As a relatively new player who just really likes Magic, I play almost exclusively for the fun of it. I know that when I play a tournament whether it's sealed deck or constructed I'm going to make some dumb mistakes that a well seasoned player won't and therefore I'm going to lose some games I shouldn't, so I don't usually consider the payout when I play. My main consideration is time, which at roughly one hour per round means I don't ever expect to play in PE w/top 8. Ever. I'm a family guy like you and if I'm lucky I can squeeze in one DE constructed or one 4-3-2-2 draft per weekend. Or if there's release event I can play a Sealed Swiss event and get free avatar and event card. If I were to make one suggestion to WoTC about Magic Online it wouldn't be about payouts it would be to cut the time for each player from 30 to a maximum of 20. Preferably 15. Most play is finished well within that time and it keeps players from sitting around waiting 30 minutes or more for next round to start. I'm a slow player by any standard and I'd be more than happy to accept a draw or even an undeserved loss for the sake of being able to play more often. I'm pretty sure however that most people probably don't have the same attitude about draws and losses, but I'm willing to bet just about everyone would agree that tournaments need to be faster.
The other thing you mentioned that is completely lacking is the achievement aspect. And this seems like something that could be done very simply and in a way that doesn't promote elitism. Something like a unique avatar is a great idea or maybe a clan avatar if your clan has achieved so and so objective. I think that would be great for adding some extra enjoyment to the experience and something I would personally like, but I don't know if it would be incentive enough for me to play more if everything else stayed the same.
Anyhow thanks for the article, I enjoyed it and I think your insights are very interesting.
Lol, no :) I just got the link from my husband to read and I read it. It was interesting for me to see what advices the author would give and I posted my opinion about what I read (being in the target group) :) I focused on some of the aspects of the article, not all :) And ofc people are free to disagree with me :) Just for the record I am a psychologist :)
This article was already mostly-written by the time yours was out - I'd started it in formation when I'd come back from Renton. I'd got the idea after spending the time there. It was merely coincidence your article on the subject of EV came out a week ago. It would have read exactly the same way with or without your article, with the exception of the Intro, which I normally leave to the end anyway, and even then I think it was just the "recently" line.
I don't think the article makes any attempt to try to solve "quality time" issues between couples - merely instruct how to carry someone's more casual and lighter interest into the game for mutual enjoyment.
It sounds to me like you have a personal issue with the way you were introduced to this article - like it was a magic spell (no pun intended) that could make someone like Magic. Sorry if that's the case.
It is not quality time when the whole idea is to involve the significant other so that he/she stops complaining that we spend too much time playing a game. If the partner really wants to learn how to play and play together with his/her loved one and has the initiative, then it might be good. But not if the player just wants to reduce the number of fights he/she has with the partner over the game. In cases where we have a fanatic player who spends too much time with the game, involving the partner is not helping for solving the problem. Good balance between games and all other activities is very important. And ofc people are different, some might embrace the idea, but I believe most will not.
You did make it clear in the article. But you also called me out a bit by using some strong language and I thought I at least had to justify some of my thoughts. There is a difference in my mind between heinous to WoTC and a non-starter.
In terms of recognition, I think match replays could be utilized a bit more without the need for that much programming. They go away so quickly as it is now. I know that is probably due to space concerns but I would think saving at least the top matches for a longer period of time would be valuable and interesting to players.
If there was a link on the main Magic Online start-up page that held the replays for the final match of every major tournament in the past month or 2 months. People could get recognition and valuable tournament information at the same time. Also I wouldn't think that it would be too hard to create some kind of spreadsheet leaderboard from that information.
The top 8 matches would probably be better, but then space becomes more of a concern.
If my foggy memory serves that was in the beta test only. Since that was over 7 years ago I can't be 100% certain though. Maybe a shared hallucination? MTGO Historians please help!! :)
Oh and that bit about your rating is an interesting thing. They took away the public display of ratings presumably to stop elitism/people picking on lower ranked players or excluding higher ranked players. But that seems a fairly bad way to handle what to my mind was never a problem. Clans aren't even fully functional now so the rating system which helped players keep score and display their achievements is not available.
Sure there is some elitism in any sport/game where there are super competitive people but face it, unless you are on the pt there is no reason for it to be a problem. And if you are it should be irrelevant. I think the privatization of that should be reversed.
I love playing allies but currently I haven't found a way to make them work well enough to be competitive. When they do go off they make slivers look silly, but getting there is rough. I look forward to your new decks. :D
Hello. I read the article and I found some tips that could be useful BUT it didn't sound quite convincing as a whole :) My husband gave me the link, so I decided to say my opinion about it.
1. Yes, we have plenty of cards at home, cards are everywhere and in front of my eyes all the time. Yes, I like how some of them look like even though I have no idea how "strong" or useful they are, but it doesn't make me want to actually play the game. I just note "Oh, this is a beautiful card" and that's it. So the idea of "put some cute cards laying around so she can see them" can have the opposite effect:
- she will complain it is messy, there is no need to have cards laying around everywhere and at the end it might actually annoy her
2. I strongly recommend - DO NOT use the last advice about the "if she learns to play the game, you’ll pay extra attention to her and she’ll get bonus time with you that she might not get otherwise". Seriously, do not use this unless you have a very good answer to: "How about you stop playing this game so that you get bonus time with me?"
3. No, I am not interested in learning how to play the game, I am fine with him playing, chatting with others about it, reading articles, watching videos and so on as long as it doesn't take too much of his time and it does not affect the other (I dare to say more important) things in his life. I like RPG games and I have never been interested in cards games.
4. Actually I am quite smart and I can easily notice all kind of attempts and tricks to make me interested in the game. So those will not work with me and he knows it. If I am interested in something, I am and that's it. If I am not, then I am not and that's it. This is his game, he plays it, it is his time with his friends and I prefer to let things stay this way.
5. Do respect your partner's wishes and preferences and do not force them to do things they don't want to, do not ignore them for a game (no game is more important than your relationship with a living person you hav feelings for).
all i know is i have two new decks ready to go. The mana on my allies was my own worst enemy so i have hung them up and now embraced the dark side of magic. Brought back a couple old favorites. One from Mirrodin/Kamigawa standard, and another from Onslaught block updated with a few new cards.
WotC should implement your payout method and pay you handsomely for coming up with it as I'm sure it would bring new life to the sanctioned event scene.
I especially liked the achievements aspect. I never thought about it before, and it is a big deal. I'm not sure because I've never played it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Duels of the Planeswalkers on the Xbox has more in the way of achievements than MTGO does, and that just doesn't seem right.
Is that for the most part, your's and other cries will go on deaf ears to the people who can really enact change - WoTC - if the only means by which you can suggest changes are at the 2nd market level. For exmaple, while saying "Classic Events aren't firing because MED3 packs are selling for 3" might be true, it's simply not the way WoTC sees it.
So while EV is an interesting exercise and discussion point for us players, it's a non-starter for WoTC. I thought I made that explicitly clear in the article as well. There's no reason not to talk about it - EV exists. But it's not a good starting point for talking about change.
I agree on the time issue, though I don't think I understated how important it is to many people. It simply didn't need as much explanation I thought.
Someone back me up on this, but didn't the first version of MTGO have a "Trophy" room you could view under "Settings"? It seems someone had the idea to allow players to track their achievements but it was never fully fleshed out.
Also, there are guilds with rankings but I have no idea how those are calculated. Maybe it's just total membership but it could be cummulative ratings for all I know. In either case there is a "goal" and some sort of competition (though the guild names haven't seemed to change in years).
I agree that there needs to be more ways for players to get some sort of "recognition" even if it's only something you can see personally, like player ratings these days. It would be VERY easy to give players an untradable token medal for a Top Finish or Draft Win. Even simple medals for collection goals (x4, complete sets, etc...) would give people more reasons to log on and interact.
Other games that compete for our on-line time offer achivement goals. Simple games, like Mafia Wars, give out a million different "awards" that keep certain players motivated to come back and play more. Complex games like MMORPG's have guild competitions and personal recognitions that keep people logged in. Even my free daily Sodoku and Crossword allows me to track my game stats (wins, fastest time, etc...)!
But with MTGO, there's nothing to indicate my history with the game. My 7th Ed set could have been purchased on eBay instead of collected when the game was initially launched. My Avatars may have been won or traded. With the exception of my Player Rating (which peaked during the Rav block) there's nothing to feel terribly good about my investment in this game for the past seven years.
"Most especially heinous in this category are those articles which talk specifically about Expected Value (or EV for short). I know that these articles cause no end of pain to WoTC, because they generally look at only the purely mathematical factors that play into the decision of whether to play at all in a specific tournament (or whether or not to choose it over another)."
Overall, a very nice article. Except for the part where you basically called my article especially heinous. :-)
All kidding aside, when I talked about expected value in my article, I didn't use it as the main justification for changing pack distribution. I think the terrible firing rate of classic tournaments and classic drafts is reason enough for WotC to try to make some kind of change. EV is a major part of my article because a major part of my article is geared towards material that I thought other players would be interested in.
I don't see what's especially heinous about talking first about what players expect from the game (prizes and expected value) and second about what WotC expects from the game (tournaments that don't give away too many prizes and fire at a decent rate) and then making a suggestion that helps both parties. If I wrote a letter directly to WotC I wouldn't talk about expected value, and I would try to focus on information that is relevant to WotC's interests. As it was, I wrote an article that would be read by more players than WotC employees and I thought it prudent to focus my article on information that would be useful to those players.
You made a valid point against my initial idea that a generic pack wouldn't have an expiration date and therefore would never go offsale. This would effectively hurt WotC's bottom line. Therefore I see the need to tie it to a current pack (like the core set booster).
Getting back to your article...
I think time is an even bigger issue than you make it to be. That is one of the big reasons that drafts and sealed decks are so much more popular than constructed tournaments. They require no preparation time, while constructed tournaments require time to buy cards for a deck, assemble that deck, do adequate testing of that deck, and finally make minor changes to the deck based on testing results. That requires a lot of time doing somewhat un-fun things all before you even start to play in constructed tournaments.
That's why I really think we need leagues back. Leagues don't require the same kind of time commitments that long tournaments do. Of course I realize that leagues are over a year away, so I don't think I need to say too much about them.
I usually end up playing 2-man queues because it's difficult on my family when I'm on the computer for a long period of time. I can't remember the number of times my wife has asked me how many rounds I have left in a tournament. Anyway, 2-man queues are nice, but they are no substitute for Leagues. Also WotC doesn't seem to pay much attention to them.
Would also be nice if i didnt come off as such a novice "Ok this is exciting stuff now we have two players who haven’t got to the final before" < i did final it 2 weeks ago and won it 3 weeks ago with my allies :( but ok nice article other than that
I thought the same thing (about breaking it up - not the naked ladies)
(...ok maybe them too [smack] Hi honey!).
Sadly, writing that much of an article left me too drained to try and figure out what picture would be appropriate. It's not like I mentioned a single Magic card. Thanks for the compliment though
As a relatively new player who just really likes Magic, I play almost exclusively for the fun of it. I know that when I play a tournament whether it's sealed deck or constructed I'm going to make some dumb mistakes that a well seasoned player won't and therefore I'm going to lose some games I shouldn't, so I don't usually consider the payout when I play. My main consideration is time, which at roughly one hour per round means I don't ever expect to play in PE w/top 8. Ever. I'm a family guy like you and if I'm lucky I can squeeze in one DE constructed or one 4-3-2-2 draft per weekend. Or if there's release event I can play a Sealed Swiss event and get free avatar and event card. If I were to make one suggestion to WoTC about Magic Online it wouldn't be about payouts it would be to cut the time for each player from 30 to a maximum of 20. Preferably 15. Most play is finished well within that time and it keeps players from sitting around waiting 30 minutes or more for next round to start. I'm a slow player by any standard and I'd be more than happy to accept a draw or even an undeserved loss for the sake of being able to play more often. I'm pretty sure however that most people probably don't have the same attitude about draws and losses, but I'm willing to bet just about everyone would agree that tournaments need to be faster.
The other thing you mentioned that is completely lacking is the achievement aspect. And this seems like something that could be done very simply and in a way that doesn't promote elitism. Something like a unique avatar is a great idea or maybe a clan avatar if your clan has achieved so and so objective. I think that would be great for adding some extra enjoyment to the experience and something I would personally like, but I don't know if it would be incentive enough for me to play more if everything else stayed the same.
Anyhow thanks for the article, I enjoyed it and I think your insights are very interesting.
im still waiting for lifetime points to be awarded, personally, i would love to see power 9 given out to those who have spent the farm on mtgo
Thanks LE I look forward to playing with you when you have more time. And where is that article? :D
Lol, no :) I just got the link from my husband to read and I read it. It was interesting for me to see what advices the author would give and I posted my opinion about what I read (being in the target group) :) I focused on some of the aspects of the article, not all :) And ofc people are free to disagree with me :) Just for the record I am a psychologist :)
Congrats to you for the win. Last weekend I had some real life duties to attend to but hopefully this weekend I'll be back.
LE
This article was already mostly-written by the time yours was out - I'd started it in formation when I'd come back from Renton. I'd got the idea after spending the time there. It was merely coincidence your article on the subject of EV came out a week ago. It would have read exactly the same way with or without your article, with the exception of the Intro, which I normally leave to the end anyway, and even then I think it was just the "recently" line.
I don't think the article makes any attempt to try to solve "quality time" issues between couples - merely instruct how to carry someone's more casual and lighter interest into the game for mutual enjoyment.
It sounds to me like you have a personal issue with the way you were introduced to this article - like it was a magic spell (no pun intended) that could make someone like Magic. Sorry if that's the case.
It is not quality time when the whole idea is to involve the significant other so that he/she stops complaining that we spend too much time playing a game. If the partner really wants to learn how to play and play together with his/her loved one and has the initiative, then it might be good. But not if the player just wants to reduce the number of fights he/she has with the partner over the game. In cases where we have a fanatic player who spends too much time with the game, involving the partner is not helping for solving the problem. Good balance between games and all other activities is very important. And ofc people are different, some might embrace the idea, but I believe most will not.
You did make it clear in the article. But you also called me out a bit by using some strong language and I thought I at least had to justify some of my thoughts. There is a difference in my mind between heinous to WoTC and a non-starter.
In terms of recognition, I think match replays could be utilized a bit more without the need for that much programming. They go away so quickly as it is now. I know that is probably due to space concerns but I would think saving at least the top matches for a longer period of time would be valuable and interesting to players.
If there was a link on the main Magic Online start-up page that held the replays for the final match of every major tournament in the past month or 2 months. People could get recognition and valuable tournament information at the same time. Also I wouldn't think that it would be too hard to create some kind of spreadsheet leaderboard from that information.
The top 8 matches would probably be better, but then space becomes more of a concern.
If my foggy memory serves that was in the beta test only. Since that was over 7 years ago I can't be 100% certain though. Maybe a shared hallucination? MTGO Historians please help!! :)
Oh and that bit about your rating is an interesting thing. They took away the public display of ratings presumably to stop elitism/people picking on lower ranked players or excluding higher ranked players. But that seems a fairly bad way to handle what to my mind was never a problem. Clans aren't even fully functional now so the rating system which helped players keep score and display their achievements is not available.
Sure there is some elitism in any sport/game where there are super competitive people but face it, unless you are on the pt there is no reason for it to be a problem. And if you are it should be irrelevant. I think the privatization of that should be reversed.
I think that is the key right there. The article is geared toward helping along someone who *is* interested - not in tricking someone who isn't.
If my wife ever said "you know I'd like to give that a try" I'd be following these tips. Instead I end up following yours :)
Lastly, just because you believe that playing magic together isn't quality time spent between significant others doesn't mean it can't be.
I love playing allies but currently I haven't found a way to make them work well enough to be competitive. When they do go off they make slivers look silly, but getting there is rough. I look forward to your new decks. :D
Hello. I read the article and I found some tips that could be useful BUT it didn't sound quite convincing as a whole :) My husband gave me the link, so I decided to say my opinion about it.
1. Yes, we have plenty of cards at home, cards are everywhere and in front of my eyes all the time. Yes, I like how some of them look like even though I have no idea how "strong" or useful they are, but it doesn't make me want to actually play the game. I just note "Oh, this is a beautiful card" and that's it. So the idea of "put some cute cards laying around so she can see them" can have the opposite effect:
- she will complain it is messy, there is no need to have cards laying around everywhere and at the end it might actually annoy her
2. I strongly recommend - DO NOT use the last advice about the "if she learns to play the game, you’ll pay extra attention to her and she’ll get bonus time with you that she might not get otherwise". Seriously, do not use this unless you have a very good answer to: "How about you stop playing this game so that you get bonus time with me?"
3. No, I am not interested in learning how to play the game, I am fine with him playing, chatting with others about it, reading articles, watching videos and so on as long as it doesn't take too much of his time and it does not affect the other (I dare to say more important) things in his life. I like RPG games and I have never been interested in cards games.
4. Actually I am quite smart and I can easily notice all kind of attempts and tricks to make me interested in the game. So those will not work with me and he knows it. If I am interested in something, I am and that's it. If I am not, then I am not and that's it. This is his game, he plays it, it is his time with his friends and I prefer to let things stay this way.
5. Do respect your partner's wishes and preferences and do not force them to do things they don't want to, do not ignore them for a game (no game is more important than your relationship with a living person you hav feelings for).
Have fun and good luck all of you :)
Congrats to the new guy! I'm gonna try to get back in next week with something new.
all i know is i have two new decks ready to go. The mana on my allies was my own worst enemy so i have hung them up and now embraced the dark side of magic. Brought back a couple old favorites. One from Mirrodin/Kamigawa standard, and another from Onslaught block updated with a few new cards.
Sorry Fadew, many apologies.
WotC should implement your payout method and pay you handsomely for coming up with it as I'm sure it would bring new life to the sanctioned event scene.
I especially liked the achievements aspect. I never thought about it before, and it is a big deal. I'm not sure because I've never played it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Duels of the Planeswalkers on the Xbox has more in the way of achievements than MTGO does, and that just doesn't seem right.
Is that for the most part, your's and other cries will go on deaf ears to the people who can really enact change - WoTC - if the only means by which you can suggest changes are at the 2nd market level. For exmaple, while saying "Classic Events aren't firing because MED3 packs are selling for 3" might be true, it's simply not the way WoTC sees it.
So while EV is an interesting exercise and discussion point for us players, it's a non-starter for WoTC. I thought I made that explicitly clear in the article as well. There's no reason not to talk about it - EV exists. But it's not a good starting point for talking about change.
I agree on the time issue, though I don't think I understated how important it is to many people. It simply didn't need as much explanation I thought.
Someone back me up on this, but didn't the first version of MTGO have a "Trophy" room you could view under "Settings"? It seems someone had the idea to allow players to track their achievements but it was never fully fleshed out.
Also, there are guilds with rankings but I have no idea how those are calculated. Maybe it's just total membership but it could be cummulative ratings for all I know. In either case there is a "goal" and some sort of competition (though the guild names haven't seemed to change in years).
I agree that there needs to be more ways for players to get some sort of "recognition" even if it's only something you can see personally, like player ratings these days. It would be VERY easy to give players an untradable token medal for a Top Finish or Draft Win. Even simple medals for collection goals (x4, complete sets, etc...) would give people more reasons to log on and interact.
Other games that compete for our on-line time offer achivement goals. Simple games, like Mafia Wars, give out a million different "awards" that keep certain players motivated to come back and play more. Complex games like MMORPG's have guild competitions and personal recognitions that keep people logged in. Even my free daily Sodoku and Crossword allows me to track my game stats (wins, fastest time, etc...)!
But with MTGO, there's nothing to indicate my history with the game. My 7th Ed set could have been purchased on eBay instead of collected when the game was initially launched. My Avatars may have been won or traded. With the exception of my Player Rating (which peaked during the Rav block) there's nothing to feel terribly good about my investment in this game for the past seven years.
Thanks for bringing these ideas up.
"Most especially heinous in this category are those articles which talk specifically about Expected Value (or EV for short). I know that these articles cause no end of pain to WoTC, because they generally look at only the purely mathematical factors that play into the decision of whether to play at all in a specific tournament (or whether or not to choose it over another)."
Overall, a very nice article. Except for the part where you basically called my article especially heinous. :-)
All kidding aside, when I talked about expected value in my article, I didn't use it as the main justification for changing pack distribution. I think the terrible firing rate of classic tournaments and classic drafts is reason enough for WotC to try to make some kind of change. EV is a major part of my article because a major part of my article is geared towards material that I thought other players would be interested in.
I don't see what's especially heinous about talking first about what players expect from the game (prizes and expected value) and second about what WotC expects from the game (tournaments that don't give away too many prizes and fire at a decent rate) and then making a suggestion that helps both parties. If I wrote a letter directly to WotC I wouldn't talk about expected value, and I would try to focus on information that is relevant to WotC's interests. As it was, I wrote an article that would be read by more players than WotC employees and I thought it prudent to focus my article on information that would be useful to those players.
You made a valid point against my initial idea that a generic pack wouldn't have an expiration date and therefore would never go offsale. This would effectively hurt WotC's bottom line. Therefore I see the need to tie it to a current pack (like the core set booster).
Getting back to your article...
I think time is an even bigger issue than you make it to be. That is one of the big reasons that drafts and sealed decks are so much more popular than constructed tournaments. They require no preparation time, while constructed tournaments require time to buy cards for a deck, assemble that deck, do adequate testing of that deck, and finally make minor changes to the deck based on testing results. That requires a lot of time doing somewhat un-fun things all before you even start to play in constructed tournaments.
That's why I really think we need leagues back. Leagues don't require the same kind of time commitments that long tournaments do. Of course I realize that leagues are over a year away, so I don't think I need to say too much about them.
I usually end up playing 2-man queues because it's difficult on my family when I'm on the computer for a long period of time. I can't remember the number of times my wife has asked me how many rounds I have left in a tournament. Anyway, 2-man queues are nice, but they are no substitute for Leagues. Also WotC doesn't seem to pay much attention to them.
Would also be nice if i didnt come off as such a novice "Ok this is exciting stuff now we have two players who haven’t got to the final before" < i did final it 2 weeks ago and won it 3 weeks ago with my allies :( but ok nice article other than that
hmm Ban the Elves :)
lol well just so you know i gave saved every top 4 with the top 4 tribes. Just as a note Elves is currently No. 1
I thought the same thing (about breaking it up - not the naked ladies)
(...ok maybe them too [smack] Hi honey!).
Sadly, writing that much of an article left me too drained to try and figure out what picture would be appropriate. It's not like I mentioned a single Magic card. Thanks for the compliment though