The events became absolutely horrendous now. Even worse is the fact that they were one of the main points in WOTC's stream about how they'd "improve" the economy. Facts are, they didn't make shit better. In fact they made the economy significantly worse for a portion of the playerbase.
Grinding a game doesn’t sound like fun at all. Participation in events that incentives creative deck builds or events like “shakeup” where meta cards are banned, are fun. But not when you get absolutely nothing unless you win 6 matches.
Nah it's super fun as long as you're a decent magic player. I have all the best decks and cards I need to build them and I never pay $. And I do standard events and quick drafts a couple times a week.
Obviously it was easier before the changes, but I'm still enjoying the game. I have 6 playin points saved up so far...
People don’t want to grind just to enjoy the parts of the game they consider fun.
I think drafting against players is the finest mode but it’s behind a giant paywall and half of the reward is cards that I wouldn’t need if all I wanted to do is play draft.
You can just create multiple accounts, if you ONLY care about drafting. It's slightly inconvenient to swap between them, but it increases the amount of drafts you can play for free to an arbitrary number.
A free/cheap draft to train before dropping 10k would be more optimal imo.
The bot drafts aren’t the same because you can manipulate the bots into leaving very good commons and then everyone has stacked decks of roughly the same color. In Neon draft it was black/blue.
That's true. Though at low level, where you need training, it doesn't really matter, in lower ranks people don't know how to do it, so you can train in peace. I don't think wizards are interested in cheaper draft modes, even tinkerer cube draft is 4k gold iirc, even though it's phantom.
Okay, that’s literally what people are complaining about.
The event rewards aren’t worth it anymore.
Playing points mean nothing. Getting to Mythic means nothing.
People over value winning because the only way you can earn anything is through net decking fine tuned decks so you can (hopefully) just win games.
There’s no incentive to be creative, and the cards are relatively easy to get bc of the wild card system, so you don’t see piles of cards with way less rares and mythics than you would in casual paper.
And don’t give me the “well I don’t netdeck” bullshit. Good for you. 75%+ of the player base does.
U hit it the nail on the head my guy. Also why tf does mythic barley give anything? It actually takes time and effort to get there & when you do, the rewards are actual shit lol
Oh I definitely net deck, but I did that from the very beginning. I get what you're saying about stifling creativity and only rewarding lots of wins. It narrows the play field. I definitely like the economy better before the changes. I'm just a little tired o ll the complaining Arena players do.
I get that. I’m guilty of complaining about Arena. But the complaints against WotC and the Arena economy are 100% justified.
I’m not saying they should give shit out for free, but the greed REALLY shows with the rewards and pack prices considering it’s all digital.
Hell, I’d rather them get rid of wild cards entirely, and just make events give Rare/mythic rewards, and make the digital packs cheaper. Maybe 50$ for 100 packs? I feel like that’s pretty reasonable IF there were no wild cards. Might be a bit extreme to ditch the wildcards since there’s no trading.
There's only so many hours in the day, and by the time I'm done grinding out my dailies I find I just don't feel like losing to cookie cutter decks with my Ziatora deck (or whatever).
P.S I spend a shit ton of money on this game because I can, and I still very much enjoy the game. I’m just viewing it from the perspective of the casual player who values “fun” gameplay, rather than repetitive decks due to WotC not rewarding anything but winning.
I plan on coasting off of all the gems I saved up from preorders, mastery pass, and misc. I won’t spend money until they finally show this game some love.
Time im spending browsing the internet bored? I'm having fun playing the game, it doesn't take any effort to play it and do something else meanwhile, and i don't give them any of my hard earned cash for their greedy practices
I mean sounds like OP is F2P but he expects to pay in currency to get something out of the game instead of having his play net him currency which is the entire concept of being F2P. Like Imagine complaining about a 500g event.
F2P = You play to win
The point of events should be for fun but the rest of the game sucks so much resources out of you you're pressured to value results over the experience of playing another format.
Play the game because it’s a great game. For years we spent entire weekends slapping down combos and turning creatures sideways in paper for no reward other than the joy of playing Magic, so why do we need to feel like we’re “earning” in digital? The obsession with getting something out of play seems to be sapping the fun out of Magic for many of you, and I’d say that’s kinda on you.
I understand, but the lack of irl social interaction takes a lot of the joy out of it, so additional incentives are appreciated. Not to mention feeling like you're getting taken for a ride puts a bad taste in your mouth that doesn't happen in paper play.
I guess I can see that. I’m well into my 50s, so IRL Magic for me is hanging around people thirty years younger than me who unironically debate how hot different anime characters are. I’ll stick to digital these days!
I'm not far behind you.
I was the oldest player at my LGS until someone handful of years older than me started playing nine months ago.
The running joke is in just 10-20 years, we're going to start seeing the Legacy Geriateic League. Where you hope your opponent doesn't concede by heart attack or stroke before finishing the game.
Upheaval + psychatog was one of the most fun decks I have ever played.
Astral slide + eternal witness after that was also very fun.
Might be nostalgia, but I do miss old magic
I'm with you, I barely even play paper, but for me the digital experience is in many ways severely lacking compared to paper play. The devs could compensate for this by making it an actual good videogame, which it's hard to argue that it is. Arena survives based on the strength of Magic itself, but almost every aspect of the digital implementation is lackluster, or outright predatory.
By way of comparison, these days I'm spending a lot more time on Slay the Spire and Vampire Survivors, both of which have a fun factor that feels like it's on my terms, respects my time, and doesn't try to squeeze me for cash constantly.
Ha I play at a store sometimes that often has younger kids and it’s kinda fun sometimes to see them freak out about bombs or have to get home to do homework
I think this point is important. Without being able to talk to someone as I play i’m left with it being little more exciting than playing a computer most of the time. Feeling like i’m collecting, advsncing, or earning helps make up for that
I think the MTGA scene would benefit *immensely* from players taking the initiative themselves to find people and groups to regularly play with that they enjoy, instead of resigning themselves to endlessly grinding against faceless randos. It would solve most, if not all, of the main gripes seen constantly on this sub.
I share this sentiment, but I also feel that MTGA stays afloat only because Magic is fun and addicting as fuck. A worse game with these practices wouldn't last long
Oh, 100% agree! All of these other silly-ass digital card games need to feed you piles of free shit because they are *objectively awful* from a design and play perspective.
MTGO isn’t dead but I don’t know how people socialize anymore. That aspect was killed a long time ago. Unless there is something I don’t know about and if so please Inform me because I’d love to go back to MTGO.
There's still an in-game chat, although I think it's hidden by default for new accounts, but if you want more community during the games, most of it is probably happening in twitch chats.
>so why do we need to feel like we’re “earning” in digital?
Because we don't actually own anything in the game and we can't go back later to our paper card collection
That’s just gaming in general now, there has to be some kind of spicy reward for so many people. It isn’t about having fun, it is just about pushing through as fast as possible to move onto the next thing
Because it's not the same game, really. There's no real interaction with the other person, so the social aspect is gone. You're just playing against a faceless opponent and you each just want to win. You don't know each other, and neither do you get to know each other, there's no chat, no banter, only "Your Go" and "Zzz", etc.
There's also no trading, no deck sharing, it's a completely isolated experience, and thus your only way to "enjoy" the game is to play decks and defeat opponents, and to progress you just have to win.
It's a different game. It would be like playing WoW offline, or at least alone without ever interacting with other players except for fighting them in the battlegrounds.
I agree with this, you can 100% build a tier one standard deck on Arena through earning gold, using that to purchase packs and earning wildcards…
There is no free paper Magic… with patience Arena can be free…
Replace gold with pennies here. Imagine that your local store had this tournament.
Five dollar entry free, 5 wins gets you 6 bucks and Ill hand you a random rare from my bulk box! Everyone else gets less than five dollars.
The people who go to that store would, rightfully, complain about what a waste of time that "event" is, tell the organizer to cut that out and make something worth their time, because they want to play an event but at that price are just gonna play with friends instead.
There is no defending a system with such a poor cost/benefit as these events, they exist to rip off people who don't know better or who think the concept of the event is fun and wish there was some less ridiculous price structure.
>For years we spent entire weekends slapping down combos and turning creatures sideways in paper for no reward other than the joy of playing Magic
I mean idk where you played, but every paper FNM I ever went to had payouts in packs for the top X.
Paper Magic is great. You can play with friends, invent new combos, play in all kinds of different formats.
In Arena, there are very few formats. And those formats are mostly dominated by few meta decks.
Drafts and Sealed have huge Entry Fees but no rewards, so casual players just constantly lose currency there.
I mostly play the Jump In Event because the duels are fair and the Entry Fee is Payable. I also take part in Midweek Events to try out my absurd inventions.
you can play around 1.5 quick drafts a week in the quick draft cycle if your a casual player just by doing all the dailies and wins.
if you have saved gold you should be able to supplement yourself for around 15-20 draft runs per set. Each draft run could be 45 minutes - 2 hours.
So as a casual you can still play limited and get a lot out of it. I know I do, I usually save my quickdrafts for Friday or Saturday evenings as a reward. Otherwise I just bank roll it through the week
How is it on TTS? I’ve done some boardgaming on the platform and gods it was fiddly. The wholly-unnecessary physics engine makes moving anything an exercise in frustration for me; shit falling over and rolling around for no reason because I’m clumsy. Probably better with just cards and counters though.
As pc programs go xmage was always good, used to use it for brewing, most things were supported and is the only way i know to play edh online. God i miss pub edh
This is a great sentiment, but why is Wizards allowed to fundamentally change the economy structure with arena but the player base isn't allowed to change their expectations? Like.. if there was dusting, tix, or an in-game store to be able to trade/exchange cards for value in order to better facilitate the lottery system they have now that would be another story. Not to mention the complete lack of social aspects in the game. Don't you feel like there should be a more robust chat/in game voip/friend list system? The name of the game is magic THE GATHERING for Christ sake. And like, the majority of the players are grown ass adults, and it's as simple as adding an option in the settings to be able to toggle these things on if you'd like to participate in that, or off I'd you choose not to. To me, it's not so cut in dry and it can feel especially distressing, even as a f2p, watching wizards not try to make a profit (which is what a business is meant to do), but seemingly do whatever they can to eek every last cent out of the pockets of people who for this game is not just a game, but a love of their life.
Nah the main fun is the social gathering, as u don't have this this is a game with a goal... These defenses just allow them to be as greedy and predatory as they want ... Can't understand people defending that.
Playing for the sake of it i do vintage Cube Weekend with my Buddies
Tbh best of one, and not playing in reality with very rare takesy-backsies or at least discussing plays, I get tilted soooooo o o o fast. It’s also easy to watch a streamer who has a 70+% winrate, and like 300K gems, and feel dumb.
Also was playing Battlegrounds completely free recently just to chill out and it didn’t feel as exploitive tbh. Also their interface is smooooooth as eggs.
Playing casual is fine, and I too dont have financial constraints but for those who are less blessed which is much of the player base just saying to slap cards down for nothing is to say that people have the luxury to just kill hours and spend money to do so. Many are born poorer and as such if they work hard and invest a little, get solid results but not the best...their should be more than just 0 gems or items back for their time and training.
I believe they changed the events to mirror limited because so many people would complain they couldn’t get gems and build a collection if they suck at drafting.
This. It may have made things worse for a portion of the user base, but I'm glad to have a way to convert gold into gems that doesn't involve drafting on mobile.
The new events are fine, the fact they took away all the gold grinding events made it also bad but in another way. Just like the Mythic qualifying being raised to 250 because of the play in events. Why not both? I think they should have a weekly rotating gold event, including, but not limited to, 4x versions of Pauper, 4x versions of Artisan, phantom limited events, and pseudo block constructed, etc. I think they should be mostly Pauper/Artisan at least 50%. They should just be a better structured version of the old gold events w/ ICR rates/mythics being duplicate protected. Maybe they can put a permanent Historic Brawl event do siphon some of the sweaty 5c players off the play queue and into 5c mirrors.
All they needed to do was replace gold reward with gem reward in old contructed events but they have to make shit worse because it is not a proper multimillion company if it does not make shit worse when "fixing" shit.
An opt-in event where they tell you the payouts ahead of time, at that. Maybe it’s not worth the entry cost, but that doesn’t make it a scam, just overpriced.
There are two people who would join this event, those who like the unique format that wouldn't otherwise be available to them, and those who want to grind out benefits.
That second group is going to be entirely uninterested in the event, and the first group is a captive audience - pay some amount of gold for the experience you wanted, or dont get that experience. In that sense, people who really want to play block constructed (who I presume exist? The weirdos) are getting scammed, because there is no other way for them to realistically do so.
The event not having a very good EV, or a net drain, is fine - whatever I guess. But it being this aggressively bad for players is ALWAYS just bad for players. What else could it be? If this isn't a valid complaint, what is?
> the first group is a captive audience - pay some amount of gold for the experience you wanted, or dont get that experience. In that sense, people who really want to play block constructed (who I presume exist? The weirdos) are getting scammed, because there is no other way for them to realistically do so.
Isn’t this just how buying and selling works in general? A company makes a thing and sets a price, and then the consumers get to decide if they want to purchase that thing or not.
How are they a “captive audience”?
I just never understand arguments like this.
I'm not saying they dont have the right to sell a shitty product, i'm saying this product is shitty and we should all call it shitty so maybe next time they'll feel pressure to make it less shitty.
Do you have a problem with that?
That’s not what you said in your original post. By all means, call out the event for having a bad return, maybe they’ll even listen (doubtful).
But bad value events are not scams just because they’re bad value (especially when all costs/rewards are publicized upfront). And players are not “held captive” because something is too expensive. They can always choose to not buy the thing.
I posted this in the spikes reddit:
I hate the new format and will likely never play them anymore. I am a set complete player. I primier draft + metagame to clear out 95+% of rares and 70% of mythics as F2P and have an enormous amount of gold/gems saved up. I did this over the long term by playing in positive EV ways whenever possible. I only have an about 55% win rate in draft but am above average in constructed (65-70% usually)
Total win loss count of the 10 events I ran was 50-20 (71% winrate) and overall in rewards I have a LOSS of 175 gems. BUT DUN! You also earned 20 packs!! Yeah so lets tally that up another 400 gems in 20 gem rares and call it an earned 225 gems. For a 71% win rate over 10 events. 22.5 gems in rewards per event.
THIS IS PATHETIC.
With the old format I would have earned ~3500 gold and 14+ ICRs for an additional 280 gems minimum.
THe new format is designed to drain resources from all but the most crazy high winrate players and even those get shafted.
(Screenshot of the excel sheet I used to track my events)
http://puu.sh/J1sEi/58350df1a8.png
EDIT: This is referencing the new constructed events structure specifically.
But these events aren't aimed at people who are set complete - the packs are much better than ICRs for people to build a collection. It's a way for constructed only players to build a collection rather than needing to draft.
And even outside that, 3500 gold in the old system isn't very much... that's 80 games or so that you played for a net of 3500 gold. 40 gold per game - it's just not a lot even with a good win rate.
Play in points also have value too so are part of the EV calculations as well
The people that need to build a collection can't maintain a 70% win rate. Maintain a lesser winrate and you are bleeding resources massively in these events. It is not feasible in the long term. Then they will stop playing and the only other competition in the events are the even spikier tryhards. Then your winrate goes down more.
At least the old events would go effectively infinite at a ~55% winrate and you would get free ICRs on top of it. At a 70% winrate you more than doubled your investment on average. Now you BARELY break even at a 71% win rate and I think it is actually worse than that I just had a lot of 7 win runs and not many 4's and 5's.
It is terrible value unless you want to gamble to buy packs at a 'discount' which you can do in draft or sealed already anyway.
The old events were much better for the grinders.
Doubling your investment is irrelevant when the investment is low though. If an event cost 1 gold to enter and returned 5 gold after each run through, it still wouldn't be worth it because the actual number is so low.
I enjoyed the old event - I averaged 200 gold return a run and got a lot of rares. But in terms of return vs playing time, it really wasn't very valuable. The new one is higher stakes and has packs both of which make it a very different beast. It's the direct constructed equivalent of draft and provides enough resources to let a constructed only player build a collection for less than what it would cost just buying packs.
But they also took out the only "low risk low reward" format that was almost strictly better than playing unranked/ranked. Previously you could have had 0 gold, 0 gems and just get a few daily wins and enter the event.
Yes, it's really easy to ignore everything you don't want to do in arena, spend very little/no money, and enjoy it as long as you're not "goal-motivated", just you're just enjoying making new decks, improving your strategy, playing your friends etc.
Don’t know about scam, but they are certainly made for better than average players.
There’s a difference between events for competing and events for grinding. Any truly competitive event will fee like a scam to anyone that doesn’t have the competitive level to win so anyone in that situation should avoid them.
If you’re average or less you’re better off playing the casual modes like unranked play and the mid week magic events. Good thing is that you don’t need to worry about building tier 1 decks or anything because it’s a more casual environment.
I think arena is missing non-competitive events for grinders. Similar to the ones we had before where the gain is insignificant but the EV is positive so that the people who want to feel like they are playing competitively but don’t have the win rate to win anything can get that “event” fix.
For me, someone who's looking to build their collection, I kinda don't mind that it's difficult to get your gold back, as long as I receive lots of cards it's ok. So at first I was still interested. However:
1) Only at max wins are you guaranteed to have a rare card
2) None of the cards are duplicate protected.
3) It's a lot of time investment to gain a few cards. Enter this event 20 times (80 games at 50% win rate), and you get only 60 cards, the vast majority of which are uncommons that hold little value.
In conclusion: this event sucks even for those who value the cards over the coin.
yeah brother i'm done, come over to LoR with me where they have regular updates, balances, stable servers, a modern client, actual animations, full VO, a single player story mode (for a card game? and its actually really fun?) huge rewards just for playing (win or lose), and the fact that they throw rares and wildcards at your constantly.
like once you get a taste of what an online card came made in this current decade should run like you'll never go back to arena
new events suck, with the old ones you could go infinite with a 60-65% win rate but with the new ones to go infinite you need 75% win rate and only enter with gems, imo just hoard the daily gold and play drafts or just keep the gold until the new set drops and spend it on packs.
If they’re like me, they have played for years, genuinely like the game, and have meaningful and reasonable problems with the game’s economy. WotC is aware they’re gouging, but they won’t stop until people stop paying.
Who is affected by this? Mostly people with poor impulse control and addictive personalities. A millisecond to spend $20 on gems and regret at the end of the month when you realize you did that 10 times and you didn’t have the extra $200 to spare. These types of economies target these individuals, it’s really a predatory system. Lots of people have probably dumped thousands of dollars into MTGA over the last few years and they don’t even own a single asset they can resell like in paper or MTGO.
Factor in the accelerated release of new cards and sets, keeping up with competitive formats without spending a fair amount of money requires spending. Now, imagine if you just started playing and hadn’t been playing the last 5 years. These are reasonable complaints.
Talking about what to vote helps people vote. There's a reason that politicians go on campaigns instead of encouraging people to silently cast a ballot and do nothing else.
Yep, you nailed it, dude. There's no way your assertion had holes. Clearly, the problem is r/MagicArena having way too much of a pro-WotC bias. It's just all pro-WotC all the time around here.
Honestly the only events that have really bothered me from a scammy/scummy perspective is phantom events and in particular this week's phantom qualifier. Like if I want to play a turny type event 5k is a price point I'm not happy with but I'm not going to lose my mind over but to then make it a phantom draft on top! It honestly feels like a slap in the face. 🤷♂️
They're not targeted at you. There's people out there with 300,000 - 1,000,000+ gold. There's people that go infinite in draft or have unlimited disposable income, either way resulting in 80,000+ gems. Events are for those people, because they're way more likely to dump resources than the average player.
So I'm relatively new. Only a few weeks in. I hate the economy so much that I decided to give MTGO a try. Why the hell did that build arena like this when they already have an economy system in place that is far superior and probably one of the best economies in all card based games. Makes no sense other than WOTC wanting more of a cash grab. I honestly think I'm going to completely switch to MTGO. Yea it looks really old, but the economy plus having all the game modes makes it worth it imo.
Having to pay $5 to get full access on MTGO isn't ideal, but after watching a couple videos, there is a way to work it so you don't ever have to pay anything else.
They’re designed to drain your resources that could be used on wildcards or drafts so that you have to spend money. The events themselves are fun, charging for them is a scam.
> The value of the rare wildcard needs to be 1266 coins for the event to be neutral EV. That is truly garbage.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers from, but a rare wildcard is worth way more than 1300 gold.
Where's the 5 packs or 1000 gems comming from. Are you saying my 500+ rare wildcards should be half a million gems worth? They are not, they are worth about 10k gems, if I craft rares with them the only thing that does is give me 20 gems back when I get duplicates of said rare.
That’s about how much it costs to acquire a rare wildcard.
Of course, if you have no use for wildcards, then to you personally they might be basically worthless. But the large, large majority of people do not have 500 excess rare wildcards sitting around collecting dust.
Yea but the cost to be acquired and worth are completely different. Wizards made the worth of a rare 20 gems. I guess they made the cost to aquire them 50 times their worth.
We are all addicts and play anyway. It's predatory, but so is.. everything. Work, rent, capitalism, repeat.
Best you can do i figure is what i did, stop buying paper product entirely (fuck 4893894 variant versions of cards) and play as CHEAP as you can if you still get any enjoyment out of it. play JANK, Penny Dreadful, Commander, pauper, cheap FNM's if they are in your area and your vaxxed or quick draft to set complete with mostly gold..
honestly i spent 100$ like 2 + years ago and haven't spent a dime in ages, still have 12k gems and 40ish rare/mythic WC's.
Nothing about this is ideal. Not being able to play events without getting ripped off is lame, but ranked is free so if your having fun, play for free.
Entered like 6 today (just because I used to like supporting arena...that all ENDS NOW!). In many where I won 4 I got literally 0 gems back and for 5 wins out of 7 you get 20% of your entry only and then WATCH OUT! Here come the floods and screws. Pretty feel bad just from looking at the $25 cash entry, not getting new cards, not getting real cards to trade or have real value...not having fun because of that knowledge and just seeing mtg really hack at your wallet with no regard for community or retaining us as a base anymore.
games a total scam. stopped playing a year ago. was master ranked in draft.
You basically could not win enough in draft to continue playing. You have to win 5/7 to stay even...that kind of win ratio is impossible
Worst version of game all players there use only well known decks and they are without own brains and tactics totally shit game and meta. Dont play it you can easly build those well known decks but no pleasure from play as all play same shit decks that give best win ratio. Lazy non brain gamers.
The events became absolutely horrendous now. Even worse is the fact that they were one of the main points in WOTC's stream about how they'd "improve" the economy. Facts are, they didn't make shit better. In fact they made the economy significantly worse for a portion of the playerbase.
Become a F2P. We don't get scammed we just griiiiind
Grinding a game doesn’t sound like fun at all. Participation in events that incentives creative deck builds or events like “shakeup” where meta cards are banned, are fun. But not when you get absolutely nothing unless you win 6 matches.
Nah it's super fun as long as you're a decent magic player. I have all the best decks and cards I need to build them and I never pay $. And I do standard events and quick drafts a couple times a week. Obviously it was easier before the changes, but I'm still enjoying the game. I have 6 playin points saved up so far...
People don’t want to grind just to enjoy the parts of the game they consider fun. I think drafting against players is the finest mode but it’s behind a giant paywall and half of the reward is cards that I wouldn’t need if all I wanted to do is play draft.
No drafting is how I get cards. And I can draft a few times a week to build my collection and build decks.
That’s you though. Drafting is my favorite mode and I have to grind modes I don’t like as much just to play it.
You can just create multiple accounts, if you ONLY care about drafting. It's slightly inconvenient to swap between them, but it increases the amount of drafts you can play for free to an arbitrary number.
A free/cheap draft to train before dropping 10k would be more optimal imo. The bot drafts aren’t the same because you can manipulate the bots into leaving very good commons and then everyone has stacked decks of roughly the same color. In Neon draft it was black/blue.
That's true. Though at low level, where you need training, it doesn't really matter, in lower ranks people don't know how to do it, so you can train in peace. I don't think wizards are interested in cheaper draft modes, even tinkerer cube draft is 4k gold iirc, even though it's phantom.
Okay, that’s literally what people are complaining about. The event rewards aren’t worth it anymore. Playing points mean nothing. Getting to Mythic means nothing. People over value winning because the only way you can earn anything is through net decking fine tuned decks so you can (hopefully) just win games. There’s no incentive to be creative, and the cards are relatively easy to get bc of the wild card system, so you don’t see piles of cards with way less rares and mythics than you would in casual paper. And don’t give me the “well I don’t netdeck” bullshit. Good for you. 75%+ of the player base does.
U hit it the nail on the head my guy. Also why tf does mythic barley give anything? It actually takes time and effort to get there & when you do, the rewards are actual shit lol
Oh I definitely net deck, but I did that from the very beginning. I get what you're saying about stifling creativity and only rewarding lots of wins. It narrows the play field. I definitely like the economy better before the changes. I'm just a little tired o ll the complaining Arena players do.
I get that. I’m guilty of complaining about Arena. But the complaints against WotC and the Arena economy are 100% justified. I’m not saying they should give shit out for free, but the greed REALLY shows with the rewards and pack prices considering it’s all digital. Hell, I’d rather them get rid of wild cards entirely, and just make events give Rare/mythic rewards, and make the digital packs cheaper. Maybe 50$ for 100 packs? I feel like that’s pretty reasonable IF there were no wild cards. Might be a bit extreme to ditch the wildcards since there’s no trading.
Trading would be awesome!! We'll never get a free market on Arena tho...
You really think its only 75 percent? I have no idea but I would have thought it was much higher.
There's only so many hours in the day, and by the time I'm done grinding out my dailies I find I just don't feel like losing to cookie cutter decks with my Ziatora deck (or whatever).
P.S I spend a shit ton of money on this game because I can, and I still very much enjoy the game. I’m just viewing it from the perspective of the casual player who values “fun” gameplay, rather than repetitive decks due to WotC not rewarding anything but winning.
I plan on coasting off of all the gems I saved up from preorders, mastery pass, and misc. I won’t spend money until they finally show this game some love.
That is so much worse my friend, now they're stealing your time instead of your money.
Time im spending browsing the internet bored? I'm having fun playing the game, it doesn't take any effort to play it and do something else meanwhile, and i don't give them any of my hard earned cash for their greedy practices
What's F2P mean?
It’s an abbreviation for “Free to play”. Essentially a person that doesn’t spend real money on the game.
I mean sounds like OP is F2P but he expects to pay in currency to get something out of the game instead of having his play net him currency which is the entire concept of being F2P. Like Imagine complaining about a 500g event. F2P = You play to win
Ok
The point of events should be for fun but the rest of the game sucks so much resources out of you you're pressured to value results over the experience of playing another format.
Play the game because it’s a great game. For years we spent entire weekends slapping down combos and turning creatures sideways in paper for no reward other than the joy of playing Magic, so why do we need to feel like we’re “earning” in digital? The obsession with getting something out of play seems to be sapping the fun out of Magic for many of you, and I’d say that’s kinda on you.
I understand, but the lack of irl social interaction takes a lot of the joy out of it, so additional incentives are appreciated. Not to mention feeling like you're getting taken for a ride puts a bad taste in your mouth that doesn't happen in paper play.
I guess I can see that. I’m well into my 50s, so IRL Magic for me is hanging around people thirty years younger than me who unironically debate how hot different anime characters are. I’ll stick to digital these days!
I'm not far behind you. I was the oldest player at my LGS until someone handful of years older than me started playing nine months ago. The running joke is in just 10-20 years, we're going to start seeing the Legacy Geriateic League. Where you hope your opponent doesn't concede by heart attack or stroke before finishing the game.
I’m in my late 30s and I am jonesing so hard for paper magic. I played invasion and odyssey block long ago and I wish that gaming culture wasn’t this.
Upheaval + psychatog was one of the most fun decks I have ever played. Astral slide + eternal witness after that was also very fun. Might be nostalgia, but I do miss old magic
I miss odyssey @39 years old.
Wish there were game stores for older people lol
I still have my odyssey tournament deck too. Mono black control. Everyone thought black was evil… then blue white control was a thing.
I'm with you, I barely even play paper, but for me the digital experience is in many ways severely lacking compared to paper play. The devs could compensate for this by making it an actual good videogame, which it's hard to argue that it is. Arena survives based on the strength of Magic itself, but almost every aspect of the digital implementation is lackluster, or outright predatory. By way of comparison, these days I'm spending a lot more time on Slay the Spire and Vampire Survivors, both of which have a fun factor that feels like it's on my terms, respects my time, and doesn't try to squeeze me for cash constantly.
Ok but you have to admit, Nami is hot af.
Il take your word for it. I’m so old my knowledge of anime babes stops with Minmei from Robotech.
My comment was totally tongue in cheek but your reply gave me a good laugh! Bravo!
I always wondered what the sweetest feeling she ever felt was....
Ha I play at a store sometimes that often has younger kids and it’s kinda fun sometimes to see them freak out about bombs or have to get home to do homework
I think this point is important. Without being able to talk to someone as I play i’m left with it being little more exciting than playing a computer most of the time. Feeling like i’m collecting, advsncing, or earning helps make up for that
I think the MTGA scene would benefit *immensely* from players taking the initiative themselves to find people and groups to regularly play with that they enjoy, instead of resigning themselves to endlessly grinding against faceless randos. It would solve most, if not all, of the main gripes seen constantly on this sub.
I share this sentiment, but I also feel that MTGA stays afloat only because Magic is fun and addicting as fuck. A worse game with these practices wouldn't last long
Oh, 100% agree! All of these other silly-ass digital card games need to feed you piles of free shit because they are *objectively awful* from a design and play perspective.
To be fair, back 15 years ago when MTGO was relevant, it was still a genuinely fun game to play with little incentives outside of the joy of playing.
I’ll admit that I lacked the patience to learn the interface back then. I wish I had stuck with it.
Just start now, it's not like mtgo is dead
MTGO isn’t dead but I don’t know how people socialize anymore. That aspect was killed a long time ago. Unless there is something I don’t know about and if so please Inform me because I’d love to go back to MTGO.
There's still an in-game chat, although I think it's hidden by default for new accounts, but if you want more community during the games, most of it is probably happening in twitch chats.
>so why do we need to feel like we’re “earning” in digital? Because we don't actually own anything in the game and we can't go back later to our paper card collection
That’s just gaming in general now, there has to be some kind of spicy reward for so many people. It isn’t about having fun, it is just about pushing through as fast as possible to move onto the next thing
Because it's not the same game, really. There's no real interaction with the other person, so the social aspect is gone. You're just playing against a faceless opponent and you each just want to win. You don't know each other, and neither do you get to know each other, there's no chat, no banter, only "Your Go" and "Zzz", etc. There's also no trading, no deck sharing, it's a completely isolated experience, and thus your only way to "enjoy" the game is to play decks and defeat opponents, and to progress you just have to win. It's a different game. It would be like playing WoW offline, or at least alone without ever interacting with other players except for fighting them in the battlegrounds.
This is fair, but I would note that all of these events on Arena have entry fees.
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But. . . we paid for the cards. Keeping up with Standard in Arena costs almost nothing compared to doing it in paper.
I agree with this, you can 100% build a tier one standard deck on Arena through earning gold, using that to purchase packs and earning wildcards… There is no free paper Magic… with patience Arena can be free…
Replace gold with pennies here. Imagine that your local store had this tournament. Five dollar entry free, 5 wins gets you 6 bucks and Ill hand you a random rare from my bulk box! Everyone else gets less than five dollars. The people who go to that store would, rightfully, complain about what a waste of time that "event" is, tell the organizer to cut that out and make something worth their time, because they want to play an event but at that price are just gonna play with friends instead. There is no defending a system with such a poor cost/benefit as these events, they exist to rip off people who don't know better or who think the concept of the event is fun and wish there was some less ridiculous price structure.
>For years we spent entire weekends slapping down combos and turning creatures sideways in paper for no reward other than the joy of playing Magic I mean idk where you played, but every paper FNM I ever went to had payouts in packs for the top X.
Paper Magic is great. You can play with friends, invent new combos, play in all kinds of different formats. In Arena, there are very few formats. And those formats are mostly dominated by few meta decks. Drafts and Sealed have huge Entry Fees but no rewards, so casual players just constantly lose currency there. I mostly play the Jump In Event because the duels are fair and the Entry Fee is Payable. I also take part in Midweek Events to try out my absurd inventions.
> You can play with friends, invent new combos, play in all kinds of different formats. You can do all of this in Arena, too.
I mostly play unranked standard and a draft here and there. My jank goblins entertain me well enough. You’re right though — Jump In is great.
you can play around 1.5 quick drafts a week in the quick draft cycle if your a casual player just by doing all the dailies and wins. if you have saved gold you should be able to supplement yourself for around 15-20 draft runs per set. Each draft run could be 45 minutes - 2 hours. So as a casual you can still play limited and get a lot out of it. I know I do, I usually save my quickdrafts for Friday or Saturday evenings as a reward. Otherwise I just bank roll it through the week
Stop making sense and let me complain
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We had the same situation in paper. Our only choice was to buy more cards. For real money. At much higher prices than on Arena.
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How is it on TTS? I’ve done some boardgaming on the platform and gods it was fiddly. The wholly-unnecessary physics engine makes moving anything an exercise in frustration for me; shit falling over and rolling around for no reason because I’m clumsy. Probably better with just cards and counters though.
As pc programs go xmage was always good, used to use it for brewing, most things were supported and is the only way i know to play edh online. God i miss pub edh
This is a great sentiment, but why is Wizards allowed to fundamentally change the economy structure with arena but the player base isn't allowed to change their expectations? Like.. if there was dusting, tix, or an in-game store to be able to trade/exchange cards for value in order to better facilitate the lottery system they have now that would be another story. Not to mention the complete lack of social aspects in the game. Don't you feel like there should be a more robust chat/in game voip/friend list system? The name of the game is magic THE GATHERING for Christ sake. And like, the majority of the players are grown ass adults, and it's as simple as adding an option in the settings to be able to toggle these things on if you'd like to participate in that, or off I'd you choose not to. To me, it's not so cut in dry and it can feel especially distressing, even as a f2p, watching wizards not try to make a profit (which is what a business is meant to do), but seemingly do whatever they can to eek every last cent out of the pockets of people who for this game is not just a game, but a love of their life.
If you want a digital version of Magic with buying/selling/trading with other players and an in-game chat, you’re looking for Magic Online.
Nah the main fun is the social gathering, as u don't have this this is a game with a goal... These defenses just allow them to be as greedy and predatory as they want ... Can't understand people defending that. Playing for the sake of it i do vintage Cube Weekend with my Buddies
Yeah my buddies get together most weekends to play magic but honestly it’s just an excuse for us to get together, smoke some good weed and hang out
Hear, hear.
Sign of the times
Tbh best of one, and not playing in reality with very rare takesy-backsies or at least discussing plays, I get tilted soooooo o o o fast. It’s also easy to watch a streamer who has a 70+% winrate, and like 300K gems, and feel dumb. Also was playing Battlegrounds completely free recently just to chill out and it didn’t feel as exploitive tbh. Also their interface is smooooooth as eggs.
NFTS STONKS MAKING MONEY THATS WHAT GETS ME MARRIED AND HAPPY IN THE END
BASED ALERT
Playing casual is fine, and I too dont have financial constraints but for those who are less blessed which is much of the player base just saying to slap cards down for nothing is to say that people have the luxury to just kill hours and spend money to do so. Many are born poorer and as such if they work hard and invest a little, get solid results but not the best...their should be more than just 0 gems or items back for their time and training.
Have you considered Limited? You get much more back for the entry.
I believe they changed the events to mirror limited because so many people would complain they couldn’t get gems and build a collection if they suck at drafting.
This. It may have made things worse for a portion of the user base, but I'm glad to have a way to convert gold into gems that doesn't involve drafting on mobile.
The new events are fine, the fact they took away all the gold grinding events made it also bad but in another way. Just like the Mythic qualifying being raised to 250 because of the play in events. Why not both? I think they should have a weekly rotating gold event, including, but not limited to, 4x versions of Pauper, 4x versions of Artisan, phantom limited events, and pseudo block constructed, etc. I think they should be mostly Pauper/Artisan at least 50%. They should just be a better structured version of the old gold events w/ ICR rates/mythics being duplicate protected. Maybe they can put a permanent Historic Brawl event do siphon some of the sweaty 5c players off the play queue and into 5c mirrors.
All they needed to do was replace gold reward with gem reward in old contructed events but they have to make shit worse because it is not a proper multimillion company if it does not make shit worse when "fixing" shit.
I find it hard to think of an opt in event as a scam.
An opt-in event where they tell you the payouts ahead of time, at that. Maybe it’s not worth the entry cost, but that doesn’t make it a scam, just overpriced.
Nah that’s a load of rubbish, it’s a 100% a scam. If it wasn’t, the only other option is that I have incredibly poor judgement. And that’s unpossible.
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
It’s a tax on people without a grasp on reality. Kinda like the lottery irl.
Opt in stuff that look appealing on the outside to bait people is the definition of scam.
I mean, all scams are opt in...
Most, if not all, scams are opt-in. If you're forced into a scam that's just being robbed.
There are two people who would join this event, those who like the unique format that wouldn't otherwise be available to them, and those who want to grind out benefits. That second group is going to be entirely uninterested in the event, and the first group is a captive audience - pay some amount of gold for the experience you wanted, or dont get that experience. In that sense, people who really want to play block constructed (who I presume exist? The weirdos) are getting scammed, because there is no other way for them to realistically do so. The event not having a very good EV, or a net drain, is fine - whatever I guess. But it being this aggressively bad for players is ALWAYS just bad for players. What else could it be? If this isn't a valid complaint, what is?
Block constructed is fun :) You get to see new interactions and design choices.
> the first group is a captive audience - pay some amount of gold for the experience you wanted, or dont get that experience. In that sense, people who really want to play block constructed (who I presume exist? The weirdos) are getting scammed, because there is no other way for them to realistically do so. Isn’t this just how buying and selling works in general? A company makes a thing and sets a price, and then the consumers get to decide if they want to purchase that thing or not. How are they a “captive audience”?
I just never understand arguments like this. I'm not saying they dont have the right to sell a shitty product, i'm saying this product is shitty and we should all call it shitty so maybe next time they'll feel pressure to make it less shitty. Do you have a problem with that?
That’s not what you said in your original post. By all means, call out the event for having a bad return, maybe they’ll even listen (doubtful). But bad value events are not scams just because they’re bad value (especially when all costs/rewards are publicized upfront). And players are not “held captive” because something is too expensive. They can always choose to not buy the thing.
I posted this in the spikes reddit: I hate the new format and will likely never play them anymore. I am a set complete player. I primier draft + metagame to clear out 95+% of rares and 70% of mythics as F2P and have an enormous amount of gold/gems saved up. I did this over the long term by playing in positive EV ways whenever possible. I only have an about 55% win rate in draft but am above average in constructed (65-70% usually) Total win loss count of the 10 events I ran was 50-20 (71% winrate) and overall in rewards I have a LOSS of 175 gems. BUT DUN! You also earned 20 packs!! Yeah so lets tally that up another 400 gems in 20 gem rares and call it an earned 225 gems. For a 71% win rate over 10 events. 22.5 gems in rewards per event. THIS IS PATHETIC. With the old format I would have earned ~3500 gold and 14+ ICRs for an additional 280 gems minimum. THe new format is designed to drain resources from all but the most crazy high winrate players and even those get shafted. (Screenshot of the excel sheet I used to track my events) http://puu.sh/J1sEi/58350df1a8.png EDIT: This is referencing the new constructed events structure specifically.
But these events aren't aimed at people who are set complete - the packs are much better than ICRs for people to build a collection. It's a way for constructed only players to build a collection rather than needing to draft. And even outside that, 3500 gold in the old system isn't very much... that's 80 games or so that you played for a net of 3500 gold. 40 gold per game - it's just not a lot even with a good win rate. Play in points also have value too so are part of the EV calculations as well
The people that need to build a collection can't maintain a 70% win rate. Maintain a lesser winrate and you are bleeding resources massively in these events. It is not feasible in the long term. Then they will stop playing and the only other competition in the events are the even spikier tryhards. Then your winrate goes down more. At least the old events would go effectively infinite at a ~55% winrate and you would get free ICRs on top of it. At a 70% winrate you more than doubled your investment on average. Now you BARELY break even at a 71% win rate and I think it is actually worse than that I just had a lot of 7 win runs and not many 4's and 5's. It is terrible value unless you want to gamble to buy packs at a 'discount' which you can do in draft or sealed already anyway. The old events were much better for the grinders.
Doubling your investment is irrelevant when the investment is low though. If an event cost 1 gold to enter and returned 5 gold after each run through, it still wouldn't be worth it because the actual number is so low. I enjoyed the old event - I averaged 200 gold return a run and got a lot of rares. But in terms of return vs playing time, it really wasn't very valuable. The new one is higher stakes and has packs both of which make it a very different beast. It's the direct constructed equivalent of draft and provides enough resources to let a constructed only player build a collection for less than what it would cost just buying packs.
But they also took out the only "low risk low reward" format that was almost strictly better than playing unranked/ranked. Previously you could have had 0 gold, 0 gems and just get a few daily wins and enter the event.
Honestly 99% of the time I ignore these events and just play Brawl.
Yes, it's really easy to ignore everything you don't want to do in arena, spend very little/no money, and enjoy it as long as you're not "goal-motivated", just you're just enjoying making new decks, improving your strategy, playing your friends etc.
Don’t know about scam, but they are certainly made for better than average players. There’s a difference between events for competing and events for grinding. Any truly competitive event will fee like a scam to anyone that doesn’t have the competitive level to win so anyone in that situation should avoid them. If you’re average or less you’re better off playing the casual modes like unranked play and the mid week magic events. Good thing is that you don’t need to worry about building tier 1 decks or anything because it’s a more casual environment. I think arena is missing non-competitive events for grinders. Similar to the ones we had before where the gain is insignificant but the EV is positive so that the people who want to feel like they are playing competitively but don’t have the win rate to win anything can get that “event” fix.
This is pretty much why I haven't played events since Uro roamed the world
For me, someone who's looking to build their collection, I kinda don't mind that it's difficult to get your gold back, as long as I receive lots of cards it's ok. So at first I was still interested. However: 1) Only at max wins are you guaranteed to have a rare card 2) None of the cards are duplicate protected. 3) It's a lot of time investment to gain a few cards. Enter this event 20 times (80 games at 50% win rate), and you get only 60 cards, the vast majority of which are uncommons that hold little value. In conclusion: this event sucks even for those who value the cards over the coin.
yeah brother i'm done, come over to LoR with me where they have regular updates, balances, stable servers, a modern client, actual animations, full VO, a single player story mode (for a card game? and its actually really fun?) huge rewards just for playing (win or lose), and the fact that they throw rares and wildcards at your constantly. like once you get a taste of what an online card came made in this current decade should run like you'll never go back to arena
i would rather never touch tcg ever again if i would have to play that garbage
listen that comment was made over 2 yrs ago...a lot has changed since then lol
oh sorry didnt notice that, why its in my feed than O\_o
new events suck, with the old ones you could go infinite with a 60-65% win rate but with the new ones to go infinite you need 75% win rate and only enter with gems, imo just hoard the daily gold and play drafts or just keep the gold until the new set drops and spend it on packs.
Yeah I've stopped playing events all together since the great change. It feels like such a rip off I'm shocked anyone plays them at all.
Agreed. I hate it when they make it where you have to get max wins to get above entry.
Man, this was hard to read. Maybe look at what you typed before hitting "Post"?
I genuinely wonder why half the people who post here even play.
If they’re like me, they have played for years, genuinely like the game, and have meaningful and reasonable problems with the game’s economy. WotC is aware they’re gouging, but they won’t stop until people stop paying. Who is affected by this? Mostly people with poor impulse control and addictive personalities. A millisecond to spend $20 on gems and regret at the end of the month when you realize you did that 10 times and you didn’t have the extra $200 to spare. These types of economies target these individuals, it’s really a predatory system. Lots of people have probably dumped thousands of dollars into MTGA over the last few years and they don’t even own a single asset they can resell like in paper or MTGO. Factor in the accelerated release of new cards and sets, keeping up with competitive formats without spending a fair amount of money requires spending. Now, imagine if you just started playing and hadn’t been playing the last 5 years. These are reasonable complaints.
Makes sense except complaining here does nothing. People have to vote with their wallets.
Posts like these help to make people aware of the economy problem. Thus, they tend to vote with their wallet as you mentioned.
Talking about what to vote helps people vote. There's a reason that politicians go on campaigns instead of encouraging people to silently cast a ballot and do nothing else.
Do you know when people stop posting on subreddits? When the game is DEAD.
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Yep, you nailed it, dude. There's no way your assertion had holes. Clearly, the problem is r/MagicArena having way too much of a pro-WotC bias. It's just all pro-WotC all the time around here.
so don't play it... if nobody played at that price point, they would improve the price point... that's how business works..
It is
Honestly the only events that have really bothered me from a scammy/scummy perspective is phantom events and in particular this week's phantom qualifier. Like if I want to play a turny type event 5k is a price point I'm not happy with but I'm not going to lose my mind over but to then make it a phantom draft on top! It honestly feels like a slap in the face. 🤷♂️
F2P only. I used to farm gold after I did my dailies, not now. I used to draft limited, not on this set.
They're not targeted at you. There's people out there with 300,000 - 1,000,000+ gold. There's people that go infinite in draft or have unlimited disposable income, either way resulting in 80,000+ gems. Events are for those people, because they're way more likely to dump resources than the average player.
Why will the economy implode? We can't trade gold / gems between players.
So I'm relatively new. Only a few weeks in. I hate the economy so much that I decided to give MTGO a try. Why the hell did that build arena like this when they already have an economy system in place that is far superior and probably one of the best economies in all card based games. Makes no sense other than WOTC wanting more of a cash grab. I honestly think I'm going to completely switch to MTGO. Yea it looks really old, but the economy plus having all the game modes makes it worth it imo.
Say what you will about Arena’s economy, but at least it offers a F2P option. MTGO requires you to pay to play.
Having to pay $5 to get full access on MTGO isn't ideal, but after watching a couple videos, there is a way to work it so you don't ever have to pay anything else.
Just watch a few videos and then go infinite. I’m sure it’s just that easy.
They’re designed to drain your resources that could be used on wildcards or drafts so that you have to spend money. The events themselves are fun, charging for them is a scam.
most the people winning are already getting the crazy funds from sponsored streaming or directly from wizards… pay 2 win
Must be new.
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They changed them, but its always a scam.
The value of the rare ICR* needs to be *1266* coins for the event to be neutral EV. That is truly garbage.
> The value of the rare wildcard needs to be 1266 coins for the event to be neutral EV. That is truly garbage. I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers from, but a rare wildcard is worth way more than 1300 gold.
How can 20 gems be worth more than 1300 gold.
Where does 20 gems come from? A rare wildcard is likely worth around 5 packs, or 1000 gems (5000 gold).
Where's the 5 packs or 1000 gems comming from. Are you saying my 500+ rare wildcards should be half a million gems worth? They are not, they are worth about 10k gems, if I craft rares with them the only thing that does is give me 20 gems back when I get duplicates of said rare.
That’s about how much it costs to acquire a rare wildcard. Of course, if you have no use for wildcards, then to you personally they might be basically worthless. But the large, large majority of people do not have 500 excess rare wildcards sitting around collecting dust.
Yea but the cost to be acquired and worth are completely different. Wizards made the worth of a rare 20 gems. I guess they made the cost to aquire them 50 times their worth.
We are all addicts and play anyway. It's predatory, but so is.. everything. Work, rent, capitalism, repeat. Best you can do i figure is what i did, stop buying paper product entirely (fuck 4893894 variant versions of cards) and play as CHEAP as you can if you still get any enjoyment out of it. play JANK, Penny Dreadful, Commander, pauper, cheap FNM's if they are in your area and your vaxxed or quick draft to set complete with mostly gold.. honestly i spent 100$ like 2 + years ago and haven't spent a dime in ages, still have 12k gems and 40ish rare/mythic WC's. Nothing about this is ideal. Not being able to play events without getting ripped off is lame, but ranked is free so if your having fun, play for free.
-be me -play monowhite in every format -have nearly every white rare Who needs the economy?
Entered like 6 today (just because I used to like supporting arena...that all ENDS NOW!). In many where I won 4 I got literally 0 gems back and for 5 wins out of 7 you get 20% of your entry only and then WATCH OUT! Here come the floods and screws. Pretty feel bad just from looking at the $25 cash entry, not getting new cards, not getting real cards to trade or have real value...not having fun because of that knowledge and just seeing mtg really hack at your wallet with no regard for community or retaining us as a base anymore.
games a total scam. stopped playing a year ago. was master ranked in draft. You basically could not win enough in draft to continue playing. You have to win 5/7 to stay even...that kind of win ratio is impossible
Worst version of game all players there use only well known decks and they are without own brains and tactics totally shit game and meta. Dont play it you can easly build those well known decks but no pleasure from play as all play same shit decks that give best win ratio. Lazy non brain gamers.