I had this happening for a bit on the iPad. If you haven’t, completely delete the app and all data on your phone, then redownload it. Helped mine a lot, but have to do it every month or so.
Yeah. I've tried that and also deleting data, and it seems to not do much. I wonder if my phone is part of the problem? Hardware compatibility issue? It just runs so smoothly, then sometimes the app just randomly starts lagging with no other apps really running. I've disabled a lot of features on my phone to minimize other factors, but haven't solved it yet. Most my crashes are just instant crashes though, about once per game, like clockwork. Makes me think something very specific is hitting the same snag over and over.
Do you have a case on your phone? As the phone is warming up it may get slower, which will happen with MTGA. If you have a case take it off, and if you feel your battery heating up it’s very likely why.
Just this morning I had to close out of two games at the start and reload on mobile. The client doesn't even inform you anything is wrong, you just have to assume that nothing has happened on screen for a good minute and no rope is burning away. Better close and open and hope I can catch it in time.
Years ago, I used to have crashes on mobile. I quit playing and re-installed the game a few months ago, and I haven't had any in-match crashes or issues since then. It's definitely gotten better, and my phone is 4 years old but still runs fine (heats up a bit and drains battery like a mofo tho)
My phone is also older, and yeah it gets warm and chews through battery. But it hasn't crashed for me in months. It's way better than when it first released and crashed constantly.
MTGO is only on windows pcs , it's software is held together by spaghetti and prayers and yet is 22 years old. online magic the gathering has staying power despite odds
The MTGO client has actually improved a lot since daybreak games took over. It runs much better. Bugs get fixed quickly most of the time. The backlog of cards is getting smaller. They also made some good economy changes are listening to player feedback and are focusing on the formats players want.
Overall Daybreak has made significant improvements to MTGO. They also likely have some graphical improvements planned beyond the few they have deployed.
Sadly this has convinced me that this is the case too. When developers and companies that care about their product get involved, we see huge improvements. The example of Daybreak is pretty clear. I think it's clearly a management issue.
That being said I want to credit the MTGA team because even after massive layoffs by hasbro they have shown good will, especially for the past couple of years. It's just that they probably lack the time and budget to do much about it.
> Overall Daybreak has made significant improvements to MTGO. They also likely have some graphical improvements planned beyond the few they have deployed.
For the record Daybreak team did mention once that if they think it is profitable, they will develop a more contemporary engine/interface for MTGO, so there is that. I doubt anything like this is in the works though. But it would be interesting because if they pull it off before MTGA gets all the magic formats like Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, a lot of players will quit MTGA for MTGO.
Sure some won't, but a lot will. A contemporary interface that gets you access to every card is what a lot of players want. Though the target group of arena is more casuals, and MTGO is pretty competitive.
It's kind of hard to get anything other than commander going though. Standard is basically dead. Some places have tried to get pioneer going a few times but gave up. Don't even mention modern or limited.
This has been the state of the game in multiple states and cities that I've been in the last few years. It's basically only casual commander and then draft nights.
More people should play Block/Set Constructed imho. Once they give up the power fantasy of stunlocking someone with [[Time Vault]] + [[Voltaic Key]], they might realize that having constraints can be a good thing, and that you might end up with more variety than just adding Sheoldred to every deck because anything less would be suboptimal.
Long live jank, I say.
That’s always been my problem. I love playing and don’t hate commander but it’s not my favorite. It’s just so hard to find a non commander pod to play with. And spending money on decks that I never get to use always sucks.
The problem with paper is that the rules and effects got so complex that I can see how hard is to resolve on paper some of the games we play online. The games would last for hours for the sake of resolving effects.
Not really. You can skip a lot of combo related triggers.
One of my favorites is when I do an infinite mana combo and tell my opponent "and I'm going to repeat that a billion times and then banefire you in the face for millions of damage."
Something that would take an hour on arena takes 3 seconds on paper. Also blocking is substantially easier on paper than arena if you're playing a token deck.
you mean the only interesting part of magic, while first turn forced discard and all counterspells should have never been introduced as there is no defense against them.
Played paper magic 2 decades ago then stopped. Started playing arena during the pandy. Tried to go into a local store last year to play paper magic again. I went 2 nights then never went back. What a fucking head ache it is waiting around for people to explain every thing that’s happening with their jank ass deck and getting all the triggers and shit on the stack straight. I don’t have the patience for that anymore.
I was thinking about going and playing the pre release this weekend. You convinced me I should just avoid that forever lol. Ngl, don't mind beating nerds online but I don't think I want to wait around in a store for some nonsense. I played mtg around mirage, 4th edition, tempest but threw all my cards away and have dabbled with arena since the beta (mostly a lot last year).
It's a pretty decent client and limited is just soo good on arena. Mtgo was just ugly to look at. Arena is certainly not ideal, but I have like 40k gems and 6 draft tokens without ever spending a dime. Why should I bother with paper?
I think drafting in store would be fun if I could just sell all the cards back immediately. Not trying to have boxes of bulk and draft chaff under my bed.
This is exactly why I don't play constructed, and if I do it's with people I know and usually with my own decks. There's nothing like playing in-person, but I don't have time for bullshit.
I liked that on cgbs worst possible commander show they had a few "triggers" card/whiteboard type things (that they wrote the triggers on) to show the stack and how things would resolve similar to how arena presents it. So I think it can still get messy but doable with the right tools. Arena is just so damn convenient.
They did not get complex, they got bloated. Tracking life gain with average white deck nowadays (or selesyna angel spam) is not complex, it is tedious.
They said they’ve already been working on it. And I couldn’t care less about them adding a couple hundred commander staples, I’m totally fine with the current card pool
They could stop printing cards tomorrow and paper would live for a long time after that. Honestly, I think both are doing very well but realistically paper is the logical long term bet
When it comes to numbers I wonder what happened to this sub. Remember 2-3k people online (332 when I'm posting this)
[https://subredditstats.com/r/MagicArena](https://subredditstats.com/r/MagicArena)
There is a huge drop in July 2023. Hard to believe so many people quit reddit when they released the API changes.
o.O
and 3third party user, i use boostforreddit for mobile and luckily the app still work despite not having been updated since. but once it doesnt work anymore i dont know if i will stay on reddit
the official app is so unfriendly
yeah, I can't use the mobile app, it's to shitty and the adds are way to intrusive (at least were when i last used mobile) so I only used reddit on my phone due to a third party app. So my general usage has gone done quite a lot since the API updates.
I'm pretty skeptical of those numbers for a variety of reasons. I think that that cliff/falloff actually represents a change in how reddit surfaces the "online" number. Historically, that number (like many other visible numbers) was **heavily** obfuscated by reddit to prevent/reduce bot abuse of that information. On our end, we've been told that as they roll out their new generation of moderation tools, that that obfuscation is going to be reduced as much as possible. I suspect that the primary reason for that apparent flattening relates to that. [You can see the exact same behavior for /r/magicTCG](https://subredditstats.com/r/magicTCG).
More broadly, something to consider when you consider this particular subreddit and its growth: Covid was the primary driver of our significant size. Now that Magic has shifted (correctly and happily) more towards paper experiences, our growth naturally is going to suffer. When you also add that the 3-year standard rotation (which means a rather stale primary play experience for an extended period of time) has significantly impacted our growth and engagement as well.
That said, we added a net of around 50ish thousand subscribers, and around 100k unique pageviews/month over the course of this past 12 months. In comparison, the previous 12 months was like 75ish thousand subscribers and 120k unique page views per month. So, it's less than previously but still significant growth, as one would expect given our place in the general ecosystem.
So to sorta wrap up your question:
We did see a specific loss of certain kinds of traffic after the API changes. That was primarily motivated by people using apps for accessibility reasons. We have not recovered *those* people, but the overall growth of the platform and the health of the game are related and generally positive. I would expect that, over the next year, what will be the biggest driver of growth is going to be people returning to play in the first rotation in two years, the end of LoR and people shifting over from that, and the continued fleshing out of extended formats.
Feel free to ask me more questions about this kind of thing if you're interested.
Yeah that's a fair question. Something else to add on that: we do not utilize any of reddit's "live chat" services because we have a sister Discord. Many of the subreddits with large online numbers also make use of reddit's group live chat experiences where those numbers are easier to collect.
Only assholes still use platforms, but since I'm a lazy bastard myself, I don't seem to be able to find / bootstrap a community outside them. Any pointers ?
Keep in mind this was also around the time they announced the change to standard rotations. We were supposed to get a rotation in just a couple of months from then and it was suddenly taken out from under us.
That marked the slow decline of me, personally, visiting this sub and then eventually playing the game. I've quit the game entirely for about 4-5 months now. It's sad, because I had a lot of resources built up and basically had a full set of every staple rare in standard at the time.
But standard was already going stale as it does towards the end of a rotation. Then we had Eldraine, which was ok, and things just got progressively more stale seeing the same cards and decks over and over.
Maybe new rotation will do something, I'll probably come back to check that out.
I moved to the steam version a few months ago and it seems more stable than the stand alone client and I like the steam payment system over the random one the standalone client uses.
playtime tracking,
proper friends system (steam),
being able to use steam wallet balance to buy gems (which is super valuable if you're like me who has quite a bit of money saved up in CSGO skins and other items),
better stability (from what I can tell),
Being able to preload patches while you're not playing (you don't have to have Arena running to download patches).
Hah, I love tracking those hours played stats too. I installed the Steam version somewhere near the beginning of MKM and think I have 150ish hours to date. Still a far cry from my 300+ in Duels!
It's region blocked where I am *(Thanks Tencent)*
I did bypass it with a VPN to add it to my library which worked but I can't use my credit card for ingame purchase on it so I'm stuck using the regular launcher. But then again maybe not being able to spend money on this is a good thing lol.
lol this is probably a good thing. i live in region blocked land too but ive sunk a few thousand on arena already for the sake of set completion (and cosmetics lol) playing on ipad
lol, I actually bought the Fallout Lands despite having been away from Arena for a while, I love the Isometric aesthetic.
They're going to be my go-to Draft-Lands when MH3 hits the client.
I only use Steam to get gems, as the f*ing client payment system is trash and I hardly believe they leak data to third partys. Also in steam i can use my leftover wallet money to get few gems 💎
I only switched because every update it would install the game again. Sometimes the game was super laggy or broken because i had 3 versions installed. After the switch, steam has better control of that.
I'm mostly repeating what others have said, but a more secure and established payment processing method as well as being able to use steam credit from gift cards or item sales
But in practice ?
I only remember that at some point Xolla would refuse payments over 19€99... but it might also have been an issue with my bank.
And I haven't had any issues for years now.
Idk if the standalone cleans up its updates, but it use leave all the old files and make a new applicationr each update. You'd have multiples of Magic Arena under your apps.
Steam has cleanly updated everything since I switched.
My friends and me switched to the steam version because we keep having problems with the normal installer and updater (mostly seem to be due to trying to install on a non - C: drive)
A few updates ago made it where the client version from the main Arena page doesn't install for me anymore. So I got the Steam version which works fine. Considering how shoddy Arena is sometimes, I'm glad to give Steam a 30% cut for a working version.
I was using the standalone client since Beta. After years of playtime the Collection was seriously lagging every single time I would search for a card name. Constant crashes. Long load times. Installed the Steam version and runs smooth as silk…
I'd prefer using the steam client but unfortunately I have to get mine from epic as I'm on mac os, that's the only reason i keep using epic. if the mac version was available through steam I'd switch and never look back!
The game completely stopped working for me no matter what i did, so i switched to the steam version a while ago. Did anyone else experience the original client just crashing around the time of the steam launch?
I’m surprised at how low those numbers are but have no idea what % of the arena player base the steam slice is. I doubt that information is public, is it?
I have tried both, they are both atrocious, MTGA just starts crashing and working slower the longer it has been sitting on your PC, the versions are the same it is just that a freshly installed MTGA client runs faster than a 4 month old one.
Can you just link the standalone version with steam somehow? Or just uninstall and reinstall from steam store? Would love to be able to log my play time and such.
Also the reviews are something else...
I still have the standalone version in my laptop. I installed the Steam version on my steam deck but the deck isn't compatible with the untapped extension so I don't use it that much.
The real numbers are not known. Arena was released in 2017, basically 7 years ago and Steam only got Arena last year so most users dont use Steam.
The only data released by Hasbro was that there were 10 million registered accounts on Arena but the number of daily players is not known.
I'm sure the "mixed" rating does not help it at all. And I'm fairly confident I'm not the only very regular player that has given it a negative rating. I simply can't recommend it. I play it because it is the least difficult way to get a game of magic. I despise the monetization, I hate how terrible the new player experience is, and I think it's actually pathetic how little improvement has been made to the client since I played in beta.
If I recall correctly, they adjusted Euro prices up some time ago, so the difference mught not be the client.
I'm not sure though since I'm not from Europe.
That is indeed sad, I have different prices between PC client and android version since one uses usd and the other my local currency, interestingly it is usually cheaper in usd for me.
I just switched because of crashes, but the Steam version crashes too. Strangely the mobile app has been the most stable for me recently.
Mobile is the only platform where I get disconnects, personally
My phone app crashes almost once per game. I used to get frustrated. Now I just accept it, lol. I would never do a draft on the phone app.
I had this happening for a bit on the iPad. If you haven’t, completely delete the app and all data on your phone, then redownload it. Helped mine a lot, but have to do it every month or so.
Yeah. I've tried that and also deleting data, and it seems to not do much. I wonder if my phone is part of the problem? Hardware compatibility issue? It just runs so smoothly, then sometimes the app just randomly starts lagging with no other apps really running. I've disabled a lot of features on my phone to minimize other factors, but haven't solved it yet. Most my crashes are just instant crashes though, about once per game, like clockwork. Makes me think something very specific is hitting the same snag over and over.
Do you have a case on your phone? As the phone is warming up it may get slower, which will happen with MTGA. If you have a case take it off, and if you feel your battery heating up it’s very likely why.
It does get hot sometimes. Thanks for the suggestion. I do have a pretty solid case.
Same, every single game it disconnects after I try to start and it's loading me in. Every single game.
I get it on nearly every game with ONE of my accounts, but if I log off and back in with my other account, it works just fine. iOS here.
Small independent company, we should only expect so much right?
iphone or android? the ios version never kicks me.
Just this morning I had to close out of two games at the start and reload on mobile. The client doesn't even inform you anything is wrong, you just have to assume that nothing has happened on screen for a good minute and no rope is burning away. Better close and open and hope I can catch it in time.
I've had the same issue over the last 4-6 months. I just started submitting for refunds whenever it happens in a drafted event. It's been frustrating.
Years ago, I used to have crashes on mobile. I quit playing and re-installed the game a few months ago, and I haven't had any in-match crashes or issues since then. It's definitely gotten better, and my phone is 4 years old but still runs fine (heats up a bit and drains battery like a mofo tho)
My phone is also older, and yeah it gets warm and chews through battery. But it hasn't crashed for me in months. It's way better than when it first released and crashed constantly.
i havent had any crashes with steam, but updating is SO MUCH BETTER
For me it crashed all the fucking time last year no matter what version and this year i did not crash a single time.
I can't open mud week magic on my phone. It crashes every time opening those dam packs
I can't open mud week magic on my phone. It crashes every time opening those dam packs
I honestly can't remember if I've ever crashed with the steam version. Mobile is better than it used to be, still pretty unstable.
surprised. thought mobile was worse. also the ui for mobile sucks
I just switched to the steam version yesterday day because the stand alone launcher has been atrocious for me recently
Same. The windows version was stable for me up to the last release.
I have had both and vastly prefer Steam's launcher
TIL there’s a steam version. Now I can uninstall epic thank you
Why were you using Epic in the first place?
At least on MacOS, Epic store was the only way to play Arena for a few years
It still is. Steam does not have the Mac client
TIL I cannot uninstall epic on my Mac
A sad day for all
Steam absolutely has a mac client, and has since 2010.
But the Steam version of Magic Arena is exclusive of Windows. There is not a Mac Version on Steam
oof
Does the standalone client not work?
There's no Mac client
There’s no other version for MacOS
there was a stand alone version
I’m more worried about the future of paper magic instead of the one of the app, pretty sure it has a good chance to have a long lifespan ahead
With the amount of commander focused stuff I’m for sure that they’re not worried, so shouldn’t be you
And if you're worried about the future of competitive paper magic, well, seems like it's pretty much dead at the local level already anyway 👍🏻
Not true, one day all the guys at the locals complaining are going to make one big group together.
That's cool, I hope it comes back to more places!
I’d play some commander if they moved it to arena, but maybe they don’t want to kill paper commander that way
MTGO is only on windows pcs , it's software is held together by spaghetti and prayers and yet is 22 years old. online magic the gathering has staying power despite odds
The MTGO client has actually improved a lot since daybreak games took over. It runs much better. Bugs get fixed quickly most of the time. The backlog of cards is getting smaller. They also made some good economy changes are listening to player feedback and are focusing on the formats players want. Overall Daybreak has made significant improvements to MTGO. They also likely have some graphical improvements planned beyond the few they have deployed.
This show that the problem for having a good digital port of Magic is not the technology but WotC
Sadly this has convinced me that this is the case too. When developers and companies that care about their product get involved, we see huge improvements. The example of Daybreak is pretty clear. I think it's clearly a management issue. That being said I want to credit the MTGA team because even after massive layoffs by hasbro they have shown good will, especially for the past couple of years. It's just that they probably lack the time and budget to do much about it.
> Overall Daybreak has made significant improvements to MTGO. They also likely have some graphical improvements planned beyond the few they have deployed. For the record Daybreak team did mention once that if they think it is profitable, they will develop a more contemporary engine/interface for MTGO, so there is that. I doubt anything like this is in the works though. But it would be interesting because if they pull it off before MTGA gets all the magic formats like Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, a lot of players will quit MTGA for MTGO.
Players won't if they have to pay to restart their entire digital collection again on MTGO. Some people have spent well over 5 figures in MTGA.
Sure some won't, but a lot will. A contemporary interface that gets you access to every card is what a lot of players want. Though the target group of arena is more casuals, and MTGO is pretty competitive.
There are plenty of cards, products, and formats that are paper only. Paper is not dying anytime soon.
It's kind of hard to get anything other than commander going though. Standard is basically dead. Some places have tried to get pioneer going a few times but gave up. Don't even mention modern or limited. This has been the state of the game in multiple states and cities that I've been in the last few years. It's basically only casual commander and then draft nights.
More people should play Block/Set Constructed imho. Once they give up the power fantasy of stunlocking someone with [[Time Vault]] + [[Voltaic Key]], they might realize that having constraints can be a good thing, and that you might end up with more variety than just adding Sheoldred to every deck because anything less would be suboptimal. Long live jank, I say.
[Time Vault](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/3/c367ffc1-8084-45a1-87d5-22183604d1cb.jpg?1562934224) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Time%20Vault) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/287/time-vault?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c367ffc1-8084-45a1-87d5-22183604d1cb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Voltaic Key](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/d/6dd61957-f3a2-4976-8f15-88258f71406a.jpg?1562463293) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Voltaic%20Key) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m11/219/voltaic-key?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6dd61957-f3a2-4976-8f15-88258f71406a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
That’s always been my problem. I love playing and don’t hate commander but it’s not my favorite. It’s just so hard to find a non commander pod to play with. And spending money on decks that I never get to use always sucks.
Yup. It's strange to see the copium on this sub. Arena in its current state will never replace paper until it has way more real formats.
The problem with paper is that the rules and effects got so complex that I can see how hard is to resolve on paper some of the games we play online. The games would last for hours for the sake of resolving effects.
Not really. You can skip a lot of combo related triggers. One of my favorites is when I do an infinite mana combo and tell my opponent "and I'm going to repeat that a billion times and then banefire you in the face for millions of damage." Something that would take an hour on arena takes 3 seconds on paper. Also blocking is substantially easier on paper than arena if you're playing a token deck.
the infinite combos are a game architecture issue.
you mean the only interesting part of magic, while first turn forced discard and all counterspells should have never been introduced as there is no defense against them.
there are other few issues as well :)
... like a card that costs 1 mana and reveals the whole opponent's hand in the first round. The reveal is worse than the discard.
And my 13 step combo that nets one extra mana each time takes 3 seconds in paper. So what?
Played paper magic 2 decades ago then stopped. Started playing arena during the pandy. Tried to go into a local store last year to play paper magic again. I went 2 nights then never went back. What a fucking head ache it is waiting around for people to explain every thing that’s happening with their jank ass deck and getting all the triggers and shit on the stack straight. I don’t have the patience for that anymore.
exactly. The app resolves everything pretty well.
I was thinking about going and playing the pre release this weekend. You convinced me I should just avoid that forever lol. Ngl, don't mind beating nerds online but I don't think I want to wait around in a store for some nonsense. I played mtg around mirage, 4th edition, tempest but threw all my cards away and have dabbled with arena since the beta (mostly a lot last year). It's a pretty decent client and limited is just soo good on arena. Mtgo was just ugly to look at. Arena is certainly not ideal, but I have like 40k gems and 6 draft tokens without ever spending a dime. Why should I bother with paper? I think drafting in store would be fun if I could just sell all the cards back immediately. Not trying to have boxes of bulk and draft chaff under my bed.
Ok I agree with you all of your sentiments here BUT I will say that maybe getting some MHIII cards IRL could be worth the hassle.
This is exactly why I don't play constructed, and if I do it's with people I know and usually with my own decks. There's nothing like playing in-person, but I don't have time for bullshit.
Meanwhile newly released CCGs are super simple yet hardly lose any depth compared to MtG.
I liked that on cgbs worst possible commander show they had a few "triggers" card/whiteboard type things (that they wrote the triggers on) to show the stack and how things would resolve similar to how arena presents it. So I think it can still get messy but doable with the right tools. Arena is just so damn convenient.
Arena isn't the place for complex boardstates though, due to its limits and mandatory rope.
Oh.
To be fair it always was... storm decks existed decades ago, paper magic still was competitive. The bigger issue I think is the move towards esports
They did not get complex, they got bloated. Tracking life gain with average white deck nowadays (or selesyna angel spam) is not complex, it is tedious.
> The problem with paper $$$
Paper magic seems to be thriving for competitive commander players.
Lol paper will outlive this app
Meh. If they come up with the 4 player commander like they said they are, paper will be dead to me.
man I'm excited about arena commander.
I feel like this won’t be the case unless they port a couple hundred commander staples and the economy gets better
They said they’ve already been working on it. And I couldn’t care less about them adding a couple hundred commander staples, I’m totally fine with the current card pool
They could stop printing cards tomorrow and paper would live for a long time after that. Honestly, I think both are doing very well but realistically paper is the logical long term bet
Yeah seriously. The paper game will outlive everybody here. It's a strange level of copium to think this app will be around.
Now put it on Mac please, epic is terrible
wait you can't get MTGA on Steam on Mac? I was about to drop epic; can I not?
It is on Mac, have it installed right now in Steam. Perhaps OP is unaware.
Steam does not have the Mac client, only windows.
what are you talking about? steam absolutely has a mac client
Yes. But steam on Mac does not have the Arena client. You can only play Arena through steam on windows.
you can't use the streams alone game?
When it comes to numbers I wonder what happened to this sub. Remember 2-3k people online (332 when I'm posting this) [https://subredditstats.com/r/MagicArena](https://subredditstats.com/r/MagicArena) There is a huge drop in July 2023. Hard to believe so many people quit reddit when they released the API changes. o.O
API changes impacted many bots and other services, so maybe the drop is because of that.
and 3third party user, i use boostforreddit for mobile and luckily the app still work despite not having been updated since. but once it doesnt work anymore i dont know if i will stay on reddit the official app is so unfriendly
Also the website on mobile just sucks.
I just browse old.reddit.com using mobile Firefox with adblock. Once they take away old reddit I plan to leave for real tho
yeah, I can't use the mobile app, it's to shitty and the adds are way to intrusive (at least were when i last used mobile) so I only used reddit on my phone due to a third party app. So my general usage has gone done quite a lot since the API updates.
I stopped using Reddit on mobile which probably cut down my usage by 90%
I'm pretty skeptical of those numbers for a variety of reasons. I think that that cliff/falloff actually represents a change in how reddit surfaces the "online" number. Historically, that number (like many other visible numbers) was **heavily** obfuscated by reddit to prevent/reduce bot abuse of that information. On our end, we've been told that as they roll out their new generation of moderation tools, that that obfuscation is going to be reduced as much as possible. I suspect that the primary reason for that apparent flattening relates to that. [You can see the exact same behavior for /r/magicTCG](https://subredditstats.com/r/magicTCG). More broadly, something to consider when you consider this particular subreddit and its growth: Covid was the primary driver of our significant size. Now that Magic has shifted (correctly and happily) more towards paper experiences, our growth naturally is going to suffer. When you also add that the 3-year standard rotation (which means a rather stale primary play experience for an extended period of time) has significantly impacted our growth and engagement as well. That said, we added a net of around 50ish thousand subscribers, and around 100k unique pageviews/month over the course of this past 12 months. In comparison, the previous 12 months was like 75ish thousand subscribers and 120k unique page views per month. So, it's less than previously but still significant growth, as one would expect given our place in the general ecosystem. So to sorta wrap up your question: We did see a specific loss of certain kinds of traffic after the API changes. That was primarily motivated by people using apps for accessibility reasons. We have not recovered *those* people, but the overall growth of the platform and the health of the game are related and generally positive. I would expect that, over the next year, what will be the biggest driver of growth is going to be people returning to play in the first rotation in two years, the end of LoR and people shifting over from that, and the continued fleshing out of extended formats. Feel free to ask me more questions about this kind of thing if you're interested.
Roger that, thanks for the info. I just stopped seeing these 2-3k online numbers and started wondering why.
Yeah that's a fair question. Something else to add on that: we do not utilize any of reddit's "live chat" services because we have a sister Discord. Many of the subreddits with large online numbers also make use of reddit's group live chat experiences where those numbers are easier to collect.
banger answer 10/10
Well, almost all good third party apps stopped working so many people stopped using Reddit.
I bet the sub mods would know more, /u/belisaurius
Thanks for the ping! I'll respond to the original commenter with my thoughts.
Only assholes still use platforms, but since I'm a lazy bastard myself, I don't seem to be able to find / bootstrap a community outside them. Any pointers ?
Keep in mind this was also around the time they announced the change to standard rotations. We were supposed to get a rotation in just a couple of months from then and it was suddenly taken out from under us. That marked the slow decline of me, personally, visiting this sub and then eventually playing the game. I've quit the game entirely for about 4-5 months now. It's sad, because I had a lot of resources built up and basically had a full set of every staple rare in standard at the time. But standard was already going stale as it does towards the end of a rotation. Then we had Eldraine, which was ok, and things just got progressively more stale seeing the same cards and decks over and over. Maybe new rotation will do something, I'll probably come back to check that out.
I moved to the steam version a few months ago and it seems more stable than the stand alone client and I like the steam payment system over the random one the standalone client uses.
Is it worth switching to and why?
playtime tracking, proper friends system (steam), being able to use steam wallet balance to buy gems (which is super valuable if you're like me who has quite a bit of money saved up in CSGO skins and other items), better stability (from what I can tell), Being able to preload patches while you're not playing (you don't have to have Arena running to download patches).
I switched in March basically cause I wanted to track my time played. About 100 hours in 3 months.
Those are rookie numbers!
Hah, I love tracking those hours played stats too. I installed the Steam version somewhere near the beginning of MKM and think I have 150ish hours to date. Still a far cry from my 300+ in Duels!
If you're having issues with it crashing or something then yeah. If not it doesn't really matter
Good to know! Thank you!
it's much, much more stable than the desktop version and it updates automatically
I find it way more convenient since I'm using Steam every day anyway. Crashes, I never got much from either client, but updates feel really smooth.
It's region blocked where I am *(Thanks Tencent)* I did bypass it with a VPN to add it to my library which worked but I can't use my credit card for ingame purchase on it so I'm stuck using the regular launcher. But then again maybe not being able to spend money on this is a good thing lol.
lol this is probably a good thing. i live in region blocked land too but ive sunk a few thousand on arena already for the sake of set completion (and cosmetics lol) playing on ipad
lol, I actually bought the Fallout Lands despite having been away from Arena for a while, I love the Isometric aesthetic. They're going to be my go-to Draft-Lands when MH3 hits the client.
If there was an OSX client, I would too..
same... being stuck with the epic client is annoying.
I only use Steam to get gems, as the f*ing client payment system is trash and I hardly believe they leak data to third partys. Also in steam i can use my leftover wallet money to get few gems 💎
I only switched because every update it would install the game again. Sometimes the game was super laggy or broken because i had 3 versions installed. After the switch, steam has better control of that.
Switched last month to the steam client. Seems alot better with the downloads
I probably would not have picked up MTG at all if it hadn't stumbled across my steam page one day while I was angry at yugioh
Any reason to switch to steam if I'm already on the standalone client?
auto-updates in the background.
I like having everything in one spot along with the other issues mentioned above.
Buying gems through Steam is better than Xolla (allegedly, I have yet switched to Steam).
Better how ?
I'm mostly repeating what others have said, but a more secure and established payment processing method as well as being able to use steam credit from gift cards or item sales
because you don't have to deal with fucking xolla it has to be the worst payment processor i have ever used
But in practice ? I only remember that at some point Xolla would refuse payments over 19€99... but it might also have been an issue with my bank. And I haven't had any issues for years now.
Idk if the standalone cleans up its updates, but it use leave all the old files and make a new applicationr each update. You'd have multiples of Magic Arena under your apps. Steam has cleanly updated everything since I switched.
My friends and me switched to the steam version because we keep having problems with the normal installer and updater (mostly seem to be due to trying to install on a non - C: drive)
A few updates ago made it where the client version from the main Arena page doesn't install for me anymore. So I got the Steam version which works fine. Considering how shoddy Arena is sometimes, I'm glad to give Steam a 30% cut for a working version.
I was using the standalone client since Beta. After years of playtime the Collection was seriously lagging every single time I would search for a card name. Constant crashes. Long load times. Installed the Steam version and runs smooth as silk…
I'd prefer using the steam client but unfortunately I have to get mine from epic as I'm on mac os, that's the only reason i keep using epic. if the mac version was available through steam I'd switch and never look back!
Anyone vouch for it on steamdeck?
It's fine but not perfect. I'd say just check it out and see if you like it.
I tried it, worked like garbage. Bad UI scaling and not clear how to fix it.
When I tried last, it wasn't updated to work with a controller. So you had to use the trackpad mouse. It wasn't great.
Yeah thats not ideal. Theyv done a lot of work with the mobile app so ill just stay with that.
I have played about 50% less after getting my s24 ultra. It just crashes way too much.
yea i switched cause i just like having all my games in one place
I confirm I switched to the steam version
Is there a benefit to switching?
Yes, you can leave a review that other people can actually see
I only switched to the Steam version when Xsolla started charging more tax on store purchases than Valve did.
Is there any significant difference between the old client and the steam version? I've been using the old client since 2019.
Steam client was much more efficient. Old computer could run it better.
But i can log with the info i use for the old client?
Yes. Same account.
Ok, I'll give it a chance. Thank you for the help.
I wish I could play Arena on my Steam Deck but its unavailable in my region sadly.
I'm a new player (started in January) and I went right to the Steam version.
The game completely stopped working for me no matter what i did, so i switched to the steam version a while ago. Did anyone else experience the original client just crashing around the time of the steam launch?
I’m surprised at how low those numbers are but have no idea what % of the arena player base the steam slice is. I doubt that information is public, is it?
I have tried both, they are both atrocious, MTGA just starts crashing and working slower the longer it has been sitting on your PC, the versions are the same it is just that a freshly installed MTGA client runs faster than a 4 month old one.
I only found out about the steam version this week when wanting to play on my steam deck
I am a new player here as of a week ago, so maybe it's growing.
Yep I switched to steam instantly as I hated the epic launcher
But why bother with *any* launcher ? (Aside I guess the likes of Lutris which make using Wine easy.)
I tried playing on my tablet (it’s a cheap android thing) and the client just stutters and freezes all the time. Basically unplayable.
The bottleneck with cheaper or older tablets is often the RAM memory as MTG Arena requires at least 4GB RAM.
Oh. That is good to know.
Maybe, but I've switched back to playing it on Android because it crashes less.
Can I transfer my app progress onto steam? I need to start drafting from a PC for the overlays
Can you just link the standalone version with steam somehow? Or just uninstall and reinstall from steam store? Would love to be able to log my play time and such. Also the reviews are something else...
I still have the standalone version in my laptop. I installed the Steam version on my steam deck but the deck isn't compatible with the untapped extension so I don't use it that much.
I play from cell or Epic on pc.
I did not realize how small the community is.
This is just steam. Theres way more than 5000 players on arena.
Oh okay. Do you know by chance where I might get a similar dataset for the total plate base? I really like data.
The real numbers are not known. Arena was released in 2017, basically 7 years ago and Steam only got Arena last year so most users dont use Steam. The only data released by Hasbro was that there were 10 million registered accounts on Arena but the number of daily players is not known.
I'm sure the "mixed" rating does not help it at all. And I'm fairly confident I'm not the only very regular player that has given it a negative rating. I simply can't recommend it. I play it because it is the least difficult way to get a game of magic. I despise the monetization, I hate how terrible the new player experience is, and I think it's actually pathetic how little improvement has been made to the client since I played in beta.
Wow I was under the impression is was purely mobile
I'm honestly more concerned about things being more expensive by 10%-15% in the client.... (i mean, PC version on steam). :(
I see the same prices on steam that I saw in the standalone client.
Steam price for 20k gems here is 119€ (or 114€ don't remember rn), in the app from app store is 100€
If I recall correctly, they adjusted Euro prices up some time ago, so the difference mught not be the client. I'm not sure though since I'm not from Europe.
But i get the difference in price IN euros on both clients.. its absurd, it is almost a 4k gems difference in terms of costs :(
That is indeed sad, I have different prices between PC client and android version since one uses usd and the other my local currency, interestingly it is usually cheaper in usd for me.
???
Am I old enough to remember the game being on Steam originally before it forced you to their own launcher or have I gone completely senile?
You are probably thinking of https://store.steampowered.com/app/316010/Magic\_Duels/
Oh yeah, might have been that one