Magic Arena Dominaria Limited patch

After the first Dominaria patch I was able to just play some games and comment on what I saw in game (DOM Patch. There were many changes. Economy changed, we got events and we got a big visuals update.

Since my collection is rather bad I wasn't really into playing Quick Constructed so I thought about skipping it altogether and wanted to just wait for a draft. Nevertheless I decided to hop in one of the events and get crushed. I paid the entry which wasn't much considering I'd still get something back and got terribly crushed by three Gold Rank players while my rank was Bronze (Rank 4). Anyway, I noticed one thing. It was the very first time I actually felt like playing a game of Magic. Even though I lost my matches I played games that made sense. My opponent's just wanted to win but that also made the games playable for me. No stalling, no players trying to figure out what card x or y does and no players playing random piles of cards, players not conceding immediately etc. I played against fully functional decks (full of mythics and rares). I wasn't really sure if this was the experience I wanted from the event but at the time I didn't really think much about it. I just knew that I should enter with a reasonable deck next time.

After little bit of playing it's time for me to write something.

Economy changes

Daily wins
The first win of the day awards 250 gold. The following 4 wins will award 100 gold each. That totals to 550 gold if you win 5 times a day.

A good change

Quests
The rewards of quests were changed too. We get quests that give us 500 or 750 gold. The quests are similar to the previous ones (play X lands, attack with X creatures, playing x color1/color2 spells etc.). The quests saying win with a color1/color2 deck were removed.

The change means that we can earn a pack per day if we want to. We need to play more games to finish a quest but that's not a bad thing. I like this change too.

Weekly wins
At 5, 10 and 15 wins we get a pack of the actual set (Dominaria).

Individual Card Rewards
ICRs were removed from Daily wins and the Vault. They still after this update will exist as prizes in Constructed events.

I have to say that I hated the ICRs. Getting a rare per day sounded nice but getting there was really terrible since the gold I was awarded in the meantime was 150 in total. ICRs being now behind a pay wall is something I don't mind. It's ok if the other prizes received won't be random (for example Limited awards 1-3 packs which sounds pretty terrible)

The Vault
The Vault contents changed. The random mythic is gone and we get a Mythic Wildcard once again. Next there are 2 Rare Wild cards and 3 Uncommon Wildcards. The Vault fills up more quickly now (if you play 60-90 minutes per day, the vault should open for you about once per month)!

• Opening an 8-card booster: 3.33333333...%
• Fifth (or more) copy of a mythic rare added to collection: 1.11111...%
• Fifth (or more) copy of a rare added to collection: 0.5555555555.....%
• Fifth (or more) copy of an uncommon added to collection: 0.3333333.....%
• Fifth (or more) copy of a common added to collection: 0.11111111....%

Gems

Since this update we also get the option to buy gems with real money. I do not plan spending money on this game so there is not much I can comment on. I will just leave this here. It's slightly better from what I expected (I expected 5.5-6k per draft, 1.5 per pack), as it seems F2P aren't really content with these numbers?

Actually I have a comment to make. It's not really easy to buy stuff from Wizards of the Coast store on Magic Online for people outside of the United States and I really hope that Arena store won't work in a similar way. We need other ways how to pay for the Gems, including PayPal or something of that kind. On MODO we also pay VAT or something which is quite high, will we have to pay it here too? (I didn't check, so I don't know).

• 750 Gems: $4.99
• 1,600 Gems: $9.99
• 3,400 Gems: $19.99
• 9,200 Gems: $49.99
• 20,000 Gems: $99.99
• 600 Gems: 3 Packs
• 1,200 Gems: 6 Packs, which includes at least 1 Uncommon and 1 Common Wildcard
• 3,000 Gems: 15 Packs, which includes at least 1 Rare, 3 Uncommon, and 3 Common Wildcards
• 9,000 Gems: 45 Packs, which includes at least 1 Mythic, 3 Rare, 9 Uncommon, and 9 Common Wildcards. (The Dominaria 45-pack bundle will also include 1 copy of Firesong and Sunspear)
• 18,000 Gems: 90 Packs, which includes at least 3 Mythic, 6 Rare, 18 Uncommon, and 18 Common Wildcards. (The Dominaria 90-pack bundle will also include 2 copies of Firesong and Sunspear.)

Quick Constructed

Quick Constructed is a best-of-1 (constructed if that wasn't clear) event that should be available in MTGA at all times. The entry is 500g or 95 Gems and it ends after 7 wins or 3 losses are accumulated. The sets we will be able to draft will be rotating. It started with HOU/HOU/AKH and was followed by DOM. Next, we will have the possibility to draft RIX/RIX/XLN and then HOU/HOU/AKH again. Event prizes are:

• 0 Wins: 100 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
• 1 Win: 200 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
• 2 Wins: 300 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
• 3 Wins: 400 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
• 4 Wins: 500 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
• 5 Wins: 600 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
• 6 Wins: 800 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards
• 7 Wins: 1,000 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards

You might wonder why Quick Constructed was introduced. If you are already in the beta you probably know that all we could do was get daily rewards and then get some ICRs (individual card rewards). For many daily grind ended with 5 wins or something similar because that is were the front-loaded rewards ended (1st win of the day reward, some additional gold, 1 mythic or rare card). For many playing to get all the individual cards was simply not worth it. This changed later. The ICRs were gone, we got more gold and we could get some additional packs after 5th, 10th and 15th win of the week. Quick Constructed now allows us to actually grind. If we want to commit to grinding we can do so. 500g is something we can get daily and if we can get to at least 4 wins we gain some value - in this case one guaranteed rare or mythic card and 2 uncommons. No matter how badly this actually sounds the fact that we can pour 'money' into something to generate value is something we didn't have access to before and for that only reason people should be glad we have this event around at all times.

I'd like to digress a bit. I'll talk about Magic Online. When Magic Online's economy was pretty bad and people started running away, Wizards of the Coast tried to fix it somehow. There were few things that changed, one was the introduction of Play Points which made grinding a bit more limiting (I will get back to this later). The second thing that changed was tournament structure. These two things (PP and events) are linked. First, after waiting for years, we got Leagues. At first glanced they pretty much tried to copy the events before (I won't go into detail, but hopefully I'll say enough so you can see my point). We got something with the name "Competitive" in it and Leagues with "Friendly" in their names. These can be sometimes misleading but it was very clear that I'm more on the "Competitive" side of things. I used to play 8-4 single elimination drafts when I wanted to grind and played premier events in order to enjoy constructed (or Daily events). The more flat prize structure wasn't what I was looking for. It wasn't just the prize structure that didn't give me the motivation to play. See, soon after the release of a set the 8-4 and 6-2-2-2 queues were relatively similar. The 8-4 players drafted a deck in order to win so they were passing cards that one could sell for tix. 6-2-2-2 players were usually money drafting, they didn't mind about losing a first pick. With time both drafting and playing experience changed. While the 8-4 one changed to more refined experience the 6-2-2-2 events started to get chaotic. Not only the drafting went strange sometimes, one also played against decks that were very strange for a format that got solved relatively fast. I didn't play the Pack per win/4-3-2-2 unless I didn't care about losing my tix completely and didn't care about the experience I'd get out of it. After the introduction of Leagues on Magic Online the Competitive (8-4 equivalent) and Intermediate (6-2-2-2 equivalent) League players somehow ended up playing both in the Intermediate League. At first I wondered if this will become a problem. Wizards of the Coast changed the prize structure later and it segregated the players to how it used to be before. There was one more thing that surprised me and that is Friendly Sealed League and Friendly single game Draft League. When I read the announcement for each of these my brain just couldn't understand those Leagues. If I want to play a Sealed deck I want to play my 5 rounds with the 6 packs I get not some add a pack strange sealed deck. The prize structure also didn't make a sense to me at all (mostly because it awards PP and 3 packs max if you go 9-0). The draft sounded like a total nonsense. You draft like normal and then play up to 7 wins or 4 losses (best-of-1). You get up to 120PP for all that (120PP is how much it costs to enter). A bit later I heard many people actually talking about the Friendly Sealed League. Many players were also saying that it has the best EV and that it is their preferred way to play limited. Reluctantly I tried it. After my first experience I said, never again. I checked the EV though again and realized that for someone who's win percentage is not that high this indeed becomes the best EV event. Question is, is it worth the experience? For many it is. They get to play more, they can even get a better pool by buying another pack etc. Yesterday, when I opened MODO I stared at 7000 players in the Sealed deck Friendly League. That's a lot for Magic Online.

Back to Arena. We have one type of an event and while many players complain about it because of a thing A or B, one thing is certain - it draws the competitive crowd there. Since it is the only way to grind we'll find grinders there, players that want to play as much as possible and win as much as possible. I don't know how many players are in the beta but many of those in are either Magic players or F2P game grinders that are looking for something new to spend their time and effort on. This means that those that just want to play casual games get crushed. If you can't break even in Quick Constructed you shouldn't enter. You won't be able to grind that fast but you will still be able to get gold and packs. The difference between these two types of players will get huge and yes this is a problem that should get addressed. One thing that I noticed on MODO though is that segregating the players with different kind of events made everyone happy. I get to play what I want and can avoid Friendly Leagues while others will prefer those and won't ever enter a Competitive League.

I believe that Wizards of the Coast is trying to figure out what the best events will be for us and this is a start. Quick Constructed is the first event we got and the first draft of a prize structure. Many of us feel that best-of-one matches are something we don't want to be. There will be players that will want to play those and will be their preferred way how to play Magic. So all should bear with it, give it a try and see what it offers. Then we can jump into another event we will get and see how that works for us.

The problem with Quick Constructed is that well a good deck is expected of us and that takes some time grinding with the 'basic' economy. Since the matchmaking is not the greatest this may be a very frustrating experience for a new player.

Quick Draft
While I was in France without access to the internet Quick Draft was introduced. It is, once again, a best-of-1 event (hence the Quick in the name which is a bit confusing to some...) and ends with either 7 wins or 3 losses whichever comes first. The entry fee is 5000 gold or 750 gems. Prizes as follows:

• 0 Wins: 50 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
• 1 Win: 100 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
• 2 Wins: 200 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
• 3 Wins: 300 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
• 4 Wins: 450 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
• 5 Wins: 650 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
• 6 Wins: 850 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
• 7 Wins: 950 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted

So far you enter the event and draft with 7 bots that are scripted in a way to draft to win, thus they will be passing 'money cards'. For those not knowing what draft is - you open a pack, pick a card and pass the rest of the pack. You will receive another pack with one less card. You pick from there and pass the rest to another player. You do this until all 14 cards are drafted. Yes, fourteen. That is the actual number of cards in Magic: The Gathering packs in paper and on Magic Online with which we also draft. After you finish you get to build your 40-card deck and play your matches.

You probably noticed that Draft awards gems instead of Gold. The premium currency given out at this event can be bad for some and good for others. It depends on what you can do with it. A player not putting money into the game will have a way how to get premium currency but will also find it harder to spend it. If one would want to chain drafts we need to get to 6 wins (or have really a lot of gold). If we miss the break point for us (depending on amount of gold we have) all we can do is play Quick Constructed with it. This actually converts Gems into Gold once again and it is something we as players should realize. This is one of the reasons why I mentioned Play Points above. On Magic Online we enter events with event tickets that have an actually monetary value and are used as the currency on Magic Online to buy cards, enter events etc. PP are used to enter events and that this all we can do with them. A grinder on Magic Online wants to eventually turn these PP into something they can sell and while still keeping PP to continue playing. We get certain amount of PP as prizes and Treasure Chests (in Constructed) and Booster Packs (in Limited). The number of PP can get quite high for some players and one of the ways to turn them into something we can sell is to enter Limited events. When I saw that Draft awards Gems I thought of this. There is nothing wrong with that as long as we have the means to use or convert either currency. Note that gems can also be used to buy packs. The question is, will you want to do it?

Motivation
Each of us is different and our expectations are different. What motivates one player does not necessarily need to motivate another player. Those that know me, know that I'm not really motivated to play Arena. It doesn't suit me because it doesn't offer the kind of experience I want from playing Magic. I was looking forward to playing Limited though and the experience wasn't what I expected. The bots obviously have certain archetypes in mind and those that are hardly draftable they ignore. This also means that we get to see certain cards way more often than we would in a paper draft or Magic Online. There are cards that are not that great in multiples and we often draft some of them just to have a good curve or simply because there isn't anything better in the pack, we hate draft (still happening on Magic Online where we play have cross-pod play now). This also means that sometimes we can build a deck that will work because we know that no one will cut us from it. While some can argue that this is similar to reading signals IRL, it doesn't feel like it. We also know that no one is going to cut us and the cards we would not normally get, we can happily get for a last pick. While I don't think this is bad, it creates a different kind of experience. I expected that drafts on Arena would be a mess but I wasn't really sure what would be worse - drafting with 7 bots or 7 other people of a varying levels. I remember stopping going to certain LGSs to draft elsewhere where the level was higher. I couldn't stand playing with half the pod of players not knowing what they were doing and the other half knowing how to draft. I'm not a good limited player, I'm ok-ish, good enough to know when there is something strange happening and I'm not interested in that 'strange'. I played few drafts of Dominaria and then I got stuck with 600 gems. Since I do not play Quick Constructed I wondered what to do with that and that is where another problem might be for some. In Magic we often have Limited players and Constructed players. I'm a Constructed player but the economy is not kind enough for me to be able to put together a Constructed deck by playing Constructed. I give preference to Limited, but after my first few experiences I'm not sure if I won't just continue playing on MODO were I know what to expect. Since I don't want to play both Constructed and Limited in Arena it limits me and forces me to either pay money to participate in draft events or slowly grind some gold by completing quests (I'm in the losers bracket...) and getting gold for the first 5 or how many wins. I suppose this was the intention.

In general, the changes are good. There are certainly things I'm not a fan of and it still doesn't motivate me to play but it is way better start and we can see a fuller picture of how Arena can work. We should see how things are linked to each other and what are the ways to play Arena and if we can find our place there somewhere. I believe many features and events await us. What I still fear is rotation and I can't imagine Arena to work with the economy how it is set now. Time will tell.

As for visuals and audio, it got way better. What didn't get better is the fluidity of the game and there are still many bugs awaiting to be fixed. The game still has quite a lot of room for 'messing up' which is not idea for competitive play.

My two cents...take it easy
S'Tsung (stsung on MODO, stsungjp on Twitter)