I'm still not sold on the idea but..... I'd give it a shot if it was available.
Any online format has to have three things to make me want to play it. It must be fun to play, it must provide me with opponents before I fall asleep at the keyboard and it must fit into my available spending budget.
I know that my definition of 'fun' and 'budget' are stricly personal things and there is nothing WotC or anyone else can do about that but hey. I'm trying to throw together a Commander deck after it was mentioned in an article here so there is proof that I will at least try things.
Well you did ask for feedback on your business so I felt that I should respond. There are a couple of things that effect me personaly which I'd like to bring up. Before I do however please don't read any further unless you understand that these are small points and that I find your existing service very good. Also you need to understand that I'm a budget player and therefore it's all cheap stuff. This is one of the reasons that it may not be viable for you to change anything even if you wanted to.
Your bots are always busy. That's good news for you because with your internet site there is little point anyone checking prices using the bot so I have to assume that people are buying stuff. The only issue is that after a while people do tend to get bored (nobody has any patience these days, including me) and look elsewhere for the cards. Now if it's me doing that you've lost maybe half or sometimes a whole ticket. If it's someone looking to buy that playset of FoW then you are loosing out on a much bigger scale. Only you can know the answer to this but might it be worth setting up more bots? I'm not sure how you might want to make the destincion, it could be on format (Say Pauper, Classic, Standard) or it could be on rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare). That would mean anyone wanting to use a bot for an expensive purchase wouldn't be stuck behind the likes of me buying my playset of Raging Goblin. (Having already rare drafted the Mountains I need to play them. lol) Mind you I guess anyone spending a lot would be better talking to you rather than using the bot at all.
You loose out on buying cards from me because your buying bot does not share credits with your selling bots. Again for the high rollers this means nothing. If you are selling 40 tix worth of cards it's not a problem if half a tix is stuck in the buying bot account. If, like me, you are selling one and a half tix worth of cards getting half a tix stuck in the bot is enough of a deal breaker for me to sell elsewhere. There is an additional issue here in as much as having sold to another bot I'm going to be using that partial credit to pick up some cards from them rather than you. Again, I'm not selling/buying the big stuff so not buying my cards probably doesn't impact you very much at all as a business.
Anyway, These are very minor things that I thought I'd make you aware of. Well you did ask! :o)
Rainbow stairwell would be a really fun format to allow people to play. The biggest issue has to be coding the filters. How exactly would you set up a BYOB event? Block wars would be easier.
The premise is that all decks are 'standard' even if they're made out of different pieces.
Meaning that a Lorwyn Block + Tempest Block + 10th would be allowed to face an Time Spiral Block + Mirage Block + M10, you wouldn't have to find someone in your Standard.
Yeah... This was pointed out. I'm not sure how I could repeatedly add that line into the announcement. Tisk-Tisk! I'm seeing if I can get an editor to update the article to avoid confusion.
First of all you give away prizes, host this website, and give store credit to writers. I think your business is just fine. Not to mention you are competative on 99% of cards. Theres a reason why many people I know ONLY buy from you. 95% or more of my business goes to you as well.
I'm curious as to how these formats you propose would be viable in an online environment.
BYOS for example.
Who decides what the 'standard' is? If I decide I want to build a deck using Kamigawa+Shards+9th as 'my' standard do I have to find an opponent that has a deck valid in 'my' standard? My issue with this is that it's hard enough for me to find Classic or Pauper games in a reasonable time frame (I'm not in a US time zone). With such a large number of possible 'standard' formats I'm never going to see a game fire. There could be a dozen other players online wanting to play 'their' standard and none of them able to get a game.
The other option is that all these BYOS decks can play each other. So in effect my Kamigawa+Shards+9th deck is going up against your 'Tempest+Mirrodon+M10' deck. I'm sorry but I really don't see the benefit of that set up at all. I can't see that a metagame is ever going to develop because deck builders have different restrictions and that means the format is a 'casual' one and can already be played between people who want to do that in the casual room.
BYOB makes the above issues even worse.
Block Wars is a much more viable option but again I'm not sure where there is any real need for anything other than a line of text in the description of a game that could be set up currently in the casual room.
I'm not trying to be negative however I'm struggling to see how these 'new' formats are going to be popular and make WotC want to support them when they could, with a little effort, be played already and as far as I can tell that just isn't the case.
Well worth writing an article on however. I'm sure that if there was enough support WotC would consider supporting any format. I was very surprised when they took on Pauper. OK, there are a few things that I dislike about what they did but on the whole it has been a very positive move for that format.
Constructed 16-man 4 round swiss doesn't pay out to 2-2... from the announcement:
Constructed 4-Round Daily Events
SIZE: 16 players minimum, 128 players maximum.
DURATION: 4 rounds of Swiss play
LOCATION: “Daily Events” room.
ADMISSION: 6 event tickets and constructed deck (appropriate to format)
PRIZE SUPPORT: Prizes are based on the total match points at the end of the tournament. Each match win awards 3 points and each loss awards 0 points.
12 Points gives you 11 Boosters and 3 QPs
9 Points gives you 6 Boosters and 1 QP
funny when I read hat Mox Diamond dropped 12 tickets unexpectedly I thought to myself "oh great they are down to 20 that is finally reasonable maybe i'll pick some up" only to then find out that they had somehow crawled up to 44 since the last time I checked when they were at 32 :(
build your own standard and byob both sound like alot of fun id love to see them supported on mtgo with real tournaments, it sure would make constructed a more viable format for budget players, well at least for a little while, and help keep the secondary market fresh.
I read that section at least twelve times, and each time I mentally added '2-2 gets...'. I'll see if I can get that updated. Thanks for the correction!
So you're saying mtgotraders games the market to cause panic and therefore sales to refill their stock, or merely that they try to get the cards cheaply when they need alot of them?(the latter part doesnt make much sense since you'd expect them to be unable to buy as many by reducing prices to pay, unless they gaming the market strategy has worked) If your inference is correct there may be some illegality to this preactice, though perhaps in trading cards it wouldn't be.. still ..scandalous.
The drop in mox diamond was the same reason as force of will which we have 40 of. Simply it was too high and I was holding off on dropping these until med3 came out but gave in to the pressure of not being more expensive than others. Also I have never dropped a price purposely on my site just to rebuy it cheaper and that would give me a horrible reputation and I'm sorry you think I do that. If you ever see another specific example of me doing this please let me know as I do not want to run my business that way.
I really do appreciate the feedback and it's always good to learn what others think of my business so if you have any other feedback please let me know even if it's negative.
Great article! As a mid-level player (well, aspiring :), I'm looking forward to playing in these new events/queues.
On point of clarification: The new Constructed Daily Events only have prizes for 12 (4-0) and 9 (3-1) tournament points. The new Sealed Daily Events have prizes for 12 (4-0), 9 (3-1), and 6 (2-2) tournament points.
Reborn Hope is a decent card, although Naya Charm usually gets more of a look in for its added versatility. I'm also rather fond of Vengeful Rebirth as a recursion effect with bite, and I've done my best to break Bound/Dertermined, usually with Child of Alara.
I sympathise with the explorer crash: This is why I get my first draft done in Notepad first and copy/paste for formatting after. Congrats on the big win: I saw it on the Traders front page, kudos for getting an article out of it.
Nice article, as always. I do have 1 remark though:
"Perhaps the most interesting move this week was Mox Diamond, which shed 12 tickets for no apparent reason."
I have to disagree with you there. The reason for it's price drop is very obvious:
Although I like mtgotraders and use it myself as a reverence, I noticed some strange activities. When the mtgotraders website is almost out of stock of a certain (high priced) card they seem to drop the price of that specific card. Result: mtgotraders buys low and when they have like 10 mox diamonds at 32 they raise prices again and sell for 44. Normal market (low supply, high demand) should raise prices, so it's obvious that this drop in price is manual.
So: the reason why Mox Diamond shed 12 tickets is very apparent. ;)
OK, that clears up one issue I had, thanks Ham.
I'm still not sold on the idea but..... I'd give it a shot if it was available.
Any online format has to have three things to make me want to play it. It must be fun to play, it must provide me with opponents before I fall asleep at the keyboard and it must fit into my available spending budget.
I know that my definition of 'fun' and 'budget' are stricly personal things and there is nothing WotC or anyone else can do about that but hey. I'm trying to throw together a Commander deck after it was mentioned in an article here so there is proof that I will at least try things.
Well you did ask for feedback on your business so I felt that I should respond. There are a couple of things that effect me personaly which I'd like to bring up. Before I do however please don't read any further unless you understand that these are small points and that I find your existing service very good. Also you need to understand that I'm a budget player and therefore it's all cheap stuff. This is one of the reasons that it may not be viable for you to change anything even if you wanted to.
Your bots are always busy. That's good news for you because with your internet site there is little point anyone checking prices using the bot so I have to assume that people are buying stuff. The only issue is that after a while people do tend to get bored (nobody has any patience these days, including me) and look elsewhere for the cards. Now if it's me doing that you've lost maybe half or sometimes a whole ticket. If it's someone looking to buy that playset of FoW then you are loosing out on a much bigger scale. Only you can know the answer to this but might it be worth setting up more bots? I'm not sure how you might want to make the destincion, it could be on format (Say Pauper, Classic, Standard) or it could be on rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare). That would mean anyone wanting to use a bot for an expensive purchase wouldn't be stuck behind the likes of me buying my playset of Raging Goblin. (Having already rare drafted the Mountains I need to play them. lol) Mind you I guess anyone spending a lot would be better talking to you rather than using the bot at all.
You loose out on buying cards from me because your buying bot does not share credits with your selling bots. Again for the high rollers this means nothing. If you are selling 40 tix worth of cards it's not a problem if half a tix is stuck in the buying bot account. If, like me, you are selling one and a half tix worth of cards getting half a tix stuck in the bot is enough of a deal breaker for me to sell elsewhere. There is an additional issue here in as much as having sold to another bot I'm going to be using that partial credit to pick up some cards from them rather than you. Again, I'm not selling/buying the big stuff so not buying my cards probably doesn't impact you very much at all as a business.
Anyway, These are very minor things that I thought I'd make you aware of. Well you did ask! :o)
Rainbow stairwell would be a really fun format to allow people to play. The biggest issue has to be coding the filters. How exactly would you set up a BYOB event? Block wars would be easier.
The premise is that all decks are 'standard' even if they're made out of different pieces.
Meaning that a Lorwyn Block + Tempest Block + 10th would be allowed to face an Time Spiral Block + Mirage Block + M10, you wouldn't have to find someone in your Standard.
Yeah... This was pointed out. I'm not sure how I could repeatedly add that line into the announcement. Tisk-Tisk! I'm seeing if I can get an editor to update the article to avoid confusion.
My apologies to everyone for the mistake!
Great friday read as always
First of all you give away prizes, host this website, and give store credit to writers. I think your business is just fine. Not to mention you are competative on 99% of cards. Theres a reason why many people I know ONLY buy from you. 95% or more of my business goes to you as well.
Sep 7th is not that far away. you'll get more milage out of the duals than anything you'll get in M10
It made me want to read your article, and I agree that calling them "casual" formats is a complete misnomer.
I'm curious as to how these formats you propose would be viable in an online environment.
BYOS for example.
Who decides what the 'standard' is? If I decide I want to build a deck using Kamigawa+Shards+9th as 'my' standard do I have to find an opponent that has a deck valid in 'my' standard? My issue with this is that it's hard enough for me to find Classic or Pauper games in a reasonable time frame (I'm not in a US time zone). With such a large number of possible 'standard' formats I'm never going to see a game fire. There could be a dozen other players online wanting to play 'their' standard and none of them able to get a game.
The other option is that all these BYOS decks can play each other. So in effect my Kamigawa+Shards+9th deck is going up against your 'Tempest+Mirrodon+M10' deck. I'm sorry but I really don't see the benefit of that set up at all. I can't see that a metagame is ever going to develop because deck builders have different restrictions and that means the format is a 'casual' one and can already be played between people who want to do that in the casual room.
BYOB makes the above issues even worse.
Block Wars is a much more viable option but again I'm not sure where there is any real need for anything other than a line of text in the description of a game that could be set up currently in the casual room.
I'm not trying to be negative however I'm struggling to see how these 'new' formats are going to be popular and make WotC want to support them when they could, with a little effort, be played already and as far as I can tell that just isn't the case.
Well worth writing an article on however. I'm sure that if there was enough support WotC would consider supporting any format. I was very surprised when they took on Pauper. OK, there are a few things that I dislike about what they did but on the whole it has been a very positive move for that format.
Constructed 16-man 4 round swiss doesn't pay out to 2-2... from the announcement:
Constructed 4-Round Daily Events
SIZE: 16 players minimum, 128 players maximum.
DURATION: 4 rounds of Swiss play
LOCATION: “Daily Events” room.
ADMISSION: 6 event tickets and constructed deck (appropriate to format)
PRIZE SUPPORT: Prizes are based on the total match points at the end of the tournament. Each match win awards 3 points and each loss awards 0 points.
12 Points gives you 11 Boosters and 3 QPs
9 Points gives you 6 Boosters and 1 QP
funny when I read hat Mox Diamond dropped 12 tickets unexpectedly I thought to myself "oh great they are down to 20 that is finally reasonable maybe i'll pick some up" only to then find out that they had somehow crawled up to 44 since the last time I checked when they were at 32 :(
Sorry - Helm plus Top plus Future Sight.
build your own standard and byob both sound like alot of fun id love to see them supported on mtgo with real tournaments, it sure would make constructed a more viable format for budget players, well at least for a little while, and help keep the secondary market fresh.
Holy crap!
I read that section at least twelve times, and each time I mentally added '2-2 gets...'. I'll see if I can get that updated. Thanks for the correction!
So you're saying mtgotraders games the market to cause panic and therefore sales to refill their stock, or merely that they try to get the cards cheaply when they need alot of them?(the latter part doesnt make much sense since you'd expect them to be unable to buy as many by reducing prices to pay, unless they gaming the market strategy has worked) If your inference is correct there may be some illegality to this preactice, though perhaps in trading cards it wouldn't be.. still ..scandalous.
I look forward to this every Friday. Another great article.
Great article! As a mid-level player (well, aspiring :), I'm looking forward to playing in these new events/queues.
On point of clarification: The new Constructed Daily Events only have prizes for 12 (4-0) and 9 (3-1) tournament points. The new Sealed Daily Events have prizes for 12 (4-0), 9 (3-1), and 6 (2-2) tournament points.
Reborn Hope is a decent card, although Naya Charm usually gets more of a look in for its added versatility. I'm also rather fond of Vengeful Rebirth as a recursion effect with bite, and I've done my best to break Bound/Dertermined, usually with Child of Alara.
good article ,i may try kscope sometime looks fun.
how is reborn hope on that format id imagine a regrowth would be good tho non combo?
I sympathise with the explorer crash: This is why I get my first draft done in Notepad first and copy/paste for formatting after. Congrats on the big win: I saw it on the Traders front page, kudos for getting an article out of it.
Nice. I won the $400 prize in october last year - it set me up with my duals etc. Lots of fun.
I think your list is pretty good. I really want Tradewind Rider's - a card that will never be what it once was.
Multiplayer will be fixed, and the gold cards from IPA will shine again. Shards, the mutations... such goodness.
"Helm + Sensei's Divining Top = draw your deck"
?
Nice article, as always. I do have 1 remark though:
"Perhaps the most interesting move this week was Mox Diamond, which shed 12 tickets for no apparent reason."
I have to disagree with you there. The reason for it's price drop is very obvious:
Although I like mtgotraders and use it myself as a reverence, I noticed some strange activities. When the mtgotraders website is almost out of stock of a certain (high priced) card they seem to drop the price of that specific card. Result: mtgotraders buys low and when they have like 10 mox diamonds at 32 they raise prices again and sell for 44. Normal market (low supply, high demand) should raise prices, so it's obvious that this drop in price is manual.
So: the reason why Mox Diamond shed 12 tickets is very apparent. ;)