https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/59601

amirite?

I fail to see the problem. Or at least I fail to see the new problem.

The only problem I see is Mjack

Which means you agree with me the topic in the op is not a problem?

I find you both highly disagreeable.

Also, I'm not understanding what WotC has done. Are they allowing people to buy singles yet? or was this something else?

At a very basic level:

- Historic is the new format, which is a none rotating format starting from Ixilan basically intended so people's cards have use once they rotate

- WOTC in their infinite genius basically said "in the interest of helping new players Historic is gonna be twice as expensive" (i.e it's gonna cost 2 wildcards to craft one Historic card) so people are pretty unhappy about that as it makes 0 fkn sense to be more expensive

- This is further exacerbated by the fact WOTC have said they're gonna be putting old cards straight into Historic - Firebolt, Brainstorm, Wurmcoil engine, Dark confidant ect, which are obviously going to be format staples and it's probably gonna cost 8 mythic rare wildcards for a playset of confidant and wurmcoil for example

Basically, WOTC are trying to make Historic as unappealing as possible cause they get more $$$ from people playing Standard and they can technically say cards aren't worthless once they rotate

Sets that have being standard legal en ARENA should always be 1:1 at the very least.

Those MTG staples should have their own RWC like every 3 mythic rares and or just be able on the store.
I guess those could be 20Us per playset and whales would buy then in a heartbeat.

The bad part is that it would inmediately scale the P2W aspect of MTG.

WOTC almost always has a stupidly unreasonable pricing structure for whatever they decide to do; and they get away with it because it is Magic the Gathering. Their customers simply have not held them accountable.

Since Arena is the replacement for MTGO; they want to make older cards artificially "worth more". It's not a big deal as far as I am concerned because it is nowhere near as egregious as things that are already in the game. Y'all let them take a mile and are now arguing with them over just a few more inches.

I'm not familiar with Historic but if this is an accurate description then I don't see any problem. If you don't like Historic, just don't play it, simple.

I think the issue is, that people actually do like Historic as a format. A playground where you get to pick from a much larger collection and make very powerful combos and decks.

They just don't want to abandon standard, so you'll still want to buy your packs there and thus getting specific rares in Historic will eat your wildcards. Meaning even more money towards Standard.

I think wizards have simply done as follows: if you want to compete(ish), you should fork out 20k gems each quarter and play at least 4-5 matches pr day for ingame rewards. Possibly double that on gems. (just for packs mind you, more if you run drafts)

At that rate, if you did it from the beginning, you should have a healthy amount of rares from each set. And then cherry-pick the rares you need when you want to mess around in Historic.

This concept is known as "largely F2P CCG". Still cheaper than papermagic, but again, you don't get any wizardpoker-cardboard-tokens you can turn around and sell.

This is an over-simplification: If you don't care for something, don't bother if it gets taken away.

Thing is, Historic was promised as an Eternal format where you get to play your (purchased) cards beyond rotation. So, if you enjoy Jund Dinos, that's an avenue you could've taken come September. And maybe that prospect made you purchase cards you otherwise wouldn't have.

And now instead of bringing Historic like that - as players would have expected - they decided to warp said format from the get-go. Bringing in select powerful cards from the past is destined to force a new meta with every cycle. So neither do you get to play your Dinos in a world of Wurmcoil Engine and company, nor can you ever foresee what sort of old cards will enter the format in the next cycle.

Now none of that would be a problem if this format didn't replace the anticipated Historic format - then you would be correct.

Oh and the fact that they hid this format-warping behind that obvious 2:1 fiasco doesn't make them look better either.

Yeah pretty much that, "don't play it" isn't a valid argument because Historic is their solution to a good chunk of your collection rotating out, if people didn't like it as a concept that would be fine (which too be honest is me, i probably wouldn't play it more that Standard anyway even if their wasn't all this ****) The problem is they're actively trying to make the format as unappealing as posssible just for the cash grab

I like Vintage as a format, but I'm not shelling out thousands of dollars for a deck just so I can be competitive. Why is this be different?

Also, we're playing Magic. It's a game where the 2-year lifetime of most Standard cards is well known. We can't expect Standard cards to be viable in older formats. If one wanted to play with old cards then one should not play the rotating Standard in the first place (just go direct to Modern). Having this Historic format is just a luxury.

That said I do get the feeling that releasing cards such as Wurmcoil Engine into this new format will not work out well. Wurmcoil simply has too strong a power level. I'm not concerned about cost, just balance.

This is different from Vintage because WOTC have repeated multiple times over the last standard cycle "don't worry, we're planning on people having something to do with their old cards"

When you buy into Standard, you buy into Standard, and don't expect that your cards will have use forever, but when people have bought into arena they've been told they have Standard AND will have use for the older cards which is a big difference.

Historic isn't a luxury, it's a basic necessity if WOTC isn't going to introduce a dusting system otherwise old cards have 0 use which is HUGELY different from what they've been saying the last 2 years.

Once again, Historic doesn't have to appeal to you, it's the ethical decision from WOTC to try and make the format as unappealing as possible right from the get go with the wildcard rate ect ect that you should care about, even if you have no plans to play it

It is so awkward how hard it will be for players that have already played one whole year to join historic 2 years from now due to completely missing 8 sets, and joining the format is going to be even harder.
IMHO if they just wanted the format ot not overshadow standard they could just have made the ranked games only run for the first 1-2 weeks of a month and maybe ban cards from the top tier decks every 6-12 months to force players to craft more cards for it.

The format feels like a dying format just due to how hard it will be for new players to build an historic deck 2 years from now .

This is the wrong hill to die on. The correct one was back in September 27, 2018 when the game "officially launched" with free to pay mobile gacha monetization that makes Hearthstone look good. That was a good time to say "Hey, maybe the game shouldn't have launched with thousands of dollars of microtransactions" or "Hey, it's not reasonable to ask people to spend 200+ per set on a F2P game that launched with more than 4 of them." Or even that WOTC should have at least told people at the game's launch what the plan for "Modern" or the equivalent (Historic but not really lol) was going to be. Any of those would have been reasonable customer expectations. Even as far as hills to die on go, the most correct one still available is that the game shouldn't be more expensive than paper; since it's a digital product where you don't own pickles.

I give absolutely no respect to the argument (NOTE: argument; I respect every poster but I do not respect the argument itself) that just now the way they've been handling this entire situation is unacceptable; and I think people are still complaining about the wrong things. You should be mad that wildcards are a system at all. You should be mad that the game's economy is a stingy skinner box. You should be mad that you can't spend a very small amount of money to buy singles. You should be mad that their communication is actually getting worse, not better. You should be mad that the game is more expensive than paper but you can't trade cards with your friends at that price (even if it was purely limited to those from packs bought with gems). Getting mad at Brainstorm and wildcard conversion rates is just taking the rhubarb at this point; because that should not be the single point of failure where people actually get upset at this game.

Speaking of, six months from now they will have gotten away with it or something close. The fact that the game has managed to survive this long in this state means they will most likely get away with this; since it's not a major step up from what they've already been doing imo. Now if MTG Arena looked like the new NBA 2K20 trailer that Take Two felt the need to unlist from Youtube due to how bad the reaction was; THEN I could see people getting mad enough for this to actually be a thing with major lasting effects that Wizard is unhappy with. I can't see people not playing the game because a mode that isn't Standard is intentionally unappealing. Most of the most successful digital CCG's with rotations have done something similar; and they are still all chugging along just fine. Turns out people in a F2P game who are actually "Pure F2P" mostly just care about melting down their collections to keep up with Standard; and older formats aren't cared about enough to make a lasting stink.

The format's mere existence is the entire point of the exercise. Whether or not people actually play it; the mode needs to exist so that they can pay lip service to supporting non-Standard sets.

If they intended for the format to succeed; then they would leave the card packs for it in the shop. That's the biggest problem with the entire announcement and will be way worse for the format than the other stuff that is also still egregious in its own right. I don't want anyone to get me wrong by the way. I definitely agree that this is all extremely shady bullpucky. Unfortunately however it's just par for the course at this point; and I've mostly run out of outrage.

Jesus H. Christ. You realize hardly anyone is going to read your 5 paragraph double post holier-than-thou post telling us what we should and shouldn't be mad about like we all have the same opinions as you.

By default hardly anyone is going to read any of these.