Todays not your day

[HaleTheFreeVoice]

Its bought deck andy day everyone who is f2p don't bother.

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by runicentity:

If i wanted to spend that kind of money I'll just go play in person.

Ironically Arena costs way more. If I spend $700 on a paper metadeck after the tournament or whatever I can turn around and sell it for pretty much $700.

On Arena you're just stuck with worthless digital cards you can't transfer to anyone else or recycle into new cards, and they'll eventually even rotate out of standard.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

I explained the math to you. It's up to you whether you care to understand it.

You didn't really you just told me 64%. And I am genuinely curious how you came up with that, but warning you in advance you're not going to convince me that deck construction will not "statistically impact results". You don't need any any math at all to see that all of the top performing decks look pretty similar to each other and there's a reason that hundreds of cards available in standard never see any play at all.

Oh, right. My apologies. The term is "hypergeometric distribution". That's the math of drawing cards from a randomized deck. And yes, deck construction DOES impact results, it's part of the portion you do have influence over. However, the advantages you can "buy" are small. They do technically exist, but they're far smaller than you're suggesting. A well built deck with sub-optimal cards in collection piloted by someone skilled at strategy and knowledgeable about the game will outperform a sub-par build with the best cards in the game piloted by someone who doesn't know what they're doing. The cards you get to play are impacted almost as much by the fundamental randomness of card draws as they are by owning those cards.

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

A well built deck with sub-optimal cards in collection piloted by someone skilled at strategy and knowledgeable about the game will outperform a sub-par build with the best cards in the game piloted by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

I mean, I agree with this. That's just not really the comparison I'd make and still not what you said earlier about how the cards you have won't "statistically impact" results. I'm not arguing it's the most important variable but it's certainly a statistically significant variable.

Holding all other variables constant and assuming players of similar skill, the well built deck of good cards will be statistically favored over a well built deck of bad cards. The way you get "good cards" is buying them or grinding for an amount of time that is not reasonable for the average person. That's all I'm saying.

Edit: let me rephrase that to an amount of time that is not trivial for the average person. I have no idea if it's reasonable or unreasonable, but its not trivial, and that makes the game pay to win per the conventional definition.

[Winter Wolf]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

A well built deck with sub-optimal cards in collection piloted by someone skilled at strategy and knowledgeable about the game will outperform a sub-par build with the best cards in the game piloted by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

I mean, I agree with this. That's just not really the comparison I'd make and still not what you said earlier about how the cards you have won't "statistically impact" results. I'm not arguing it's the most important variable but it's certainly a statistically significant variable.

Holding all other variables constant and assuming players of similar skill, the well built deck of good cards will be statistically favored over a well built deck of bad cards. The way you get "good cards" is buying them or grinding for an amount of time that is not reasonable for the average person. That's all I'm saying.

Edit: let me rephrase that to an amount of time that is not trivial for the average person. I have no idea if it's reasonable or unreasonable, but its not trivial, and that makes the game pay to win per the conventional definition.

I think where some of us get stuck is your definition of "pay to win" which is derogatory of the game if true, and defamatory if false.

In addition I think it may bother some people that you are essentially saying that their efforts to learn how to use, build and win with the "good" cards (via wildcards) they have purchased (whether with money, or time (as I have)) isn't worth much if anything and any thousand monkeys in a room with unlimited time (and or money) could easily do the same.

I think it is fair to say that WOTC somewhat skirts the question of Skinner box ethics with how they make things available and what prices they want for their products, particularly their digital offerings and most specifically Arena. What are Arena's cosmetics if not a way to eek extra monetary income from players without crossing that line? So two different series of ethical questions arise here:

Does the average person benefit by spending time and money on Arena? If not, is Wizards to blame for that? If so, is it cheating? What is acceptable for a player to do in this sort of game vs what is unacceptable? (I am thinking of the gold cheat that happened in between last mastery track and this as an example of players going too far.)

And secondly what amount of profit is OK for WOTC to endeavor to make from its players before it starts crossing a line ethically? Cosmetics are considered basically harmless but if an addictive personality gets hooked on buying them, is WOTC culpable for that? How do they prevent luring in the addicts whilst still making a healthy bottom line that keeps their incentive for running Arena high?

Is it ethical to have a pay-in at all? At what point is it unethical? Is it the amount of money asked for per gem? Is it OK for WOTC to charge for drafting (gems being the fast way to afford them and gold being the slow way)? How about for Wildcards? Buying Packs for gems (or gold) from the store?

These are some tough questions to answer imho.

My personal view is: They skirt the line quite well. MTGA is obviously a grand slam in the multiplayer market. M:TG is a fine game but suffered in the past from either a medium client (MTGO -bugs and UI/UX problems, variations of Duels, all that and gimped game play.) They make plenty off us without having to resort to in your face micros and other annoying things like constant ads and I am happy for that. I wish Drafts and events were a little cheaper but they are not too prohibitive if I participate regularly in quests and laddering.

Laddering itself is an inferior form of the game imho but it is how a majority of gamers like to compete in a variety of games and it makes sense that this holds true for M:TG as well even though it leads to a less than fun experience at times while everyone tries to struggle up the rungs or gives into the dark side and plays RDW decks all the way to Mythic (imho not a brainless feat, whatever people feel about it.)

Tournaments that rewarded play-skill rather than mere persistence, being more numerous or cheaper would be desirable. Or maybe if the rungs of each ladder were a bit more articulated in how they gave out prizes rather than the skimpy 1 pack per metal + a tired amount of gold (it used to be much better as I recall). Heck if it was up to me, you would never lose tiers during the month and everyone would start at the bottom tier at the beginning of each month. Still grindy but you would never have to have sit there and ponder, "do I wish to play this alchemy event that is for some reason set on the ladder risking my position on the ladder?" or "is it worth an extra pack to grind to diamond or mythic?"

Otoh I can see why things are as they are. The company's seers have balanced and scryed and checked their occult sources for data points and in their ineffable wisdom have determined that this is the best method for WOTC (not necessarily the players mind you) for how to do things.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

Holding all other variables constant and assuming players of similar skill, the well built deck of good cards will be statistically favored over a well built deck of bad cards. The way you get "good cards" is buying them or grinding for an amount of time that is not reasonable for the average person. That's all I'm saying.

This specific idea is what was the target when I was saying that it's not statistically significant. A well built deck of good cards is not that much better than a well built deck of bad cards, to the extent that two players of equal skill should not see a significant shift in win rate due to card quality. It is very much akin to discussions about the importance of an optimized manabase; the difference in win rates between basics and guildgates vs the extremely expensive lands that competitive players use in paper MtG is a small fraction of a percentage point, meanwhile the manabase of those optimized decks makes the price of the deck balloon to comical proportions. This is the idea I was trying to get across, that the core of the deck at its lowest power level will be close enough to a perfectly optimized version of the deck that it's not meaningful whether you do have all the best versions of the effects you're using.

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

I mean, I agree with this. That's just not really the comparison I'd make and still not what you said earlier about how the cards you have won't "statistically impact" results. I'm not arguing it's the most important variable but it's certainly a statistically significant variable.

Holding all other variables constant and assuming players of similar skill, the well built deck of good cards will be statistically favored over a well built deck of bad cards. The way you get "good cards" is buying them or grinding for an amount of time that is not reasonable for the average person. That's all I'm saying.

Edit: let me rephrase that to an amount of time that is not trivial for the average person. I have no idea if it's reasonable or unreasonable, but its not trivial, and that makes the game pay to win per the conventional definition.

I think where some of us get stuck is your definition of "pay to win" which is derogatory of the game if true, and defamatory if false.

I think if we're going to be very careful about specific wordings, we should stay away from calling something "defamatory" unless it might in fact rise to that surprisingly difficult legal standard. This won't.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

In addition I think it may bother some people that you are essentially saying that their efforts to learn how to use, build and win with the "good" cards (via wildcards) they have purchased (whether with money, or time (as I have)) isn't worth much if anything and any thousand monkeys in a room with unlimited time (and or money) could easily do the same.

I would not say this and would find someone very justified feeling offended if someone did say this.

I would also be offended if someone told me that the cards in my deck have no statistically significant impact on my win rate, implying that if I'm losing it must definitely be that I am simply bad an unlucky.

What I would say is simply that the quality of your cards matter. Of course they do. There's no way anyone genuinely thinks that's a controversial statement, right? It's not the only variable, it might not be the most important variable, but it's a variable.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

I think it is fair to say that WOTC somewhat skirts the question of Skinner box ethics with how they make things available and what prices they want for their products, particularly their digital offerings and most specifically Arena. What are Arena's cosmetics if not a way to eek extra monetary income from players without crossing that line? So two different series of ethical questions arise here:

Does the average person benefit by spending time and money on Arena? If not, is Wizards to blame for that? If so, is it cheating? What is acceptable for a player to do in this sort of game vs what is unacceptable? (I am thinking of the gold cheat that happened in between last mastery track and this as an example of players going too far.)

Good question. I think in keeping with being specific about saying what we mean here, "cheating" is a very heavy allegation buying better cards certainly doesn't rise to that. Does smurfing or deranking or finding other ways to get around a system without directly violating it rise to the level of cheating? Probably something best left to be defined by ToS (I don't know what WotC says about these specifically because I wouldn't do them and therefore don't care), but I think you can certainly say it's unethical.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

And secondly what amount of profit is OK for WOTC to endeavor to make from its players before it starts crossing a line ethically? Cosmetics are considered basically harmless but if an addictive personality gets hooked on buying them, is WOTC culpable for that? How do they prevent luring in the addicts whilst still making a healthy bottom line that keeps their incentive for running Arena high?

It's more of a personal thing than a well-reasoned and informed opinion, but I'm not very sympathetic to the addiction argument unless the company in question is obviously predatory and underhanded about what they're doing. If you get what you pay for and you see what you pay for, I don't see any problem with the profit margin itself. Unless WotC is cooking the books behind the scenes (a very audacious claim) to give you cards it thinks you won't use so that you'll buy even more packs, as one example, it's fine. Despite the ~weekly conspiracy theories about broken shufflers and fixed unfavorable matchmaking I don't know of any real evidence any of this is happening. The worst thing is probably the hand smoother and I absolutely hate the way they handle everything about that, but it still doesn't seems less predatory business practice and more just... weird.

For the most part WotC makes it clear what you're going to get and gives it to you and I think most people know what to expect. Only occasionally will someone throw out something weird like cards won't be "statistically significant" in your performance. Most people have a pretty good idea what this is and aren't being misled.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

Is it ethical to have a pay-in at all?

Of course. People's time and effort went into making this product possible. Nobody should expect the entire thing to be free.

...Or conversely, if they do, they should not expect a product of any appreciable quality.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

At what point is it unethical? Is it the amount of money asked for per gem? Is it OK for WOTC to charge for drafting (gems being the fast way to afford them and gold being the slow way)? How about for Wildcards? Buying Packs for gems (or gold) from the store?

Referring to my opinion above, yes, I think it's fine because there's no sleight of hand. You see what you're getting, and you get it. The prices are absolutely outrageous, but they're not unethical. It's a game purely for entertainment you can simply choose not to partake in, not an essential commodity like water. They could basically charge whatever they want. You might argue with how absurdly expensive it is to play draft with store-bought gems, they already do.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

These are some tough questions to answer imho.

My personal view is: They skirt the line quite well. MTGA is obviously a grand slam in the multiplayer market. M:TG is a fine game but suffered in the past from either a medium client (MTGO -bugs and UI/UX problems, variations of Duels, all that and gimped game play.) They make plenty off us without having to resort to in your face micros and other annoying things like constant ads and I am happy for that. I wish Drafts and events were a little cheaper but they are not too prohibitive if I participate regularly in quests and laddering.

I got started long ago so there were some cards I had left over from before. I also learned how to play the game with tenth edition like 15 years ago. But every time I try to convince my friends to give it a try they always ask how much it would be and I tell them truth: expensive, and more so if they're bad. Which is a shame. This could easily be the most accessible entry point for new people to give magic a try, but somehow it ended up being more costly than paper. I would absolutely love if there was a permanently available, rotating set phantom draft for like, a tenth the price that a normal one on Arena requires.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

Laddering itself is an inferior form of the game imho but it is how a majority of gamers like to compete in a variety of games and it makes sense that this holds true for M:TG as well even though it leads to a less than fun experience at times while everyone tries to struggle up the rungs or gives into the dark side and plays RDW decks all the way to Mythic (imho not a brainless feat, whatever people feel about it.)

Tournaments that rewarded play-skill rather than mere persistence, being more numerous or cheaper would be desirable. Or maybe if the rungs of each ladder were a bit more articulated in how they gave out prizes rather than the skimpy 1 pack per metal + a tired amount of gold (it used to be much better as I recall). Heck if it was up to me, you would never lose tiers during the month and everyone would start at the bottom tier at the beginning of each month. Still grindy but you would never have to have sit there and ponder, "do I wish to play this alchemy event that is for some reason set on the ladder risking my position on the ladder?" or "is it worth an extra pack to grind to diamond or mythic?"

I mean I could go on for hours about how modern video games and their fake rank systems not based on real ELO are an abomination that hurts both tryhards and casuals alike.

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

Otoh I can see why things are as they are. The company's seers have balanced and scryed and checked their occult sources for data points and in their ineffable wisdom have determined that this is the best method for WOTC (not necessarily the players mind you) for how to do things.

I mean, I genuinely don't know if that's true. I'd like to think that it's true, but what makes us confident? We've seen how badly they managed all their digital versions of this incredibly successful product in the past, what makes this iteration so certainly different? Is there really a whole office of analytic financiers running the numbers on every card and every mechanic and every interaction and coming back with a prescription like "ah yes, actually it appears that after 31.5 seconds, not 32, of waiting for a match that many more players begin to log off and do something else" or is it more likely that someone just asked how long the matchmaking timer should be and the other intern said "idk, set it for 30 seconds before it starts looking in other tiers, that sounds good"?

I don't know.

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

the core of the deck at its lowest power level will be close enough to a perfectly optimized version of the deck that it's not meaningful whether you do have all the best versions of the effects you're using.

What do you mean by the "core of the deck" here? What replaces Sheoldred and accomplishes something similar but costs $.07 instead of $70.00? What is your reanimator deck going to swap out for Virtue of Persistence that won't take mythic wildcards? How do you build Esper Legends with uncommons and get the same win rate?

The "core" of most decks are really expensive, that's like, the whole problem. You can try Azorius Soldiers with no Knight-Errant of Eos, no Wedding Invitations, and no Harbin... I guess? But it's going to be bad. Statistically significantly bad. To say otherwise is basically saying everyone in Mythic ranks, pro tours, and even local game stores are all just misled. That's silly.

Edit: Not Wedding Invitation... not even Wedding Announcement. No idea what I was thinking here. You get my point though. Plenty of staples that hold entire decks together are rares and mythics.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

the core of the deck at its lowest power level will be close enough to a perfectly optimized version of the deck that it's not meaningful whether you do have all the best versions of the effects you're using.

What do you mean by the "core of the deck" here? What replaces Sheoldred and accomplishes something similar but costs $.07 instead of $70.00? What is your reanimator deck going to swap out for Virtue of Persistence that won't take mythic wildcards? How do you build Esper Legends with uncommons and get the same win rate?

The "core" of most decks are really expensive, that's like, the whole problem. You can try Azorius Soldiers with no Knight-Errant of Eos, no Wedding Invitations, and no Harbin... I guess? But it's going to be bad. Statistically significantly bad. To say otherwise is basically saying everyone in Mythic ranks, pro tours, and even local game stores are all just misled. That's silly.

Edit: Not Wedding Invitation... not even Wedding Announcement. No idea what I was thinking here. You get my point though. Plenty of staples that hold entire decks together are rares and mythics.

What replaces Sheoldred while accomplishing something similar and being a lot easier to obtain? Cosmos Elixir, or Ajani's Welcome, Soul Warden, Authority of Consuls, Trespasser's Curse, Revenge of Ravens. Any number of things really. Though this isn't really a fair question because Sheoldred is never a card that is core to any strategy, ever.

To be completely honest, Virtue of Persistence isn't that big a deal for reanimator strategies, specifically because their strategy is to get things out earlier than you would otherwise. At 7 mana, Virtue of Persistence doesn't do that. It's more a generic value engine for the late game in any deck, not particularly useful for reanimator strategies that want to have already gotten into things before Virtue could drop anyway. There are plenty of generic value engines that could take its place.

The core of most decks is pretty cheap. Upgrading them is what costs you. Though, for the record, that's not exactly relevant to what you're saying. Your weird assertion that the extremely minor, insignificant benefit of those upgrades somehow suggests "everyone in mythic ranks, pro tours, and even local game stores are all just misled" is silly, because it doesn't logically follow anything either of us were saying. Statistically insignificant and "literally zero impact" are different things. Doubling your deck's price for a 0.02% increase in consistency is commonplace in competitive magic. It's also extremely bad advice to suggest any player who isn't exclusively going to tournaments with large cash prizes should be doing it to improve their game experience.

[Berserkr]

Virtue of Persistence's biggest upside is the -3/-3 cause you can actually kill something indestructible if you can bring it's toughness to zero or below which is great, I have 2 copies of Languish in my Historic B/W removal deck and I love the spell

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

What do you mean by the "core of the deck" here? What replaces Sheoldred and accomplishes something similar but costs $.07 instead of $70.00? What is your reanimator deck going to swap out for Virtue of Persistence that won't take mythic wildcards? How do you build Esper Legends with uncommons and get the same win rate?

The "core" of most decks are really expensive, that's like, the whole problem. You can try Azorius Soldiers with no Knight-Errant of Eos, no Wedding Invitations, and no Harbin... I guess? But it's going to be bad. Statistically significantly bad. To say otherwise is basically saying everyone in Mythic ranks, pro tours, and even local game stores are all just misled. That's silly.

Edit: Not Wedding Invitation... not even Wedding Announcement. No idea what I was thinking here. You get my point though. Plenty of staples that hold entire decks together are rares and mythics.

What replaces Sheoldred while accomplishing something similar and being a lot easier to obtain? [...] Though this isn't really a fair question because Sheoldred is never a card that is core to any strategy, ever.

And yet it's in virtually every deck playing black, curious. Maybe she's just oh so insanely fun? Or might it be, possibly, that the card is so strong that it can win games almost entirely on its own unlike almost all of the alternatives (none of which are even in standard? what?) that you mentioned?

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

To be completely honest, Virtue of Persistence isn't that big a deal for reanimator strategies, specifically because their strategy is to get things out earlier than you would otherwise. At 7 mana, Virtue of Persistence doesn't do that. It's more a generic value engine for the late game in any deck, not particularly useful for reanimator strategies that want to have already gotten into things before Virtue could drop anyway. There are plenty of generic value engines that could take its place.

Once again, that it's so versatile it finds its way into so many black decks that would never run any 7-drop reanimator enchantment otherwise is my point. There isn't a common or uncommon or even a rare in black that does everything this card can do in both the early game and late game. If you say there's plenty. Name one. Tell me what someone can run that's both excellent against monored aggro/gruul enchantments threatening to win on their turn 3 yet also breaks a stall against a midrange deck when you both run out of gas.

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

The core of most decks is pretty cheap. Upgrading them is what costs you. Though, for the record, that's not exactly relevant to what you're saying. Your weird assertion that the extremely minor, insignificant benefit of those upgrades somehow suggests "everyone in mythic ranks, pro tours, and even local game stores are all just misled" is silly, because it doesn't logically follow anything either of us were saying. Statistically insignificant and "literally zero impact" are different things. Doubling your deck's price for a 0.02% increase in consistency is commonplace in competitive magic. It's also extremely bad advice to suggest any player who isn't exclusively going to tournaments with large cash prizes should be doing it to improve their game experience.

No you've just imagined in your head a well-constructed, high-synergy deck using common and uncommon forms of powerful cards that just don't exist in the format, and now you're pulling these numbers out of your booty. You can build a monored aggro deck for pretty cheap but I am extremely certain that replacing 4 Shivan Devastators for 4 Rabbit Batteries is going to matter in more than 2 in 10,000 games like you're asserting. And that's one card. 2 Goddrics for Minecart Daredevils, Sokenzan's basically just a mountain right? and Invasion of Tarkir is just a glorified Lightning Strike after all. You think all those move the needle by 0.02%?

Like someone else said in a different thread about something else, what you're asserting strikes me as from someone who's very smart and has done a lot of thinking about the math and theory behind a lot of this... but doesn't play the game.

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by Berserkr:

Virtue of Persistence's biggest upside is the -3/-3 cause you can actually kill something indestructible if you can bring it's toughness to zero or below which is great, I have 2 copies of Languish in my Historic B/W removal deck and I love the spell

Yes, it's extremely powerful because the adventure is a quality counter-aggro spell that would find a nice place in sideboards at the very least in just about any slow black deck. The 7 drop part would be nearly unplayable (and in many games goes unplayed) but because it's attached to the excellent sorcery, it's almost a no-brainer.

There is no equivalent or even similar card in standard that is a common/uncommon.

Edit: Once again you know this, among other reasons, by the price tag. People aren't paying $15/card because the art is cool, and the totality of the magic community isn't brainwashed about how it's good but really Drown in Ichor would work just as well. (It wouldn't.)

[Berserkr]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

Yes, it's extremely powerful because the adventure is a quality counter-aggro spell that would find a nice place in sideboards at the very least in just about any slow black deck.

Funny thing is I only have the 2 copies of it in my deck because I actually got them from packs on Arena(haven't owned paper magic in probably 18 years) but it seems every time I get virtue in my hand I also have Ashiok Dream Render lol, so now I'm not sure if I wanna hit their deck and graveyard with him, but they seem to show up at the same time almost always....shrug

[PJ]

I'm really worried about this new trend of Wizards Of The Coast trying to get people to buy playing cards for the Collectible Card Game, Magic The Gathering.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by Berserkr:

Virtue of Persistence's biggest upside is the -3/-3 cause you can actually kill something indestructible if you can bring it's toughness to zero or below which is great, I have 2 copies of Languish in my Historic B/W removal deck and I love the spell

Actual good point here. A removal spell that actually does something beyond being a 1 for 1, that's the true value of Virtue of Persistence.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

What replaces Sheoldred while accomplishing something similar and being a lot easier to obtain? [...] Though this isn't really a fair question because Sheoldred is never a card that is core to any strategy, ever.

And yet it's in virtually every deck playing black, curious. Maybe she's just oh so insanely fun? Or might it be, possibly, that the card is so strong that it can win games almost entirely on its own unlike almost all of the alternatives (none of which are even in standard? what?) that you mentioned?

No you've just imagined in your head a well-constructed, high-synergy deck using common and uncommon forms of powerful cards that just don't exist in the format.

Like someone else said in a different thread about something else, what you're asserting strikes me as from someone who's very smart and has done a lot of thinking about the math and theory behind a lot of this... but doesn't play the game.

How would you imagine a card that is core to a specific strategy manages to be in every deck regardless of strategy? This is my point, that Sheoldred doesn't particularly excel anywhere, it's just generically good everywhere. As such, it doesn't really have a niche that forces its use at all. It can never be necessary, but can certainly be an upgrade to include.

I haven't imagined anything. I've told you how I build my decks.

I appreciate the compliment. It's a refreshing change of pace for a disagreement on the internet to not devolve to mindless insults. I do play the game though.