I'll give the room a brief lowdown of the economy discussion from before NDA to now:

Us:"hey we think the idea could work, but right now it's way to harsh, the grind is still insane even if you have amazing RNG, and we even only have 2 sets, imagine this with 4-8? it'd be impossible.

WOTC: "We appreciate your feedback, and understand people find the economy too harsh right now, we'll be making changes to make it easier on the players don't worry!"

NDA Drops

WOTC: "Thanks for all your amazing feedback, and using this we've made some improvements to the economy, such as increasing the amount of packs you get a week from four to three, and changing the vault so you get a random mythic instead of a mythic wildcard - we appreciate your feedback!"

Us: uh isn't that just worse? Even if it is an improvement we've done the maths and assuming perfect RNG it would take over a year to get all the sets, and again, we're only on four sets so far, more and more will be added. Do you think we wouldn't notice?

WOTC: "...."


WOTC: "we appreciate your feedback"

Jesus...

I was watching Shaolin´s stream the other day... he was optimistic.... It could not be worse... so it can only get better...
I´m not that optimistic WOTC can always be worse...

Ugh, that really sounds like the same old grind... I think I'm too pampered by Gwent's generosity by now to go back to a system like this.

Honestly, WotC, if don't want to compete with HS and the likes, just go back to making the old Duels games. At least those were fun and the grind was minimal...

I honestly prefer Duels right now. 2HG + deeper card pool + Ixalan sucks.

It's so frustrating cause the game actually plays pretty well, but the economy is so **** and they don't seem to realise that, and only make minor changes.

Like they've stated today that the goal is one pack every other day - you literally could double or even triple that and it STILL would be practically impossible haha, and the way the system works means you can really only focus on one deck at a time and have no licence for brewing (really good for someone who makes vids btw)

As it stands now, the game is dead in the water, and they don't really seem to have the balls to change that

I haven't looked at it too much but I have been hearing people complain that they can't focus on one deck at a time. Doesn't the lack of choice force you to unlock a bunch of cards for other decks?

No. There's nothing for you to unlock really. You can earn packs with wins, gold and in the future we will assume gems(money) and individual cards. There are common, uncommon, rare and mythic wildcards in the mix and in the vault when you open it (every repeated card over x4 goes in the vault, when it's full you get wildcards) that can be used to craft ANY card you want that you don't own within that rarity. So, you are never FORCED to have cards unlocked unless you count cards you didn't want that comes in packs like irl (except for fewer cards).
It has the barebones of a really good economic system it just needs a lot of tinkering.
They actually seemed to have listened to our concerns on this and they are improving increased card and wildcard acquisition soon it is said. Did get a couple free packs last night.
It can be good. It really can be.

Edit: This part of the beta came with 10 precon decks that aren't horrible. You can start with those or modify with the cards in you collection and then add other cards via the wildcard system like I did on one, or just go whatever color you want from the starting collection, nail some wins and quests and get more wildcards to craft what you want. Just hoping that the economy will balance between hardcore ftp, casual ftp maybe a little money and whales. It could be easy to fall behind the way it's set up but the matchmaking is pretty good in putting you with people of similar rank.

The problem is your wildcards are so high value that you can't really afford to stretch them thin by trying to build multiple decks (for example i've been playing for almost a week now and have gotten a grand total of 2 rare, 2 mythic wild cards, and that includes the starting packs, and the pity packs they gave us today)

With the drops this harsh it's really hard to get the key cards in a deck, and the matchmaking doesn't help either, if you grind some wins with your "good" deck then you'll have to play your bad decks at the higher ranks as well, which is pretty brutal haha.

It can be brutal especially if you don't play everyday. And yes, you are pretty limited in grinding and making decks as you build wilds toward what you ultimately really want.

How much "fun" could you have with MTG Online if you had zero dollars to invest? They don't care about catering to those of us who won't empty out our wallets for digital cards. This game will be pay2win, with no regard for those of us who would simply like to grind our way to the top. And I agree that unless they drastically change the direction this is headed, then it will sadly be dead on arrival.

Before MTGO got flooded with tradebots, I didn't have to spend much money at all to have a competitive deck, all I had to do was ignore 2 or 3 colors entirely and trade away all my chase rares of those colors.

Of course we see how MTGO has ended up...