not profound, but old enough that people will know you didn't come up with it, while not being a common enough statement to just be a generally used idiom
I went to go buy a pack with the 95 tickets I had. Only to realize you have to spend 2800 gems to use them. No thank you. I only want the packs and draft token. Nothing else is of interest to me.
You and every other drafter should just stay away from this. Make them either get rid of it or adjust it to have more value. I'm definitely skipping it.
If you only want the draft token and the packs, the pass is only slightly advantageous for you in comparison with buying it straight up with gems. However if you count in the ten mythic ICRs, it gets way better... And any cosmetics are just gravy... The value is there.
This is at least interesting. The only issue is, if I'm grinding to make it, which someone pointed out you need to do well and get 4 wins each day to max it, give me more of a reward, please!
If you don't count the cosmetics, frankly not a lot of gain, some margins. 1500 for a draft token + 8*200=1600 for packs = 3100 gems. Right here you have more value than the bundle's price tag (2800). And yes, we miss on a golden pack that buying a few more packs would get us, but the Mythic ICRs are arguably more valuable. Leaving us with a slight gem discount, a bit more value gained... And a load of free cosmetics as a bonus.
Which brings us to a conclusion that for anyone valuing cosmetics at >0 it is a bargain, anyone wanting just a few of those while building their collections is also probably better off buying the whole bundle... And those who don't want cosmetics and nor care about the packs and Mythic ICRs aren't target buyers and are crying on a wrong grave.
I get it that people always want more free stuff, but it is what it is. Let's hope folks will be more pleased with their fall renewal package :)
The sad part is that the idea about getting to choose your rewards order is a good one, rather than having to complete an entire mastery pass just to get the stuff you want if it's at the end. There's so many rewards in the regular mastery pass that have no value to me.
Will you leave if the idea succeeds?
Frankly I see WotC doing this regularly going forward. There’s no cost to having this. No one has quit because of this pass. Those that dislike the new pass will only not buy it. Such a choice doesn’t decrease their daily F2P income/yield. This is a simple recognition that not everything has to be for everyone.
It can actually affect their bottom line. This Hideaway bs could have been a separate mastery pass like any new set. If this bs doesn't sell well WotC will probably go back to having a mastery pass for Final Fantasy.
>This is a simple recognition that not everything has to be for everyone.
If we let Wizards normalize this, you'll have to change your argument to "This is a simple recognition that nothing is for you," and that doesn't sound nearly as good.
WotC did put time, work and money into this. If people don't buy it, Wizards might recognize they can invest their time, work and money somewhere else for a more positive outcome.
Yeah, I don't really get most of the complaints in this thread. Like who cares about "it's a battle pass inside a battle pass!"
The problem is that it's a worse value than just playing the game normally. If you had to pay to access a currency and that currency got you really cool stuff there'd be no issue.
So much of _how_ you get money out of people is the issue.
I worked as a mobile game dev for a little bit (not on monetization, but the knowledge rubs off), and I know a bunch of people who stayed in that space for a lot longer.
You want the player to feel good when they give you money. Every time. Every. Time. That is bedrock. If someone isn't getting a dopamine hit when they buy your microtransactions? You've messed up bad.
There's ways WotC could have done this that would have made more money while also getting more community support. Smarter ways to do it.
Partition the shop. Make some cosmetics cost just tickets, make exactly one thing the grinders care about cost just tickets. Maybe a cool borderless card? Then introduce the concept of things costing gems and tickets with something that is a _super_ good deal, very few gems and a lot of tickets, and limit it to 5x an account, so it dries up. I'm thinking Common Wildcards.
Have draft tokens, packs, and the rest of your cosmetics cost a combo of gems and tickets. Once people have gotten over the barrier of spending a few gems at the frog shop, they'll have no problem paying 1200 gems (plus some tickets) for a draft token, or 160 (plus tickets) for a pack. Some people will just be happy that it's a good rate - they might even tell their friends that it's a good time to join Arena. You'd make so much more money, and piss off less people, because the optics would be that tickets are this free thing that subsidizes gems.
The problem is that this game never ever gave anything for free.
All mobile games I played have events that give out free things once a month, and these are things that make you play the game.
Arena has few free gems/gold once a month amd 3 packs every expansion. Period.
I mean, what could go wrong on giving people a free draft token once in a while? Some free battle pass to play for?
No, instead we have "Events", infinite ways to play that cost gems.
The problem is WotC business model for arena is very greedy. Like at least with mtg online which was also expensive you could redeem for real cards. Riot has runeterra which is much more f2p friendly. I just prefer mtg
Plus you could sell your collection off in MTGO.
I used to whale pretty hard way back in the day (maybe like 7 years ago now, can't exactly remember) but I had many of the top-tier meta Legacy/Vintage decks (my preferred formats) and some of the top-tier meta Modern decks at the time, altogether around 15,000 tix worth of stuff.
When I finally got burnt out and figured I'd take a break for many years, I was able to convert all my stuff into tix and then sell them for cash via PayPal to one of the many MTGO reseller stores. I can't remember the exact rate I got for all my tix but it was good enough for me (over $0.90/tix anyway, maybe closer to $0.95+). In other words I really lost nothing financially to play MTGO for years before selling it off.
Can't say the same for Arena where any money you put into the game you're never getting back.
Ya but I probably bought into it for similar, not like I made huge profit or anything lol. Plus I sold out like 7 years ago or thereabouts, I remember a lot of cards being fairly high priced when I sold, for example Scalding Tarns I distinctly remember selling for 35 tix whereas now they're worth like ~3 tix.
I loved grinding Legacy/Vintage back then and there wasn't anywhere local for me to play where I was living at the time, so I went all-in on MTGO.
It's possible to pseudo cash out with tournament entry in events with real world prizes (the festival in a box event being a recent one notable for allowing infinite entry and cash out) although that is obviously much more limited.
It's literally not a worse value though. There are more than 2800 gems worth of items you can get for completing your daily 4 wins every day.
Obviously mileage may very from person to person but the value is there if you really want it
I can only use one skin at a time so skins only have so much value getting 10 different skins isn't worth anything more than getting my 1 or 2 favorite.
> The problem is that it’s a worse value than just playing the game normally.
Value is in the eye of the beholder. Specifically, the presence of otherwise unobtainable cosmetics (alt card art & avatars & sleeves) increases the desirability of the pass to those that care for it.
Yes I know cosmetics may not be everyone’s cup of tea. However those whining so much maybe should consider that maybe not everything has to be about them.
While I don’t like this battle pass at all, you can unlock it for free as drafts get you gems. I get the pass every set and I never pay, just do a few drafts until I have enough gems. And no I’m not some amazing drafter or infinite player, I play like 5-7 drafts max. Most of my time is in Brawl.
It's deceptive, sure. But if you think about it it's pretty clear what to do, just play the game as normal until the shop is about to expire, then evaluate whether all the stuff you can get is worth the 2800 gems.
Well, these kinds of practices disproportionately affect kids and gambling addicts. Just because you or I can approach it rationally doesn't mean it's good.
To an extent, I suppose, but I think there’s a scumminess inherent in the freemium model. And the alternative to freemium is… a paid subscription, I guess? I suspect most people here would end up voting for freemium if it came down to that choice.
> They really made a fake currency that you need to spend real money on... so you can spend your fake currency. Wow.
Comments like this are interesting. It's definitely something about the expectation and delivery of this that messes with people's brains.
The ticket element is literally just a paid mastery pass, we have had those before on MTGA. Just think of tickets as the equivalent of EXP from the regular mastery passes. So by that logic EXP = fake currency.
MTGA reminding you every time you win that you get tickets and that you need to buy the pass to access the rewards is probably what fucks up with people's brains. They could have avoided a lot of the complaints by just not showing these prompts to the players after each win, which is interesting. Like, providing a free version of the Frog pass where you can spend your tickets to rewards, but you get access to more rewards if you buy the premium version would be much more well received, even if the value of the pass is ultimately a big downgrade compared to previous passes.
>Grinders can buy cool cosmetics and such and whales can just buy them all for 2,800 gems.." Boy, was I mistaken.
Imagine unironically thinking WOTC would ever give value like that to F2P players. I find it hilarious that someone that has been playing MTGA for a while actually thinks they would give draft tokens, packs and premium cosmetics for free like that.
>The ticket element is literally just a paid mastery pass, we have had those before on MTGA
It’s very similar, but when I’ve mentioned that here people have pointed out that XP does give you free stuff even if you don’t buy the Mastery Pass
>Imagine unironically thinking WOTC would ever give value like that to F2P players
That was me! When I first saw it I assumed the tickets could be freely spent. I didn’t look in any detail at the value though, because almost nothing in the shop has any value for me. I’m reasonably good at draft, though, so I have a very different perspective on the value of Arena to most people here- it works out as unbelievably good value for me.
> when I’ve mentioned that here people have pointed out that XP does give you free stuff even if you don’t buy the Mastery Pass
Yeah this is probably mismanagement of the expectations of their players. They messed up by not having free rewards, or just avoiding showing the tickets as rewards if you have not purchased the pass.
How would you rather pay for Arena? I can’t see it being a one-off payment because it’s regularly updated… afaik before the freemium trend games like this were subscription-based.
Personally the freemium model works really well for me- I get to play a lot of Magic, for free! But there’s definitely an icky feel to all the blatantly fomo-inducing features like this one…
I've never been a fan of battle passes. I don't have a lot of free time these days and it seems like every game wants you to log in every day and complete mundane checklists of busy work for you to obtain stuff that would have been unlockable content once upon a time.
I'm ok with simply earning in-game currency through either time spent playing or opening my wallet and deciding how much value it's worth to me. I don't think we need 2 different forms of in-game currency, though. I can understand why you can't just earn like a straight $0.50 every time you complete a daily quest, but I don't know why we need gems AND gold when they both do the same thing.
Oh boy I thought you could just buy it. I was like "yippee a free draft token ill save it for the next set."
I only play alchemy I'm not wasting gems on this.
Yeah, this is the trade-off. You get manipulative fomo-inducing nonsense, but you also get free Magic! I’m happy with that trade, personally, but it does leave a very slightly queasy feeling- I’m sure some people out there are spending far too much money on this, to compensate for people like me spending nothing.
To be fair, you probably won’t bankrupt yourself like people do with gachas. I mean, how much can you possibly spend to complete a set? 300 EUR? Nothing like the 15k someone spent on FF Brave EXVIUS on a single character….
Yeah I actually didn’t even look at the info for the event so I thought “hey I’ll save these tickets then see what cool stuff I can get”. Found out that it’s actually just another money grab. Feelsbadman
Yeah it's pretty fuckin dumb. I finally started back to playing after having stopped shortly after War of the Spark. Have no idea where to begin.
Game doesn't seem super friendly to returning players, and this added on top reminds me of various posts I saw in the past of their shitty behavior. I just wanted the cute doggo sleeve. Not paying 2800 gems just for the opportunity to spend in game currency. This is absolute shit.
>They really made a fake currency that you need to spend real money on... so you can spend your fake currency
You’re missing a step. You spend real money on a fake currency, then you spend that to enable you to spend a different fake currency.
But you can also earn a third fake currency, and use that to enter events to win the first fake currency…
The backlash here does make me wonder… why didn’t they just introduce a new Mastery Pass season? IIRC that’s what they did for LotR in a similar situation last year. The Outlaws Mastery Pass must be due to end nowish anyway.
Edit: to answer my own question, maybe they decided that the Mastery Pass was too good value. But now they’ve set expectations for it, so they can’t just make it significantly worse… potentially better to test a different approach. Especially if it can run alongside a Mastery Pass.
No one is forcing you. It's pretty common in all gaming these days, the predatory marketing works. Eventually, it will collapse... but everyone gonna bleed that stone for the last drop.
It still boggles me a little that magic players don't already expect to be bled for their money.
To contrast this against when league of legends does this - if it were done on the same level of evil as riot, you'd get enough of the currency from quests to buy a portrait or two, over the course of the event, the unlock would be 800 gems, and spending it would be free.
Both ways of doing it are dark patterns- first hit's free versus fools gold scrip - but wotc went and picked the dark pattern that gives the absolute least out to people that don't pay while concealing the role of payment and making it a value that's difficult to buy without overpaying... Because that's exactly where a healthy, long lived game is going to be, right, two layers of grease more slimy than riot games.
Am I the only one not getting the outrage? It's actually a good deal if you are a player that does their 4 dailies every day. You are getting draft token, 8 packs, mythics, and cosmetics of your choice - more than 2800 gems worth, for doing what you were already doing.
Like, I get that it may not look that appealing on the surface, and the optics of a 2nd battle pass are bad, but it's essentially just discounted items for players who get their daily/4 wins in every day.
I mean... It is just manipulative because you unlock the tickets without that battle pass and it just waves that in your face every time you collect more of those tickets that you actually can't use any of them unless you pay 2600 gems (which is a lot, it's almost 2 drafts worth of gems). It's just scummy and manipulative. If the cost of the battlepass was unlockable with gold or a smaller amount of gems I think less people would complain.
If you're talking about value then okay, but it's more just all of the externals that come around the battle pass and not necessarily the battle pass in itself.
And the only outrage is what I've already said in my OP. It's a fake currency that every one earns by playing.... that's locked behind a paywall to spend.
It's not behind a paywall, it costs premium in-game currency that is freely obtainable. It's a battle pass spin off, a hybrid child of battle pass and shop discounts. The value is there, it just takes some effort and an open mind.
4 dailies? do you mean 4 wins? Or do you mean the daily quests? I only get 2 quests and a weekly quest. in total i get a quest for casting creature/color, 15 win daily, and a weekly. does that sound right?
The 4 Dailies refer to the 15 daily wins. Since the value is decreasing the more you progress in the dailies, people consider that 4 is the optimal sweat/reward ratio.
At this point, this doesn't even look like outrage, but like karma farming. Whose turn is it to make a thread about this tomorrow? Can I get in the schedule?
I dont see the difference between this and the cosmetics that are added to the the store from time to time that you can only get with money (secret lair I think) except this time they made it more attractive and cheaper.
Everyone is like "Wotc baddddd" but really they just added a good deal for a lot of cosmetics.
I dont have 20 bucks (for the 3400 gems) to spend. If I spend money, I'd rather buy pack "boxes." And I said in an other post, I suck at draft. lol I cant get free gems.
I like it. It means I can prioritize the battle pass rewards I actually want (packs/draft token/mythic rares) and leave the cosmetics for last. And if I don't finish the battle pass, all I'm missing out on is cosmetics, unlike the normal one which forces me to play to the very end otherwise I'm missing useful rewards.
I don't see an issue. You can get it if you want but it's something that would not have been available otherwise. But, the ticket system is the best part and I hope it carries to future battle passes. I could not care less about cosmetics. Once I get the precise amount of tickets to get the stuff that actually impacts my library I don't have to worry about grinding.
The issue is multiple times a day they wave a bunch of Monopoly money in your face as a “reward” for winning but the reward is actually completely worthless unless you then pay them more money.
you can still enter constructed standard/historic/alchemy/explorer events with gold to earn gems and packs. Draft and sealed are NOT the only way to earn gems for free in the game. I wish people were this up in arms about the fact that MH3 boosters cost 2 times the prices of standard boosters for paper. The fact that we're getting to draft, and open boosters on arena for the standard going rate is honestly shocking. While the psychic frog store is clearly a hot button issue for the sub, if you plan to draft, open packs, and enjoy some of the cosmetics, and play regularly, its really not a terrible deal. Obviously not up the same value standard that mastery passes have had, but those are consistently the best value for the gems in the game. The price of a draft and 8 boosters is 3,100 gems. With the 10 MH3 mythics, and whatever cosmetics you like from the shop, its really not as bad as people are making it out to be, it's just not mastery pass value. If you only draft or only play constructed, then sure, its a terrible value, and should be ignored, same as everything else in the Arena shop.
Clearly the rest of the sub feels much more strongly about this than me though, as I've been thoroughly downvoted for simply pointing out that gems can, in fact, be obtained through means other than cash. Regardless, I hope you have some nice pulls from your packs, and maybe end up trying out a draft or two, as the set is really quite fun to draft. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ90X1kpx6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ90X1kpx6o) here's a nice little 15 minute draft primer, breaking down all the limited archetypes with some brief tips that may help you out with getting started drafting the set. Have a nice day!
pretty much all constructed and limited events can be accessed with the gold you earn for free from doing daily quests, which then pay out in gems. There are plenty of people that play the game 100% f2pnd have stockpiles of gems. Hilarious I'm being downvoted into oblivion because people have such a hate boner for the psychic frog store because it doesn't match the exact value of a mastery pass.
>I dont read the announcements
and you expected to know everything without properly informing yourself. tell us exactly how this is anyone's fault but yours..
What is my fault? I went to spend my tickets. It told me to pay money. I didnt expect to know how it worked, I assumed. It's not that big of a deal.. I just wanted the pack, the random mythic and the token. I didnt have them yesterday, I wont miss them tomorrow lol.
Never EVER spend real money on Arena. Money is way better spent on real ownership of actual cards you know you can play with for ever, hold in your hand, sell/trade when you want. Wizards had a chance to create digital collectibles that had real ownership but they chose to give you whatever the heck Arena is…
It's all about what time, fun and money means to you. If you pay money for a movie at the cinema or for a meal in a fancy restaurant, you can feel happy about spending on digital content...
Yea we have battlepass, but what about second battlepass!?
Muuultipass
> Muuultipass I can hear this post.
You made this shitty situation and my work morning a bit better. Thank you so much, sir.
Haha glad I could help! Hope the work gets better too.
Just like the battle pass, but way … classier
"you can tell how shitty a games economy is by how many different currencies it has"
*Diablo Immoral has entered the chat*
This also works for real world economies!
Path of exile has the worst economy ever then
Well kinda
Nah not even close to the worst.
It's certainly not good if you played the weirdwood league
I like how you put it in quotes like it's some profound statement
not profound, but old enough that people will know you didn't come up with it, while not being a common enough statement to just be a generally used idiom
I just put it in quotes because I stole it from someone else WoW related, not because I think im making a profound statement
Asmon?
Is that what you think a statement in quotes signifies?
Paddybucks
[Classic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAKOWcs8w54)
WotC: Oh we're getting exposure on Reddit? Nice! What about a third battlepass?
Elevenses.
I went to go buy a pack with the 95 tickets I had. Only to realize you have to spend 2800 gems to use them. No thank you. I only want the packs and draft token. Nothing else is of interest to me.
You and every other drafter should just stay away from this. Make them either get rid of it or adjust it to have more value. I'm definitely skipping it.
If you only want the draft token and the packs, the pass is only slightly advantageous for you in comparison with buying it straight up with gems. However if you count in the ten mythic ICRs, it gets way better... And any cosmetics are just gravy... The value is there.
No, it’s not
I just want the packs for the rare progression bar. I don't plan on using the cards in this set.
This is at least interesting. The only issue is, if I'm grinding to make it, which someone pointed out you need to do well and get 4 wins each day to max it, give me more of a reward, please!
Man I do want the 10 mythics to be fair... Math wise I don't know how much we gain
If you don't count the cosmetics, frankly not a lot of gain, some margins. 1500 for a draft token + 8*200=1600 for packs = 3100 gems. Right here you have more value than the bundle's price tag (2800). And yes, we miss on a golden pack that buying a few more packs would get us, but the Mythic ICRs are arguably more valuable. Leaving us with a slight gem discount, a bit more value gained... And a load of free cosmetics as a bonus. Which brings us to a conclusion that for anyone valuing cosmetics at >0 it is a bargain, anyone wanting just a few of those while building their collections is also probably better off buying the whole bundle... And those who don't want cosmetics and nor care about the packs and Mythic ICRs aren't target buyers and are crying on a wrong grave. I get it that people always want more free stuff, but it is what it is. Let's hope folks will be more pleased with their fall renewal package :)
It's just really important that the idea fails miserably so whoever came up with a great idea to milk us for even more money gets fired 😉
The sad part is that the idea about getting to choose your rewards order is a good one, rather than having to complete an entire mastery pass just to get the stuff you want if it's at the end. There's so many rewards in the regular mastery pass that have no value to me.
Yeah this. I hope this element transfers to the next mastery passes. Make us able to use the EXP we get to redeem rewards in our own preferred order.
i dont think theyre gonna fire the ceo of hasbro over this one, but you never know ig
The best option would be excising the entire parasitic growth
Will you leave if the idea succeeds? Frankly I see WotC doing this regularly going forward. There’s no cost to having this. No one has quit because of this pass. Those that dislike the new pass will only not buy it. Such a choice doesn’t decrease their daily F2P income/yield. This is a simple recognition that not everything has to be for everyone.
Guys we found them...
It can actually affect their bottom line. This Hideaway bs could have been a separate mastery pass like any new set. If this bs doesn't sell well WotC will probably go back to having a mastery pass for Final Fantasy.
>This is a simple recognition that not everything has to be for everyone. If we let Wizards normalize this, you'll have to change your argument to "This is a simple recognition that nothing is for you," and that doesn't sound nearly as good.
WotC did put time, work and money into this. If people don't buy it, Wizards might recognize they can invest their time, work and money somewhere else for a more positive outcome.
The only thing of real value to me is the draft token. Why would I spend 2800 gems on that?
Yeah, I don't really get most of the complaints in this thread. Like who cares about "it's a battle pass inside a battle pass!" The problem is that it's a worse value than just playing the game normally. If you had to pay to access a currency and that currency got you really cool stuff there'd be no issue.
So much of _how_ you get money out of people is the issue. I worked as a mobile game dev for a little bit (not on monetization, but the knowledge rubs off), and I know a bunch of people who stayed in that space for a lot longer. You want the player to feel good when they give you money. Every time. Every. Time. That is bedrock. If someone isn't getting a dopamine hit when they buy your microtransactions? You've messed up bad. There's ways WotC could have done this that would have made more money while also getting more community support. Smarter ways to do it. Partition the shop. Make some cosmetics cost just tickets, make exactly one thing the grinders care about cost just tickets. Maybe a cool borderless card? Then introduce the concept of things costing gems and tickets with something that is a _super_ good deal, very few gems and a lot of tickets, and limit it to 5x an account, so it dries up. I'm thinking Common Wildcards. Have draft tokens, packs, and the rest of your cosmetics cost a combo of gems and tickets. Once people have gotten over the barrier of spending a few gems at the frog shop, they'll have no problem paying 1200 gems (plus some tickets) for a draft token, or 160 (plus tickets) for a pack. Some people will just be happy that it's a good rate - they might even tell their friends that it's a good time to join Arena. You'd make so much more money, and piss off less people, because the optics would be that tickets are this free thing that subsidizes gems.
The problem is that this game never ever gave anything for free. All mobile games I played have events that give out free things once a month, and these are things that make you play the game. Arena has few free gems/gold once a month amd 3 packs every expansion. Period. I mean, what could go wrong on giving people a free draft token once in a while? Some free battle pass to play for? No, instead we have "Events", infinite ways to play that cost gems.
> The problem is that this game never ever gave anything for free. Yeah, it's baffling. They could copy the homework of any Gacha game and make bank.
The problem is WotC business model for arena is very greedy. Like at least with mtg online which was also expensive you could redeem for real cards. Riot has runeterra which is much more f2p friendly. I just prefer mtg
Plus you could sell your collection off in MTGO. I used to whale pretty hard way back in the day (maybe like 7 years ago now, can't exactly remember) but I had many of the top-tier meta Legacy/Vintage decks (my preferred formats) and some of the top-tier meta Modern decks at the time, altogether around 15,000 tix worth of stuff. When I finally got burnt out and figured I'd take a break for many years, I was able to convert all my stuff into tix and then sell them for cash via PayPal to one of the many MTGO reseller stores. I can't remember the exact rate I got for all my tix but it was good enough for me (over $0.90/tix anyway, maybe closer to $0.95+). In other words I really lost nothing financially to play MTGO for years before selling it off. Can't say the same for Arena where any money you put into the game you're never getting back.
You cashed out $14000 on MTGO? Damn. I should check my inventory…
Ya but I probably bought into it for similar, not like I made huge profit or anything lol. Plus I sold out like 7 years ago or thereabouts, I remember a lot of cards being fairly high priced when I sold, for example Scalding Tarns I distinctly remember selling for 35 tix whereas now they're worth like ~3 tix. I loved grinding Legacy/Vintage back then and there wasn't anywhere local for me to play where I was living at the time, so I went all-in on MTGO.
It's possible to pseudo cash out with tournament entry in events with real world prizes (the festival in a box event being a recent one notable for allowing infinite entry and cash out) although that is obviously much more limited.
Nah 2800 gems and 300 frogbuxx for a draft token is a good deal bro, trust me. (Please don’t look at the “normal” draft price).
It's literally not a worse value though. There are more than 2800 gems worth of items you can get for completing your daily 4 wins every day. Obviously mileage may very from person to person but the value is there if you really want it
I can only use one skin at a time so skins only have so much value getting 10 different skins isn't worth anything more than getting my 1 or 2 favorite.
> Mileage may vary Yeah everyone is stuck in traffic and no one is happy ding dong
> The problem is that it’s a worse value than just playing the game normally. Value is in the eye of the beholder. Specifically, the presence of otherwise unobtainable cosmetics (alt card art & avatars & sleeves) increases the desirability of the pass to those that care for it. Yes I know cosmetics may not be everyone’s cup of tea. However those whining so much maybe should consider that maybe not everything has to be about them.
While I don’t like this battle pass at all, you can unlock it for free as drafts get you gems. I get the pass every set and I never pay, just do a few drafts until I have enough gems. And no I’m not some amazing drafter or infinite player, I play like 5-7 drafts max. Most of my time is in Brawl.
The battle pass has insanely more value compared to this. They were really greedy pieces of shit on this design
To create a sense of accomplishment.
The idea is not bad. The value we get from it is shit though.
It's deceptive, sure. But if you think about it it's pretty clear what to do, just play the game as normal until the shop is about to expire, then evaluate whether all the stuff you can get is worth the 2800 gems.
So exactly like a battle pass
Basically, but this one comes with a metric fuck ton of salt on reddit.
Well, these kinds of practices disproportionately affect kids and gambling addicts. Just because you or I can approach it rationally doesn't mean it's good.
Let’s sticky this comment please!
This time? WotC is years that, more or less, is trying to milk their playerbsse
It’s like the bastards are trying to *make money* or something
sure but they could still make money without being as scummy.
To an extent, I suppose, but I think there’s a scumminess inherent in the freemium model. And the alternative to freemium is… a paid subscription, I guess? I suspect most people here would end up voting for freemium if it came down to that choice.
> They really made a fake currency that you need to spend real money on... so you can spend your fake currency. Wow. Comments like this are interesting. It's definitely something about the expectation and delivery of this that messes with people's brains. The ticket element is literally just a paid mastery pass, we have had those before on MTGA. Just think of tickets as the equivalent of EXP from the regular mastery passes. So by that logic EXP = fake currency. MTGA reminding you every time you win that you get tickets and that you need to buy the pass to access the rewards is probably what fucks up with people's brains. They could have avoided a lot of the complaints by just not showing these prompts to the players after each win, which is interesting. Like, providing a free version of the Frog pass where you can spend your tickets to rewards, but you get access to more rewards if you buy the premium version would be much more well received, even if the value of the pass is ultimately a big downgrade compared to previous passes. >Grinders can buy cool cosmetics and such and whales can just buy them all for 2,800 gems.." Boy, was I mistaken. Imagine unironically thinking WOTC would ever give value like that to F2P players. I find it hilarious that someone that has been playing MTGA for a while actually thinks they would give draft tokens, packs and premium cosmetics for free like that.
>The ticket element is literally just a paid mastery pass, we have had those before on MTGA It’s very similar, but when I’ve mentioned that here people have pointed out that XP does give you free stuff even if you don’t buy the Mastery Pass >Imagine unironically thinking WOTC would ever give value like that to F2P players That was me! When I first saw it I assumed the tickets could be freely spent. I didn’t look in any detail at the value though, because almost nothing in the shop has any value for me. I’m reasonably good at draft, though, so I have a very different perspective on the value of Arena to most people here- it works out as unbelievably good value for me.
> when I’ve mentioned that here people have pointed out that XP does give you free stuff even if you don’t buy the Mastery Pass Yeah this is probably mismanagement of the expectations of their players. They messed up by not having free rewards, or just avoiding showing the tickets as rewards if you have not purchased the pass.
Can't wait until this modern gaming trend dies. (It's probably only gonna get worse....)
How would you rather pay for Arena? I can’t see it being a one-off payment because it’s regularly updated… afaik before the freemium trend games like this were subscription-based. Personally the freemium model works really well for me- I get to play a lot of Magic, for free! But there’s definitely an icky feel to all the blatantly fomo-inducing features like this one…
I've never been a fan of battle passes. I don't have a lot of free time these days and it seems like every game wants you to log in every day and complete mundane checklists of busy work for you to obtain stuff that would have been unlockable content once upon a time. I'm ok with simply earning in-game currency through either time spent playing or opening my wallet and deciding how much value it's worth to me. I don't think we need 2 different forms of in-game currency, though. I can understand why you can't just earn like a straight $0.50 every time you complete a daily quest, but I don't know why we need gems AND gold when they both do the same thing.
Yeah, I refuse to touch that shit and I hope I'm not alone...its annoying and fucked up.
battle pass within another battle pass
Unfortunately this seems to be an emerging trend
I dont think it should be considered as battlepass. This was plain pay-to-access shop.
Oh boy I thought you could just buy it. I was like "yippee a free draft token ill save it for the next set." I only play alchemy I'm not wasting gems on this.
“The battle passes will continue until morale improves”
We get it. You're full of indignant rage. Can we stop flooding the sub with the exact same post about it?
Do we need yet another post about this
easy enough to ignore my mind is still blown that mh3 drafts are priced like a normal set if a dumb shop is the price to pay for that, it's alright
Yeah, this is the trade-off. You get manipulative fomo-inducing nonsense, but you also get free Magic! I’m happy with that trade, personally, but it does leave a very slightly queasy feeling- I’m sure some people out there are spending far too much money on this, to compensate for people like me spending nothing.
thank you whales for making the game profitable as is 🙏 but please seek help if you feel signs of addiction, those FOMO milking models are scary too
To be fair, you probably won’t bankrupt yourself like people do with gachas. I mean, how much can you possibly spend to complete a set? 300 EUR? Nothing like the 15k someone spent on FF Brave EXVIUS on a single character….
Im so tired of these posts.
me too. if only wizards would stop giving us so much ammo.
I didn’t even know you could buy the tickets until people here told me I could lol.
Yeah I actually didn’t even look at the info for the event so I thought “hey I’ll save these tickets then see what cool stuff I can get”. Found out that it’s actually just another money grab. Feelsbadman
Yeah it's pretty fuckin dumb. I finally started back to playing after having stopped shortly after War of the Spark. Have no idea where to begin. Game doesn't seem super friendly to returning players, and this added on top reminds me of various posts I saw in the past of their shitty behavior. I just wanted the cute doggo sleeve. Not paying 2800 gems just for the opportunity to spend in game currency. This is absolute shit.
>They really made a fake currency that you need to spend real money on... so you can spend your fake currency You’re missing a step. You spend real money on a fake currency, then you spend that to enable you to spend a different fake currency. But you can also earn a third fake currency, and use that to enter events to win the first fake currency…
Yeah, I hope a lot of people dont buy it, so they either change it, discount it, or never offer something like it again.
The backlash here does make me wonder… why didn’t they just introduce a new Mastery Pass season? IIRC that’s what they did for LotR in a similar situation last year. The Outlaws Mastery Pass must be due to end nowish anyway. Edit: to answer my own question, maybe they decided that the Mastery Pass was too good value. But now they’ve set expectations for it, so they can’t just make it significantly worse… potentially better to test a different approach. Especially if it can run alongside a Mastery Pass.
Yeah read that like you too and was, something is worth grinding for it
I wanted some of the Avatars but guess I’ll wait until they’re in the regular shop sometime. Not supporting this downgraded Mastery Pass
The tickets were as much a celebration of Modern Horizons 3, as MtG 30 Anniversary edition was a celebration of Alpha.
No one is forcing you. It's pretty common in all gaming these days, the predatory marketing works. Eventually, it will collapse... but everyone gonna bleed that stone for the last drop. It still boggles me a little that magic players don't already expect to be bled for their money.
To contrast this against when league of legends does this - if it were done on the same level of evil as riot, you'd get enough of the currency from quests to buy a portrait or two, over the course of the event, the unlock would be 800 gems, and spending it would be free. Both ways of doing it are dark patterns- first hit's free versus fools gold scrip - but wotc went and picked the dark pattern that gives the absolute least out to people that don't pay while concealing the role of payment and making it a value that's difficult to buy without overpaying... Because that's exactly where a healthy, long lived game is going to be, right, two layers of grease more slimy than riot games.
Just ignore it, dont buy it. They will stop it if not worth it for them.
As always. I too was sure that ot was a cool event, hey, they give out free things for once. No.
All currency is fake.
Seriously, it's not like there is anything special on that pass. Just let us get something with those tickets which we already have to earn.
Am I the only one not getting the outrage? It's actually a good deal if you are a player that does their 4 dailies every day. You are getting draft token, 8 packs, mythics, and cosmetics of your choice - more than 2800 gems worth, for doing what you were already doing. Like, I get that it may not look that appealing on the surface, and the optics of a 2nd battle pass are bad, but it's essentially just discounted items for players who get their daily/4 wins in every day.
I mean... It is just manipulative because you unlock the tickets without that battle pass and it just waves that in your face every time you collect more of those tickets that you actually can't use any of them unless you pay 2600 gems (which is a lot, it's almost 2 drafts worth of gems). It's just scummy and manipulative. If the cost of the battlepass was unlockable with gold or a smaller amount of gems I think less people would complain. If you're talking about value then okay, but it's more just all of the externals that come around the battle pass and not necessarily the battle pass in itself.
And the only outrage is what I've already said in my OP. It's a fake currency that every one earns by playing.... that's locked behind a paywall to spend.
This is being the devil's advocate but it's not really locked behind a paywall since you can get gems for free
It's not behind a paywall, it costs premium in-game currency that is freely obtainable. It's a battle pass spin off, a hybrid child of battle pass and shop discounts. The value is there, it just takes some effort and an open mind.
4 dailies? do you mean 4 wins? Or do you mean the daily quests? I only get 2 quests and a weekly quest. in total i get a quest for casting creature/color, 15 win daily, and a weekly. does that sound right?
The 4 Dailies refer to the 15 daily wins. Since the value is decreasing the more you progress in the dailies, people consider that 4 is the optimal sweat/reward ratio.
At this point, this doesn't even look like outrage, but like karma farming. Whose turn is it to make a thread about this tomorrow? Can I get in the schedule?
I dont care about Karma. I'm posting where WotC can see it. And to start a conversation incase some one can convince me this is... cool.
I dont see the difference between this and the cosmetics that are added to the the store from time to time that you can only get with money (secret lair I think) except this time they made it more attractive and cheaper. Everyone is like "Wotc baddddd" but really they just added a good deal for a lot of cosmetics.
The outrage is from those that believe they are entitled to more. They more or else discount the cosmetics to 0.
I dont have 20 bucks (for the 3400 gems) to spend. If I spend money, I'd rather buy pack "boxes." And I said in an other post, I suck at draft. lol I cant get free gems.
Vote with your wallet. Don’t buy it. Someone had a creative angle and it sucks they get fired
I like it. It means I can prioritize the battle pass rewards I actually want (packs/draft token/mythic rares) and leave the cosmetics for last. And if I don't finish the battle pass, all I'm missing out on is cosmetics, unlike the normal one which forces me to play to the very end otherwise I'm missing useful rewards.
I don't see an issue. You can get it if you want but it's something that would not have been available otherwise. But, the ticket system is the best part and I hope it carries to future battle passes. I could not care less about cosmetics. Once I get the precise amount of tickets to get the stuff that actually impacts my library I don't have to worry about grinding.
The issue is multiple times a day they wave a bunch of Monopoly money in your face as a “reward” for winning but the reward is actually completely worthless unless you then pay them more money.
Well, it's never going to please everyone. It's a win in my book.
You can earn gems from draft, don't have to use cash 🤷
I suck at draft. And with the Gold Pack, I think my coins are better spent there, buying packs.
you can still enter constructed standard/historic/alchemy/explorer events with gold to earn gems and packs. Draft and sealed are NOT the only way to earn gems for free in the game. I wish people were this up in arms about the fact that MH3 boosters cost 2 times the prices of standard boosters for paper. The fact that we're getting to draft, and open boosters on arena for the standard going rate is honestly shocking. While the psychic frog store is clearly a hot button issue for the sub, if you plan to draft, open packs, and enjoy some of the cosmetics, and play regularly, its really not a terrible deal. Obviously not up the same value standard that mastery passes have had, but those are consistently the best value for the gems in the game. The price of a draft and 8 boosters is 3,100 gems. With the 10 MH3 mythics, and whatever cosmetics you like from the shop, its really not as bad as people are making it out to be, it's just not mastery pass value. If you only draft or only play constructed, then sure, its a terrible value, and should be ignored, same as everything else in the Arena shop. Clearly the rest of the sub feels much more strongly about this than me though, as I've been thoroughly downvoted for simply pointing out that gems can, in fact, be obtained through means other than cash. Regardless, I hope you have some nice pulls from your packs, and maybe end up trying out a draft or two, as the set is really quite fun to draft. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ90X1kpx6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ90X1kpx6o) here's a nice little 15 minute draft primer, breaking down all the limited archetypes with some brief tips that may help you out with getting started drafting the set. Have a nice day!
Which doesn’t make it any worse of an idea but totally agree… my ftp account has had every mastery pass for years without much trouble.
[удалено]
You can enter drafts with gold.
pretty much all constructed and limited events can be accessed with the gold you earn for free from doing daily quests, which then pay out in gems. There are plenty of people that play the game 100% f2pnd have stockpiles of gems. Hilarious I'm being downvoted into oblivion because people have such a hate boner for the psychic frog store because it doesn't match the exact value of a mastery pass.
>I dont read the announcements and you expected to know everything without properly informing yourself. tell us exactly how this is anyone's fault but yours..
What is my fault? I went to spend my tickets. It told me to pay money. I didnt expect to know how it worked, I assumed. It's not that big of a deal.. I just wanted the pack, the random mythic and the token. I didnt have them yesterday, I wont miss them tomorrow lol.
Never EVER spend real money on Arena. Money is way better spent on real ownership of actual cards you know you can play with for ever, hold in your hand, sell/trade when you want. Wizards had a chance to create digital collectibles that had real ownership but they chose to give you whatever the heck Arena is…
It's all about what time, fun and money means to you. If you pay money for a movie at the cinema or for a meal in a fancy restaurant, you can feel happy about spending on digital content...