I want to primer this with, I played in Closed Beta and so far I have greatly enjoyed the software that Arena is built upon. Aside from my questions over the free play hand manipulation and how that factors into the draw and shuffle algorithms, I think that the interface, options, and gameplay are spot on and this is definitely the game to replace MTGO for most players.... except... I have come to greatly dislike the model this game has decided to go with for the playerbase and I find something new to be very frustrated with from a player standpoint each day. I'm no stranger to digital card games, I play Eternal, Hearthstone, Duelyst. I have played but currently no longer significantly bother with HEX, Shadowverse, Gwent, and Shadow Era. I've been around a long time in the trading card game scene. So to dispel any concerns, I don't mind spending money on my hobbies, nor do I care about the randomization of cards in packs. To me those aspects are fun or at least something I don't mind. I used to preorder every Hearthstone expansion, I am one of the primary customers that games like this look for, a long term player willing to spend consistent money on the game and willing to also make larger purchases. Sadly, I have decided that the current state of Arena warrants not spending money on the game ever again. To me, the practices I am seeing in beta are pushing me further and further away from participating in this game. Here are some of my major concerns and issues:
1. Card Economy - Currently we have been pushed into Open Beta and there's still a ton of things that are very concerning about the card economy for the players. You can't craft cards by sacrificing unwanted cards, duplicates just disappear with no clear idea of what happened to them, the vault is TERRIBLE and is supposedly also hated by the design team, and we still have no idea how set rotations will work since the wipe in closed beta stopped that. Considering all these things, the only reason I can see for the push for open beta was to cover up the unknown mechanic surrounding rotations so that players won't realize that all their money time and effort will be wiped away completely during set rotations. You will lose your progress and you will have no significant legacy format support for those cards you lost access to.
2. Different Versions of Cards - I've noticed that different versions of cards from different sets are split up. This makes sense ONLY if art is changed, but sometimes the set reprints don't change the art, which is fairly often. Additionally, the reason this is done in paper products is for drafting and limited events, but limited events in MTGA allow you to play with the cards and then excess copies essentially go to the vault, so why is there not a system for you to select the art you want on a card, while merging those cards into a single option. This is dumb. It clutters the collection, makes players lose value on duplicates, and gives them ZERO benefit since they don't count as duplicates. This is yet another thing that makes players feel bad, because there's an easy solution and the only reason not to do it is to screw over your players.
3. The Closed Beta Rewards - This is a personal issue and MASSIVE way to just completely screw over your players. Closed Beta participants like myself were awarded a nice code for three free planeswalker cards with special alternate premium art. Full-art and alternate, these promos looked great and really got me excited for open beta. I even used some of my mythic wildcards, very rare and valuable ones that cannot be created except by random chance in the store, to craft extra copies of some of them for use immediately in decks I wanted to play. I planned to save my wild cards and use them on important deck pieces first before creating more alternate art versions. I got some extra mythic wildcards over this week, went to craft my fourth Teferi, and got met with "You can't use wildcards to craft this" I thought that was odd, maybe it's a bug. Surely in BETA they wouldn't force players to immediately use their most valuable wildcards to craft 9 cards that may or may not be useful to them right away and that their only purpose would be for a fancier art. I mean, it's still beta right? And these were JUST released recently to closed beta participants as a reward. I relogged, and got the same error. When I googled the issue to see if others were having trouble too, I found a twitter post as almost an afterthought on how it was the last chance to do this about 5 days ago. WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD YOU PUT SUCH A SMALL TIME LIMIT ON A SPECIAL REWARD FOR YOUR BETA TESTERS WHILE STILL IN BETA?! This is unacceptable to me in any regard and shows a complete lack of care for your players, especially ones that did leg work to help you test your game. This is the nail in the coffin that made me post this thread, and the reason I will never spend another dime on a WotC product, including Arena. I will continue to get my value from this game, but you will see no revenue from me in the future. I have no words, I feel utterly and completely blind-sided. There was no clear reason for this time limit, no warning for players outside of a twitter post, and you're still in beta. Why would you even do this?
I'm just so unhappy and disappointed with how I feel I've been treated as a player and as a beta tester that I can no longer support this game. I will not recommend MTGA to any of my friends, nor my local gamestore fellow players. I will likely never return to paper magic, though I already felt I would not want to, and I will not be spending more money in the future. This is an utter failure on Wizards part in supporting their playerbase, and after what Gerry has said publicly on the matter, Wizards is going to have to significantly change their model for me to want to start supporting this game again.
Submitted October 08, 2018 at 08:08AM by Church174 https://ift.tt/2Oef2UM
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