Yeah doesn’t sound like it’s for casuals like us

The problem is that it's standard format (or soon will be). Standard is for Spikes. Standard format are usually solved by the pros and netdecking, doesn't leave much room for would-be budding johnny deck-builders like me.
Duels actually benefited from being it's own format with it's very own meta (even if the meta was boring at times, looking at you superfriends).
Arena's been fun enough though and I've found that there is room to brew new stuff. But I've actually spent money on it now after going f2p for a long time. The grind is frustrating because aquisition is slow as hell with the sheer size of the cardpool. That should stabilize in the long term, sort of like Duels did.
And that brings me back to Duels... I guess at the end we all got used to having full collections and forgot what it felt like to want to play a deck and lack the cards for it (having to use crappy replacements). It sucked. That's where Arena is at now. P2win players have their net-decked T1 decks so they're happy and are probably content to just keep smashing the poor f2p casuals. So I guess Arena is very spikecentric in it's approach atm, but then so is standard and that's just a natural consequence then?

I don't agree with the last sentence there, but lets assume I did just for the sake of making the point I really want to make.

Problem: The grind is frustrating.

"Solution": The grind will eventually stabilize to a point where it isn't frustrating in the long term.

Problem 1 with Solution: How do you convince people who find the game incredibly frustrating to play it long term?

Problem 2 with Solution: For new players, this problem will always exist. If you want to start playing MTG: Arena at any point in the future, you will face this problem. And note: We are only dealing with 5 sets, 1 of which will rotate out this year. Soon it's going to be seven sets, and then 8. This is the least frustrating the game is ever going to be from now on to start as a new player.

Oh SD I understand your point, I loved the Duels deckbuilding restrictions, I loved how it froze -without one deck clearly over the others- and I hated when I read that some Standard tourney the top 10 decks where 6 exact same copies of a deck and 4 of the other... when I was in Duels I thought -where is the fun in that BS?
Now in ARENA at the high end of the ladder -not quite on the top yet- I can say that things are a bit less spiked... since once you get your Master Tier Medal you cannot lose it, so once you get it I guess people just chill and start playing less spiked decks, I have seen some Johny decks there, I sure as hell will be buildinging some jank-o-Rama nonsense for the laughs -I wish Joker or Flaky hosted a new deck building contest soon- But I guess that this time around the "enjoy" of the game in the short term will have to be bought...
I wish more NGA´s joined the action so we can start organizing tourneys or leagues coz in the end that was where most of the fun I had in Dules, not so much in the ladder but playing King of the Hill, organizing the Tourneys, or participating on the deckbuilding contests... that's where the real fun of duels where for me, the ladder...is just a bunch of wankers on a pissing contest.

New State of the beta is up, basic summary:

- Kaladesh coming next month
- No wipe for this patch
- Economy post delayed till they get results of survey
- BO3 most likely gonna be event only till later on when it arrives

I took the survey yesterday and I was really negative on my scoring. Not that I really think it's all that bad, but because I want to weight the results to see if they can be more generous.
So hopefully a lot of people will do the same and when they get their results they'll go, "Oh man, our players aren't happy campers, let's give them more stuff!"
A guy can hope...
But this is WotC... Anyway, these kind of surveys will just be a way to justify their greed if the results aren't heavily negative. They won't change anything if it comes up neutral and let's hope that something strange like the results being positive doesn't happen. If that was the case, they'd dismiss all the complaints as being from a few loud players who like to complain a lot on the forums and leave everything as it is.

I blew 100$ on gems a couple of days ago and recieved them, no problem.
But, oddly enough, my bank doesn't seem to know about it. No such transaction shows up...
Does WotC really want me to continue to be a f2pyer so they decided to give me the gems for free?
Or, they're probably just slow at processing the purchase...
Same thing happen to you guys that bought Gems?

Nope, my bank sent me a text message immediately about an online purchase. Hopefully, your bank is boycotting Wizards for their evil economy.

A week later the transaction showed up.

$99.99 = 87.17€
A good thing the exchange rate isn't too bad after all the goddam taxes and comissions. Paypal would be a lot simpler though...

I did the same thing...

I just pulled 12 rares from a single draft, then got 3 packs as a reward. Unfortunately I went 3-3 (for the 3rd time in a row), so I only 300 gems back, but for the 450 Gem net loss, I Can't complain.
Don't know what was up with the AI drafters, they kept passing me actual good rares...
Still, I suck at draft, can't get Past a 50% win-rate.

If you have a 50% win-rate than you are in the top 50% of drafters and thus do not "suck". If you were constantly going back and forth between 2 and 3 then you'd be ~average.

It's probably a bell curve (sort of) with the peak somewhere between 2 and 3.

Indeed, because half of the people who’d win 3 out of 6 are cut off at 2-3.

If you go 2-3 and then go 3-3, your average is 2.5. If you then go 5-3 in a 3rd run, your average is ~3.33. And so on.

Due to different factors, the average number of wins per run in this game should be slightly less than 3. That's what I would expect based on other games with the same kind of system.