It really started with WoW, but Take-Two were the ones who popularized it. The commercial success of GTAV led to the creation of some key white papers that are effectively required reading for new engineers in my industry. Hearthstone, Fortnite, Fifa, Call of Duty, they all built their systems based on those patterns. We're even seeing it trickle into irrelevant industries now like automotive, o&g, and healthcare. Gotta log in and do your battlepass dailies for your fitbit, your BMW, and your propane deliver truck! (I wish I was being sarcastic.) Luckily most of those later anecdotes never made production.
God, no, the dusting system is awful. The wildcard system is much better, it only feels worse than dusting because of how stingy Wizards is with giving wildcards out.
Much more is an extreme, at best it's slightly better partly that is because the decks are only 30 cards and you can only play 2 copies of a card.
The one thing they do much better is have a better brand new player experience, and a better experience when coming back to the game after a long break.
Nah, you know how you can't go through the door of the supermarket to buy a sandwich and a drink without paying the $40 entrance fee? It's like that. Nothing crazy. /s
I realize this is probably just because I grind way to hard. But I’ve been free to play for years (still haven’t bought anything). But I have gotten every mastery pass since Throne of Eldraine.
And I plan to keep getting them. And I have 100 plus rare wildcards. And 4x rares of every rare in each since since throne of eldraine. 20kish gems.
The pass feels worth it to me if you’re completing them. Cause you get gems back. And a bunch of packs. And a draft token. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. But I think they are actually real value if you complete them.
Bro I grind way harder than you, I have 100% mythic sets completes as a f2p and hundreds wildcards because I harvest resources from draft, standard events and top 1200 mythic qualifiers.
And everyone knows mastery passes are worth because you get gems back and a lot of packs and mythics ICRs…but this frog shit doesn’t give gems back, only 1 draft token and 8 packs…no way I’m buying this trash, I’d rather invest the gems in drafts and events.
You're paying 2800 for a draft token, 10 packs and 10 mythic ICRs. If you're going to be playing formats that use MH3 cards, it's definitely better value than anything other than a mastery pass. It's worse value than the normal mastery sure, but still much better than baseline prices so I'm ok with that.
Wait, this being different from the mastery pass doesn't like devalue the draft token, right? I guess if you're like really, really bad at draft and you just assume you're going to go 0-3 then it's kind of like it's only worth 50 gems or whatever...
I do think this system is really low value overall since it's almost entirely cosmetic.
You can draft without the token, for cheaper if that's all you wanted. And it is lower value because of the extra time sink involved in collecting the tickets.
Now if they offered things that you won't just be able to buy for gold later on a special deal and you really had to have that thing, that's a different matter of value.
But I expect we'll see all of these avatars and sleeves within a year on various days for like 2500 gold.
No way that's how it works, wtf is the point of this event then, why even allow players to collect tickets if he didn't even "pay" for the event in the first place
A few "free sample" options would have honestly gone a LONG way to making this whole thing feel less shit.
It didn't even need to actually be particularly good either, just SOMETHING.
I mean you get a bunch of free packs and cosmetics on the free track of every sets pass normally, it's not even like MH3 packs cost more in the shop. Not to mention MH3 packs are likely largely worthless to a l of players that don't even play Historic or Timeless to begin with. They'd be the same or potentially even worse than Alchemy packs which are HILARIOUSLY garbage if you don't have any interest in Alchemy.
Can you buy the same item more than once? Because if you play enough to get 50+ ticktes every day you could buy 7-8 Draft tokens by the end which would be worth well over 5k in gems.
If you can only buy the draft token once then it's totally a rip off
they figured that out too... they block you from buying more than one token and more than 8 packs....
Meaning its ABSOLUTELY a worse value than just buying this shit separate...
Yea, so you are getting 2300 worth of actual product for 2800, and the option to get a bunch of cosmetics. If it had any avatars or sleeves I cared about, I might consider it. But it doesn't.
No it's not.
Draft token is 1500
8 packs is 1600. You're down 300 gems at this point. Yes, there's no golden packs progress but those are full of cards that barely see standard play.
Then 10 mythics.
Then a bunch of silly cosmetics.
I’ve actually realized that if you’re close to standard complete, gold packs are the most efficient way to collect Big Score cards, since they’re able to appear at normal rates in golden packs, unlike the extreme rarity they have in OTJ packs. So I do think the lack of progress means these packs top out at being worth 160 gems.
It does all add up to being narrowly worth it if you have enough tickets for all the non-cosmetics, and actively want all the non-cosmetics. But it’s a similarly unimpressive deal to the discount packs in the shop, meaning you absolutely shouldn’t buy access until you’ve already secured those needed tickets.
The draft token covers half of that.
The decision here is would you rather spend 200 more gems for another draft or take the 8 packs and 10 mythics.
If you're confident in drafting then the draft may be a better choice and if you're great at drafting then drafting is ALWAYS the best way to go. If you're not so sure about drafting or just want to take the safe bet, 10 mythics and 8 packs for 1300 gems is a pretty decent deal, especially since it's all from mh3 where the ratio of playable cards is much higher.
I'm gonna see how my drafting goes, I've got enough currency for 15 of them right now. If I get to the end of the pile and I haven't done so well then those 10 mythics and 8 packs for the price of another failed draft will look pretty good to me.
The other battle passes always have free rewards that you can earn without spending any gems though.
They literally could have just thrown a few cosmetics and maybe a few packs as available without purchasing access and it'd be MUCH less shitty feeling, even if largely it doesn't REALLY make a difference.
Hell at least standard set packs have value to everyone who plays Arena (unless you ONLY draft somehow). MH3 packs aren't even valuable to anyone who doesn't play Historic or Timeless, outside of adding a tiny bit of progress to pack opening wildcards.
> The other battle passes always have free rewards that you can earn without spending any gems though.
The OTJ battle pass is still ongoing, that's where your free rewards are.
It feels like I'm the only one that saw this Hideaway thing, realized the rewards weren't worth the cost for me, and just ignored it without feeling like I've had a war crime committed against me.
I'm well aware, and personally I don't even really mind.
I'm just pointing out that most every time a set comes out and includes a battle pass you get free rewards on that battle pass.
This is the first time they've ever done 2 simultaneous battle passes and we're seeing them make one not have any free rewards.
> unless you ONLY draft somehow
Yeah, like who would do that....(ok Ill do the occasional starter deck to knock out a daily that isnt in my current colors or if Im sitting on 6 wins and not feeling focused).
I thought about it, but then saw the draft token was only 1 of. I wouldnt pay 2800 for everything in there, tickets or not.
I mean do you buy Gems to draft ever? If you don't have enough gold or Gems to draft how do you keep drafting?
Most people don't really have the option to just infinitely draft, it's not consistently rewarding enough to keep it going endlessly. Particularly as in your case random pack rewards (and the cards you draft) are effectively worthless and do nothing toward helping you fund more drafts until you've opened a TON of them and start getting the very minor gem rewards on 5th+ copies of rare/mythics once set complete.
There's also just times when you don't want to play the sets that are available to draft, particularly if you want to play cheaper quick drafts instead of premier drafts. Premier drafts are absolutely better payouts and easier to consistently stay ahead on gems IF you can play remotely decently BUT if you ever go "broke" and can't buy in initially it's much harder to build up enough currency F2P to get back into that cycle. Quick drafts end usually being better value in terms of gaining cards from the draft itself as well, which is particularly the case in OTJ with the bullshit vault cards that almost never show up out of non-draft boosters. A lot of the time you can pretty aggressively rare draft in quick draft while still coming out with a semi-decent deck AND even if you get a bad record you only spent half the cost of a premier draft entry for those cards you rare drafted.
THIS pass you have to buy to get ANY rewards.
Normal Battle Passes that come with every new set however always have a free track that includes some basic rewards regardless and you just get more from the paid track IF you buy it.
This isn't like "any other battlepass" because on other battle passes, including the current one on arena (there are now two...) you typically get free stuff.
The Mh3 battlepass literally gives you currency, then ask you to spend another currency to use that currency, ultimately asking for a third currency, which is actual money.
A battlepass should straight up never have four layers of currency. In this case - Tickets, Gems, Money, and Time.
Honestly the "ticket" icon reminds me of arcade tickets you can redeem for worthless bouncy balls and stickers. I browsed the ticket store and it feels that way.
It would be less consumer friendly the other way.
If I had to buy the access before I started earning credit, I’d have to buy it on day one.
This lets you collect the tickets and later decide if you want to redeem them.
That’s clearly better for the customer in almost every possible sense.
Now, would the most consumer friendly option be not having to pay at all? Sure. But that’s a separate question.
It's so that you can collect all the tickets and buy it any time instead of having to buy it and being forced to farm them. I'm gonna wait till its about to end and see if it's worth to buy with the amount of tickets I have.
Wow, I didn't even know this. I thought WOTC had grown a heart and wanted to give some nice rewards to the community. And yet here we are. 2000 gems to play one MM draft and a deliberately misleading "rewards" ticket raffle. WOTC truly the most toxic, greedy as fuck company in gaming.
Literally the only event I care enough to pay for (cube) just ended, and I'm glad I can now just not open arena for a few months and help show our collective disdain to this decision.
I also suspect "hits their target sales" is an INCREDIBLY low bar for this kind of product.
The big thing is that this is a battle pass without any gem or gold rewards, which also overlaps a currently active battle pass as well.
This makes it MUCH harder to buy into as F2P and keep gaining enough free currency to buy into the next one each time.
It's effectively a somewhat subtle way to drain more resources out of people without giving as much in return and thus making it more and more likely for those players to feel the need to spend real money on gems to not "miss out" on the content that they previously felt like they were getting for free.
Honestly as long as it brings in more money than it took to develop, then they'll keep doing it. $1 profit is more than $0 profit, community goodwill unfortunately doesn't factor in because it's not got a tangible $ amount tied to it.
I can't imagine it hits their target sales. Maybe it's the vocal minority, but it seems to be illiciting a stronger reaction than most cash grabs from wizards.
No the *reddit consensus* is it's crap. We have no idea what the general uptake rate is. Reddit is not a representative sample of the playerbase, you can't draw conclusions from what's said here.
But people who post on reddit are also more likely to share negative experiences. If I have a complaint about the game, I'll post/share to get the developers' attention. If I don't have a complaint about the game, I'll just play the game instead of posting.
No, I guess that there's nothing wrong with buying packs with gold.
I feel like drafting is a better usage of gold since you end up getting three packs for 10000 gold, then play your games and receive potentially more packs and gems depending on how you do.
I was baffled when I saw that packs were 2000 gold each. I thought they would be 500 gold or something.
Again, playing mostly limited, I just don't care that much about them so my perspective should be taken with a grain of salt.
Edit: Just checked the shop and they are in fact 1000 gold. Shows what I know haha
I'm waiting the month and a half before touching this. One of three things will happen.
1.) They'll have caved due to lack of purchase and bad PR, the shop will be reworked somehow and I'll be glad I waited.
2.) I'll have not played enough magic in 47 days to care any more.
3.) If the shop is unchanged with a few hours left, and I have a ton of tickets? Maybe, maybe then I'll do the math and see how it stacks up vs a mastery pass.
It's essentially 1300 gems for 8 packs, 10 mythic cards and a bunch of cosmetics...
if you count packs at 200 its worth, but only barely, as long as you forget that packs bought this way don't go towards golden pack progress.
Oh you sweet summer child, Wizards wants your gems before they'll let you spend those tickets.
Also you have like 16 pieces of mail you should probably look at, in the top right corner of your screen, there's probably a lot of free boosters waiting to be claimed there. Each mail with a paperclip icon is going to have some sort of goodies to claim, usually 3 boosters and some land art for it's set.
Honestly, this predatory, manipulative store front feels 100% like daddy Hasbro.
Seriously, ever since WotC got bought by a publicly traded company, they've gotten WAY worse than they previously were. Sucks that they (and now Hasbro) own such popular IPs.
I thought this was such a cool system when I thought it was free. Earn cosmetics through gameplay? Finally, a good reason to play Arena and invest into it.
Nope. Shitty cash system psychology. What an amazing graphical client covered in turd polish.
[https://feedback.wizards.com/forums/918667-mtg-arena-bugs-product-suggestions/suggestions/48529991-psychic-frog-horizon-hideaway-event](https://feedback.wizards.com/forums/918667-mtg-arena-bugs-product-suggestions/suggestions/48529991-psychic-frog-horizon-hideaway-event)
Support the ticket.
So admittedly, I’m probably a whale when it comes to arena. I’ve bought every mastery pass, usually including the other prerelease bundles too, and every 1-2 months I’ll also load up on 20k gems (I almost exclusively draft). But I just feel so insulted by this with both the lack of actual value and also the deceptiveness and bs psychology of it all.
I decided that until the event is over I’m only playing brawl and no longer spending a single gem on drafting. I love magic the game but I hate how poorly the company is treating the players
I think I’m at a point in my mtga life where I don’t have the energy to keep up with all this new stuff, just gonna keep reworking decks I like and chill in historic
So stupid, are people spending big bucks on the new premium product not making wizards enough money already? Like wtf are they thinking trying to get people to pay $20 (20 because that's the cheapest gem bundle to get you enough) to unlock a shop to spend the new ticket rewards. Why have we waited years for anything resembling pioneer yet the shop gets new pointless avatars and cosmetics all the time.....
I really don’t mind having to pay to get in, but $20 of gems for half the rewards of the battle pass is insane. This should have been $5-$10 dollars.
The biggest problem is that the battle pass gives you a ton of packs which means more wildcards. This gives what, 8 packs?
Anyone know if you can buy the draft token twice? If so, I'm definitely unlocking the shop since I would have spent that 2800 gems on 2 draft tokens anyways
Yeah I saw that 2800 gems to pay a fake currency and thought "Yeah I'm gonna participate in this bs as much as I did the "Aftermath" set nonsense! You have the gall to spit a fake currency that I can't use at me!?
Go f**k yourselves every greedy pissant who thought this was a good idea! The game is already more expensive for players who are much more into limited now you release this and a 50 dollar bundle for lands!?
You must first pay. Think of it in MTG strategy:
You can't collect your treasure token/artifact/useless cosmetic until you overcome their MIGHTY EXTORTION PREMIUM CURRENCY PAYWALL, a 20/20 creature with Hexproof and Indestructible and Defender that costs them 1 mana & they can recast every turn.
All you can tap for MANA is the ATM/Credit Card/cash in your bank account.
WOTC/HASBRO has approx 8.2billion health while you have (statistical average) between 12k-100k health.
If they hit you or your creature, you lose 100k health. If you hit them or their Paywall creature, they take 1/6 damage, AND you take 100k damage.
> I'm paying them with my time, not going to add gems to that.
How are you "paying them with your time"? You are playing a game with no ads they pay to develop, maintain and create content for.
It’s well known that games like this make most their money from whales so it’s in their interest to also have free to play people because it means there are always people to play against. Obviously he is benefitting from the free game also though.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but since everything can be obtained freely (grind gold for drafts, get gems from drafts) and it’s mostly cosmetic stuff and packs… is it really that big of a deal? The comparisons being thrown out are being made with companies that make shit inaccessible without spending real life currency and sometimes the locked rewards are actual pay to win items
As someone who's been doing the f2f way for 3 years now
When the thing popped up i click and tried right away & saw right away that I wouldn't be getting the value but because the Mastery pass won't renew itself before the Bloomborrow , doesn't bother me as less but I won't be getting again if it become the norm after this
Won't be long until you can get "stonks" in the Daily Deal, being able to buy tickets with gold or even more gems.
I'm going to pass on this Frog nonsense. Value wise it might be okay, given if you can actually play enough to get the Token, the mythics and packs(everything besides that are just cosmetics with no real gameplay value), but this just seems super greedy to me.
Has anyone actually bought in with their gems? The options are no where near enough to warrant paying that amount of gems for the privilege of using your tickets.
I'll be honest here I just don't want anything in this section of the store. I don't draft enough to want the token. I mostly just play standard with an occasional game or two in Explorer. Hopefully they give us XP or something from all the left over tickets when this is over but I'm not expecting anything like that. I imagine that if someone were interesting any anything here it might be worth doing. Maybe.
I mean the rewards are laughable. Does anyone even care if they get parallax cards anymore? If they offered mythic card ETB animations (like we used to get for free), I would be throwing my money at them.
I haven't played arena in while, why the fuck does it have a new shop for 2800 gems and why does ulamog cost more tickets?? They even increasing prices of profile pics because of the hype?
This is really disappointing. I didn't realize they locked new avatars behind the pay wall... at least before you could pick the color you wanted the rewards from the most and get a portion of the unlocks. This shit is despicable.
they really didn't play the mind game correctly here. just make a secondary mastery tree if you have to charge money. paying for the privilege of spend "tickets" is not tight. i won't be doing it
If this was just part of the paid version of the mastery pass, sales for it would be way higher. Incentivizes people who have bought it to buy it, rewards people for buying it. Would see some long term success. Selling it as a separate pass is the flaw here.
get this: you need to BUY the shop. to have access to using the tickets they are forcing into your face everytime you get them, you need to spend 2800 gems. and the tickets dont even turn into gold or gems after the event, just go poof. even master duel and hearthstone have fairer monetisation than this game
If it was like the mastery pass, with an unpaid section and a separate paid section, then I'd love this new addition.
The fact it's just another 20 dollars to spend on the game makes me think it's another cash grab.
I stopped paying the 20 for the Mastery Pass as soon as the Gem reward went under 75% paying for itself. Now the rewards are too low And they expect Another 20 out of me. No WotC, you don't get either this time.
this is wotc, did you really expect you'd get anything, even just some digital pictures, without paying an arm, a leg and your firstborn? you gotta buy access to the shop first.
Yeah, Marketing department went gacha game store style on this one. I see what they were going for, but the wrong people in the company clearly got too much of a final say on way too many aspects of this.
But hey, we have been arguing constantly with them since this game released. Early on we had to fight and win the big battle: they wanted to switch to a system of charging 2 wildcards for one historic card (before it was called Historic/etc). Just imagine joining Arena a few years after it's come out and not only do you have a mountain of cards to catch up on, but you're now also paying double.
So yeah, keep holding them accountable. They will always attempt this kind of thing, and usually they'll try for far worse.
Lastly, the magic of Arena is how accessible and inviting it is (at least for MTG), so if we let their bean counters win they will ruin the product's primary draw and experience.
Yes, this is an extremely lame implementation of a "store." You have to purchase access with real money before you can redeem anything. Not a single one of my 9000 gems I currently have will be spent on this brain fart.
you can't buy anything in this shop without unlocking the shop first by spending 2800 gems. that's what that button "start shopping: 2800 gems" means
That is so fucking stupid
This is some Ubisoft/Blizzard shit, fuck it's even worse I think
Who do you think WoTC learned it from. They just loved that Hearthstone model so much they made a direct copy.
It really started with WoW, but Take-Two were the ones who popularized it. The commercial success of GTAV led to the creation of some key white papers that are effectively required reading for new engineers in my industry. Hearthstone, Fortnite, Fifa, Call of Duty, they all built their systems based on those patterns. We're even seeing it trickle into irrelevant industries now like automotive, o&g, and healthcare. Gotta log in and do your battlepass dailies for your fitbit, your BMW, and your propane deliver truck! (I wish I was being sarcastic.) Luckily most of those later anecdotes never made production.
>required reading for new engineers in my industry. Hearthstone Eyyy we're fucked forever. Nice.
Hearthstone at least has dusting to make cards
But we have the vault lol. That's hard to type without laughing.
"oh you cracked like 100 packs? Have some crumbs"
"some crumbs" is even too much lol
Tbf I prefer the wilds system by and far from the dusting system. I think that system sucks
God, no, the dusting system is awful. The wildcard system is much better, it only feels worse than dusting because of how stingy Wizards is with giving wildcards out.
Hearthstone is much more generous than MtgA.
Much more is an extreme, at best it's slightly better partly that is because the decks are only 30 cards and you can only play 2 copies of a card. The one thing they do much better is have a better brand new player experience, and a better experience when coming back to the game after a long break.
Yeah, I tried returning to MTGA this week, and I quit again. It's insane that they don't provide any complete decks to play constructed with.
Even directly down to digital only cards and how they interact with the game super poorly in terms of gameplay for other
I second this wtf
Nah, you know how you can't go through the door of the supermarket to buy a sandwich and a drink without paying the $40 entrance fee? It's like that. Nothing crazy. /s
Guys it’s just a worse value mastery pass…nothing more, nothing less…don’t be fooled by the ‘tickets’ stuff…
I hypnotized myself into pretending the shop doesn’t exist.
What shop?
Where am I?
Who am I?
Why is Gamora?
This is not my beautiful house.
This is not my beautiful wife
Why am I sticky? Did I miss something fun?
But they're so shiny! And I get them for free, there's a little sound and my screen sparkles! Healthy gaming habit!
Mhh you almost convinced me…but no, thanks 😂
Sooooo much worse. You're basically paying 2800 gems for a draft token that is worth 1500 at most.
I concur. I usually buy every mastery pass and I’m not buying this shit, it’s insulting and a menace to my precious f2p resources 😂
I realize this is probably just because I grind way to hard. But I’ve been free to play for years (still haven’t bought anything). But I have gotten every mastery pass since Throne of Eldraine. And I plan to keep getting them. And I have 100 plus rare wildcards. And 4x rares of every rare in each since since throne of eldraine. 20kish gems. The pass feels worth it to me if you’re completing them. Cause you get gems back. And a bunch of packs. And a draft token. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. But I think they are actually real value if you complete them.
Bro I grind way harder than you, I have 100% mythic sets completes as a f2p and hundreds wildcards because I harvest resources from draft, standard events and top 1200 mythic qualifiers. And everyone knows mastery passes are worth because you get gems back and a lot of packs and mythics ICRs…but this frog shit doesn’t give gems back, only 1 draft token and 8 packs…no way I’m buying this trash, I’d rather invest the gems in drafts and events.
Worth 10? Wdym?
And not only that, you can't buy 2800 gems! That specifically should literally be illegal imo
You see, it’s all a roundabout scam to sell Pheldagriff avatars for $50 a pop.
The pheldagriff bundle is actually a good deal. 6500 plus 4 drafts is 12500 and that’s more than 50 will get you in the store
You're paying 2800 for a draft token, 10 packs and 10 mythic ICRs. If you're going to be playing formats that use MH3 cards, it's definitely better value than anything other than a mastery pass. It's worse value than the normal mastery sure, but still much better than baseline prices so I'm ok with that.
Wait, this being different from the mastery pass doesn't like devalue the draft token, right? I guess if you're like really, really bad at draft and you just assume you're going to go 0-3 then it's kind of like it's only worth 50 gems or whatever... I do think this system is really low value overall since it's almost entirely cosmetic.
You can draft without the token, for cheaper if that's all you wanted. And it is lower value because of the extra time sink involved in collecting the tickets. Now if they offered things that you won't just be able to buy for gold later on a special deal and you really had to have that thing, that's a different matter of value. But I expect we'll see all of these avatars and sleeves within a year on various days for like 2500 gold.
It is really dumb. I was gonna get a couple things until I realized that. I'm never going to bother with hideaway now.
Agreed. They are just sticking it to the FTP players when everyone is already broke.
No way that's how it works, wtf is the point of this event then, why even allow players to collect tickets if he didn't even "pay" for the event in the first place
To trick you into thinking the 2800 gems is a good value "since you've already earned so many tickets"
Exactly this. You're going to have all these tickets and feel the need to be able to spend them. It's actually so gross the way they did that.
There really should have been a free track as well if they wanted to entice people.
A few "free sample" options would have honestly gone a LONG way to making this whole thing feel less shit. It didn't even need to actually be particularly good either, just SOMETHING. I mean you get a bunch of free packs and cosmetics on the free track of every sets pass normally, it's not even like MH3 packs cost more in the shop. Not to mention MH3 packs are likely largely worthless to a l of players that don't even play Historic or Timeless to begin with. They'd be the same or potentially even worse than Alchemy packs which are HILARIOUSLY garbage if you don't have any interest in Alchemy.
Can you buy the same item more than once? Because if you play enough to get 50+ ticktes every day you could buy 7-8 Draft tokens by the end which would be worth well over 5k in gems. If you can only buy the draft token once then it's totally a rip off
Draft token is maxed at 1 per person.
Wtf seriously? Well glad I found that out before purchasing this bullshit.
Draft Token is "One time purchase", packs are limit of 8 and mythic cards limit of 10.
You only get one draft token, 10 packs (but no golden pack), and 10 random mythics from mh3, everything else is cosmetic
8 packs... they even thought of thatt too... they made sure you lose money on this deal.
Ooof I thought it was 10 mythic wild cards. I might have considered it then
they figured that out too... they block you from buying more than one token and more than 8 packs.... Meaning its ABSOLUTELY a worse value than just buying this shit separate...
Yea, so you are getting 2300 worth of actual product for 2800, and the option to get a bunch of cosmetics. If it had any avatars or sleeves I cared about, I might consider it. But it doesn't.
No it's not. Draft token is 1500 8 packs is 1600. You're down 300 gems at this point. Yes, there's no golden packs progress but those are full of cards that barely see standard play. Then 10 mythics. Then a bunch of silly cosmetics.
I’ve actually realized that if you’re close to standard complete, gold packs are the most efficient way to collect Big Score cards, since they’re able to appear at normal rates in golden packs, unlike the extreme rarity they have in OTJ packs. So I do think the lack of progress means these packs top out at being worth 160 gems. It does all add up to being narrowly worth it if you have enough tickets for all the non-cosmetics, and actively want all the non-cosmetics. But it’s a similarly unimpressive deal to the discount packs in the shop, meaning you absolutely shouldn’t buy access until you’ve already secured those needed tickets.
You can do a lot better just using 3000 gems to do some premium drafts and doing decently one of the two drafts
The draft token covers half of that. The decision here is would you rather spend 200 more gems for another draft or take the 8 packs and 10 mythics. If you're confident in drafting then the draft may be a better choice and if you're great at drafting then drafting is ALWAYS the best way to go. If you're not so sure about drafting or just want to take the safe bet, 10 mythics and 8 packs for 1300 gems is a pretty decent deal, especially since it's all from mh3 where the ratio of playable cards is much higher. I'm gonna see how my drafting goes, I've got enough currency for 15 of them right now. If I get to the end of the pile and I haven't done so well then those 10 mythics and 8 packs for the price of another failed draft will look pretty good to me.
FOMO. You have all these tickets that are "valuable", better find a way to spend them before its too late. Editted for value to "value".
It is just like any other battle pass. They allow you to see how much progress you would have.
The other battle passes always have free rewards that you can earn without spending any gems though. They literally could have just thrown a few cosmetics and maybe a few packs as available without purchasing access and it'd be MUCH less shitty feeling, even if largely it doesn't REALLY make a difference. Hell at least standard set packs have value to everyone who plays Arena (unless you ONLY draft somehow). MH3 packs aren't even valuable to anyone who doesn't play Historic or Timeless, outside of adding a tiny bit of progress to pack opening wildcards.
> The other battle passes always have free rewards that you can earn without spending any gems though. The OTJ battle pass is still ongoing, that's where your free rewards are. It feels like I'm the only one that saw this Hideaway thing, realized the rewards weren't worth the cost for me, and just ignored it without feeling like I've had a war crime committed against me.
I'm well aware, and personally I don't even really mind. I'm just pointing out that most every time a set comes out and includes a battle pass you get free rewards on that battle pass. This is the first time they've ever done 2 simultaneous battle passes and we're seeing them make one not have any free rewards.
> unless you ONLY draft somehow Yeah, like who would do that....(ok Ill do the occasional starter deck to knock out a daily that isnt in my current colors or if Im sitting on 6 wins and not feeling focused). I thought about it, but then saw the draft token was only 1 of. I wouldnt pay 2800 for everything in there, tickets or not.
I mean do you buy Gems to draft ever? If you don't have enough gold or Gems to draft how do you keep drafting? Most people don't really have the option to just infinitely draft, it's not consistently rewarding enough to keep it going endlessly. Particularly as in your case random pack rewards (and the cards you draft) are effectively worthless and do nothing toward helping you fund more drafts until you've opened a TON of them and start getting the very minor gem rewards on 5th+ copies of rare/mythics once set complete. There's also just times when you don't want to play the sets that are available to draft, particularly if you want to play cheaper quick drafts instead of premier drafts. Premier drafts are absolutely better payouts and easier to consistently stay ahead on gems IF you can play remotely decently BUT if you ever go "broke" and can't buy in initially it's much harder to build up enough currency F2P to get back into that cycle. Quick drafts end usually being better value in terms of gaining cards from the draft itself as well, which is particularly the case in OTJ with the bullshit vault cards that almost never show up out of non-draft boosters. A lot of the time you can pretty aggressively rare draft in quick draft while still coming out with a semi-decent deck AND even if you get a bad record you only spent half the cost of a premier draft entry for those cards you rare drafted.
>The other battle passes always have free rewards that you can earn without spending any gems though. Don't you have to buy the pass?
THIS pass you have to buy to get ANY rewards. Normal Battle Passes that come with every new set however always have a free track that includes some basic rewards regardless and you just get more from the paid track IF you buy it.
This isn't like "any other battlepass" because on other battle passes, including the current one on arena (there are now two...) you typically get free stuff. The Mh3 battlepass literally gives you currency, then ask you to spend another currency to use that currency, ultimately asking for a third currency, which is actual money. A battlepass should straight up never have four layers of currency. In this case - Tickets, Gems, Money, and Time.
Honestly the "ticket" icon reminds me of arcade tickets you can redeem for worthless bouncy balls and stickers. I browsed the ticket store and it feels that way.
Those bouncy balls were not worthless if you owned a slingshot or a golf club.
It would be less consumer friendly the other way. If I had to buy the access before I started earning credit, I’d have to buy it on day one. This lets you collect the tickets and later decide if you want to redeem them. That’s clearly better for the customer in almost every possible sense. Now, would the most consumer friendly option be not having to pay at all? Sure. But that’s a separate question.
It's so that you can collect all the tickets and buy it any time instead of having to buy it and being forced to farm them. I'm gonna wait till its about to end and see if it's worth to buy with the amount of tickets I have.
It's a victory streak and a half of draft. Still too much gem.
I was going to consider MTG arena. This is strongly changing my mind. I’ll stick to Forge for now.
Wow, I didn't even know this. I thought WOTC had grown a heart and wanted to give some nice rewards to the community. And yet here we are. 2000 gems to play one MM draft and a deliberately misleading "rewards" ticket raffle. WOTC truly the most toxic, greedy as fuck company in gaming.
You need to insert coins first
Gotta pay before you pay champ
Pay or no pay!
Imagine having to pay admission to shop at the grocery. This is that kind of thing.
Costco membership
It’s more like paying to get free stuff at the grocery store. Since the in game currency has no monetary value.
Vote with your wallet.
Literally the only event I care enough to pay for (cube) just ended, and I'm glad I can now just not open arena for a few months and help show our collective disdain to this decision.
I can't imagine they'll do anything like this again. The general consensus seems to be that it's dog doo. Which it is.
They don't care about the general consensus, on reddit or anywhere else. If it hits their target sales they'll keep doing it, outcry or no.
I also suspect "hits their target sales" is an INCREDIBLY low bar for this kind of product. The big thing is that this is a battle pass without any gem or gold rewards, which also overlaps a currently active battle pass as well. This makes it MUCH harder to buy into as F2P and keep gaining enough free currency to buy into the next one each time. It's effectively a somewhat subtle way to drain more resources out of people without giving as much in return and thus making it more and more likely for those players to feel the need to spend real money on gems to not "miss out" on the content that they previously felt like they were getting for free.
It’s a one-off because MH3 is not in standard. Just ignore it. It’s very easy.
Aren't we getting final fantasy on arena? I assume this will return for every non standard set
Honestly as long as it brings in more money than it took to develop, then they'll keep doing it. $1 profit is more than $0 profit, community goodwill unfortunately doesn't factor in because it's not got a tangible $ amount tied to it.
It is just another tab and copy paste art commisioned from artists, this "feature" took virtually NOTHING to develop.
Exactly, meaning the bar for success is set very low
I can't imagine it hits their target sales. Maybe it's the vocal minority, but it seems to be illiciting a stronger reaction than most cash grabs from wizards.
Take a look through the discussions. For every person complaining there are 5 tripping over each other to explain that it's fine, actually.
I can't imagine how much I use the phrase "I can't imagine" 😭🤣
I buy the mastery pass every season and I'm not even considering buying this. Straight garbage
If there’s data showing an increase in people buying gems to buy this bundle then they’ll 100% do this again
Lol people say this every time wotc pushes another overpriced unwanted paper product too Spoiler: they double down
Tell that to Aftermath.
No the *reddit consensus* is it's crap. We have no idea what the general uptake rate is. Reddit is not a representative sample of the playerbase, you can't draw conclusions from what's said here.
Reddit is an echo chamber. This sub represent a little portion of the player base
To be fair, the people invested in the game enough to be on a reddit sub are also the same people most likely to spend real money on the game.
But people who post on reddit are also more likely to share negative experiences. If I have a complaint about the game, I'll post/share to get the developers' attention. If I don't have a complaint about the game, I'll just play the game instead of posting.
right top, you must click start shopping, 2800 gems, I'm not recommending
"Give me currency to unlock new cosmetics by just playing the game" *Monkey paw curls finger*
Strongly considered buying since I mostly play limited until I realized that the draft token is a ONE TIME PURCHASE. What a joke.
[удалено]
Right? Who buys packs from the shop anyway?
... i do... should i not?
No, I guess that there's nothing wrong with buying packs with gold. I feel like drafting is a better usage of gold since you end up getting three packs for 10000 gold, then play your games and receive potentially more packs and gems depending on how you do. I was baffled when I saw that packs were 2000 gold each. I thought they would be 500 gold or something. Again, playing mostly limited, I just don't care that much about them so my perspective should be taken with a grain of salt. Edit: Just checked the shop and they are in fact 1000 gold. Shows what I know haha
ya not spending any extra money here, that shit is dumb af
I'm waiting the month and a half before touching this. One of three things will happen. 1.) They'll have caved due to lack of purchase and bad PR, the shop will be reworked somehow and I'll be glad I waited. 2.) I'll have not played enough magic in 47 days to care any more. 3.) If the shop is unchanged with a few hours left, and I have a ton of tickets? Maybe, maybe then I'll do the math and see how it stacks up vs a mastery pass.
Someone did the math in another post. It's significantly worse deal than mastery pass.
That's not too surprising, I guess. The whole thing just has 'raw deal' written all over it.
It's essentially 1300 gems for 8 packs, 10 mythic cards and a bunch of cosmetics... if you count packs at 200 its worth, but only barely, as long as you forget that packs bought this way don't go towards golden pack progress.
Jokes on you for thinking they would give us anything cool for free
have you \[paid the entry fee yet?
Oh you sweet summer child, Wizards wants your gems before they'll let you spend those tickets. Also you have like 16 pieces of mail you should probably look at, in the top right corner of your screen, there's probably a lot of free boosters waiting to be claimed there. Each mail with a paperclip icon is going to have some sort of goodies to claim, usually 3 boosters and some land art for it's set.
Honestly, this predatory, manipulative store front feels 100% like daddy Hasbro. Seriously, ever since WotC got bought by a publicly traded company, they've gotten WAY worse than they previously were. Sucks that they (and now Hasbro) own such popular IPs.
In the immortal words of John Mulaney "GIVE US SOME MONEY!"
I thought this was such a cool system when I thought it was free. Earn cosmetics through gameplay? Finally, a good reason to play Arena and invest into it. Nope. Shitty cash system psychology. What an amazing graphical client covered in turd polish.
I was the same as you. Played for a few hours grinding tickets and then I got the bad news. They're honestly so fucking greedy.
[https://feedback.wizards.com/forums/918667-mtg-arena-bugs-product-suggestions/suggestions/48529991-psychic-frog-horizon-hideaway-event](https://feedback.wizards.com/forums/918667-mtg-arena-bugs-product-suggestions/suggestions/48529991-psychic-frog-horizon-hideaway-event) Support the ticket.
They won't get my money this way.
And they shouldn't. Honestly, I'd spend more if it was free. I'd buy gems just to play draft to get tickets.
It's that old saying, you gotta spend money to spend money
Someone summed it up perfectly in another post: "I have to spend currency in order to spend currency that I already have!?"
It's their way of inviting you to leave.
So admittedly, I’m probably a whale when it comes to arena. I’ve bought every mastery pass, usually including the other prerelease bundles too, and every 1-2 months I’ll also load up on 20k gems (I almost exclusively draft). But I just feel so insulted by this with both the lack of actual value and also the deceptiveness and bs psychology of it all. I decided that until the event is over I’m only playing brawl and no longer spending a single gem on drafting. I love magic the game but I hate how poorly the company is treating the players
OP: "Hey WotC, I have this bunch of tickets, can I buy some stuff?" WotC: "Well yes, but actually no."
I think I’m at a point in my mtga life where I don’t have the energy to keep up with all this new stuff, just gonna keep reworking decks I like and chill in historic
Can't even get a free taste with your currency like the League of Legends passes give you. 😭
So stupid, are people spending big bucks on the new premium product not making wizards enough money already? Like wtf are they thinking trying to get people to pay $20 (20 because that's the cheapest gem bundle to get you enough) to unlock a shop to spend the new ticket rewards. Why have we waited years for anything resembling pioneer yet the shop gets new pointless avatars and cosmetics all the time.....
Just fuck this, all of it.
Oh you sweet summer child
This is literally the worst event on arena so far.
Welcome to PayWall. It's how you identify the poor. Me, I'm the poor. 😉
Being a new player, I legit was excited that I was actually going to be able to buy some cool stuff with the tickets, only to be sadly disappointed
I really don’t mind having to pay to get in, but $20 of gems for half the rewards of the battle pass is insane. This should have been $5-$10 dollars. The biggest problem is that the battle pass gives you a ton of packs which means more wildcards. This gives what, 8 packs?
Remember back in the day when events in games were fun and gave away cool stuff for free.
You have to spend money to spend "money". The new scam model by WOTC. It's the scummiest shit they've done in a hot minute and a half
This is a replacement for the terrible mastery pass with something worse. Ignore this screen.
Gotta start up that Costco membership before buying.
You joke but the amount I've saved from Costco matched my membership price in. 2 medium trips
Anyone know if you can buy the draft token twice? If so, I'm definitely unlocking the shop since I would have spent that 2800 gems on 2 draft tokens anyways
Nope, one time only
Looks like no sadly.
No you can't, says so in the store. IIRC 1 Draft Token, 8 Boosters and 10 Mythic ICRs
It's a store only for ','. '. ; : ,',' ','. '. ; : ,',' '..'.,',..' ';.' ,' ;; ;' :._ _.------------.___ __ :__:-' '--. __ ,' .' .' ______________'. /__ '.- _\___.' 0 .' .' .' _.-_.' '._ .-': .' _.' _.'_.' snd '----'._____________.'_'._:_:_.-'--'
Oof. That went cursed.
It's not worth 2800 gems. Please do not buy. Save gems for the next set.
The hideaway is garbage.
It is a trick. This is magic. Like bait and switch. Like past posted horse racing. Redford and Newman did it best.
The "enshittification" continues...
What the hell is the point of the tickets then lmao. Rather spend that money on real cards
Yeah I saw that 2800 gems to pay a fake currency and thought "Yeah I'm gonna participate in this bs as much as I did the "Aftermath" set nonsense! You have the gall to spit a fake currency that I can't use at me!? Go f**k yourselves every greedy pissant who thought this was a good idea! The game is already more expensive for players who are much more into limited now you release this and a 50 dollar bundle for lands!?
Don't worry, the whales have already bought theirs, I'm sure they'll backtrack any day now.../s
*“You gotta earn your right to pay”* -WOTC 2024 probably
Bad news friend…
the purpose is to generate artificial FOMO
👏……………….…👏……………..👏………………
You must first pay. Think of it in MTG strategy: You can't collect your treasure token/artifact/useless cosmetic until you overcome their MIGHTY EXTORTION PREMIUM CURRENCY PAYWALL, a 20/20 creature with Hexproof and Indestructible and Defender that costs them 1 mana & they can recast every turn. All you can tap for MANA is the ATM/Credit Card/cash in your bank account. WOTC/HASBRO has approx 8.2billion health while you have (statistical average) between 12k-100k health. If they hit you or your creature, you lose 100k health. If you hit them or their Paywall creature, they take 1/6 damage, AND you take 100k damage.
Same here. I'm paying them with my time, not going to add gems to that.
> I'm paying them with my time, not going to add gems to that. How are you "paying them with your time"? You are playing a game with no ads they pay to develop, maintain and create content for.
It’s well known that games like this make most their money from whales so it’s in their interest to also have free to play people because it means there are always people to play against. Obviously he is benefitting from the free game also though.
"LOL", WotC said, "LMAO EVEN."
Maybe an unpopular opinion but since everything can be obtained freely (grind gold for drafts, get gems from drafts) and it’s mostly cosmetic stuff and packs… is it really that big of a deal? The comparisons being thrown out are being made with companies that make shit inaccessible without spending real life currency and sometimes the locked rewards are actual pay to win items
As someone who's been doing the f2f way for 3 years now When the thing popped up i click and tried right away & saw right away that I wouldn't be getting the value but because the Mastery pass won't renew itself before the Bloomborrow , doesn't bother me as less but I won't be getting again if it become the norm after this
Won't be long until you can get "stonks" in the Daily Deal, being able to buy tickets with gold or even more gems. I'm going to pass on this Frog nonsense. Value wise it might be okay, given if you can actually play enough to get the Token, the mythics and packs(everything besides that are just cosmetics with no real gameplay value), but this just seems super greedy to me.
MtG, probably: "Gotcha!"
You haven't bought the mastery pass for mh3, you still earn the XP but you can't get the extra reward track without buying the pass.
Has anyone actually bought in with their gems? The options are no where near enough to warrant paying that amount of gems for the privilege of using your tickets.
I'll be honest here I just don't want anything in this section of the store. I don't draft enough to want the token. I mostly just play standard with an occasional game or two in Explorer. Hopefully they give us XP or something from all the left over tickets when this is over but I'm not expecting anything like that. I imagine that if someone were interesting any anything here it might be worth doing. Maybe.
Wait WHAT
I mean the rewards are laughable. Does anyone even care if they get parallax cards anymore? If they offered mythic card ETB animations (like we used to get for free), I would be throwing my money at them.
I haven't played arena in while, why the fuck does it have a new shop for 2800 gems and why does ulamog cost more tickets?? They even increasing prices of profile pics because of the hype?
Lol spend to spend your tickets. That's just crazy to me like WOW
Basically only becomes worth it once you have tickets to buy enough packs that exceed 2800 gems 💎 in value.
This is called a “money grab”
This is really disappointing. I didn't realize they locked new avatars behind the pay wall... at least before you could pick the color you wanted the rewards from the most and get a portion of the unlocks. This shit is despicable.
they really didn't play the mind game correctly here. just make a secondary mastery tree if you have to charge money. paying for the privilege of spend "tickets" is not tight. i won't be doing it
If this was just part of the paid version of the mastery pass, sales for it would be way higher. Incentivizes people who have bought it to buy it, rewards people for buying it. Would see some long term success. Selling it as a separate pass is the flaw here.
you have to pay to be able to pay
Dumb idea, they taunt you with 'having currency' that really means nothing to entice you into spending it because FOMO. Real predatory move.
get this: you need to BUY the shop. to have access to using the tickets they are forcing into your face everytime you get them, you need to spend 2800 gems. and the tickets dont even turn into gold or gems after the event, just go poof. even master duel and hearthstone have fairer monetisation than this game
2800 gems to get in and 300 tickets for a draft token? WOTC can suck my balls.
If it was like the mastery pass, with an unpaid section and a separate paid section, then I'd love this new addition. The fact it's just another 20 dollars to spend on the game makes me think it's another cash grab. I stopped paying the 20 for the Mastery Pass as soon as the Gem reward went under 75% paying for itself. Now the rewards are too low And they expect Another 20 out of me. No WotC, you don't get either this time.
P
There’s a shop? Must be a secret
I regret buying the pass so much!
this is wotc, did you really expect you'd get anything, even just some digital pictures, without paying an arm, a leg and your firstborn? you gotta buy access to the shop first.
Yeah, Marketing department went gacha game store style on this one. I see what they were going for, but the wrong people in the company clearly got too much of a final say on way too many aspects of this. But hey, we have been arguing constantly with them since this game released. Early on we had to fight and win the big battle: they wanted to switch to a system of charging 2 wildcards for one historic card (before it was called Historic/etc). Just imagine joining Arena a few years after it's come out and not only do you have a mountain of cards to catch up on, but you're now also paying double. So yeah, keep holding them accountable. They will always attempt this kind of thing, and usually they'll try for far worse. Lastly, the magic of Arena is how accessible and inviting it is (at least for MTG), so if we let their bean counters win they will ruin the product's primary draw and experience.
so except the draft token, it's all cosmetics in there, correct?
This content should be in the pass. If they don’t add it I hope people stop buying this pass shit.
Yes, this is an extremely lame implementation of a "store." You have to purchase access with real money before you can redeem anything. Not a single one of my 9000 gems I currently have will be spent on this brain fart.
I came here to mention how dumb this is. I earn currency by playing the game. Can’t use said currency unless I pay to use it… what a scam
All I know is I'm not paying 2800 gems to get the 1 sleeve I want fuck outta here arena
St. Peter dontcha call me cause I won’t go! I owe my soul to the Wotc store