This is Magic: the Gathering on the computer, free to play and possible to play without spending any money, that sounds great, but...

Magic as a game has been going downhill since M20, the power creep has exploded, which is both good and bad for this game, bad in that it makes it hard for new players to learn the game without getting frustrated, but good in that new players don't need to pay as high an entry cost when many of the best cards available are coming out currently. The existence of Arena has lead to some of this downhill slide even on paper magic, the easiest example I can think of is the fetches from SNC, which automatically sacrifice when played - this is counter to the usual wisdom in magic of waiting until you know what you need, and waiting so you don't give your opponent more information, but was done because it speeds up the digital game.

That brings me to some of the worst issues with how Arena is implemented. It waits to ask you if you want to take an action every single time you can, which gets pretty annoying when you have instant speed effects like Skirk Prospector. They haven't given a way to tell the game "no, I don't want you to wait for me to confirm I don't want to take this action every single time I can"

There are no good shortcuts for the game either, no way to tell the game when you left a card on top in the middle of 30 scry 1 triggers, that it shouldn't keep asking you if you want it to leave it on top (I've had this in the 100s, it's not pretty) shortcuts that are obvious in paper and would be easy to code in, and even obvious if you are leaving a card on top that you want it to stay there (in this case)

The game also punishes you for it's own limitations. I have lost games because the game took so long running through actions that would have taken 5 seconds in paper because it needed to ask half a dozen questions and get the same answer every time for each step of the process.

The game has also started offering "Alchemy" cards, and rebalanced versions of real cards, but it also offers you very little choice in if you want to play with, and agaisnt, these cards or not. Priest of Possibilities and Oracle of the Alpha are cards that shouldn't exist, but if you want to play anything other than standard, you are forced to play against these decks that use digital only cards and mechanics. As for the rebalanced cards, the worst example is Symmetry Sage, a piece of what was already one of the most common and oppresive decks in standard that was made stronger, even more oppressive and even more broken.

I love Magic the Gathering I have played it for over a dozen years, but there are problems with it, they are getting worse, and they are much, much worse here. They could fix some of them, but they don't seem to want to put in the effort. I don't recommend people join in now, not until some of these fixes are put into place.

This is Magic: the Gathering on the computer, free to play and possible to play without spending any money, that sounds great, but... Magic as a game has been going downhill since M20, the power creep has exploded, which is both good and bad for this game, bad in that it makes it hard for new players to learn the game without getting frustrated, but good in that new players don't need to pay as high an entry cost when many of the best cards available are coming out currently. The existence of Arena has lead to some of this downhill slide even on paper magic, the easiest example I can think of is the fetches from SNC, which automatically sacrifice when played - this is counter to the usual wisdom in magic of waiting until you know what you need, and waiting so you don't give your opponent more information, but was done because it speeds up the digital game. That brings me to some of the worst issues with how Arena is implemented. It waits to ask you if you want to take an action every single time you can, which gets pretty annoying when you have instant speed effects like Skirk Prospector. They haven't given a way to tell the game "no, I don't want you to wait for me to confirm I don't want to take this action every single time I can" There are no good shortcuts for the game either, no way to tell the game when you left a card on top in the middle of 30 scry 1 triggers, that it shouldn't keep asking you if you want it to leave it on top (I've had this in the 100s, it's not pretty) shortcuts that are obvious in paper and would be easy to code in, and even obvious if you are leaving a card on top that you want it to stay there (in this case) The game also punishes you for it's own limitations. I have lost games because the game took so long running through actions that would have taken 5 seconds in paper because it needed to ask half a dozen questions and get the same answer every time for each step of the process. The game has also started offering "Alchemy" cards, and rebalanced versions of real cards, but it also offers you very little choice in if you want to play with, and agaisnt, these cards or not. Priest of Possibilities and Oracle of the Alpha are cards that shouldn't exist, but if you want to play anything other than standard, you are forced to play against these decks that use digital only cards and mechanics. As for the rebalanced cards, the worst example is Symmetry Sage, a piece of what was already one of the most common and oppresive decks in standard that was made stronger, even more oppressive and even more broken. I love Magic the Gathering I have played it for over a dozen years, but there are problems with it, they are getting worse, and they are much, much worse here. They could fix some of them, but they don't seem to want to put in the effort. I don't recommend people join in now, not until some of these fixes are put into place.