For a bit of history, Magic the Gathering has always had a string of terrible PC games with poor customization, poor optimization, no match making, very limited format and deck options, terrible monetization, and negative support post-launch, and it's usually a combination of all these issues.
I bring all this up because Arena circumvents nearly all of these problems, and is arguably the best digital CCG that WotC has put out. Of course outside of a few weeks at launch I put off actually putting time into the game, as its release meant the death of their previous live service title, Duels. Unlike Duels though, it seems like Arena is here for the long term. (Hopefully) And unlike at launch, it's a much more packed game.
For comparison, the game launched with just standard. Anyone that knows anything about standard will tell you it's a hellscape. Luckily there are a ton of fairly active game modes available. You have brawl which is basically mini commander, you have alchemy which uses digital only cards as opposed to just the physical equivalents, you have historic which is the game's legacy lite, and a bunch of events, drafts and rotating experimental game modes. There's certainly a lot to do here, and similar to other CCG's like Hearthstone, the cards and board are well crafted and animated. There's a lot more polish here compared to what we were dealt with in the past 2 decades.
Of course it's not all rainbows and sunshine. Despite having the most polish of any MtG title, the PC version is optimized poorly. Even on mid and low settings the game will lag and stutter, something I've never seen with any other card game on my computer. And it's not just isolated issues there, as even on my phone I'll get occasional crashes. Despite me gassing it up, it's not doing anything real technical. You don't have Elspeth or Liliana standing on cardboard with 3D renders. I can only theorize it being a server issue, but it really adds to a mixed experience during long sessions.
And that brings to whats my opinion the main issue; the monetization. And it's real messy. A pack is 1000 gold. You get about 300 gold a day, and about 2k gold a week. That's about 4 packs a week if you're choosing to be f2p, which really isn't good. To compare, Hearthstone you can get a pack a day at worst. That's really not good, and to boot the cash shop has the usual flood of cosmetics, overpriced pack bundles, random (pretty) uncommons sold at some few thousand gold each, it's a mess. The 1 upside is you can obtain wild cards as you open packs, which you can trade in for cards you want, ie a rare wild card let's you get any rare card you want. I would say it's more generous than your average dust system, until you realize you probably need or want 4 of the same rare or mythic in your list to stay competitively, which can really jack costs up.
Now that's not to necessarily say the game is p2w (well in some formats it will be p2w) but say we have climbing the standard ladder as the benchmark, you can make a relatively cheap mono red or mono black deck and climb to mythic (the game's top rank) without too much trouble. Paying is if you want variety in deck building and other game modes, which I imagine is most of the fun for most deck builders.
I mentioned how much gold you could make a day, and yeah that's another issue which creates a real monotonous gameplay loop. Each win nets you 25 gold, sometimes a random uncommon card. You get 15 wins a day for earning gold. Meaning you'll be playing about 15-40 games depending daily. Most of those games will either be with a very linear deck like mono red or mono black, or with a constructed starter deck. You get your dailies done, and that's about it. There's nothing here to keep playing and work towards. You can grind out ladder rank for end of month rewards, and you can gamble and try to go infinite through drafts, but it's not consistent. So for months, this will be MTG Arena, until MAYBE you get a somewhat sizeable card pool.
As such, this makes Arena an incredibly difficult game to recommend for the long term. If you never played Magic then I couldn't recommend this game more solely to introduce you to the franchise, but as far as spending goes? Your money is better spent either on MTG Online or the physical game itself. And if you want to goof around with friends, you have much cheaper alternatives like Tabletop Simulator or Untap.
I bring all this up because Arena circumvents nearly all of these problems, and is arguably the best digital CCG that WotC has put out. Of course outside of a few weeks at launch I put off actually putting time into the game, as its release meant the death of their previous live service title, Duels. Unlike Duels though, it seems like Arena is here for the long term. (Hopefully) And unlike at launch, it's a much more packed game.
For comparison, the game launched with just standard. Anyone that knows anything about standard will tell you it's a hellscape. Luckily there are a ton of fairly active game modes available. You have brawl which is basically mini commander, you have alchemy which uses digital only cards as opposed to just the physical equivalents, you have historic which is the game's legacy lite, and a bunch of events, drafts and rotating experimental game modes. There's certainly a lot to do here, and similar to other CCG's like Hearthstone, the cards and board are well crafted and animated. There's a lot more polish here compared to what we were dealt with in the past 2 decades.
Of course it's not all rainbows and sunshine. Despite having the most polish of any MtG title, the PC version is optimized poorly. Even on mid and low settings the game will lag and stutter, something I've never seen with any other card game on my computer. And it's not just isolated issues there, as even on my phone I'll get occasional crashes. Despite me gassing it up, it's not doing anything real technical. You don't have Elspeth or Liliana standing on cardboard with 3D renders. I can only theorize it being a server issue, but it really adds to a mixed experience during long sessions.
And that brings to whats my opinion the main issue; the monetization. And it's real messy. A pack is 1000 gold. You get about 300 gold a day, and about 2k gold a week. That's about 4 packs a week if you're choosing to be f2p, which really isn't good. To compare, Hearthstone you can get a pack a day at worst. That's really not good, and to boot the cash shop has the usual flood of cosmetics, overpriced pack bundles, random (pretty) uncommons sold at some few thousand gold each, it's a mess. The 1 upside is you can obtain wild cards as you open packs, which you can trade in for cards you want, ie a rare wild card let's you get any rare card you want. I would say it's more generous than your average dust system, until you realize you probably need or want 4 of the same rare or mythic in your list to stay competitively, which can really jack costs up.
Now that's not to necessarily say the game is p2w (well in some formats it will be p2w) but say we have climbing the standard ladder as the benchmark, you can make a relatively cheap mono red or mono black deck and climb to mythic (the game's top rank) without too much trouble. Paying is if you want variety in deck building and other game modes, which I imagine is most of the fun for most deck builders.
I mentioned how much gold you could make a day, and yeah that's another issue which creates a real monotonous gameplay loop. Each win nets you 25 gold, sometimes a random uncommon card. You get 15 wins a day for earning gold. Meaning you'll be playing about 15-40 games depending daily. Most of those games will either be with a very linear deck like mono red or mono black, or with a constructed starter deck. You get your dailies done, and that's about it. There's nothing here to keep playing and work towards. You can grind out ladder rank for end of month rewards, and you can gamble and try to go infinite through drafts, but it's not consistent. So for months, this will be MTG Arena, until MAYBE you get a somewhat sizeable card pool.
As such, this makes Arena an incredibly difficult game to recommend for the long term. If you never played Magic then I couldn't recommend this game more solely to introduce you to the franchise, but as far as spending goes? Your money is better spent either on MTG Online or the physical game itself. And if you want to goof around with friends, you have much cheaper alternatives like Tabletop Simulator or Untap.
Gujin
5 months ago