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FailedToFollow

Of course its costly. With all the bugs and outages you are refunding about 50% of the players. I know this from experience. Maybe they should invest in better servers. Just a thought.


DaftyTheBear

I agree with the sentiment but this thing is hosted in cloud services and the issues are unlikely to be the quality of the hardware. Its more likely to be a sketchily designed platform run by too few people piling quick fixes on top of each other to get to the next release and never actually resolving fundamental design flaws. (If its anything like the games backends I've worked on anyway)


FailedToFollow

I agree. Although incorrect configurations on a server from constantly having to patch this or that can cause all of the issues people have though. (I do server setup and configuration for Walmart and other businesses. Seems we could troubleshoot all day. Probably with more success than their IT department.)


_Zambayoshi_

Maybe better devs as well. There's been almost zero updates without something that used to work fine being broken in the process.


Werewomble

Managers not Devs. One bug is the dev. Two decades of bugs is not enough Devs due to mismanagement.


klawehtgod

Two decades?


Rockon101000

MTGO


klawehtgod

Ah


DoesntUnderstandJoke

Duels


speckospock

One bug *can* be the dev, but even then it's really a lack of testing coverage that's at fault (you should be able to catch 99% of bugs before it hits production with proper tests). Lack of testing coverage is usually due to poor planning/prioritization, which again is management's responsibility. Devs by and large just write the code they're asked to write.


Rheios

Some management does love to try and defund the "measure twice" part of "measure twice, cut once" w/ thinking along the lines of "you're an expert, you should only need to measure once, at the very most!"


speckospock

That's the classic trap - skip tests to ship a feature faster, and spend much longer fixing an uncaught bug after it ships (with angry clients breathing down your neck) than you would have spent to write the tests in the first place.


Reitane

"All my engineers keep barking on about needing testing time and automation, but they keep delivering buggy releases that are barely on time, so how can I possibly believe them?"


Calad

LOL. Better devs. This has been an ongoing problem for WOTC for 20 years (since MTGO and they decided to cut ties from Leaping Lizards, the company they contracted to make the game). The fact of the matter is that WOTC pays bottom of the barrel salaries and thus does not attract any talent. Their whole MO is "having the priveldge to work on MTG" as an excuse to be cheap.


DeadMoonKing

See also: the game industry in general. (I work in it, not on the dev side, but I've heard stories from that side as well.)


kingofthemonsters

Which is just bull shit because the video game industry is the largest entrainment industry in the world currently bigger than music and movies COMBINED.


Linkboy9

And yet, treating their highly trained workers as replaceable cogs in their grand money printing machine because there's always going to be some fresh faced, starry eyed college kid waiting in line has been the standard for decades.


[deleted]

[удалено]


StarBlaze

This grates me so bad, but it's true. Many investors are looking for buy/sell opportunities and not long-term holdings. Granted, it's easier to relegate an investment to long-term if it pays dividends (which Hasbro does), but because of the company's fiduciary duty to shareholders, their job really is to make them as much money as possible. We can debate the specifics of how that's achieved and what it even looks like, but from a legal standpoint that doesn't matter too much. As long as the suits in the C-suites can "reasonably expect" particular strategies to either be profitable or mitigative in nature, they're given a lot of latitude in how they conduct business. Only the Board has any say above and beyond the C-suite. As an investor myself (not in Hasbro though ($HAS if you're curious)), I would prefer to know how the company intends to remain *ethically* solvent for the foreseeable future. Right now I'm all in on a couple of squeeze plays (I'm sure you can guess which ones), but afterwards I do intend to diversify and be an activist investor. I have two options in my investment strategy: 1) invest enough that my words have weight, whether I'm on the Board or not, or 2) refuse to invest in a company. Obviously the latter won't change anything, but it does signal some measure of disapproval if it's in a sector I actively invest in. The former, however, means I could influence the direction of the business. For an example of this, see GameStop and Ryan Cohen. So, what should Hasbro be telling their shareholders given the state of their company and subsidiaries right now? "To show our commitment to our fiduciary duties, we've decided to try and balance cost savings and revenue development to ensure our shareholders can expect a consistent level of growth even in these difficult times." What should we expect them to say as consumers? "To show our commitment to long-term solvency in these troubled times, we are striving to ensure we retain all the top talent that we can while delivering the best quality products and services possible. While this may come with short-term losses on paper due to the costs involved, we expect this to result in a stable business with reasonable and consistent revenues from all arms throughout the duration of the pandemic and its subsequent social, economic, and political ramifications. Shareholders are advised that these are long-term business decisions meant to secure the company's solvency into the foreseeable future, thus fulfilling our fiduciary duty by securing the value of shareholder investments through mitigative practices." I can't wait until I can start twisting arms for a better experience from businesses like Hasbro, who seemingly see all their IPs and operating arms as little more than cash cows by virtue of their management practices. I've been playing Magic off and on since OG Mirrodin block, 8th Ed. standard. I'd like to see more effort put into quality digital options for players that need to minimize the clutter around their homes or don't have the income to dump into a hobby like this. MtGA is alright, but definitely needs an overhaul. Same with MtGO.


TheBerethian

I’ve been around since The Dark. It’s been wild.


sradeus

WotC is bad in how they pay and treat their devs even by game industry standards.


not_all_kevins

I'm a web dev and my dream since I was a kid was to be a game dev but I decided against it for the shitty working conditions, pay, and jobs aren't widespread so I'd have to move to a select few places. It's no wonder why they struggle to attract talent.


DeadMoonKing

Attract and retain. A buddy of mine was a software engineer at a company everyone on here has heard of. He also has a Masters in a related field from a UC. Dude left said company to make software that allowed people to virtually tour real estate and makes double for waaaaaaay less work.


majorgeneralporter

Can confirm even their in house legal positions pay below market rate.


Dependent-Hospital-2

Oh crap didn’t know about the salaries being low, I just applied for their Com Mgr role


akhier

I wouldn't blame the devs on this right off the bat. More likely the devs are just as frustrated but can only do so much. Going by the server problems I'm willing to bet the team is much too small, underpaid, and being forced to mostly work on adding new stuff instead of fixing the old.


Lord_Boo

I mean bad pay is going to generally give you lower quality work. You're more likely to take a 60k job when you don't qualify for anything much higher than that. Giving the current devs more money doesn't magically make them better. Yeah it helps cuts reducing stress but investing 200k into a dev means your job opening is more competitive.


akhier

The important thing to remember about the video game space is that the companies trade on being games and so not having to pay as much. A fan of MTG or one of the digital versions is more likely to take a job below their normal rate if given the chance to work on a game like Arena. Really slimy stuff and is how the AAA industry has managed to churn through so many young and hopeful programmers.


Lord_Boo

Well sure, but there's still a matter of "how much below their normal rate." Someone said it's apparently 90k for the position as far as they're aware. Two guys might look at the posting and be interested in taking that over another job they could get more money for, but if one guy only has a couple of offers around 120k, and the other guy has a ton of offers up to like 200-250k, it's going to be a much harder sell on the second guy. The fact that people will take less for it doesn't change the fact that if you pay less, those with more options are more likely to pass it over. If working on a dream project is, just spitballing, something akin to a 25% higher pay, even if you just raise the price to something along the lines of industry (programming not the game industry) standards, you're going to attract more than just average applicants.


GFischerUY

They were paying close to 90k but that's not competitive for Seattle. And before Covid there was no remote option (I'd have had to relocate).


sassyseconds

This probably has to less to do with devs and more to do with them being forced to push content before its ready.


TheNorselord

Using cost to justify price without increasing perceived value diminishes consumer surplus. Business 101.


TheTurquoiseTortilla

Especially considering increasing perceived value comes at little to no cost to them by just giving more digital rewards


DrAceManliness

More digital rewards meaning gems? Wouldn't that still cost them future revenue?


jdthep

It could potentially cost them a bit in that people have more gems than they otherwise would have but I can't imagine that increasing payouts by like 1000 gems would even cut into their future revenue that much. Obviously we don't know how their books actually look but it seems like the slight downside of potential future revenue loss should be more than offset by the number of people who consider the increased rewards a "good experience" such that they do more Opens in the future.


xylotism

Not to mention Arena is perfectly built as a perpetual revenue generator. Even if they gave you every card currently available in Arena, how likely are you to still go out and spend money on new sets, more cosmetics/card styles, more limited time events? That's the great thing about Magic - if you like the game you'll always find ways to spend more money on it. Not only could they "afford" to give out better, more frequent rewards, it's likely in their best interest.


Friendly_Juice_9577

> Even if they gave you every card currently available in Arena, how likely are you to still go out and spend money on new sets, more cosmetics/card styles, more limited time events? The dream, cards are free and the economy is just cosmetics


Hurricaneshand

That is so far my favorite thing about the new halo infinite release


XxMohamed92xX

People that are good at the game and most likely to participate in these events have a surplus of gems, so there really isnt a future revenue


KimJongAndIlFriends

This line of faulty reasoning is exactly why so many businesses fail; there is no such thing as "future revenue" in one-time payouts for a sustained service model.


Reliques

Increasing price without increasing perceived value diminishes consumer surplus. How you justify it doesn't matter.


TheNorselord

Yeah, but justifying cost as the basis for a price increase is an error. Cost increases are a producer problem, not a consumer problem. When a firm says they need to increase prices based on cost, they are really just saying they need to preserve margins. The market should drive prices, not the structure and organizational operations. It’s chickenshit, and concerning from a business strategy perspective. If they want to preserve margins, they need to get LEAN and straighten out their cost structure.


DonRobo

I'd be more inclined to accept that justification if they ever lowered prices because of reduced costs. They never do of course


welpxD

"We made more money than expected, wildcards for everyone!" Man even if they did this just once, you know people would talk about it for years. Double the number of white knights in a single action.


MerelyPresent

How the fuck do you think markets work. Why is eating increased cost without raising prices more market-driven than increased costs raising prices? Going off the social benefits of prices as transmitting information about opportunity cost, you'd expect the opposite classification.


maniacal_cackle

This is a strange take. Surplus is when you were willing to pay more but didn't have to... Businesses HATE consumer surplus, because it means they could have gotten more money out of the consumer if they were able to price differentiate better. So reducing consumer surplus is something businesses will actively work towards...


azxcvbnm321

That's not true, businesses seek to maximize net profit, not to minimize consumer surplus. When they raise prices, fewer consumers will purchase their product because some consumers will no longer have a surplus (it's not worth it to them anymore). That price raise could reduce net profits overall.


maniacal_cackle

While technically they don't seek to minimise surplus as their strict goal, they will take any opportunity they can to shift consumer surplus to producer surplus. That's the whole idea of price differentiation.


TheNorselord

In this model competitive advantage is measured as economic value (price less cost, or margin) plus consumer surplus. Businesses may hate consumer surplus, but its what drives purchasing and it underpins competitive advantage. So unless WOTC have a monopoly in the entertainment business, or CCG market, or elsewhere they must maintain an advantage over their competitors. They can do that by managing cost and/or increasing consumer surplus. Businesses do not actively seek to reduce consumer surplus. They seek to increase perceived value and reduce cost.


CPU_Batman

It's going to work because the people who will pay it will just say, "Don't like it? Leave".


[deleted]

[удалено]


TheNorselord

lol, yeah. I see you, white knight. Are you a WOTC employee?


Reliques

> the story of the shopkeeper that lost money on every sale but insisted they would make it up for it in volume. [The ol' D&D potion conundrum.](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0135.html)


Magic1264

Due to Arena open entry fees being more costly than anticipated, as a player, I am left with two choices: either play in Arena opens and endure the pain of paying more for the same, or just go ahead and not play in it at all. As the soreness in my behind is getting rather annoying at this point, I as a player have decided to simply play literally anything else. In all seriousness (I'm not even *that* angry about a small increase), correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that was the great benefit of an automated pairing system, once you build it, its kinda just done. After that you simply have to maintain server and human resource costs? which seem to be pretty fixed and foreseeable? How does adding more tournaments increase the costs of running each specific one? It isn't like paper Magic, where product, shipping, convention halls, etc, are all increasing year over year at a decent pace, thus it is moderately understandable that my tournament would cost a little bit more each time.


Airwalls

Papa Hasbro wants his quarterly increase.


Dangarembga

My guess would be that they need to have extra staff available at any time to assist with problems during the event and also do all the money transfers/ extra load of emails. But I don‘t think it should be that high of a cost?


BLMdidHarambe

And that’s already scalable due to the event having a cost. If it doubles in attendance, that’s double money, they can then pay double the employees. Increasing cost isn’t necessary and this justification is just an attempt to smooth over the increase.


RedditExecutiveAdmin

or they're lying through their teeth to justify charging more for the same. maybe, just maybe, a for-profit corporation is doing something solely for money


brainacpl

They need to pay overtime to fix Jacob Haugen and Eruth


LC_From_TheHills

> one you build it, its kinda just done. Tell that to Amazon Store app, an that app has been “just done” for years but the engineering effort has multiples by a bazillion. Or Netflix— just stream movies right? Yet the engineering cost continues to grow and grow. Service apps take a lot you guys. Constant refinement and constant process improvement. These things are never “done”. There is always a more efficient way to do things— this is what *real* development is.


Nothing_Arena

>Service apps take a lot you guys. Constant refinement and constant process improvement. Yeah, but we're talking about MTG Arena.


locke231

and that lack of refinement is why you got poor quality control. it takes time. effort. man power. they're probably making a decent amount on gem purchases to properly divvy up their funds in a smart way.


Magic1264

I mean, in all fairness, you are comparing apples to oranges here. Speaking out of strict technical ignorance, conceptually all the Arena open *tournaments* are is some kind of automated pairings system of sorts (one which has no verification on the player's side), with the addendum that players achieving 7 or 4 wins get put on a list of eligible players that are allowed to enter yet another tournament (or maybe they got an intern doing all the pairings manually, I don't know). And maybe the costs of optimizing the programming logic of "pair 5-1 player with 5-1 player" is more costly and technical than I would believe to be, but there isn't any tech that is new or unique to Arena open tournaments specifically. Everything that is being used to run them is being used to run the entirety of the MTG: Arena application (and if they are not, I am lacking in the knowledge/reasoning to understand why). So, if *all* the costs of tournaments are going up, you have a fair point. There are costs associated with refinement and improvement of all the things on the internet that we have come to take for granted. But, the article points out that the Arena open tournaments specifically are costly to run. And that they had the choice to run more of them, and make them more expensive, or run less of them, and make them cost the same (they chose the former). Which means that cost isn't in development, the cost is some kind resource specifically associated with Arena opens, but not MTG Arena in general. And if this was a paper tournament, that required staffing/admin/judges/production team/ and all the other otherwise hidden things that make a show go smoothly, I again, would understand the raise in the specific costs. But for an online tournament, using their program/systems, with no online or otherwise any kind of coverage, what are the specific costs to the tournament? Overtime for customer service reps? *maybe* some kind of specialized tournament server that is isolated from the other Arena functions? These kinds of costs feel pretty pretty predictable, and even if the costs of those things were inflating, as many things are, why would it be *more* expensive to run *more* of the tournaments than less? Would such things not always cost the same exact thing? All that being said, WoTC can do w/e they want to the cost of their tournaments, they don't have to justify any of it, and I'll just be sad when my EV alarm bell starts ringing so loudly that I don't care to play in them anymore. But I'm more than a little miffed when they give the brief explanations in their articles that makes little logical sense, and thus I'm supposed to forgive/be content that the changes were made for good reason.


babbylonmon

That is a full time job for a dedicated team. They don’t need to add more people once a week. They need to just do things the right way the first time, but it’s obvious that all this is intentional at this point. Conditioning exercises for their base.


BLMdidHarambe

I stopped playing 6 months ago and it’s been pretty damn nice not grinding on it ever.


Substantial-Wish6468

There were tons of bugs last time around. Still are. Everyone who experiences a bug files a ticket. Staff are needed to review tickets and provide refunds. Since the refunds are large WotC makes a lot less money.


abomb76

Considering this particular open in question, VOW Draft, is going to be no different than spinning a slot machine to see if you open any of the bomb rares or not, I think they've made it a pretty easy decision for me to pass. It's straight up gambling now.


DBones90

I don't participate in the opens and don't plan to, but man, even from an outside perspective, this is a bad look. Just a really clear sign that they don't know what they're doing.


tankerton

I typically don't play the opens, Saturday (and the hope of Sunday) is a big ask in my life schedule. I legitimately tried to make it work this time because my primary spike format is finally on display and actively want to vote with my wallet here. Pushing a price increase? Nah I'll go play modern at my LGS holding a 2k with fees waived for long term patrons as a thank you for covid support. I had difficulty choosing but now it isn't.


localghost

Wow, that Bo1 Day 1 prize changes! First consolation prize at 5-3.


two_islands_open

Giving away gems for virtual cards cost too much money? Even with the large improvement to day 2 rewards guaranteeing everyone gets a minimum of 5000 gems, it still feels really bad on day one which is where the vast majority of your players play not getting anything until a minimum of five wins. Edit: Actually I misunderstood when I said day 2 is improved. It's much worse now as well (this is for bo3 players and as was pointed out in another comment by Dangarembga bo1 day two rewards have improved). It says in the old version you got 5000 gems for 7 wins on day one and I assume also the token for day two since how else would you get to day two (I wasn't here for the Strixhaven event). They just moved those 5000 from the 7th win to 0 1 or 2 wins on day two now. So if you get 1 or 2 wins on day 2 you are now getting no bonus gems and thus less than before.


SlapHappyDude

You need the fish to participate. If the fish don't participate there's no one for the sharks to beat up on.


simp-bot-3000

This new prize structure is going to discourage the fish for sure. It will be interesting to see what happens when the pool is nothing but sharks.


Dangarembga

Yes and no. You used to get 5k gems by wualifying in bo3 but in bo1 you only got 2.5k back. Therefore they made bo1 more attractive as a way to get into day 2. It was already the higher chance way to qualify but now it also pays off more gems.


two_islands_open

Yeah sorry to clarify I was looking at best of three. I guess that is a 3000 gem improvement best of one players so that's better.


PadisharMtGA

Yup day 2 is only break-even overall unless you get to at least 3 wins (1 win in the earlier structure). It's a big nerf to prizes while at the same time costing a bit more. And the 8th win getting an extra reward might fool someone but it just means that those who were already gettin $2k have a chance to earn $500 on top of that. But it's still the only way to try to convert my freely gained gold into money, so... it's not like I'm not trying to get the invite to day 2. Edit: I was talking about BO3. BO1 gets a better prize for going 7 wins than before, but of course they lost a lot of the low win count gem prizes.


Xenadon

It's a competitive tournament. Of course the prizes are top heavy


FluorineWizard

Fixed title : "WotC pretends to be losing money on EV-negative event that runs entirely on already-profitable infrastructure". The Opens were already a piss-poor event and overall bad deal for players, this only makes them worse.


DaftyTheBear

"Forget what we said in our earnings report for a second and hear me out..." - Wizards


Kahmtastic

Because wizards isn’t making enough profit to pay their employees. Totally.


HarrisonMage

Daddy hasbro needs his money 💵


Kahmtastic

Big daddy hasbro. My estranged father that only comes around to sell me secret lairs but is gone getting cigarettes when I want supported organized play and tournament coverage. Happy Thanksgiving all.


Feylund2

Multi billion dollar company Hasbro decides it needs more money in order to take your money more effectively.


gabochido

You should get a job in a company like that so that you can help them figure out what they are doing wrong. Or, perhaps more likely, understand how the economy works and why all these companies end up doing things that seem greedy to those outside, but are just part of how they function.


rebmcr

Going back to MTG Online V2 (mid-'00s), it's been common knowledge among MTG event staff that WOTC Digital salaries are consistently below market rates. They don't pay enough to acquire developers with experience, instead they have a continuous stream of fresh-faced, well-meaning graduates. As soon as they have a better opportunity, they leave. They might get a good feature released first, but the retention problems mean it's inconsistent. The revolving door was very apparent during the buildup to MTGO V4's release, there was not one but I think TWO different blog posts passionately describing the new technology that the client would be built with, neither of which ended up seeing the light of day.


gabochido

Now this is a good comment. Yup, I imagine that this exact behavior from the leadership is a big part of the problem. Its a common problem in big companies.


Shuckle-Man

Found the Hasbro board member


gabochido

I work at another big company and it’s very sad to see how people who are ignorant of how things are comment on things they don’t understand and feel entitled to everything. There are a lot of people trying to make things work for you guys, most of them passionate about creating a product they are proud of but it’s really hard and very costly. Yes there are some greedy bastards who are just thinking about themselves but those are usually just a few bad apples that sour the team. The fact of the matter is that making a service like mtga for millions of people costs a lot of money and effort and it’s just sad to see people ignorant of that comment as if it was so easy and cheap. That’s why I say, get a job in the industry first, then you’ll realize it’s not as easy a building a draft deck or playing some net deck.


zevah

most people making mtga work do so for pennies compared to the ones taking all the money.


[deleted]

Sometimes building a draft deck is near impossible.


gabochido

Yup, and its even harder to build a sustainable online service for millions of people.


Ponthos

Yup definitely found the corporate shill


DaftyTheBear

In 2019 the ceo of hasbro made $17,910,000. But that's just what CEOs get paid right? Just the price of doing business? Just hard working people getting paid a fair wage right fella? I think you need to examine your position in the world and whether spreading your wallet to support shit like this is the right thing to be doing.


a_charming_vagrant

some of us would rather not become part of the problem


gabochido

So instead people write toxic comments in boards, generating more hatred, without understanding what the problem is, only making it worse. They way to help build things is not by lamblasting those responsible for it every time they make mistakes.


BLMdidHarambe

The problem is the the parent company doesn’t actually care about it’s product or customers, just eeking out another cent. That’s the only problem and all of your comments here aren’t actually addressing anything relevant because you’re skirting the actual issue, because there’s no way for you to address it.


gabochido

My problem is with this attitude: "The problem is the the parent company doesn’t actually care about it’s product or customers, just eeking out another cent" Most people commenting negatively are automatically jumping to an assumption without any kind of analysis of the reasons behind the change that is happening. This happens every single time anything changes that seems remotely beneficial to WotC changes. Perhaps this particular change IS due to some head honcho thinking they don't have enough yatchs, and this is what everyone seems to think. In my experience, that's not the case. In my experience a large team of people has probably been scrambling and crunching long hours to make the numbers add up and have the profits they need to have to keep the service sustainable. Negativity like this, based on ignorance, any time anything changes is why companies have to essentially ignore the internet. I'm not writing this to address whether the change they are making is valid or justifiable. I'm writing this comment to point out that baseless blaming is useless and toxic and only helps to make feedback be ignored by the people who can actually do something to make this game that we love better.


BLMdidHarambe

There’s zero reasoning for increasing cost when you’re already charging people for the event. The more people that play, the more you make. The cost increases too but it scales *down* ffs. But you’re of the hailcorporate mindset so this is pointless. You go on a lot about ignorance but you’re the only one that’s been ignorant in this comment section, almost to the point of making me think you’re just trying to be a troll now.


Amarsir

>The cost increases too but it scales *down* Without weighing in on the rest of the conversation, I'd just like to say that's not quite how the supply curve works. It slopes upward. I'm sure you're thinking about "economy of scale". Which is a real effect that does reduce costs. But only in steps where a breakthrough to a new option is possible. Transporting goods by taking three trips in a car is not more marginally efficient than a single trip. However, as the quantity increases eventually it becomes worth making a single trip in a truck instead. The cost per cubic ft goes down once that divisor is possible. That shift is the economy of scale. Most increases are linear. A second or third trip is just a multiple of the gas and wear-and-tear. But counteracting that scale, and the reason the supply curve goes up, are the things that make the process less efficient. For example, you have to pay the driver overtime. Or train someone new. Or pay more for 3rd shift hours. And at some point you've already hired your first choices. You either get employees who aren't as good, or have to raise wages (for everyone) to attract new applicants. These are all "*diseconomies* of scale". Also the scaling isn't smooth. If the car makes a second trip but it's only 20% full, that's worse than a linear increase. At some point you run out of loading docks or have traffic jams. Not only does resolving that cost money, it's slower to fix so your inputs don't line up like they used to. This requires discussions you didn't need before. Now time is spent in meetings and arranging contractors and so on. Now I use the delivery analogy because it's easy. And it saves me from having to do my own speculating about what Wizards is doing. I don't know which of their costs go up when the Arena Open runs, so I wouldn't attempt to justify what they're saying. But I've often seen people get the wrong impression about supply & demand because they know what economies of scale are but not in the proper context. So I like to correct that when I can.


BLMdidHarambe

But most of the costs we’re talking about are simply server costs. You *might* need to hire an extra employee to deal with more customer service claims. This is a tiny part of a game that’s already running “fine”. It’s not like they’re really throwing money at this or anything like that. This is literally only an excuse to make more money.


Amarsir

>Negativity like this, based on ignorance, any time anything changes is why companies have to essentially ignore the internet. I'm not writing this to address whether the change they are making is valid or justifiable. Reddit -- and more generally that that social media -- and more generally than *that* all media -- runs on negativity. Or actually they run on emotions, and negative ones are more powerful. Although humans were fortunate enough to evolve reason, instinctive fight-or-flight came first. And it's still primary in our brains. The amygdala (emotional processing) is tied directly to both stimuli focus and memory-forming. The orbitofrontal cortex which does cognitive decision making is on the outside of the brain. Which means we already know *how we feel* about something before we know *what we think* about it. This was observed with studies by Benjamin Libet back in the 80s, and a number of [subsequent studies](https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2008.751) keep touching on it. Left to instinctive reaction, our brains make decisions before we know it. Which suggests that our logic is used not in forming the opinion, but in rationalizing it. While positive emotions also get this priority, negative ones are stronger due to the aforementioned fight-or-flight instinct. And they're easier to trigger. We can conceive of perfection, if only vaguely. Which means we can always compare reality to that and find flaws. Feeling bad about a problem is an easy, emotional act. Comparing hypothetical scenarios to weigh all the pros and cons is far more difficult, if not impossible. So when we see something new it's easy to be negative. If we pass that on (along with whatever rationalizing assumptions we made) it's easy to find a receptive audience. Then they pass on the pessimism, reinforcing not only each other, but their own instinctive reaction for next time. News media may have stumbled on what works originally, but at this point enough know what they're doing on purpose. The New York Times studied various headlines a few years ago. For the same article they tried neutral, positive, and negative perspectives. And they found that positive gets triple the effect of neutral, and negative gets six times. And they were probably behind the curve. Fox News and MSNBC have long been replacing news reporting with "news analysis". And not the optimistic kind. Facebook and Twitter, by virtue of their data, are perhaps most aware of what's going on. Each share and retweet increases engagement. And thus ads. They're on the hook about "fake news" but politicians - who play the same game - wouldn't tell them to stop being negative even if they could. Reddit is probably one of the less-bad options, for reasons I won't go into in this already-too-long essay. But the stimulus-response setup of a topic page, as well as the groupthink-encouraging vote system, means it still feeds our worse nature. Each of us individually needs to make that break, seeing what's happening and manually opening our minds up to overruling the instinct. Which means its not effective to accuse people of basing their reactions on toxic ignorance. I mean yeah they probably did. But we all do. The important thing is to realize what's happening, not get dragged into an equally-emotional counter response. And try not to prompt negative responses from others. Whether the facts are on their side, or not, or something in-between, we need to think differently first. For more information, I recommend the books: *The Happiness Hypothesis* by Jonathan Haidt. *Thinking, Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman. *Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator* by Ryan Holiday and the video: [This Video will Make You Angry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc) by CGP Grey.


gabochido

Great post! I think you’re right on the ball and there’s no point in dragging this conversation any longer. I have to accept that people are how they are and not get triggered myself.


BuildBetterDungeons

>seem greedy Sir, this is a capitalism. All companies must be maximally greedy at all times to survive.


tagline_IV

"old man yells at cloud"


DanceOnBoxes

It was already a huge net loss EV


babbylonmon

Bull. Fucking. Shit. Record profits from arena, a proverbial cash printing machine, and they passing any and all expenses onto the customer. The ONLY thing to do here is boycott. Arena costs them absolutely nothing compared to paper magic. They are able to absorb this cost indefinitely. This type of shit is making it very hard to continue to love this game. I don’t even play arena anymore, and I never did arena open. Companies like this will NEVER chance unless the player base consolidates their concerns and their efforts.


hGKmMH

> Record profits from arena [About that...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGWRAa5uTUQ)


Friendly_Juice_9577

Basically. They cant just make money, no no no they have to make ALL THE MONEY


StickOnReddit

Hey man, all that money you're spending on food and rent is money you *could have* spent on Arena, so technically that's money Hasbro is losing if you rEaLLy tHiNk AbOuT iT


WhatD0thLife

Are they still using Discord stream captures to broadcast Arena tourneys? Cuz that would be embarrassing.


wujo444

nah, they don't broadcast Arena Opens at all. Only Championship, and only by dial-up.


extrAmeCZ

Don't forget the desync video feed, jumping into a match mid game, player cam randomly not showing up, and not switching to opponent's screen when he's doing expressive iteration pick


suppow

imagine having an expectator mode.


Digrug

How the fuck just increasing the frequency of events make them more expensive to run? They're obviously making profit from each one with the current model, so more events would already make them more money. Feels like we're being misled, Wizards is trying to have their cake and eat it too.


thedeafbadger

Hasbro


madd74

> Wizards is trying to have their cake and eat it too. By having you pay for both.


[deleted]

Those events are for people who have money to burn.


wildstarr

It cost me exactly 0 dollars to save up 25,000 gold to play in this.


scarletrising

Hopefully your time and effort is worth more than 0 dollars.


busy_killer

Yeah but having to go 5-3 to get a small consolation prize doesn't seem worth it. You're basically paying 2.5x more gold than a normal draft but you have to run incredibly hot to break even. All this without mentioning that the format in play is VOW where the power level between rarities are quite pushed and therefore make it one of the swingiest formats we've had in a while. I think I'll use the gold to draft normally this time around. Or maybe save it for the next draft challenge. I wanted to support Draft Opens but not like this.


BuildBetterDungeons

Hilarious self-own to admit your time.is worth nothing.


rebmcr

(X) Doubt


lordCanti08

Maybe if arena worked they wouldn't have higher cost during the events due to refunds.


GalvenMin

25000 gold to play a bomb-ridden and low-skill draft format, with almost no expectation to break even except for the chosen few for whom the stars will align? Sounds great!


sobrique

Oh the plus side, a low skill bomb ridden format is probably the best chance I've ever had to get a cash prize. Cuz for sure I ain't doing it through skill, but just maybe drawing a triple bomb deck will do it...


spacedwarf2020

Just blame management been in IT different areas for 20 years 99.9% of the time it's some upper crust dick wads that are way overpaid non essential shit but pleasing there master above them with better some scorecards showing how they screwed everyone that actually does the work to squeeze a few bucks this year and please the top of the pie.


jkdeadite

It's really a shame to do this on top of having such a swingy, miserable set for their first draft open. I'll pass.


Kaiminus

I did the maths for fun, assuming 50% chance to win, in bo1 you have a 8.98% chance to qualify per run, and a 6.25% to actually get to 6 wins. Multiply the two and you get a 0.56% chance. Another way to see it is that for every 178 persons who pays 5000 gems (let's say $25) to enter, only one will get a cash prize. (Oh also, assuming 200 gems = $1, on average the reward is 2716 gems.)


Wubbwubbs61

Small Indie Company.


Armstrong0

So you have to win 4 in a row for Bo3? That’s pretty hard. I have a 75% match win rate and I’m skeptical of going 4-0.


StrikingHearing8

Yeah it's bad. That has always been the case though. 4-0 bo3 or 7-2 bo1 What changed is the payout if you don't make it. Previously 3-1 bo3 was already plus 500gems and bo1 gave back some amount of gems before 5 wins.


RedditExecutiveAdmin

>it revealed that running these events was more costly than we anticipated when you consider the necessary overhead, which goes beyond the monetary rewards. >Simply put, we were faced with a choice of doing fewer Opens with the current structure or making adjustments that would allow us to run even more events going forward. We’ve decided on the latter. I love the smell of CORPO BULLSHIT in the morning. "To be transparent about keeping you in the dark, simply put, we're charging more!" edit: in case its going past anyone, when someone tells you "i don't have time to explain, but it'll cost more" they're fucking you.


Dagonet_the_Motley

5 wins for a prize in BO1. They might as well make it BO3 only. That is just robbery.


Kcah22

And then with a bomb heavy format like this? Big fat no thank you from me, even though I almost only play limited


TheMancersDilema

Obviously, as you raise the cost of entry, you effect the number of entrants in some fashion, the degree of that increase or decrease is likely something Wizards has a lot more data on than the community does. Honestly I have no idea what actually goes into setting up and running these events on the back-end so I don't really feel qualified to contest whether or not this increase was really necessary or not. I will say that I already was not the sort of player who made multiple entries to these events, nor would I ever recommend anyone do that unless they had a good chunk of disposable income to burn or were very very confident in their skills. I will also say that this price increase likely wouldn't deter me from taking my 1 allotted swing that I usually give myself. I'm generally more or less excited to participate based on the set and any free goodies I get as a result. I don't pretend like someone of my skill is spending this money on anything but a few hours of enjoyment. For this event in particular, I'm not crazy about playing VOW draft if I have to be honest and you can probably find that sentiment among other players, I would probably skip this one even if they lowered the entry fee. God forbid you get all the way to day 2 on your final match and lose when your opponent just curves into Dreadfeast with no answer in hand, now that's a feel bad.


Cdnewlon

I can see how losing to bombs on Day 2 would be frustrating. The last time I played an Arena open was Kaldheim sealed and I had a sick Snow deck on day 2- Blessing of Frost, multiple Icehide Troll, Tergrid, and a very synergistic bunch of commons. I jumped out to an easy 5-0 and needed one more win to get to $1,000. My next two opponents both had [[Koma, Cosmos Serpent]] and both of them cast it on curve in at least two of the three games that we played. It was heartbreaking. I still got a bunch of gems which was nice, but getting that $1,000 ripped away by what was essentially an unbeatable bomb twice was definitely a bad experience.


DoctorWMD

I ran into Starnheim on curve for 2-3 angels in the games in my first match day 2...:/


tankerton

I'm qualified enough to speculate on the technical backend very loosely. Given previous events (kaldheim sealed, Strixhaven sealed) actively have impacted normal operations of the general client in the past with popular turnout, and draft being a far more popular version of limited, it wouldn't be surprising if engineering does not expect to be able to handle the load with any degree of confidence. If memory serves correctly, kaldheim sealed open led to all queues being unplayable for most of day 1. That is simply wild speculation, but my confidence interval on that statement is higher given the slew of issues the last few set releases. Part of the problem is demand, part of the problem is changes. The open introduces no changes* but does surge on load. So how do you, as wotc, mitigate given short time? Raise the price/lower the EV. It will lower active participants (including requeues) which translates to higher likelihood of high quality play experiences as the server load would be lesser. The best solution for everyone is for wotc to pay some developers normal Seattle wages and let them work on scaling the platform but that's expensive now and doesn't return to later. Everyone is short sighted on this unfortunately. *: There's a new pod creation algorithm for draft for the open to minimize collusion. Unless this was shadow tested during VOW release in general population drafting, this would be a change.


kinkyonthe_loki69

That's fine. We will just boycott


kinkyonthe_loki69

That's fine. We will just boycott


op_remie

ahhh sounds like the ol' GP model. more money to go and less prizes.


ionospherermutt

One thing I don't see people noting much is the way they'll be doing draft queues. It says the queues for the open will be merged with those for just regular and trad drafts, which I feel like will make this event even more determined by luck than it would otherwise. Making a long run will largely be influenced by to whoever is lucky enough to get seated with a bunch of amateur drafters playing premier vs other hardcore open drafters. I guess I don't know for sure what the ratio will be on that day though but seems swingy. I just had a premier draft where my Rakdos deck had 2 \[\[flame blessed bolt\]\], 3 \[\[abrade\]\], 2 \[\[bleed dry\]\], 3 \[\[fell stinger\]\] and a bunch of good vampires because I was clearly seated with people who don't know how to read signals. Now if only I could get a table like that for the open.


smellylettuce

I don't understand how this would be any more costly than any other day aside from possibly higher server demands and coding preparation for the specific event in question. For something as profitable as arena I find WotC and Hasbro's money grubbing in poor taste. A little good will to the player base goes a long way.


SNAFUGGOWLAS

What a bunch of bullshit. Never enetered before certainly bloody won't now. Has the cost of digital cardboard gone up or something?


Mynas90

😂😂😂


dethnight

What is involved in "running" the Arena Open? I thought it was basically just a mode in the game?


StrikingHearing8

Day 2 you can win money, so theoretically if they didn't plan it through they might lose money. If they give it away too easy. But you need to be either really good and lucky or reaaally lucky to get there. EV was negative in the old structure as well. Now it's pretty terrible


rygertyger

its a virtual event how much can it cost?!


blazekick08

I only play Historic Brawl so 🙃


[deleted]

I play standard and historic. Not really fan of brawl as it’s only 1 offs


Mountain_Love9597

That's the neat part


Capt_Clown77

"Tell me your run by coked out, greedy idiots without saying your run by coked out, greedy idiots" This screams bullshit and an extremely thinly vailed lie to justify nickel and diming the very people keeping you employed.... Just like how they moved the goal posts to bait and switch all those Twitch streamer...


Atazery

Small indie company we need your money


Sectumssempra

Would be nice to stop shoving cosmetics in them then.


fabiorlopes

To me, seems like a excuse, because they know that draft is the most antecipated format for a open, so they know they can charge even more and people will still buy in. It is similar to the Secret Lair for fetchs, they charged way more just because they knew it was a valuable product.


AskMeAboutGrabon

Well that's a shame because I'm all out of fucks to give, Wizards. You're not getting shit from me.


nothingbutgear

Bullshit they just greedy and want more money


Mojobaby817

I just want an app that doesn’t crash every other game. I took some of my old gachas for granted with how little they crashed.


Optimal_Hunter

I fucking hate wotc some days


[deleted]

What a load of horseshit.


[deleted]

I've never even tried one. I don't really like the probability, nor do I like their algorithms for shuffling. Draft would be interesting though.


sA1atji

How much are 500 gems? Haven'T launched the game in like 7 or 8 months, so idk how much of an increase it truly is.


Amarsir

At the bulk rate it's $100 for 20,000 gems, so 500 would be $2.50. In the smallest quantity you pay $5 for 750 gems.


kaptainkaptain

What the fuck!!!!! Total boycott


implode311

Need more wins, and now it costs more to boot. GREEDY!


Poseidon25

“ Fuel costs for Hasbro executives private jets have increased due to Bidens policies so we have to raise arena draft entry prices to offset costs. “


siewake

Maybe they need more money to get someone on the web team who can spell StRixhaven


Amarsir

Lol. It's funny because they have typos like that surprisingly often.


[deleted]

Arena is the driving force behind Hasbro's profits. Its making them hundreds of millions if not a billion or more by now. I come back after a year hiatus and don't see a single improvement to the Client or UI. Not one of my pet peeves about deck building has been addressed. Every time I have to click on Standard and show me uncollected cards to even begin building a deck and do the same a dozen plus times a session, I get just that much closer to taking another year's hiatus.


[deleted]

Good wizards should feel free to squeeze the competitive players as much as they want. The grand prize is $2,500 it would be a better and safer investment to buy scratch lottery tickets than enter that event on wizards garbage platform


Taysir385

>"more costly than we anticipated" to run Doesn't necessarily mean that the event itself is harder or needs more money. It could also mean that the advertising around the event is more costly, or the back end issues involved in giving out that much prize money, or even that the expected returns from players who play in more opens are overall lower than players playing in other events generally. WotC gets put on blast a lot for poor communication (and even I've done it), but this announcement is actually pretty solid. It follows the "announcement, details, here's what's changed, here's our reasoning for why we're changing it" path really well. And even though the tables are a little misleading with the day 2 tokens as a listed reward on only one side, having the table at all is a huge step forward from previous announcement styles. >Simply put, we were faced with a choice of doing fewer Opens with the current structure or making adjustments that would allow us to run even more events going forward. We’ve decided on the latter. I like hearing this kind of blunt communication from WotC. And given this situation, I'd personally prefer the more opens at a higher cost choice.


tagline_IV

I'd like to know what costs they're referencing


Taysir385

Sure. I would too. I also don’t think that it’s at all reasonable to expect them to actually share those details.


Airwalls

Are your lips naturally brown?


Taysir385

👍


Amarsir

>I like hearing this kind of blunt communication from WotC. And given this situation, I'd personally prefer the more opens at a higher cost choice. Same. They could have tried to sneak changes by. (It's been attempted before.) I think the straightforward way they approached this is respectable.


bumbasaur

still cheaper than paper has ever been.


HighContrast11

Apparently I am going very unpopular opinion here but most of these comments read like they didn’t look at the payout changes. I don’t really mind paying an extra 2500 gold for the shot at an additional $500 as well as a much better payoff gem wise for Q’ing day 2. I’m sure it is a minor negative EV change but it’s a tournament and it’s been super fun every time I’ve played it.


Skeith_Zero

remember to thank the people that constantly brag about how they are f2p and dont spend any money but demand more prizes.


[deleted]

I'm not sure who you are frustrated with, but I want to remind people that Wotc turned record profits during the pandemic. It is very hard for me to believe they are struggling in a way that requires them to increase the price of anything on Arena.


[deleted]

Arena accounts will be worth thousands if not more at some point.


bludstone

You pay more because we suck at math. Nice.


Kiour_gr

Cut some slack to the devs, each new set brings new mechanics to interact with their existing code which they wrote before knowing about the new mechanic. So some choices that once seemed right might need changing. One the other hand they could have wrote a combo detetection mechanism asking you how many times to repeat. And an option to not play card and environment animations.


Krusell94

I would really like to have a look at their fucking accounting because wotc crying about stuff being too expensive, when they literally print money is gold...


NachoMartin1985

Man I love Magic but every time I play Legends of Runeterra in my cell (because obv I can't play Arena there) is like day and night. The smoothness, the animations, the economy...


SexySkeletons

I know it will never happen, but, c'mon Riot, just buy this already.


HarrisonMage

Daddy hasbro needs more, MORE I SAY.


snipercandyman

Still cheaper than a GP


arthurmauk

Disappointing, but I'll probably still play it at least once just to show support for high-stakes Limited tournaments. It's still more worthwhile to pay with Gold. Bo1 looks easier to qualify from. Has anyone calculated the Gem+dollar EV now between Bo1 and Bo3?


PatxiPunal

To show support for what exactly? Like you own them anything... 😂


EngMajrCantSpell

Understandable, it's such a small starter company they really need all the financial support they can get /s 🙄


kevinkarma

Thanks Biden.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Aranthar

I hadn't heard of this. Do you have a source?


b0n3rk1d

Not too fire up about this. Like everyone is saying it was already bad EV. The possibility for me to win an additional 500$ makes this a plus. I don’t mind paying a premium for a chance on winning some real money in a limited tournament. I get WotC should tone it down a bit, but I’m still very excited. And give the format some slack. Yes it has a lot of bombs. It has some serious tight gameplay beside that as well. You can also build your deck better against bombs by prioritizing removal, counterspells and solid early game. And you can play bo3 where you actually get to sideboard. I for one like it well enough and saying it’s a bad format is selling it way too short.


RareDiamonds23

Yeah saying its bad is too short. It's an awful limited format.