
The Past, Present and Future of Competitive Magic The Gathering - minimaxir
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-past-present-and-future-of-competitive-magic/
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Agentlien
I play a fair bit of Magic, primarily at work. For years, I've used Magic
Online for cheaply testing decks before deciding which cards to buy in paper.

I was very excited by Arena. It looks modern, feels a lot less clunky and
allows one to just play a few games with very little hassle. It's all the good
parts of the Hearthstone or Elder Scrolls Legends clients, but it's a fully-
fledged Magic implementation!

However, I've found myself barely playing any Magic Arena.

\- As mentioned in the article, as much as I love paper Magic, it's not the
best computer game. If I'm by a PC, there are other things I usually want to
play.

-It's been great to test ideas for some Standard decks, but I usually prefer Modern.

-It's free, but I don't spend too much on Magic, anyway.

-It's quick, but it lacks all the interpersonal communication

That last point is probably one of the biggest things, for me. I love reading
opponents, playing the mind games and chatting a bit while playing. You can't
see each other and you don't even have a chat in Arena.

There's also the physical collectible aspect of it. I love picking up my
folders with cards and flipping through them. Scrolling through them on a
screen doesn't feel as satisfying.

~~~
catacombs
> I play a fair bit of Magic, primarily at work.

Literally on the job? What did you do?

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Agentlien
It's primarily over lunch, so at work but not on the job. We also hold drafts
after work hours and used to have a magic league at work.

There's a fair number of magic players at work, which seems to be quite common
at game studios.

~~~
catacombs
That's awesome.

I've been interested in playing MTG, but sinking money into decks doesn't
appeal to me.

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dx87
"Inviting streamers and video game celebrities to events with precious few
slots is too aggravated an offense for entrenched players (those who give much
of their free time and money to pursuit of competitive rewards) to forgive and
forget, perhaps."

This has been happening more and more, and it really does get frustrating.
Companies sell the idea that anyone who's good enough can compete, but
tournaments will be filled with twitch streamers who aren't good at the game,
but draw a large audience due to their personality. I've wonder if there could
ever be a "pro wrestling" of esports, where the matches are all fixed and the
winners and losers are based on what would create the best storyline.

~~~
SantalBlush
The term "esport ready" is a marketing gimmick in the first place. It has more
to do with whether a game is fun to watch, not whether it is competitive
enough.

To give an example, PUBG players complained that the game wasn't "esports
ready" because it was in third person, and therefore not competitive enough.
They argued that by making it an FPS, it would become a more competitive game,
and therefore a better esport. Too bad Fortnite is third person and blew PUBG
away as an esport anyway, because it's more fun to watch.

The point is, I can totally see winners and losers being predetermined, since
the esports scene is really about marketing games and not about competition.

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dfxm12
I don't understand how Arena can be a platform for _competitive_ constructed
Magic when you can't guarantee what cards you have access to. In the old
client and in paper Magic, if you needed a card, you could get it directly
from someone. That's not the case in Arena. You have to hope to open it (or a
wildcard of the right rarity) from a pack. This limits competitive play to
mostly people who have the _time_ and _luck_ to collect every card they need.

Imagine a first baseman needing a new glove, but time after time, they are
only given the chance to buy a catcher's mitt. You'll make it work if you're
just having fun with friends, but if money is on the line, I would hope you
can get the exact equipment you need...

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theresistor
The limiting factor on competitive deck building is Rare / Mythic Rare
availability. Lower rarity cards simply aren’t as powerful, and the
availability is high enough for them that they’re almost never an issue.

As you open random card packs, you are guaranteed to open one Rare or Mythic
Rare per pack. Arena offers duplicate protection - you will never receive a
Rare / Mythic Rare that you already have 4 copies of in a pack. Thus if you
already have a complete-but-for-one-card collection, you’re guaranteed to
receive that one in your next pack. It also means that there is a maximum
number of packs you could need to open to have a complete set of Rare / Mythic
Rare cards.

In addition, sometimes your Rare (or Mythic Rare) is replaced with a Wildcard
of the same rarity. These wildcards can be crafted 1:1 into any card of the
same rarity. This does not increase the rate at which you grow your
collection, but does increase the speed at which you can grow it in a
particular direction. The drop rate of these is tuned with the intent of
allowing a typical free-to-play user to obtain one competitive level deck per
card set.

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ausbah
My prediction, influenced by the article:

-The competitive part of MTG goes the way of online only.

-Niche or "player based" formats like Highlander or EDH stay within the realm of paper.

-Collecting cards remains worthwhile only in paper, online goes to more game play focus.

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SimbaOnSteroids
You lose wayyyyy to much of the competitive parts of the game online, online
is statistics based only, you completely lose the skill part(bluffing, reading
your opponent, fake-outs, etc) of the game online.

~~~
ausbah
I don't think you lose bluffing, most of bluffing is simply chance and leaving
a land or two untapped.

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praptak
I don't have enough MTG knowledge to plow through the article, so I hope not
to appear lazy by asking this: is there a version of MTG that isn't pay to
win?

~~~
Agentlien
Honestly, I don't think you can make a fair case for Magic being really pay to
win.

There's always a sort of buy in depending on which format you play, but once
you've spent a bit of money on some cards it's usually more skill in deck
building and playing than money spent.

Personally, I play mostly Modern in a casual way, but even when people bring
competitive magic decks and we swap decks the same players usually win.

~~~
moate
I think you can _only_ make a case for the game being pay to win.

"Once you've spent a bit of money on some cards" means I can be the greatest
player of all time, but if I haven't paid for the cards, I can't win. They
don't just give you these cards for being good. You can't find them scattered
around the environment. You have to buy them, somehow.

What is pay to win in your mind? The phrase generally means "no matter how
good you are, if you are unable to buy a certain set of cards you can't truly
compete in the meta". There are more or less expensive decks, but typically
the cheapest of the best decks in any format cost $50+

Edit- This is for constructed formats. Obviously sealed is more of a pure
skill, low cost format.

~~~
Agentlien
What you're saying is akin to saying Golf is pay to win because you can't play
without clubs.

Yes, you need cards to play, but in my mind pay to win means the amount you've
spent outweighs your skill at the game. There are plenty of games like that,
and I'd argue Magic isn't one. You can do really well in Magic with a cheap
deck and I have seen plenty of people lose hard after buying the most
expensive popular deck that they didn't know how to play.

~~~
dx87
Sure, a highly skilled player can beat a less skilled player regardless of
deck, but at similar skill levels, the player with the better cards is going
to win. If cards couldn't give you an advantage, they'd all be the same price.

~~~
SantalBlush
You can say the exact same thing about any sports equipment. But I don't think
this is how most people define "pay-to-win."

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falsedan
The subscription model sounds pretty great as a player: pay some fee for each
new set (up-front or monthly over the time it's legal in Modern), play with
whatever sets you have access to in whichever format they're legal in.

~~~
lbotos
The problem with that is it sort of invalidates their whole "booster pack"
model. Magic is also a "family" of games, so they'd either need to do some
sort of tiering:

\- pay fee for unlimited phantom drafts \- pay more fee for full sets (no
drafting) \- pay most fee for unlimited drafts and full set

It does remove a bit of the gambling/addicting element, but it would get
players like me to "support" them more.

~~~
Pulcinella
Unfortunately Mark Rosewater(lead designer for MTG) has said that the booster
pack model is basically what provides enough money that the business side is
comfortable with providing the size of the budget the design side receives. He
seems to believe that moving away from the addiction/gambling element would
mean less money, fewer designers and design resources, and fewer, worse, and
more infrequent production of new cards.

~~~
neutronicus
Fantasy Flight makes "living" card games where new cards are periodically
released and you can (supply chain permitting) buy (the pack containing)
whatever card you need deterministically.

And it works out basically how you say. The games are popular and exciting
when new, since you can buy all the cards for cheap(er than Magic) and balance
/ design doesn't have a huge card pool to think about.

Unfortunately once the competitive meta encompasses hundreds of dollars worth
of product the dynamic flips on its head. The community is composed almost
entirely of people who've "bought in" so the options for casual play are
actually much more limited than they are for Magic, and organized play doesn't
have the resources to address balance concerns or (more importantly) keep
putting in enough events with good enough prizes to keep people involved in
the scene.

And this isn't even touching the elephant in the room: the only reason there
are spaces (i.e. game stores) in which to play is because Magic keeps the
lights on for game stores.

~~~
moate
While LCGs are great, they're only able to exist because of the money from
CCGs. They're still super niche when compared to games like Pokemon, M:tG, or
Yu-Gi-Oh. Those games get people in stores spending money.

Like you said, that's the elephant in the room. Magic is hugely profitable in
its current form. There's no way they change that. They keep doing "known
quantity" products like the Commander decks, or the other pre-cons, but we all
know those aren't nearly as desirable.

As someone who works for a tabletop gaming company, and knows a little bit
about how the sausage is made, you absolutely have to use things like blind
boxes/boosters to pay the bills to make more "customer friendly" products that
sell at 1/5th the rate.

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planert41
Just surprised (or not?) that MTG makes it to the front page of Hacker News

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tareqak
> What to Submit

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
> more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
> answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
dooglius
The parent is just surprised it made it to the front page, not suggesting that
it isn't an appropriate submission.

~~~
minimaxir
This post apparently made the second chance pool; it received no upvotes on
initial posting.

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stevefan1999
Damn, haven't heard of this game anymore since the last time it was proven to
be Turing complete

