Why this game doesn't have much of a future.

[Singh]

A fragmented player base brought on by new year to year versions instead of add-ons to a base game.

A weak, difficult, and time wasting multiplayer experience brought on by said fragmentation and lack of basic functions like rank/matchmaking or even the simple ability to add someone to your steam friend's list while in game. This in addition to the general problem of online games being invisible to the player or knowing how many people are online playing at a given time - thus giving the impression of a dead multiplayer experience. Hell you can't even vote to restart a multiplayer match in-game that you might have drawn no lands in.

Confusing, overpriced DLC that often ends with people not knowing what they have bought, have already, or should have and thus ends with a multitude of complaint threads on these forums.

Slow UI, slow load/boot up, problems with card selection/assignments, & genreal bugs that seem to never be fixed year to year as one game is thrown out for the next.

This game has now 4 editions 2011,2012,2013,2014. The consistency between all versions seems to be a lack of attentiveness to increasing value to the basic player experience through debugging and improved multiplayer funcionality while adding as many ways to fleece the player of their money.

This combination of problems diminishes intrest year over year and will eventually lead to a product few want because those potentially interested have already had some form of irritation or negative experience with a past iteration of it.

The future is dim for a product that adds little - if any - value, year to year, while holding fast to the mountain of mistakes in its past.

Buyer beware.

[PLANKS]

I believe they make these games simply to promote their other products. They don't seem to want to make a polished and bug free game in this format. Its mostly just a pretty version of their Magic Online game I think.

[Wolfinmind]

Opprinnelig skrevet av PLANKS:

I believe they make these games simply to promote their other products. They don't seem to want to make a polished and bug free game in this format. Its mostly just a pretty version of their Magic Online game I think.

So it is. Otherwise you would't be spammed by their FNM "Freebies" you only get for a limited amount of time when you go to a Magic-store IRL. And let's face it: the last good Magic game that came out was in '94: Curse of Dominion, if i remember right. Had only Cards from Alpha to Revised or so, but al least you could BUILD YOUR OWN DECK.

The main reason i play Magic IRL is the versatility of enhancing your Deck, having a Sideboard and being able to influence what i wanna do by tapping. I was nearly mashing my monitor more than once, as 2012 mis-tapped mana making me unable to finish my plans, i was bored by 3/4 of the decks of 2012 and 13, and thus i did not even consider for one minute buying '14, just because it is new and has his shiny shi-tty bosster-action going on.

You will se: they will NEVER include complete Deck-building, because otherwise MTGO would be doomed. There's enough ♥♥♥♥ going on with freebie-game libraries (Cockatrice *coughs*) that shows that WOtC is only after one thing: More money.

[Singh]

I don't particularly care that they have premade decks for you and make this a sort of stripped down version of the game. That is really not the problem because when you give people the option to make their own deck 90% of them don't. They simply follow whatever deck list is winning which means there is actually less gameplay variety instead of more.

The real problem is that as a casual game DOTP fails miserably for some of the reasons you mention as well as others:

Why can't you have a sideboard?
Why aren't the matches able to be set as best of 3 or best of 5?
Why can't I add a player to my steam friend's list in-game?
Conversely why can't I block them?
Why can't a match (given this is casual) be restarted (by vote) if i mulligan 2 or 3times with no lands? Instead people mulligan down to 1 card and rage.
Why is a new edition coming out year after year instead of having a base version with addons so there could actually be a growing multiplayer scene instead of a shrinking one?

This game is some 4years old and for these basic concerns not to be addressed by now shows a willful disregard for their player base. Which is fine. The game had its day in the sun, and is past its prime. Eventually there will be something that actually wants to create a vaulable experience among players and it will be rewarded for doing so.

[slippidyjim]

I did it all backwards. I came to this game for the first time through this steam version (never played the cards). Liked it then tried the online client based one. Though I loved the actual feel of being in real competitions and having the option to actually win things the slow as s**t engine was unbarable. As said above, having this version with all the functionality of the online one would be pretty special.

[Chaos4Ever]

@Singh: You're totally right with your critics. The integration into the steam infrastructure for match making should normally be a prerequisite for offering a game on steam.
But I think WotC is trying to get more people to the game itself either as online or as card game, so like the way slippi has made. This means for them to broaden the base of MtG overall instead of broadening the base on a single layer.
Overall I'm happy to have a possibility to play MtG with some friends from time to time without the need to travel and I only bought the new versions as they were cheap during the sale for myself and as xmas gifts for some friends.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

This series was never intended to have a long term player base. That said, I find the single player good enough for how much it cost. Coop twin headed giants is also great fun with friends.

[Crushow]

Quite nice for short time and to play with friends.

[APerfectCircle]

Gameplay is so slow, this is what bothers me so much. If I could turn ALL animations off and complete games twice as fast then it would be much more enjoyable

[Kestrel]

Totally bizarre criticisms. I picked all these up for less than $5.00 each. That's cheaper than any MTG deck I own. Often, it's cheaper than the highest valued card in any deck I play. These games are great intros to MTG, good production value, and quite fun (but not perfect) in single player.

What were you expecting? The full 12,000+ Magic card database at your disposal for deckbuilding? A robust online competitive community? Just play MTGO. Otherwise, take into account how bargain-basement the pricing is for these games, and enjoy them for what they are.

The level of whining about these games is absolutely mind-boggling to me. How entitled do people feel these days anyway?

[APerfectCircle]

People can be 'entitled' and whine as much as they like, if they feel a game isn't up to their standards. I have only a few problems witth these games and have spent lots of time on them, and also play in RL. But the AI is incredibly buggy and the games progress very slowly. In saying that, I think $5 (half price) is defintely a bargin for these games.

[Singh]

It's always amusing to see people (Kestrel) who don't like complaints about the game they love accuse others of "whining" and proceed to spend paragraphs "whining" themselves about said people - absolutely mind-boggling to me.

Why you feel obligated to white knight or simply troll a thread you disagree with and insult those that share a different perspective from your own - is to me - rediculous. It's a video game - everyone doesn't need to share your feeling about it. It's okay. The world didn't end. Take a breath, stop wasting your time, and go back to what you love - presumably without insulting someone.

The criticisms are actually not at all bizarre if you had bothered to read them or have any year to year experience with the game.

As for your points they are all pretty hollow:

The regular pricing is not 5 dollars (nor has it ever been) for the complete edition of 2014, it is $20 - $35 (at the moment) depending on how much DLC you want. Nor is it 5dollars for the base edition - reg. price $10. Why you would bother to compare the pricing of the full paper game to this casual video game version is beyond me and a complete fallacy.

Paper magic is a hobby comparable to golfing or scuba diving in cost. It is that large an investment. A video game must compete with other video games. And in this realm the quality to cost is not there even at a causal level - especially given that we are on the 4th edition of it.

As I said in my prior post some of its faults are forgivable up to a point if we are talking about early editions of the game but we are not. And year over year the game gets worse in quality for the reasons I have already mentioned not better by not fixing blatantly obviously problems. This all leads to a lack of competitiveness as a game for its price point and why I don't see much of a future for it, as it continues with such a lack of professional standards.

I mean this is a game and perhaps the only program I have ever, repeat, - ever - owned that cannot even paste text into its own chat window. Someone check the calendar - this is 2014 right?

[Raef]

i mis the freedom to tap your own land with own choise.. (atleast multicolor deck).

Also this is a rare case where i miss V-synk to 60 or 30 and so on.. my frame is now 800-1000 and there is realy no need to get that hi.. my graphic card realy take it's all out ;DD so only 15 min play at a time..

[Klumpfisken]

I've played DOTP 2012 the last 3 days, and encountered at least 60 different bugs, and now Im sick and tired of it. Any1 knows where and how to report those bugs?
I've searched a bit on the net for it with no real luck, best bet was WOtC's homepage, but only option I could find for bug-reporting there was for Magic Online...
I'm gonna flood them with bugreports untill they fix it :D

[Siddha]

Some of you people whining have hundred + hours in the game
I cant make any sense of that
If I dont like a game I dont play it for hundreds of hours

[Singh]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Siddha:

Some of you people whining have hundred + hours in the game
I cant make any sense of that
If I dont like a game I dont play it for hundreds of hours

You're taking issue with a topic that's year's old and the outcome of which has long since been determined.

I checked last night and Magic Duels clocked in at a little under 4k concurrent peak users. Meanwhile Blizzard's Hearthstone has something like 50million unique accounts (http://www.pcgamesn.com/hearthstone/hearthstone-player-numbers).

WoTC ignored their product and many of the things I listed to their obvious detriment and failure. Even paper magic doesn't compare to the player numbers Blizzard is currently posting.