MTG ARENA is rigged. Don't waste your time.

[YoM3N]

Topic.
I played MTG Arena for years and this game is not only totally overpriced if you pay for the boosters ( same price as paper version but without actual value).
No, the game itself is completely rigged, some reddit users analysed over 1 million games and proved that the matchmaking AND the shuffler is completely rigged.
Arenanet never really denied it but some very sketchy tweets more or less proved it and "allegedly" are ranked matches not rigged but i highly doubt it after 10.000 rounds~ over some years.
You are warned !

You will realise it at some pointh if you draw a card 3 times in a row every 3-4 games (if you have a winning streak it gets even worse) because they try to give casual scrubs a positiv feeling in the game with a 50/50 W/L ratio ( casuals bring the most money Stonkz ).
Or the rigged matchmaking where you get with some decks always the same enemies with the same decks that by chance counter your deck perfectly, that will happened for me 10 games in a row on the worst days.
A small example : I played an blue/white control deck that started to shine at turn 5-6 so rather slow and there were two decks completely destroying it ..... mono red and mono blue aggro I GOT 12 ROUNDS IN A ROW MONO RED AGGRO AS ENEMY ! At this point must be said mono red is always the top 1 meta deck because you can play it blindfolded 60% winrate was normal for it but, I had a 2nd main deck because i was so sick of the meta, i have build myself a W/B Control anti meta deck that completely destroyed absolute every aggro deck but will loose against slow decks so when I was to annoyed of the aggro scrubsl I switched over to my W/B Control deck and pure coincidence a miracle happened and i got the next 10 rounds in a row a perfect counter deck that normally not even was in the meta like no colour artifacts....
I played the game still because even after all this rigged bs Arenanet does, MTG is still by faaaaaaaaaaaar the best TCG game you can just start and play, Hearthstone ist just gambling without money, Yu Gi Oh is only a huge clusterfck now and HEX is great but still not enough player, sadly because it has a great pve mode too.
But that is still not the reason I finally stopped playing the game.
Over the years the cards became more and more broken because nobody knowhs why....
The biggest issue now is that absolute everything is totally pwned by aggro decks the biggest garbage players use mono red btw.
If you prefer skillfull decks like control decks or trolldecks decks where you exile your enemies whole deck step by step, mill was funny too but at some point the rotation became so bad, that everything that was no aggro decks became completely destroyed.

[YoM3N]

Publicado originalmente por heecks:

Shuffler and match making is bad, I'm not gonna install the steam version since I put 0 money into the game and I already have the app but when the game decide your gonna lose you will whatever your trying. I just wonder if peoples who put money into the game are more ''lucky'' ? Best feature of the game ''concede''

Well thats a controversial thing. I doub't even would be Arenanet so shameless but well.... rigging shuffler and matchmaking to make more money through casuals ..... welp.
Btw: are there even some weird workaround tactics that even seem to work, some players mentioned that the rigging has something to do with your starting hand, if you have 3 mana in your starting hand, you draw far more mana, if you have 2 mana, far less if you throw away your starting hand, the next starting hand is really random and somehow "fixes" the shuffler, but thats not proven but i got often the feeling that i draw far more mana too if I had 3 mana in my starting hand.

[YoM3N]

Publicado originalmente por YoM3N:

Publicado originalmente por heecks:

Shuffler and match making is bad, I'm not gonna install the steam version since I put 0 money into the game and I already have the app but when the game decide your gonna lose you will whatever your trying. I just wonder if peoples who put money into the game are more ''lucky'' ? Best feature of the game ''concede''

Well thats a controversial thing. I doub't even Arenanet would be so shameless but well.... rigging shuffler and matchmaking to make more money through casuals ..... welp.
Btw: are there even some weird workaround tactics that even seem to work, some players mentioned that the rigging has something to do with your starting hand, if you have 3 mana in your starting hand, you draw far more mana, if you have 2 mana, far less if you throw away your starting hand, the next starting hand is really random and somehow "fixes" the shuffler, but thats not proven but i got often the feeling that i draw far more mana too if I had 3 mana in my starting hand.

[Brother Alpha]

Publicado originalmente por IsilithTehroth:

Publicado originalmente por Brother Alpha:

I agree with you 100%. You can spend $100 on gems on Arena and get any tier-1 deck right now. You will also get enough other cards that you will be able to get a second tier-1 deck before the next set comes out and perhaps even a third. At that point, you will be able to keep up with the meta without too much trouble.

The average tier-1 deck in standard right now costs between $300 and $500.

Going to mtggoldfish.com and looking at current meta tabletop prices; there are 4 decks that cost $120 or below.

NONE OF THOSE ARE TIER-1!

[Isilith]

Publicado originalmente por Brother Alpha:

Publicado originalmente por IsilithTehroth:

Going to mtggoldfish.com and looking at current meta tabletop prices; there are 4 decks that cost $120 or below.

NONE OF THOSE ARE TIER-1!

They literally have their winrate, percentile usage and various other stats associate with it. Guess the $20 a irl pack of magic player got me, guys. The shill won. Top 8 daily limited wins, magic online championships, irl pro tour, and mass amounts of collected data is wrong. Just like real life packs only costing $5...its just wrong according to Brother Shill.

[Brother Alpha]

Publicado originalmente por IsilithTehroth:

Publicado originalmente por Brother Alpha:

NONE OF THOSE ARE TIER-1!

They literally have their winrate, percentile usage and various other stats associate with it.

Mono-red = 4.6% of meta.
Mono-blue = 1.5% of meta.

Neither are tier one. Those are the most popular decks under $120.

Tier-1 decks are:

Rakdos Midrange, which are close to $500.
Grixas Midrange, which are just over $400.
4c/5c Ramp, which are just over $300.

Orzhov Midrange (just under $300) and Azorius Soldiers (just a hair under $200) are competitive, but not tier-1.

Here's the top 8 of the most recent pro tour. All of the prices are ~$200 to $500.

https://mtgazone.com/pro-tour-march-of-the-machine-top-8-standard-decklists/

Publicado originalmente por IsilithTehroth:

Guess the $20 a irl pack of magic player got me, guys.

Wrong person.

You claim to care about real life facts and the pro-tour is the best judge of what is tier-1. You are clearly wrong.

[gambuzino]

The shuffler is only "rigged" in best of 1 in the sense that it gives you a certain number of spells and lands in your opening hand because there's no mulligan. Beyond that there's no proof of any rigging, feel free to post your sources.

[Graveyard]

Played this prior to steam release for almost a year. Constantly being matched against the same mono white life gain deck was annoying. The card shuffle system or whatever is going on to make you pull 14 lands in a row in a 60 card deck is BS. So if you have too much time and money go for it.

[mimizukari]

Why do you keep saying Arenanet? That's the developer of Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2. MTG Arena is fine, it lets you play standard MTG online, it's better than MTGO with visuals and the value in it is that you get to keep all your cards as the game goes on to make more and more unique historic decks as time goes on.

[jweLL]

And here is another idiot who doesn't understand basic math, and probability. Yes, variance and probability are TOTALLY RIGGED and math is fake news and your personal bias does not exist

[Susan From HR]

people pay for this crap?

[Serius_Sim]

Are there Gwent players here ? How would you say that MtG and Gwent compare (Art, gameplay, balance, monetization practices) ?

[Flush Entity]

Publicado originalmente por Serius_Sim:

Are there Gwent players here ? How would you say that MtG and Gwent compare (Art, gameplay, balance, monetization practices) ?

Honestly, they are such different games I wouldn't care compare them in terms of gameplay or balance.

The art of Gwent is probably more standardized to itself in terms of style (and if it matters to you, contains a lot more mostly naked women, as per The Witcher in general, for good or ill) while MTG art can vary widely even within a given expansion but especially between expansions. Gwent also uses a semi-animated "Premium" card as rare/craftable versions of normal cards which may or may not be to your liking, it's basically a version of being Foiled but it's different (I don't know if MTGA has foils, though they do have alternate art for various cards, especially Basic Land). I personally usually prefer MTG's art over Gwent, probably because of the greater variety, but there's been some awful MTG art as well, and some just plain boring art, it can be much more hit-and-miss.

Monetization... it's worth noting that Gwent recently announced they will stop making new cards soon, either after this current expansion has ended or the next or something. This means it will be a "complete" game at some point in the near future, with only perhaps some balance changes and server maintenance. The early sets were primarily sold like regular "boosters" (with the "kegs" being cheaper than a pack, usually), and more recent expansions sold as complete "Premium" sets if you want to buy them that way (still available via in-game currency as "kegs" if you don't want to spend actual money).

Both this change and the announcement of no longer adding cards can possibly make it easier to get into, there aren't different formats (other than draft, and some challenge/weird stuff they put out now and then for variety) or banned cards to worry about (just buffs and nerfs), and it could also be a sign of the game maybe dying in the near future as well, so it could be more risky to get into if you're worried about the game becoming unplayable.

I haven't played MTGA enough to compare how it's F2P economy might compare. There are "battle pass" type things available to both I think? Which I've never been a fan of but someone likes it enough to get hooked onto it, not sure how they compare either in terms of value.

As a side note, I enjoy the music and sound assets Gwent has better than MTGA, but that might just be me.

Hope that helps?

[Minmataro]

You come off like a dude thats gotten wrecked by mono red and other high ranked aggro decks and came to cry. Go play something else.

[YoM3N]

Publicado originalmente por Minmataro:

You come off like a dude thats gotten wrecked by mono red and other high ranked aggro decks and came to cry. Go play something else.

Dude everyone gets wrecked by mono red aggro even mono red aggro thats why people say its broken and op the Meta in MTG Arena is either be a mono aggro scrub or play a aggro counter deck + rigged shuffler, matchmaking

[YoM3N]

Publicado originalmente por Flush Entity:

Publicado originalmente por Serius_Sim:

Are there Gwent players here ? How would you say that MtG and Gwent compare (Art, gameplay, balance, monetization practices) ?

Honestly, they are such different games I wouldn't care compare them in terms of gameplay or balance.

The art of Gwent is probably more standardized to itself in terms of style (and if it matters to you, contains a lot more mostly naked women, as per The Witcher in general, for good or ill) while MTG art can vary widely even within a given expansion but especially between expansions. Gwent also uses a semi-animated "Premium" card as rare/craftable versions of normal cards which may or may not be to your liking, it's basically a version of being Foiled but it's different (I don't know if MTGA has foils, though they do have alternate art for various cards, especially Basic Land). I personally usually prefer MTG's art over Gwent, probably because of the greater variety, but there's been some awful MTG art as well, and some just plain boring art, it can be much more hit-and-miss.

Monetization... it's worth noting that Gwent recently announced they will stop making new cards soon, either after this current expansion has ended or the next or something. This means it will be a "complete" game at some point in the near future, with only perhaps some balance changes and server maintenance. The early sets were primarily sold like regular "boosters" (with the "kegs" being cheaper than a pack, usually), and more recent expansions sold as complete "Premium" sets if you want to buy them that way (still available via in-game currency as "kegs" if you don't want to spend actual money).

Both this change and the announcement of no longer adding cards can possibly make it easier to get into, there aren't different formats (other than draft, and some challenge/weird stuff they put out now and then for variety) or banned cards to worry about (just buffs and nerfs), and it could also be a sign of the game maybe dying in the near future as well, so it could be more risky to get into if you're worried about the game becoming unplayable.

I haven't played MTGA enough to compare how it's F2P economy might compare. There are "battle pass" type things available to both I think? Which I've never been a fan of but someone likes it enough to get hooked onto it, not sure how they compare either in terms of value.

As a side note, I enjoy the music and sound assets Gwent has better than MTGA, but that might just be me.

Hope that helps?

You can play it F2P but it takes years to get a big collection of cards so pw2 nah but takes a ton of time, I tried to cheese it with buying only boosters of Dominaria because copies become wildcards that can be used to craft any card but Arenanet this greedy bunch thought about it too and when I buy a dominaria booster now I get just 1 random wildcard...