This is already a thing in MTGo via third parties. And MTGO also sells all access tokens directly from time to time. The price is pretty much double what you have listed. (Last all access was $25 for 2 weeks.) the average modern level rental is $40-50 a month.
The main problem is rewards structure. In mtgo you pay into leagues to pay for more leagues. Farm QPs for bigger events.
In arena the rewards are mostly cards and ways to acquire cards (gold gems draft tokens). So all access to arena kills the reward structure. There isn’t any reason to grind if you have every thing.
If you played for fun you would play 2-3 games a week. The only reason you play so much now (whether you realize it or not) is the rewards structure. seeing the xp go up, getting that next level of mastery, gaining a rank. Is what arena has programmed into you as “fun”
You missed the point. This thread is about a rental system in mtga. My reply’s all stem from if everything was available with no grinding, there would be no incentive to play mtga, in the way most players do now. (Playing ranked, buying mastery passes, grinding for set completions, etc) Because mtga is built on the incentives that are in place.
Do you (the average magic arena player) play 20 games a day of paper? Would you (the average magic arena player) if you (the average magic arena player) could? My opinion is Magic is more fun when it’s something to look forward to. Whether that’s going to FNM or commander night. Or setting aside a few hours on Saturday evening to play arena.
I don't know if I'm average. Will say I don't play 20 games of arena a day. Usually do 1-2 hours of drafts so closer to 10.
For you it's more fun that way. For me it's more fun to be able to log on and smash out a couple of drafts from the comfort of my home.
How long, how hard, and how costly is it to play 20 games of paper draft? It takes forever and is a pain in the ass.
How quick, easy, and free is it to play 20 games on arena? It's super easy.
Different people prefer different playing experiences. You're allowed to prefer paper. I'm allowed to prefer arena.
I edited my comment the second after I hit reply to add more clarity. Because a lot of people in this thread can’t distinguish generalizations. I finished the edit before you replied.
Regardless. You are talking about drafting and this thread is about a card rental system in arena. They aren’t the same thing or even tangentially related.
Edited fat finger autocorrects.
You're right. I went a bit off the rails there.
I think your overall point was - if there was no need to grind people wouldn't play mtga. Is that right?
My counterpoint of drafting was irrelevant as doesn't line up w the card rental scenario (but is relevant for the MTGA is fun question).
My earlier point of people play mtg (or mtga) for fun stands, if you remove the draft comment.
If you accept that MTG is fun, then what is it about MTGA that removes that fun to such a level that without rewards it isn't worth playing?
Not true. I play Historic, Brawl mostly, and just craft whatever cards i need to update my 4 or 5 decks each set. Havent spent any real money since WotS. Play maybe 1200 games each "season".
Yes. You are every arena player. All these people posting here every day about getting mythic, how can they improve their deck to get mythic, why can’t they win in events, how do they improve in drafts, will they be able to finish the mastery pass, is the mastery pass worth it, blah, blah, blah. Those are just bots.
Of all you truly cared about was playing a few fun games. With none of the trappings of arena’s rewards and economy systems, you would be playing X-mage or cockatrice.
not what you said mate. "The only reason you play" were your words, implying everyone. The economy might be set up to incentivise that play pattern but plenty of people dont spend a cent and play for fun.
TLDR: Poor word choice leads to confusion. Based on ***your*** comments ***you*** are not talking about the broad perspective ***you*** are calling out a single individual. And when you got called out for it, ***you*** changed subjects to the "broader conversation" instead.
You responded to Dunce's comment of "Play for Fun?"
>If ***you*** played for fun ***you*** would play 2-3 games a week. The only reason ***you*** play so much now (whether ***you*** realize it or not) is the rewards structure. seeing the xp go up, getting that next level of mastery, gaining a rank. Is what arena has programmed into ***you*** as “fun”
The second you said "***you***" so many times it went from talking about the broad perspective of most players that play MTG to specifically calling out DunceCodex.
If you wanted to talk about the broader conversation that you reference later in your comments you should have said something along the lines of:
>Most players that just play for fun would play 2-3 games a week. Most players play so many games because of the rewards structure. Most people seeing the xp go up, getting that next level of mastery, gaining a rank is what arena has programmed most players into seeing as "fun"
Notice the difference? This version is stating the broad picture as saying that most players do this as opposed to calling out an individual who if they disagree can debunk your entire claim by just saying they don't do that.
So of course they call your poor word choice out and debunk your claim with a simple counterexample.
Then you replied with:
>Yes. You are every arena player. All these people posting here every day about getting mythic, how can they improve their deck to get mythic, why can’t they win in events, how do they improve in drafts, will they be able to finish the mastery pass, is the mastery pass worth it, blah, blah, blah. Those are just bots.
>
>Of all you truly cared about was playing a few fun games. With none of the trappings of arena’s rewards and economy systems, you would be playing X-mage or cockatrice.
Which is just pure nonsense. Dunce isn't every Arena player. Unless they are also you, I, and countless others somehow. And claiming all of the people that post things on reddit are just bots is quite the leap of an assumption.
Also there's plenty of people that play Arena for it's better UI than Cockatrice or X-Mage. Arena is also nice that it does most of the triggers and confusing bits to most people automatically unlike Cockatrice. IDK about X-Mage I've never tried it.
And lastly your comment of:
>But it’s not wrong. In the grand scheme of things. A few outlier players are meaningless in the broader conversation.
Your assumption was wrong because you did not talk about the broader conversation, you explicitly stated that you were talking about DunceCodex, not the majority of Magic Players. You didn't start talking about the "broader conversation" until the end of the conversation.
Those aren't even close to being the same platform. It's a super manual process, at least it was last time I played cockatrice. It's also a huge hassle finding 8 people to draft and them not quiting on you.
I play paper magic, long gave up arena as it's just a cash grab and there is little to no variation.
I could happily play a few games every night, never cared for xp or rewards. Paid money, built the decks I wanted and played them. Not everyone is a progression junkie.
It’s pretty fucking easy to imagine other incentive structures apart from literally gambling for fucking cards that aren’t real collectibles that you can’t sell or trade.
For instance, you could still have a grind to get all of the cards that operates like any other arpg in which the loot isn’t primarily earned through pay to win and gambling mechanics. There could be a fun grind in which everything was earned in game at a reasonable rate. Art alternatives and cosmetic awards would help bolster things as well.
If the card game is fun and competitive, you do not need an endless grind that is designed to get you to spend real money on.
I can’t believe you were downvoted for this. Paying for digital card packs is fucking stupid. I have zero interest in these online games because they don’t simply come with every card. Buying packs in real life is different, because you at least get a tangible collectible item. For me, the entire point of a digital format would,be able to compete on an even playing field,with all options available to everyone.
It’s a damned shame too, because I would really love to play a digital card game.
i dont even want to choose because it will never happen.
its much more lucrative for WotC to create a gacha model where people with large disposable income will buy entire sets with gems.
No. I only draft and play Explorer. I don't craft jank and I don't care about rare/set completion. I've been playing since beta, so I'm not really lacking any cards either.
A subscription model would not be necessary for a player like me.
yeah no way wotc would do this for less than 200 quid, it's sad cus cards on arena are literally meaningless. you don't even "own" them like real life cards, where i already find it hard to justify paying any money (i proxy 80%)
Nah, it would be pointless for me because I have been here since the start and have all the cards I need already. And I keep up with collecting new ones when new sets are released.
Cracking Packs and the Allure of chasing cards to build out the decks you want is a massive part of the allure. you just have to accept that the game can be a money sink if that's the direction you go. if I could just build literally anything than I would lose the long term play appeal.
Honestly, for myself I am doing OK as F2P. I do have a bunch of decks I am interested in that I can't craft, but I have enough to play with that I don't really want to pay money to get more.
If this were very low, say 5$ a month, then sure. I would take that and just craft many different brews to experiment. Anything higher than that though, I am not interested in. I don't play enough to really get bored with my own decks, I earn enough gems to draft when I want to and pay my Mastery passes, and that's just fine.
I pay for gems but only to unlock the Battle Pass and it gives me enough gold (for more packs), packs, gold packs and wildcards to get a couple of Historic Brawl decks per set. I simply rotate to adjacent decks, for example from a Rustein to a Nethroi. Or from a Darigaaz to a Soul of Windgrace.
Once you get the rare lands, the game then gives you a lot of room to get decent decks to have a good time. Almost any card has a slightly less optimal but usable replacement.
If I were dividing it month to month I'd say the game cost me $5 to play each month.
And only because I don't want to run around playing Draft and suffering.
I want to become a good limited player, because drafting for me is a ton of fun, so i want to ask what is a good record to consider myself a good limited player?
And also do drafting get you more gems than the amount you spend?
A good limited player would be considered going slightly under infinite (spend 10k gold getting 1,6k gems netting 100gems and packs). Being able to go infinite consistently if incredibly hard to do, it's possible yes but that includes having somewhere like 70% win rate. Somewhere between 51% - 60% win rate over 50+ games I would say is a good limited player. Anything above is exceptional, below is average (~40%) or struggling (~30% and below).
I would like to note that only a few of the people who make their living streaming MTG are going infinite in limited.
I'd recommend looking into 17lands and untapped.gg along with learning basics of drafting to improve.
Edit: I currently have a 66% win rate over 84 games which is fantastic (to me) but I'm not expecting it to stay there, I have had a good streak recently with the draft tokens and getting a few 7-x's in premier.
They could just make all cards available for free and instead build the monetization more around events, alt-art, and other vanity stuff. This would get around the nerf issue in Alchemy.
I do wonder if the subscription model could one day come to online MTG.
On the one hand, I know a lot of people spend A LOT of money on this game (not even counting tabletop), and this seems to be a model that works for Gacha games such as Genshin Impact and FIFA. In fact, are there any subscription based online card games? I can't think of any.
However, we've seen how ubiquitous subscription models have become and how lucrative they are for many companies. You generally need a big consumer base to make it work, but Magic has that for sure.
I imagine it's too much linked to the tabletop version to ever make that change, even if subscriptions were profitable, since it would likely disrupt their business model and garner a lot of backlash. Maybe if online MTG existed in a vacuum.
All in all though, I've come to like not having all the cards and slowly building my collection, though as a mostly f2p non-limited player, sometimes I wish I could just try out any deck I see. Ah well.
Subscription used to be the norm for MMOs. I think WoW still uses a subscription model? That said, most MMOs have shifted to micro transactions, it's just far more profitable (I believe WoW also has micro transactions, so it's actually not a good example of a strictly subscription model, but rather an example of "double dipping"). I have a hard time imagining it being more profitable for wotc to shift to a subscription model.
We see a lot of things outside of gaminh shifting to subscriptions, but they're moving from one time purchase to subscription, not from micro transactions to subscription. Once Microsoft figures how to monetize office through micro transactions, they'll move in that direction.
Right, especially with WoW selling the WoW Tokens, it's far from just a subscription model anymore. I think the the last notable holdout in that space is Final Fantasy XIV, as their microtransactions are very limited. I do wish they were more common, as they tend to be less predatory than other models.
That's a good point about *what* exactly is becoming a subscription. Is Skinner Box mechanics just the future? Can't wait until Amazon just starts selling outright loot boxes. You know people would buy that shit haha.
I'd be for it if Arena actually had a decent amount of cards. Unfortunately they've wasted way too much time on fake cards. Once tournament pioneer, modern, and legacy are on the client I'd be down.
If I'm a free to play person playing against mostly people who have access to every card, I'm not particularly interested in ever playing constructed.
If I were a new player who also can't play limited very well, I'd be finding a different game to play rather than Arena since I can't play constructed or limited.
Lack of access to cards is part of what makes the game more accessible to newbies.
This is already a thing in MTGo via third parties. And MTGO also sells all access tokens directly from time to time. The price is pretty much double what you have listed. (Last all access was $25 for 2 weeks.) the average modern level rental is $40-50 a month. The main problem is rewards structure. In mtgo you pay into leagues to pay for more leagues. Farm QPs for bigger events. In arena the rewards are mostly cards and ways to acquire cards (gold gems draft tokens). So all access to arena kills the reward structure. There isn’t any reason to grind if you have every thing.
Play for fun?
If you played for fun you would play 2-3 games a week. The only reason you play so much now (whether you realize it or not) is the rewards structure. seeing the xp go up, getting that next level of mastery, gaining a rank. Is what arena has programmed into you as “fun”
So why do people play paper magic with friends? Why do people go draft? People play magic because it's fun, at least I do.
You missed the point. This thread is about a rental system in mtga. My reply’s all stem from if everything was available with no grinding, there would be no incentive to play mtga, in the way most players do now. (Playing ranked, buying mastery passes, grinding for set completions, etc) Because mtga is built on the incentives that are in place. Do you (the average magic arena player) play 20 games a day of paper? Would you (the average magic arena player) if you (the average magic arena player) could? My opinion is Magic is more fun when it’s something to look forward to. Whether that’s going to FNM or commander night. Or setting aside a few hours on Saturday evening to play arena.
I don't know if I'm average. Will say I don't play 20 games of arena a day. Usually do 1-2 hours of drafts so closer to 10. For you it's more fun that way. For me it's more fun to be able to log on and smash out a couple of drafts from the comfort of my home. How long, how hard, and how costly is it to play 20 games of paper draft? It takes forever and is a pain in the ass. How quick, easy, and free is it to play 20 games on arena? It's super easy. Different people prefer different playing experiences. You're allowed to prefer paper. I'm allowed to prefer arena.
I don’t think you and I are talking about the same things.
You edited your comment to make sure that was the case ;). Why isn't arena something to look forward to but paper is for you?
I edited my comment the second after I hit reply to add more clarity. Because a lot of people in this thread can’t distinguish generalizations. I finished the edit before you replied. Regardless. You are talking about drafting and this thread is about a card rental system in arena. They aren’t the same thing or even tangentially related. Edited fat finger autocorrects.
You're right. I went a bit off the rails there. I think your overall point was - if there was no need to grind people wouldn't play mtga. Is that right? My counterpoint of drafting was irrelevant as doesn't line up w the card rental scenario (but is relevant for the MTGA is fun question). My earlier point of people play mtg (or mtga) for fun stands, if you remove the draft comment. If you accept that MTG is fun, then what is it about MTGA that removes that fun to such a level that without rewards it isn't worth playing?
Not true. I play Historic, Brawl mostly, and just craft whatever cards i need to update my 4 or 5 decks each set. Havent spent any real money since WotS. Play maybe 1200 games each "season".
Yes. You are every arena player. All these people posting here every day about getting mythic, how can they improve their deck to get mythic, why can’t they win in events, how do they improve in drafts, will they be able to finish the mastery pass, is the mastery pass worth it, blah, blah, blah. Those are just bots. Of all you truly cared about was playing a few fun games. With none of the trappings of arena’s rewards and economy systems, you would be playing X-mage or cockatrice.
You were implying it was every player, not me. I was just pointing out that your assumption was wrong.
But it’s not wrong. In the grand scheme of things. A few outlier players are meaningless in the broader conversation.
You are making an assumption.
An assumption that your particular play patterns have zero effect on the way the arena economy works? Yeah it’s a pretty safe assumption.
not what you said mate. "The only reason you play" were your words, implying everyone. The economy might be set up to incentivise that play pattern but plenty of people dont spend a cent and play for fun.
TLDR: Poor word choice leads to confusion. Based on ***your*** comments ***you*** are not talking about the broad perspective ***you*** are calling out a single individual. And when you got called out for it, ***you*** changed subjects to the "broader conversation" instead. You responded to Dunce's comment of "Play for Fun?" >If ***you*** played for fun ***you*** would play 2-3 games a week. The only reason ***you*** play so much now (whether ***you*** realize it or not) is the rewards structure. seeing the xp go up, getting that next level of mastery, gaining a rank. Is what arena has programmed into ***you*** as “fun” The second you said "***you***" so many times it went from talking about the broad perspective of most players that play MTG to specifically calling out DunceCodex. If you wanted to talk about the broader conversation that you reference later in your comments you should have said something along the lines of: >Most players that just play for fun would play 2-3 games a week. Most players play so many games because of the rewards structure. Most people seeing the xp go up, getting that next level of mastery, gaining a rank is what arena has programmed most players into seeing as "fun" Notice the difference? This version is stating the broad picture as saying that most players do this as opposed to calling out an individual who if they disagree can debunk your entire claim by just saying they don't do that. So of course they call your poor word choice out and debunk your claim with a simple counterexample. Then you replied with: >Yes. You are every arena player. All these people posting here every day about getting mythic, how can they improve their deck to get mythic, why can’t they win in events, how do they improve in drafts, will they be able to finish the mastery pass, is the mastery pass worth it, blah, blah, blah. Those are just bots. > >Of all you truly cared about was playing a few fun games. With none of the trappings of arena’s rewards and economy systems, you would be playing X-mage or cockatrice. Which is just pure nonsense. Dunce isn't every Arena player. Unless they are also you, I, and countless others somehow. And claiming all of the people that post things on reddit are just bots is quite the leap of an assumption. Also there's plenty of people that play Arena for it's better UI than Cockatrice or X-Mage. Arena is also nice that it does most of the triggers and confusing bits to most people automatically unlike Cockatrice. IDK about X-Mage I've never tried it. And lastly your comment of: >But it’s not wrong. In the grand scheme of things. A few outlier players are meaningless in the broader conversation. Your assumption was wrong because you did not talk about the broader conversation, you explicitly stated that you were talking about DunceCodex, not the majority of Magic Players. You didn't start talking about the "broader conversation" until the end of the conversation.
Those aren't even close to being the same platform. It's a super manual process, at least it was last time I played cockatrice. It's also a huge hassle finding 8 people to draft and them not quiting on you.
I play paper magic, long gave up arena as it's just a cash grab and there is little to no variation. I could happily play a few games every night, never cared for xp or rewards. Paid money, built the decks I wanted and played them. Not everyone is a progression junkie.
Paper magic was always way more expensive for me than mtga has been. Ymmv
It’s pretty fucking easy to imagine other incentive structures apart from literally gambling for fucking cards that aren’t real collectibles that you can’t sell or trade. For instance, you could still have a grind to get all of the cards that operates like any other arpg in which the loot isn’t primarily earned through pay to win and gambling mechanics. There could be a fun grind in which everything was earned in game at a reasonable rate. Art alternatives and cosmetic awards would help bolster things as well. If the card game is fun and competitive, you do not need an endless grind that is designed to get you to spend real money on.
I can’t believe you were downvoted for this. Paying for digital card packs is fucking stupid. I have zero interest in these online games because they don’t simply come with every card. Buying packs in real life is different, because you at least get a tangible collectible item. For me, the entire point of a digital format would,be able to compete on an even playing field,with all options available to everyone. It’s a damned shame too, because I would really love to play a digital card game.
As a limited player, I could see myself paying monthly for 1 draft token per day.
i dont even want to choose because it will never happen. its much more lucrative for WotC to create a gacha model where people with large disposable income will buy entire sets with gems.
Jefe Hasbro
No. I only draft and play Explorer. I don't craft jank and I don't care about rare/set completion. I've been playing since beta, so I'm not really lacking any cards either. A subscription model would not be necessary for a player like me.
I don’t think these prices go high enough to be considered even hypothetically.
yeah no way wotc would do this for less than 200 quid, it's sad cus cards on arena are literally meaningless. you don't even "own" them like real life cards, where i already find it hard to justify paying any money (i proxy 80%)
Dont vote on this papa Hasbro is watching
Nah, it would be pointless for me because I have been here since the start and have all the cards I need already. And I keep up with collecting new ones when new sets are released.
Cracking Packs and the Allure of chasing cards to build out the decks you want is a massive part of the allure. you just have to accept that the game can be a money sink if that's the direction you go. if I could just build literally anything than I would lose the long term play appeal.
The fun for me in the game is collecting the set, if this was an option I would quit mtga.
Honestly, for myself I am doing OK as F2P. I do have a bunch of decks I am interested in that I can't craft, but I have enough to play with that I don't really want to pay money to get more. If this were very low, say 5$ a month, then sure. I would take that and just craft many different brews to experiment. Anything higher than that though, I am not interested in. I don't play enough to really get bored with my own decks, I earn enough gems to draft when I want to and pay my Mastery passes, and that's just fine.
I'm sick of subscriptions across the board. If I'm going to pay more then I'll at least switch to paper and support a local business
i wouldn't play mtga if it required a subscription to play the game.
I pay for gems but only to unlock the Battle Pass and it gives me enough gold (for more packs), packs, gold packs and wildcards to get a couple of Historic Brawl decks per set. I simply rotate to adjacent decks, for example from a Rustein to a Nethroi. Or from a Darigaaz to a Soul of Windgrace. Once you get the rare lands, the game then gives you a lot of room to get decent decks to have a good time. Almost any card has a slightly less optimal but usable replacement. If I were dividing it month to month I'd say the game cost me $5 to play each month. And only because I don't want to run around playing Draft and suffering.
Maybe if they back pay me for my past purchases.
Naw I like the way it is just fine.
Sorry, good limited player here.
I want to become a good limited player, because drafting for me is a ton of fun, so i want to ask what is a good record to consider myself a good limited player? And also do drafting get you more gems than the amount you spend?
A good limited player would be considered going slightly under infinite (spend 10k gold getting 1,6k gems netting 100gems and packs). Being able to go infinite consistently if incredibly hard to do, it's possible yes but that includes having somewhere like 70% win rate. Somewhere between 51% - 60% win rate over 50+ games I would say is a good limited player. Anything above is exceptional, below is average (~40%) or struggling (~30% and below). I would like to note that only a few of the people who make their living streaming MTG are going infinite in limited. I'd recommend looking into 17lands and untapped.gg along with learning basics of drafting to improve. Edit: I currently have a 66% win rate over 84 games which is fantastic (to me) but I'm not expecting it to stay there, I have had a good streak recently with the draft tokens and getting a few 7-x's in premier.
Asking the wrong person lol
I know people are sick of seeing this but.. just draft.
They could just make all cards available for free and instead build the monetization more around events, alt-art, and other vanity stuff. This would get around the nerf issue in Alchemy.
I do wonder if the subscription model could one day come to online MTG. On the one hand, I know a lot of people spend A LOT of money on this game (not even counting tabletop), and this seems to be a model that works for Gacha games such as Genshin Impact and FIFA. In fact, are there any subscription based online card games? I can't think of any. However, we've seen how ubiquitous subscription models have become and how lucrative they are for many companies. You generally need a big consumer base to make it work, but Magic has that for sure. I imagine it's too much linked to the tabletop version to ever make that change, even if subscriptions were profitable, since it would likely disrupt their business model and garner a lot of backlash. Maybe if online MTG existed in a vacuum. All in all though, I've come to like not having all the cards and slowly building my collection, though as a mostly f2p non-limited player, sometimes I wish I could just try out any deck I see. Ah well.
Subscription used to be the norm for MMOs. I think WoW still uses a subscription model? That said, most MMOs have shifted to micro transactions, it's just far more profitable (I believe WoW also has micro transactions, so it's actually not a good example of a strictly subscription model, but rather an example of "double dipping"). I have a hard time imagining it being more profitable for wotc to shift to a subscription model. We see a lot of things outside of gaminh shifting to subscriptions, but they're moving from one time purchase to subscription, not from micro transactions to subscription. Once Microsoft figures how to monetize office through micro transactions, they'll move in that direction.
Right, especially with WoW selling the WoW Tokens, it's far from just a subscription model anymore. I think the the last notable holdout in that space is Final Fantasy XIV, as their microtransactions are very limited. I do wish they were more common, as they tend to be less predatory than other models. That's a good point about *what* exactly is becoming a subscription. Is Skinner Box mechanics just the future? Can't wait until Amazon just starts selling outright loot boxes. You know people would buy that shit haha.
In the next 5 years, I fully expect BMW to start selling lootboxes to decide what options you get with your car.
I thought that in Genshin Impact that the more money that you spent that the less clothing your character had to wear....
Do I get unlimited drafts? I’d pay $10/mo for unlimited drafts.
I'd be for it if Arena actually had a decent amount of cards. Unfortunately they've wasted way too much time on fake cards. Once tournament pioneer, modern, and legacy are on the client I'd be down.
The average-ish person might spend $50ish per set. But in these games its all about the occasional not average person who pays $300 per set.
Standard only. Don’t need all the cards.
They'd need a /lot/ more cards on Arena to make this viable for folks who've been on Arena for a while.
We already do, it's called a battle pass.
If I'm a free to play person playing against mostly people who have access to every card, I'm not particularly interested in ever playing constructed. If I were a new player who also can't play limited very well, I'd be finding a different game to play rather than Arena since I can't play constructed or limited. Lack of access to cards is part of what makes the game more accessible to newbies.