Hehe well we know why conspiracy doesn't make it online, ever. The draft cards that aren't collectible as playing cards. Personally I think they should have just gone ahead and did it anyway but I don't know what they know.
This seems unlikely for the same reasons arguments about lower prices also fail. Wizards cannot in good face charge less than MSRP, as that is a rather large slap to the face of LGSs. As for the buying the previous set during flashback, they probably don't want people to buy 1000's of Future Sight packs and cause significant damage to the economy. At that point, it's easier to just not do any than try and analyze the times you could.
I agree 100% except Leovald is not a commander card. He would still be a $53 card (probably higher without cmdr cards to take up some of the price slack). I still want commander decks back. Atraxa should not be so high on mtgo.
I actually missed a point that I wanted to talk about in regards to what I wanted from MTGO.
So consider this an addendum to the article.
10. In regards to the online shop, I understand why things rotate out of it. The pack is unlikely to be sold if it's not in Standard and being drafted constantly. I get why Champions is out of the store while Kaladesh is in it. What I do not get is why can we not buy packs of those sets during their flashback periods?
In addition to that, why can't we preorder new sets at a small discount? Hearthstone does that with it's new set, and it would be simple to do. You set up the preorder, allow it to be maybe one per account, that way stores have to jump through hoops to take advantage of the special price, and deliver them with a code that is emailed to the player, or when they log in next. They could even go the route that paper stores have, you buy a box, get the buy a box promo as well.
Pokemon rotates old sets on a weekly basis, everything in their Standard is available to be purchased, but they also offer special bundles, that gets you basically a couple of packs and a promo card. Some times there offer bigger bundles, for a bit more.
Also please bring back commander decks. If you can justify keeping from the vaults in the store, then I think you can do the same for these precon decks. There is no just reason for Leovold to be a 53 ticket card.
Let me tell you, for as much as I love the PTCGO client, the background music it plays (which can be turned off) and the sound effects (which can be turned off) are about the worst thing.
With the exception that nothing I do outside of putting it in to fullscreen will make it fit my window. There is no windowed mode, and that baffles me.
"Actually I DON'T want it to look that way nor like PTCGO or Duels (I get sick playing these)."
Yeah, this is what I feel as well. I really want no bells and whistles - just a well-designed, efficient, streamlined UI to replicate the paper game as faithfully as possible in an online environment.
Very interesting read. A modern Shandalar, taking place in, say, Ravnica, is by far my most wished-for Magic product these days, and has been for a while. Hopefully the new DIgital Studio will make it more feasible.
Thank you for writing this and actually publishing it. I try not to anticipate things because I do not want to get let down. I trust WotC way more than many players but I also had moments in which I just wanted to sell everything and not open modo anymore.
What they should do is keep modo, keep Duels and create 'Digital Next' Magic game meant for the 'top 5 eSports' if they want. I personally do not want to be part of that and I honestly can't see WotC create something that would smoothly work.
As for modo I'd like a client that works. I don't necessarily need it to look like HS. Actually I DON'T want it to look that way nor like PTCGO or Duels (I get sick playing these). But I want the client to do things a player needs to do and if possible bug-free. Or at least reduce the number of bugs. It would be cool to be able to report bugs from the client and not to deal with all the wizards account system that sometimes DOES NOT even work and had its weekly downtime. I mean WTH how can you have a downtime when you have XY venues all around the world that actually need to login to that system and report an event??? Those are things that I don't understand. Even Downtime on Magic Online? That's one of the things I get messaged EVERY SINGLE Wednesday. Even though the downtimes come at same times, same days and it is easy to figure out when there is extended downtime etc people simply do not know. And googling that info is like...impossible. Sometimes even twitter stays silent. When MODO kicked me out of my match and (everyone else) and did that few more times during PTQ, ending in MODO being down for the next few hours the WotC server information was showing a GREEN light. None of us could even login, the server was down and message on twitter showed half an hour after all this mess started. I digress but those are things that should not be happening.
What I want is - possibility to easily stream.
- Possibility to disable chat but see the log.
- Less bugs.
- No downtime.
- VINTAGE Leagues.
- Infinite combos to work so we wouldn't need to click through everything. This means being able to yield to a trigger after a card changes zones, or yield to triggers to same cards a player controls
- Possibility to play on tablet - tried on tablet PC, horrible experience....compared to HS or even Duels (note, I don't even use mouse, I play using keyboard mainly so using my finger I'd want some kind of intuitive way how to use Magic Online. it's not intuitive at all! because other games set how a software can be operated)
- MODO should be able to run on other platforms or systems (and should be crossplatform)
Magic Duels
I like the game. I like the client. It got better over the years and it finally does what I wanted more or less. (I just don't find it worth playing because it is learning a totally different game and I don't want to invest hours and hours to actually play the deck I want.) Putting this aside. I wish the bugs are fixed way sooner than 'maybe in 3 months' because some of the bugs were pretty serious. I used Eldrazi Displacer blinking itself as one of them. Or JVP not removing played card from graveyard from the game. EMN Liliana is bugged. I know that these bugs won't be that annoying as on modo since the number of the copies is limited but it creates a different games often. I'd fancy something like a format or more events that award packs for less gold so new players can actually somehow catchup. I don't even have all cards from BFZ! How can I compete with someone having all cards from Kaladesh from day 1? (yeah, I know I can buy them, but since this is F2P game it should have some kind of balance...). People actually play tournaments in this game, maybe some organized play?
The game has syncing issues which is actually pretty serious issue. In modo we can just wait because the priority is automatically passed but not in duels.
What I want is CROSSPLATFORM play...I have Duels/DotP for Playstation, Android, iOS and PC and I have 4 different accounts and game IDs for that! Not only I had to buy the game 4 times I can't even share the collection. And on some platforms finding a game is just impossible sometimes.
Magic Digital Next should be perfect right from the start. Not something like 8 days downtime for Magic Duels server and intermittent connectivity issues for another few weeks. I practically lost all my cards and gold! (and progress).
I mean having problems because server is overloaded is fine. I can live with that and everyone can understand that. But this was WAY too much for players to accept. Especially those that don't know the everyday struggles of MTGO player.
Fast pacing, flashy, nice to watch etc.
Dream game
What I want is a Magic game similar to Archon battle chess. You'd play a game of 'magic' but the creatures would have to actually fight against each other in some kind of arena game. I'd probably be fine with an action RPG or MOBA game but I'd like to keep the card game aspect still somewhere in the game.
the Functionality of chat could be much much better. For example, anyone who is involved in a match SHOULD be able to mute anyone in the chat channel for that match. No questions, no reasons given. A simple toggle ability would work. With a corresponding "you have been muted in this channel" message on the other end.
In private channels they could borrow from IRC and give the channel owner the ability to create and maintain moderators for the channel. Self-policing easily. Yes there would be some channels that were very toxic indeed but since they were private they would not be your concern unless you chose to go there. This would incidentally be a huge boon for PRE runners.
You and I are on the same page here. I think making the client open chats and remember them was a key to many of my early contacts on mtgo (aside from those whom I knew were playing.)
You answered a different question. I didn't ask if they should make a TV show if they could make money, I asked if they should make a TV show if there is money in it. I.E. some players make money, but that does not mean Wizards can/will. I am less confident in Wizards' ability to make an electronic thing that actually succeeds without the massive benefit of something like the quality of Magic. If you significantly alter Magic to make it an eSport, the greatness of Magic won't carry it. You mentioned Portal, but my understanding was that Portal was generally thought to be a failure. It removed what made Magic, Magic. Most players are not involved enough in the story for the story to singlely carry a new product with sub-par mechanics.
The Eternal CCG made by the likes of LSV and Pat Chapin is already close to what I'd want my ideal version of MTGO to be like. Dire Wolf Digital have done a very good job with the client and, to be fair, it's very close to a Magic clone in terms of game play.
Comparing Reddit or Twitter to MTGO chat is inappropriate, I'd say. Back when there was MTGO chat channels, they were rarely--in my experience--a pit of dredges of humanity. The ORCs banned or silenced the real trouble makers. Reddit and Twitter do not police their communities with any actuality.
Well of course if they can make money doing a TV show, they should do it, they are a business and those exist to make profits, so yeah they should make a tv show.
Also it wouldn't take them 5 years to get to market with this as of right now fictional game. The people that were listed in the article Cocks wrote have been involved with the company for closer to a year now, I also believe (while not named) that they hired talented people who could turn out a quality product in a short period of time.
Supposedly we are getting a State of the Program article from WotC next week, and that will set the tone for what is happening.
Hehe well we know why conspiracy doesn't make it online, ever. The draft cards that aren't collectible as playing cards. Personally I think they should have just gone ahead and did it anyway but I don't know what they know.
This seems unlikely for the same reasons arguments about lower prices also fail. Wizards cannot in good face charge less than MSRP, as that is a rather large slap to the face of LGSs. As for the buying the previous set during flashback, they probably don't want people to buy 1000's of Future Sight packs and cause significant damage to the economy. At that point, it's easier to just not do any than try and analyze the times you could.
Why does WotC need an eSport? I just don't see the why...
I got my C titled supplemental product names wrong :D
I agree 100% except Leovald is not a commander card. He would still be a $53 card (probably higher without cmdr cards to take up some of the price slack). I still want commander decks back. Atraxa should not be so high on mtgo.
More than anything else I don't want my cards to go away or lose value. The rest I can live with.
I actually missed a point that I wanted to talk about in regards to what I wanted from MTGO.
So consider this an addendum to the article.
10. In regards to the online shop, I understand why things rotate out of it. The pack is unlikely to be sold if it's not in Standard and being drafted constantly. I get why Champions is out of the store while Kaladesh is in it. What I do not get is why can we not buy packs of those sets during their flashback periods?
In addition to that, why can't we preorder new sets at a small discount? Hearthstone does that with it's new set, and it would be simple to do. You set up the preorder, allow it to be maybe one per account, that way stores have to jump through hoops to take advantage of the special price, and deliver them with a code that is emailed to the player, or when they log in next. They could even go the route that paper stores have, you buy a box, get the buy a box promo as well.
Pokemon rotates old sets on a weekly basis, everything in their Standard is available to be purchased, but they also offer special bundles, that gets you basically a couple of packs and a promo card. Some times there offer bigger bundles, for a bit more.
Also please bring back commander decks. If you can justify keeping from the vaults in the store, then I think you can do the same for these precon decks. There is no just reason for Leovold to be a 53 ticket card.
Let me tell you, for as much as I love the PTCGO client, the background music it plays (which can be turned off) and the sound effects (which can be turned off) are about the worst thing.
With the exception that nothing I do outside of putting it in to fullscreen will make it fit my window. There is no windowed mode, and that baffles me.
"Actually I DON'T want it to look that way nor like PTCGO or Duels (I get sick playing these)."
Yeah, this is what I feel as well. I really want no bells and whistles - just a well-designed, efficient, streamlined UI to replicate the paper game as faithfully as possible in an online environment.
Very interesting read. A modern Shandalar, taking place in, say, Ravnica, is by far my most wished-for Magic product these days, and has been for a while. Hopefully the new DIgital Studio will make it more feasible.
Thank you for writing this and actually publishing it. I try not to anticipate things because I do not want to get let down. I trust WotC way more than many players but I also had moments in which I just wanted to sell everything and not open modo anymore.
What they should do is keep modo, keep Duels and create 'Digital Next' Magic game meant for the 'top 5 eSports' if they want. I personally do not want to be part of that and I honestly can't see WotC create something that would smoothly work.
As for modo I'd like a client that works. I don't necessarily need it to look like HS. Actually I DON'T want it to look that way nor like PTCGO or Duels (I get sick playing these). But I want the client to do things a player needs to do and if possible bug-free. Or at least reduce the number of bugs. It would be cool to be able to report bugs from the client and not to deal with all the wizards account system that sometimes DOES NOT even work and had its weekly downtime. I mean WTH how can you have a downtime when you have XY venues all around the world that actually need to login to that system and report an event??? Those are things that I don't understand. Even Downtime on Magic Online? That's one of the things I get messaged EVERY SINGLE Wednesday. Even though the downtimes come at same times, same days and it is easy to figure out when there is extended downtime etc people simply do not know. And googling that info is like...impossible. Sometimes even twitter stays silent. When MODO kicked me out of my match and (everyone else) and did that few more times during PTQ, ending in MODO being down for the next few hours the WotC server information was showing a GREEN light. None of us could even login, the server was down and message on twitter showed half an hour after all this mess started. I digress but those are things that should not be happening.
What I want is - possibility to easily stream.
- Possibility to disable chat but see the log.
- Less bugs.
- No downtime.
- VINTAGE Leagues.
- Infinite combos to work so we wouldn't need to click through everything. This means being able to yield to a trigger after a card changes zones, or yield to triggers to same cards a player controls
- Possibility to play on tablet - tried on tablet PC, horrible experience....compared to HS or even Duels (note, I don't even use mouse, I play using keyboard mainly so using my finger I'd want some kind of intuitive way how to use Magic Online. it's not intuitive at all! because other games set how a software can be operated)
- MODO should be able to run on other platforms or systems (and should be crossplatform)
Magic Duels
I like the game. I like the client. It got better over the years and it finally does what I wanted more or less. (I just don't find it worth playing because it is learning a totally different game and I don't want to invest hours and hours to actually play the deck I want.) Putting this aside. I wish the bugs are fixed way sooner than 'maybe in 3 months' because some of the bugs were pretty serious. I used Eldrazi Displacer blinking itself as one of them. Or JVP not removing played card from graveyard from the game. EMN Liliana is bugged. I know that these bugs won't be that annoying as on modo since the number of the copies is limited but it creates a different games often. I'd fancy something like a format or more events that award packs for less gold so new players can actually somehow catchup. I don't even have all cards from BFZ! How can I compete with someone having all cards from Kaladesh from day 1? (yeah, I know I can buy them, but since this is F2P game it should have some kind of balance...). People actually play tournaments in this game, maybe some organized play?
The game has syncing issues which is actually pretty serious issue. In modo we can just wait because the priority is automatically passed but not in duels.
What I want is CROSSPLATFORM play...I have Duels/DotP for Playstation, Android, iOS and PC and I have 4 different accounts and game IDs for that! Not only I had to buy the game 4 times I can't even share the collection. And on some platforms finding a game is just impossible sometimes.
Magic Digital Next should be perfect right from the start. Not something like 8 days downtime for Magic Duels server and intermittent connectivity issues for another few weeks. I practically lost all my cards and gold! (and progress).
I mean having problems because server is overloaded is fine. I can live with that and everyone can understand that. But this was WAY too much for players to accept. Especially those that don't know the everyday struggles of MTGO player.
Fast pacing, flashy, nice to watch etc.
Dream game
What I want is a Magic game similar to Archon battle chess. You'd play a game of 'magic' but the creatures would have to actually fight against each other in some kind of arena game. I'd probably be fine with an action RPG or MOBA game but I'd like to keep the card game aspect still somewhere in the game.
I do want wotc to have an eSport presence. MTG as it is, and it's digital sibling are not the esport that wotc needs.
It needs to have as much in common with magic as hearthstone has with wow, in that they share characters.
I'm planning to be there on Saturday. Just wondering why the event table already shows AJ as winning third place, though. Something rigged? :)
Now I'm just confused. Do you or do you not want a Magic eSport? Whether or not a new product?
There's an online web-based version. http://www.playdiplomacy.com/
It could be an incredible game.
The Avalon Hill title I'd like to see made into a proper digital form is the game Diplomacy
Dire Wolf also made the Pokemon client, so I'm over the moon with them already.
thats what forcing magic to be an esport is doing though, it makes magic stop being magic.
the Functionality of chat could be much much better. For example, anyone who is involved in a match SHOULD be able to mute anyone in the chat channel for that match. No questions, no reasons given. A simple toggle ability would work. With a corresponding "you have been muted in this channel" message on the other end.
In private channels they could borrow from IRC and give the channel owner the ability to create and maintain moderators for the channel. Self-policing easily. Yes there would be some channels that were very toxic indeed but since they were private they would not be your concern unless you chose to go there. This would incidentally be a huge boon for PRE runners.
You and I are on the same page here. I think making the client open chats and remember them was a key to many of my early contacts on mtgo (aside from those whom I knew were playing.)
You answered a different question. I didn't ask if they should make a TV show if they could make money, I asked if they should make a TV show if there is money in it. I.E. some players make money, but that does not mean Wizards can/will. I am less confident in Wizards' ability to make an electronic thing that actually succeeds without the massive benefit of something like the quality of Magic. If you significantly alter Magic to make it an eSport, the greatness of Magic won't carry it. You mentioned Portal, but my understanding was that Portal was generally thought to be a failure. It removed what made Magic, Magic. Most players are not involved enough in the story for the story to singlely carry a new product with sub-par mechanics.
The Eternal CCG made by the likes of LSV and Pat Chapin is already close to what I'd want my ideal version of MTGO to be like. Dire Wolf Digital have done a very good job with the client and, to be fair, it's very close to a Magic clone in terms of game play.
Comparing Reddit or Twitter to MTGO chat is inappropriate, I'd say. Back when there was MTGO chat channels, they were rarely--in my experience--a pit of dredges of humanity. The ORCs banned or silenced the real trouble makers. Reddit and Twitter do not police their communities with any actuality.
Well of course if they can make money doing a TV show, they should do it, they are a business and those exist to make profits, so yeah they should make a tv show.
Also it wouldn't take them 5 years to get to market with this as of right now fictional game. The people that were listed in the article Cocks wrote have been involved with the company for closer to a year now, I also believe (while not named) that they hired talented people who could turn out a quality product in a short period of time.
Supposedly we are getting a State of the Program article from WotC next week, and that will set the tone for what is happening.