Source
r/MagicArena•
Dimitime

Why does everything have to be tournament-style?

Question

When they first introduced game modes like QC I thought it was a fantastic idea. It lets people scratch a competitive itch at an affordable price, emulating a tournament with some stakes but nothing too ridiculous.

Fast forward several months and I wonder why EVERY event has to follow this structure. Things like Singleton or "Brewer's Delight" felt like they should just be casual ladder queues where people can screw around with crazy decks and have fun. Now there's Pauper and Momir... with paid entry fees? My mind was blown, I didn't think there existed any person in this world who would think to put a mode called "Pauper" behind a paywall (with a more expensive entry cost than QC...)

This leads me to question their design philosophy behind events. I get that some people want a more competitive feel to their games (as I said, I think QC is a great game mode), but WotC seems to want EVERYTHING in the game to be "competitive", even stupid for-fun modes. Why? Shouldn't casual modes just have an unranked queue to let people screw around with crazy deck ideas?

Posted Aug 16, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

8430
CantIgnoreMyGirth•

I can't agree more with this. Momir and pauper should just be free play options. Singleton/brawl I can see being tournament style especially if they try and push brawl in Arena.

52
mertcanhekim•

I can live with them being tournament style events. But when those events have "lose gold only" prize structure, they simply turn into traps.

11
[deleted]•

The game is free. The cards are free. Something's got to cost money.

-4
lazyoverlordBolas•

Well the cards aren’t really free, because you have to either pay for them or grind for gold every day, and if you choose to grind you can only realistically unlock a small number of cards. It’s probably more accurate to call them “freemium” or something.

3
DerNubenfrieken•

Well we're talking about mormir and pauper, one format that has no cards, and another that has the lowest buy in of any game type.

2
lazyoverlordBolas•

That’s a fair point, and for pauper I can see having some entry fee because it’s more of a real gametype, but momir is such a wacky and RNG-dependent format that having it be a paid event is pretty strange to me. Considering how much they charge for things like draft, you’d think they let you play a very casual format for free.

3
SoneEv•

Greed and money :)

30
Shin_flope•

This is being run by a private company so.... What did you expect?

-9
mertcanhekim•

Every single "free to play" game in the world are run by a private company. But everyone else reward their players simply for playing their games. With the new event prize structure, you have to lose gold just to be able to play the casual game modes. No other company in the world does this.

20
SmaugtheStupendousBolas•

No other company in the world does this.

Well, except for scummy mobile game companies.

5
flavionm•

I expected nothing, and I'm still disappointed

4
SoneEv•

I have no expectation that they be different. It was clear from the last defense of the economy "status quo". So well, I probably won't play a whole lot of events either. It'll be a fun few games and then I'll go off and play something else. :)

3
akaito_chiba•

Hearthstone already did the leg-work for them on this. They're trying to re-invent the wheel. It's infuriating to watch companies release products without copying the good stuff from successful games. Like when FFXIV came out and it was like the devs had never heard of WoW.

3
PathToEternity•

Agreed. Every constructed format should have 3 modes: free (no rewards except quest credit) single Bo1 match, quick (gold entry, gold reward) series of Bo1 matches, and competitive (gem entry, gem rewards) series of Bo3 matches. Not sure why this is so hard

16
cholz•

I like this, with the exception of being able pay gold as an option for all modes.

2
PathToEternity•

I agree with that

1
HalloBob•

Wow clean an simple. This!

1
son1dow•

WotC might think that this will get them more people buyingpacks, but I have my doubts. People want to relax, they get burned out grinding the ladder. Adding alternative casual formats would allow people to goof around without feeling like they have to play a good deck and win without wasting their gold. When players get burned out and leave, I have doubts if WotC will know whether not having a casual format impacted or not. Pretty careless to not provide alternative modes of gameplay for free, IMO. Not like there's not enough stuff to spend money on.

I think at least pauper and singleton / brawl should be free formats.

8
HalloBob•

No need to be completely free. 200 Gold is fine or 250 and you get something back when you win but as long as the entry is too high it has no fun feeling because you lose money when you play ineffective

1
crispybaconsalad•

Until they build a "training grounds" format where you can test your deck against friends, we're gonna have pay for everything.

2
gw2master•

Hearthstone has Tavern Brawl, which is 100% free. But they might be able to afford free modes a bit better because they're much larger than Arena seems to intend to be.

2
DimitimeOP•

I'm not sure they would need anything extra... The servers would have to handle the same number of games.

1
HalloBob•

I liked the brewers delight mode. The entry fee was affordable and it felt OK to spend this. 600 Gold on the other hand really is a joke for a fun mode

2
fereddit•

Economy btw

1
fereddit•

Also, the wildcard nature of this game discourages building "jank"/fun decks; if you're not building top tier decks with your wildcards, you're wasting your money.

Why NOT have the game embrace that fact, and push maximum competitiveness?

I get people want to have fun and play the decks they want to play, not the meta ones - but the system simply doesn't support that, unless you're willing top pay top tier dollar for bottom tier decks (as there are no penny/5cent commons/uncommons).

5
Shin_flope•

Singleton

3
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
Akroma_3•

I really prefer these kind of modes, since laddering is just about playing a fast deck to net as many wins per time invested as possible. If there are too many modes the matchmaking suffers.

1
Isaacvithurston•

because it ensures that those queue's, which have a low amount of players at any one point in time, are more likely to play a set of games instead of 1 and done.

0
marinelite•

Won’t there be lesser players playing overall because there isn’t any interest in paying for these modes though? I know I won’t spend a gold on them and some others have expressed the same.

7
deep6nine•

They are just throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. That's what I get out of it anyway. Things will probably settle once this goes open beta next fall. (I think it won't happen this fall, but fall of '19).

0