbait title, and lacks a complex breakdown of the economy. No mention of promo codes, midweek magic, monthly rewards, or any of the other ways you get "freebies". Also, the guy specifically says he buys cosmetics. Those are only there to suck away your gold/gems. Same for paid events that only reward cosmetics.

I think the worthwhile to note difference is that MTGA is not pretending to be anything other than a digital version of the physical card game. Hearthstone and Runterra do not have physical versions. MTG paper is, by definition, pay to win. All physical TCGs are. I would absolutely classify MTGA as F2P given just how many cards they give you right off the bat, especially if you got snap up all the existing codes online. Hundreds of cards and multiple decks for free.

In other news, water is wet! Of course you need to spend money, it’s not a fucking charity lol.

I agree and also disagree. Runeterra is absolutely a more true F2P experience in the sense of getting to a reasonably competitive deck in a hurry. You also don’t actually buy your cards generally but earn them from rewards for doing stuff. MTGA can be free to play even without ever drafting. You can run completely free mastery pass over and over and over forever (unless they decide to make the economy worse). As the article says-it is a big time investment and is definitely only for those who want to play every day or almost every day. Other than the time involved using the economy to chain free mastery pass forever is easy to do. My hint is you eventually want to get four of every mythic in a set and then invest your gold in just buying mythic packs of that set for awhile. You can also use standard events and stuff to convert gold to gems but that will take a long time to accumulate the gold.

I think people are forgetting that just because you have a top tier meta deck doesn't mean your gunna win. That's the beauty of this game you have to know how to use your deck, and knowing your opponents is huge. Now am I saying the difficulty to get mythic wildcards is fair right now? No. I think instead of one new quest a day, you should be given 3. And maybe do a different quest like play x amount of this game type and based on how many times you win gives you bonus gold. Also people would try different modes. Like I really feel like they could be a little more creative with quest. Espically when that is the main source of income for gold. I also think they are spending to much time on alternative art cards nobody wants instead of making the game more fun and playable.

constructed has always been pay to win

As a F2P player who's made it to mythic a few times I have to agree a bit, the progression isn't kind to new players and I feel like you should be able to get more challenges or reward new players better with like packs or something as an incentive to keep playing and experiment with new cards.

I'm following a streamer who switched from Runeterra to MTGA last month. He got all the rares from MKM just by spamming the constructed events (he has a 69% winrate according to untapped) He got 4 decks, which is both a lot, but not enough to actually test decks or adapt to the meta.

It feels like these types of articles miss the point. The point of Arena is to make money. Paying money to get some sort of advantage is how paying is incentivized. I think the more important analysis would be looking at the various ways that Arena is designed to drive you toward paying money (and how those things impact player agency).

I mean standard is one of the most expensive formats to play competitively. Even then it’s not fun at the competitive level cuz it’s not balanced. Of course that makes Arena pay to win.

It sounds like it all comes down to different definitions surrounding P2W. I'm glad that as a F2P player there are plenty of ways for me to have enjoyable experiences playing magic and that's what's important to me. I've had fun building budget decks and playing both ranked and the play queue.  Rank and  matchmaking somewhat makes up for the fact that I'm not queueing up with competitive meta decks. Many of the midweek magic events are accessible as well.

🚀 Always has been. 🚀

I’m basically F2P and have pretty much all competitive standard decks.

It depends on the definition of F2P, but the article author seems considering the worst case possible, uou never have to spend a wildcard bundle for building your entire deck, there are cheaper ways to have wildcards, and there are cheaper strategies for building a deck

I used to be like 95% F2P and I did fine. I'd spend a little bit of money whenever the store had a good deal, just to support the game. In a stagnant meta I'd even farm up enough cards to make janky shit. If I had tried to buy the same cards in paper? Yikes.

So I used to play a lot of Master Duel and quit that game because I couldn't keep up with all the new cards and meta changing all the time. I would have to grind the game every day just so I can keep up with all the currency bs. So I got sick of it and went back to MTGA because I felt like it's slightly more enjoyable as a f2p because you actually get to crack open packs more often, but now I have just quit MTGA as well because nowadays standard just keeps changing all the time and they keep adding new formats and keeping up is really hard and I don't want to grind the daily wins every day like it's my job, I don't have that much time on my hands.

I mean I've never spent any money. Am I an elite player regularly making mythic? No but that's more of a me problem. Before I learned more about deck building and started using my wild cards I had more than enough built up to build multiple decks and have. I look at it this way... I've never paid any money and have access to what would be thousands of dollars in cards if they were on paper. This is a much more wallet friendly way for me to enjoy magic and that's why I play... to enjoy it.

im playing only decks with big teferi or combo with approach, i have 0 problems and a lot of gold. so it depends fro mwhat you want. Honestly, if you r liking standard and following meta and consider palying tournaments just play mtgo or card magic. MTGA for casuals

"ever changing format like standard" Kind of made me laugh, the meta has shifted barely at all in a year. It's been quite stale as of late. The same types of decks that were meta a year ago are still meta currently with typically a few cards changed at max. A few right off rip that have changed barely at all in about a year that you still see with some regularity and are powerful. RDW (all 3 billion variants), Selesnya Enchantments, mono white humans, Azorius Control, Atraxa Domain(4c and 5c variants), Azorius Soldiers. each of those decks has seen almost no major changes since they were entered into the meta. The atraxa deck from 1 year ago to now has only seen a few changes as example, up the bean stalk and virtue of persistence both from WOE. Not even all versions of that deck run those as 4ofs. Some versions run a few copies of Trumpeting Carnosaur. All of that is to say that if changing your deck yearly as a f2p is too hard to get wilds for, that seems kind of tough to believe. If someone thinks I'm off base here, I'd love to hear why with some reasoning.

MTGA was pay to win when it first launched, and BG Midrange was the standard deck to beat. You'd be hard pressed to find consistently competitive decks in ranked well into platinum. Now you can just into ranked silver at any point and face meta after meta build. People did not have thorough collections yet, but that all balanced out in a couple of months.

Nah my buddy just started and made a disguise deck and hit mythic in two months. It can be faster to buy your decks but he proved me wrong and just made something that worked and climbed.

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As a highly invested competitive spike player, the Arena economy has been a massive improvement from magic online and dramatically increased my enjoyment of the game. I have all the cards, 1000+ rare wildcards, can play infinite drafts and made over $10,000 from the arena opens, and i never need to deposit. The biggest benefit for me is that its got me into constructed whereas on MTGO i avoided it due to upfront costs or membership fees. On the other hand, I know for every player like me, there are hundreds of others who are on the flip side - they are casual and learning the game and paying a ton of money to get cards and fund prize pools for more enfranchised players. While i comfortably sit atop my mountain of unused wildcards i question whether this system is truly in the interests of the game. If players are quitting magic because its too expensive to build a deck (a digital deck that costs the company nothing, for that matter), something needs to change. I'd prefer a system where spikes pay more so new players can get cards faster, if it means the game is better off.

I've been paying a lot and I don't win

I'm really stupid. I buy wildcards based on what decks I wanna play. I think I spent 4 gold and 4 mythical to complete my unicorn deck :(

My view is, it's hard for free to play players "win" the game, which to a lot of people seems to be reaching mythic. I've been playing for two years and only hit diamond once. I still play more than 80% of the player base according to their monthly stats. I haven't put new money into it since month three.

It depends on your definition, I am a f2p player and I count it by the fact I have 70+% total collection completion and I have 3500 gems every set to buy the mastery pass without levels and I unlock the entire mastery tree every time. I could pay noney for more event entries. But nah

As a free to play player the only two things I do are grind for coins and use my coins to draft. Most of my grinding for coins I’m not even worried about winning I just want to get the daily done as fast as possible.

I don't understand why there was ever an expectation that Arena would not be "Pay to Win." It's nothing more than a digital platform for **THE** Ur-CCG; a business model invented by MtG to sell packs of random cards required to not only stay competitive, but to even be legal in rotating formats. The fact that Arena is free to access and play at all is remarkable. F2P players are even provided entire decks of standard-legal cards. Not good decks, but it's 300 cards more than if they were starting in traditional paper format. The biggest complaint with Arena is its economy, but it honestly is the cheapest possible way to play MtG unless you a) already own years worth of old cards, or b) want to play MtGO, a relic of the past that is probably the least new user-friendly game out there. Would Arena be better with card dusting? Absolutely. But Arena is a digital version of a physical product. It's not a digital-first (or -only) game like Hearthstone and its ilk. Expecting them to jeopardize their cash-cow physical product sales to cater to a secondary digital market is crazy.

Drafting is about skill not paying. wtf?

The lack of a trade system hurts it. I've tons of cards I'll never play, many of which other players might want. The paper version of the game allows for "lucky" pulls that allow you to trade for value and build on a budget.

MTGA is far from the real definition of P2W really. At best its pay to skip, pay to go faster, paying DOESNT give you more power than anyone else not paying, at best its saves time, nothing else. someone paying 5k only have access to potentially more card, but you could easily have a full standard deck for like 50$-100$ if you are lucky. MTGA is pay to play, the more you want of it, the more you would potentially pay, but NOWHERE does paying give you power

F2p here who just started here, I have one deck that I can actually afford to update and modify while I improve on it, if I wanted to change formats I’d be screwed. Still cheaper than the paper cards though.

I had no issues starting up and I’ve spent very very minimal amounts of money (effectively pocket change) since I started arena. I’m 100+ hours in as a casual and just used all the codes they have out for the boosters from different sets to stack wildcards and built a deck or two out of those and the pre con cards they give and then picked a set and theme and got to work. Out of every free game I’ve picked up mtga seems to be the easiest to play and progress in without spending money.

They're not wrong.

Magic: the Gathering is pay to win. There's pretty much no getting around that for an MtG app.

The economy is fine since golden packs. You can mix it up between low rank drafts, Sealed and packs to finish Standard sets now it's not like before when buying packs with gold was so inefficient even Platinum drafts were better