I could basically echo all of this.

I ended up putting some money in so I could get the top two decks, and then I'm going to spend the rest of it on cheap Drafts. After the wipe comes I'm going to spend 100% of it on cheap Drafts and basically not touch the game after that runs out, unless they make changes.

However



I hate to have to play Devil's Advocate but...

Paying $100 guarantees you 6 Mythics of your choice, 9 Rares of your choice, and 12 uncommons of your choice. The prices for the cards above uncommon I crafted full playsets of are:

The Scarab God - $33
Hazoret the Fervent - $15
Drowned Catacomb - $5

Edit: SCG says $25, $18, and $6 respectively. So the point still stands, but I'm only leaving the above in to leave the original post unaltered b/c i'm too lazy to change the math. /Edit

The first 99 packs I opened would have let me craft all of these, plus all of the other stuff i got, for $99.99. So their current system actually IS cheap to play ultra-competitive cards like The Scarab God since you can get a playset (and then some other stuff) for $100 instead of $132. The argument being made on Reddit for why the game's pricing model is okay is that it's cheaper to be competitive in MTG:Arena than it is in actual Standard b/c the game gives you just enough wild-cards to build ultra-competitive decks a bit cheaper than you could in paper. Albeit without the "sell" option. It's also cheaper to draft, sealed will probably be cheaper, and basically if all you are interested in is playing top tier competitive magic, with no interest in any of that F2P whining going on, this game is actually going to be cheap by MTG standards.

The problem is that cardboard crack is too damn expensive in general, so applying MTG standards to a F2P game only leaves MTG addicts hobbyists happy.

This has 0 resale value though.

DJ, you must have had a return on your Duels investment, how many hours did you p’ay? It’s probab’y The cheapest hobby I’ve ever played.

I think Arena will be much more expensive per hour tho, I don’t think I’ll put money

Neither do HS, Gwent, Shadowverse, or any other such games in the industry. They all do fine, and I'm not criticizing them daily.

You should not make a digital CCG that:

- is significantly more expensive than Hearthstone.
- is significantly more grindy than Hearthstone for F2P players.
- has 90% worthless cards in every one of its sets so that opening packs just feels ****.
- has multiple sets on release where the developers expect whales to spend hundreds of dollars on each.
- looks like it's still in Closed Alpha but has already opened a freemium cash shop.
- completely prevents completely F2P players from being competitive.

MTG:Arena has done all of the above, and it's only been able to get away with it so far because right now the game is in Closed Alpha Beta. That's why I particularly care about this one. I'm used to card games having this kind of barrier to entry, because there's no way to play the genre without dealing with it. I'm just really sad that MTG is going to be the worst one I ever played for more than a week.

I am looking forward to when open beta hits. The next wipe is going to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen on Reddit, and if that happens to coincide with open beta I will literally have to pop some popcorn or get some cheese curls to fully enjoy the **** that is going to happen.

Edit:
I understand the reason for **** being censored but why does it censor the entire word?

Note to Self: **** is just how this forum rights any and all words that contain cussing.

Those are all games I also wouldn’t play, but at least some of them are successful. If I decided to play HS, I wouldn’t feel the need to worry though - they’ve yet to fail.

Blizzard is still supporting Brood War and Diablo II lol. The odds of them getting any new content is 0%, but they still sell those games with the intent for people to play them, and those are old as ****. Even if they stop printing new sets, I can't imagine them shutting down the HS servers any time in the next 5 years, so that game is the safest "investment" out there if you are willing to pay for it.

I mean... Starcraft II came out in 2010 and Diablo III came out in 2012. Those still got new content in the last year. Blizzards really does plan for most of their games to last for a very very long time.

Wizards on the other hand...

You would think so, but I had a string of games yesterday where I couldn't get my 4th land until turns I was 16-20 cards deep. I run 26 lands and 8 cycle spells, so I really figured that getting to 4 mana would not be that tough. Also had 2 games where I didn't have even 2 land until I went to 5 or lower on cards (including scry. I know it is just a bad streak, but it is by no mean s solved. Seems similar to Duels.

Thinking about it, I rarely have had hands with 5+ mana. Hmm, I wonder if it prioritizes 2 land over 5? That may explain it.

Aslo, my winning % is way down. Started to tinker with the deck adding rares/mythics, and I think I broke it

If you play less than 26 land, it prioritized 2 land hands

Ok I finally could devote this game a couple of hours and $100 Us that’s like $20 per set, I used half of that on Amonkhet coz is the set I’m most familiar on the Arena’s meta and the other half on Dominaria coz I love that set, That plus the 3 packs per set they give you out front and the 300% of vault progress you get by opening all those packs is enough to build at least a perfectly competitive Scarab god and a RDW, one decent Gruul Ramp and one Izzet wizards in progress, with 5 Mytic WC, 9 Rare WC, 20 Uncommon WC and about 50 Common WC to spare. -so yeah net decking is absolutely viable-

Winning 4 games a day with RDW or Scarab God is a piece of cake -I completed the 15 weekly wins in a heart beat- and if you build a gruul monsters deck and something with white -Boris I’m looking at you- you can complete your daily quests with out much effort.

I’m yet to try the competitive constructed mode but overall the game and the economy doesn’t feel nearly as bad as has been described, I guess that with a couple tweaks here and there the game will be more F2P friendly but I can assure you guys F2P will mean that you are stuck to one deck for every couple of months. After all WOTC has devs to feed and shareholders, so surprising as it is they need to make money with the game, I guess $20 Us per set if you play your daily quests should let you be on schedule as the sets rotate out.

I played like 4 hours in a blink of an eye -great card- and I’m looking forward to playing my 4 wins and the daily quests, I also like that after 4 wins and the daily quests you are not really motivated to keep playing, this games can be time demanding and putting one built in pause button is great.

Yeah I like that too

Ok I’m really confused about something, you say you are getting your four wins but you say also that you haven’t touched constructed. So where are you getting your wins? I don’t know the different game modes I guess

Yes I mess up a bit the explanation there, so I copy pasta this from Devils thread on DOM.

Quick Constructed


Next time I play I will try this out but I got to bring answers to Scarab God, Hazoret and must remember that settle the wreckage is very popular.

Yeah basically there's two modes right now ranked where it's pretty similar to the Duels matchmaking, except it goes bronze-silver-gold ect rather then rank 40, and there's also that quick constructed where you gamble your gold

Something they didn't say in the notes for quick constructed which i'm surprised about as it's kinda nice is the uncommons/rares can actually be randomly upgraded to higher rarity cards (e.g i went 0-3 which means i should've just got some random uncommons, but got a Demonlord Belzenlok

Think you are right on, I had gone down to 25 and I keep getting 2 land hands. I have learned not to mulligan because it is the same thing, just with less cards. I just played quick constructed and went 4-3. The last 4 games all started with 2 land hands, and I lost 3 of the 4. One I was able to get up to 3 mana bu turn 4, but the rest I was still at T5 with 2 mana and just conceded. Sure, I had several 2 mana plays, but that is not how my deck works. I need mana.

This could just be an unlucky streak, but if it is because of the game 'helping' I really wish we could turn it off. Still can not remember ever seeing more than 1-2 hands with more than 5 mana.

I am going back to 26 lands, but just annoys me that I have to tailor my deck to the programs 'help'.

Saw someone yesterday pull 2 Phoenix's as icr in quick constructed. Unreal!

the program directly put something in there to help prevent mana screw. You just have to optimize the deck to take advantage of that to not have mana screw, that's all.

I'm by no means a firm believer in the system being any better than rng. No way I'm going to have 22 or 26 in most all my decks.

yeah but what they've done now is that if you have mana screw it's probably YOUR fault now instead of the system

I think the economy is ok for f2p once you get over the building your first competitive deck barrier.

Dropping some money and netdecking something is the game is really asking you to do if your a new player (Probably the way it's designed to be).
From there, the quests + daily gold are pretty quick. I'm currently saving up 5k to try out draft when it goes live.
Only issue is that without spending money, you'll probably get bored of your main deck and won't have enough cards to really build anything else, unless its a spin-off of your main deck.
I am currently working on a second deck (wizards) that is pretty rare/Mythic Light and started out a load of crap but is getting better.
It's gonna take a while before we can do stuff like the break a card contests we did with Duels, but it doesn't seem impossible. Sure it's p2w spike heaven atm and not really tailored to casuals. Also, grinding won't get you anywhere close to paying $$$ anytime soon (spending 100$ puts you 1-2 months ahead of grinders and makes grinding easier too). I'm ok with that right now, but after the next wipe, I'm not so sure.
P2winners will get their gems back and I'll be left with Starter decks and some freebie packs... It'll be a challenge to get my first deck again and it'll probably be heavily frustrating, but if I can pull through that...
Maybe I'll just stop being cheap and invest some bucks, but 100 seems like more than I'm willing to blow right now and investing anything less doesn't really seem worthwhile.
The game is fun, dominaria has shaken the meta up a bit and I see much less Rdw/Scarab gods. The johnny in me is a little frustrated that I can't build secret tech decks with unused cards because I simply don't have them or WCs (and blowing WCs on jank just seems silly) but I probably just got used to having a full collection in duels. I do miss the ICRs, because I'd ocasionally unlock one of those cards I believe have untapped potential and I'd feel like trying them out, but I guess the quick constructed events can actually do that for me anyway.

TLDR: I'm fine with the economy right now because I can play Rdw all day long and win, but when the next wipe comes, I've got to quit being a free-loading cheap-skate.

My wizards list has 20 lands. I do see a few 1-lander hands which sucks, but the very low curve and draw can smooth out almost any 2-lander. I won't run more, because I want to draw spells and not lands later on.