MTG Arena is Fundamentally Broken 

When Wizards designed the economy for this game we had 4 sets per year and free events. This year we had 5 standard sets, 2 anthologies, jumpstart, jumpstart historic horizons and alchemy. And you still can only make 1250-1500 gold everyday from 15 wins.

When even the endlessly positive crew at mtggoldfish starts ripping WOTC a new one something is very wrong

"What am I supposed to do with 11 Ghaltas?" is a sentence that nobody should ever say ever, let alone in a digital game.

I hate that reprints are not covered on duplicate protection. When evolving wilds is in 3 sets, we still only need 4 not 12.

the worst part of mtga is having to choose between a cool rare you want to try out or the meta card you dont even want to play

As someone who has modern decks and legacy decks. I was hoping Arena would be a casual magic paradise for me. That isn't the case though, you get punished for building casual decks. Just like the point of the video. Arena kills creativity and makes it a frustrating mess.

I once had this crazy game on Arena. I was on my lunch break at work, booted up the game, and the daily challenge asked me to play white cards, so I pulled out a mono-white life gain deck with mill as the wincon (because most people just concede by the point I'd win anyway, on Arena, so why bother building in a proper wincon?). My opponent happened to be also playing a mono-white lifegain deck, with the faceless haven/ book of exalted deeds combo (before alchemy killed it). This game was epic. I kept them off facebook for the game's first hour, but they were slowly getting damage in with their ever-increasing number of birds and angels. For their part, they were keeping my lifegain from popping off, and I was just barely keeping my life above 20. The game went way past my lunch break, and I was still playing while at my desk at work. Eventually, as work was ending, I hit the last card in my deck... which shuffled itself back into my deck every time I played it. My opponent hit the last card in their library, but by this point they'd resolve two facebook combos. The game was a battle of wills. Neither of us could win, and neither of us could lose. The only way for the game to end was for one of us to give up. I drove home, playing my last card over and over again every time I was stopped at a red light (don't judge me I wasn't about to give up after this five hour game), and the game was lagging enough at this point I only had to do something every couple minutes or so, so I was able to continue while driving home. I got home. The game had been going for several hours at this point. The client had crashed several times and been rebooted without kicking either of us out permanently. The lag was incredible, from either the tokens on the field or the fact that so many turns had passed. Both of us were in it, and there was a mutual respect that can only be achieved between two opponents who cannot communicate outside dumb emotes. Eventually, with my life total so high that the client rolled it into negative numbers, perpetually no cards in either of our decks, and pass-go being the game state for the past several hours, my opponent gave me one final GG and conceded. Victory. Hard fought, hard won, and something I will never do again. My Arena client crashed again as the game ended, so I reopened it to see my spoils. It didn't count the spells I played. The challenge for casting 20 white spells was incomplete. That six or seven hours got me zilch, nada, nothing. I haven't so much as touched Arena more than once or twice since then. Kinda takes it out of you when you realize that Arena doesn't care in the slightest about actual games, and is more just about spending money to get the top tier decks. And I mean, the only reason I didn't have a proper deck with a wincon in the first place is because the deck I made only used like five rares. Seriously, I have a mono-red goblin deck, a mono-white lifegain deck, and that's it. The rest are all just trash that I've unlocked in packs or gotten from the default decks, like mono-blue whatever-counterspells-i-have-unlocked, or mono-green hope-you-get-a-turn-one-llanowar-elves-to-ramp-into-a-decent-trash-rare-before-you-get-smashed-by-your-opponent deck. So anyway that's the entirety of my Arena experience.

I remember when they introduced the economy model during the open Beta, the community loudly objected. Their competitors were already up and running, and had vastly better models for crafting and collecting cards. Hasbro has known Arena's "Economy" was terrible from the start, and it's exactly how they want it to be.

As someone who is enfranchised enough not only to have been playing a decade, but to have actually worked at Wizards in the past, Arena drove me away years ago. The economy has always been bad. I realized I was spending hundreds of dollars more per set on Arena than I ever did on MTGO. Two points that you kind of mentioned, but are the reasons I left: 1) You enjoy drafting, so that's why you're able to not spend so much money. I like drafting okay, but I mostly like trying out Against the Odds decks and messing with them. It is extremely frustrating to have to play a game I don't really want to play in order to play the game I do want to play. 2) The stifling creativity. This goes deeper even than you suggested. What I mean by 2 is this: What's the difference between a set where the metagame's been solved and one where people THINK the metagame's been solved? With MTGO you'd get variance and people trying things out because it was cheap to do so. If a rare/mythic weren't seeing widespread play - remember how much that jank rare cost? That means the price of experimentation in MTGO is CHEAP. The most expensive thing is lands and planeswalkers. If you buy the expensive lands and planeswalkers to play some awesome tier deck, then experimenting with a new deck is ridiculously cheap, and it can still be powerful. Sometimes finding some jank rare can do really amazing things. The price of experimentation in Arena is very VERY high. Not just monetarily, which it is, but also psychologically. Because of the system they use, unless you're drafting every day, mythic/rare wildcards will be very precious. And they will feel very precious. Which means you're not going to want to spend them unless it's a sure thing. Like it's even less about always wanting to win, and more just there are combos or decks which don't really work and you won't play them for more than a couple of games, and it's very hard to tell before you start playing them. But will you burn the 4 mythic wildcards and 8 rare wildcards to build that deck? Uh, no. So yeah, I think this isn't JUST people only playing the top 3 decks, which is annoying and also a problem, it's also that by stifling that creativity, cards can seem way overpowered because nobody is looking for the solution to it. In essence, people can THINK the metagame's been solved. Which discourages experimentation even MORE on Arena. Because why bother if it doesn't beat Elrund's Epiphany, right? My favorite game type is Standard Constructed Jank. And Arena that game type.

What a fucking banger, every single product designer at wizards needs to see this

Masterduel has a great way: dismantle 3x cards of same rarity to generate another card of same rarity.

At the very least there should be a trading system in the game that allows you to trade cards of your collection with other players for gold, gems, or their cards. Imagine not being able to trade cards on a Trading Card Game.

Remember when they tried to charge double WCs for any card not legal in standard?

Alchemy was the straw that broke my Arena addiction: the pure naked greed of it ruining my Historic decks with no recompense just finally crossed the line for me. It’s so bad that I don’t watch anything Alchemy related - it’s like trying to be happy for your friend’s new partner when yours has just cheated on you: it’s not their fault you have the bad association, but it’s also undeniable. I would no longer recommend Arena to my Magic friends, let alone new Magic players.

I'm glad to hear this so well articulated from someone more experienced. I started playing Arena (as a beginner) around 9 months ago. I've been (mostly) playing daily to grind out a minimum number of wins, but my god it has been a horrible experience. I've never played a game that has generated as much negative emotion, so frequently, as MTGA. For this reason, I absolutely refuse to spend any real money on the game. From the perspective of a someone just trying to grind out 7 wins (so I get a couple of cards to go with some gold each day) on a FTP deck, aggro decks are mandatory - it would be an exorbitant investment of time to play a slower deck and still get rack up the required wins. The worst experience is ending up on a losing streak that takes up anywhere from 1-1.5 hours (I just give up after that), while getting maybe 1-2 wins in that time. Which wouldn't be an issue if this happened once a month. Instead, it happens about once every 3 days. I expect I'll see where I end up at the 12 month mark, and probably decide to stop playing then.

When arena first came out and I beta tested it I thought it was incredible. Yeah it wasn't perfect but it was definitely a good experience compared to mtgo ui. But then it got super slow the economy went to hell and frankly the wizards just dropped the ball the last couple years in their attempts to drag every bit of money they could from us.

I want to emphasize a point made in this video: Losing is an important part of learning. Mistakes are how we generally learn new things - and if we're taught we can't make mistakes, we won't get better.

It's insane that I've been able to build modern and even legacy decks in paper for less than a lot of standard decks would cost me on arena.

Can't say enough about how much I love this video. Well composed and constructed arguments and defines the issues so well. The focus on winning and penalizing creativity is actually the reason I finally took a break from arena. Sure hope they take some of your ideas to heart.

Really appreciate the header that describes you're talking specifically about the economy for paying players. It really hones in on the incisive argument. Might have been nice to have that verbalized too, but having it at the top in text was excellent!

WotC: "Here's a new OP Alchemy card!" Timmy: "Oh boy! I need to craft that!" WotC: "We listened to community feedback and decided to nerf all good cards and buff all bad cards!" Timmy: "Wow I have to craft all these new buffed rares for sure! Hum, can I get my wildcards back please?" WotC: "Here's a new OP Alchemy card!" Timmy: "Oh boy! I definitely need to craft this one! It looks so fun!"

I'm squarely in the "enfranchised" category -- played on & off since 1995, own a collection worth thousands of dollars, have a few tier Modern decks & higher-powered EDH decks, etc. I was excited to start playing Arena during the closed beta in 2017, under the assumption that the economy was a stopgap. I haven't opened Arena in nearly two years, after I realized that Wizards (read: Hasbro) had no intention of improving the mess that is its economy. I'd be more than happy to drop my bucks into Arena, but I love playing janky decks and weird brews. I'm happier winning an event with a third-tier deck than with whatever sits at the top of the meta. Given how difficult cards are to acquire and how the game seems to only reward winning (and spending money), it simply doesn't sync up with my priorities & preferences. And I know I'm not the only player feeling this way, based both on conversations with other players and general sentiment online. I really appreciate that this video highlights the fact that Arena stifles creativity, because perfectly describes why I don't enjoy playing on Arena. It's a shame, because Wizards is ostensibly focusing its efforts on making Arena the "premiere" venue for playing Magic (and putting MtGO out to pasture as a product). But the economy, the grind, the lack of spectator mode, and the instability of the client all combine to make it a suboptimal experience for players like me. Sadly, it shows no signs of improving, either.

I’d totally watch a 2 hours video about the issues with user experience in arena

I recently played in the Arena Decathalon Sealed event (3 Mid, 3 Vow packs) I talked with a few friends, debated a bit about which deck to play I lost a game, tuned my deck, lost, won, won, and lost again I played for about 2/3 hours, went 2-3, not great What's my reward? Literally nothing, just felt like I wasted my time I could've just played the starter decks in the basic "Play" queue free, and spent less time playing I think this is a lesson in bad game design (and I might know, I'm studying it), because looking at the first thing I said, it sounds like I should've enjoyed myself, I spent a few hours talking with my friends, playing a different take on one of my favourite formats in a game I love And I hated it, I just felt unfulfilled after my games and wanted to blame things for my losses

I was an “enfranchised” player and Arena was the last straw that made me quit magic. I loved Constructed format more than anything else, and after rotation I was in a Catch 22 where I didn’t have the standards cards to compete in events and win ICRs. All I could do was openplay limited... and I’m terrible at limited. I played unenjoyable decks to earn daily coins to play limited, and lost, and repeated the process. The frustration of losing when you’re only rewarded for winning was so bad that one day I broke. I realized the game was making me unhappy. That day I uninstalled Arena and honestly my mental health is better.

Great video. Haven’t watched anything made by Phil before but the editing is beautiful and full of very valid points. Adding some type of trade in system for your collection even 6:1 for a wildcard I think would totally fix most of arenas problems (not spectator mode)

My answer to all economy complaints was always 'Just play the game'. But then I asked my friend who just started with arena How often do you win. His answer was like one out of twelve games! Which is horrible and I guess the problem is with match making for beginers.. Concerning the creativity issue you mentioned. I've always enjoyed squeezing the best out of my collection while deckbuilding. Which reqires creativity, I guess. (And also saves wildcards :)) And imagine the faces of meta players being beaten by Quasiduplicated Affectionate Indrik!! Anyway, thanks for the video because I finally understood the arena economy complaints all over the internet.. O_o

this was great, would love to see more videos by Brewer's Kitchen! edit: lmao the NFT joke at the end killed me

I understand not everyone can be close to a LGS or wants to deal with Mtg:Online and Arena is in fact just a harmless means to play the game but that doesn’t erase the fact that this video game from the ground up is designed to feast off the compulsive gamblers and grinders and spin the hamster wheel for perpetuity and isn’t actually meant to be heavily invested in. They’ve minimized the costs of making sure the client is actually good and just barely holding itself together while maxiziming schemes that drain people of as much time and money they have

Thank you for finally saying what a lot of players have said. Regardless I'm done with arena until changes are made. I'm going back to mtgo.

Excellent analysis. I used to love crafting decks - I was brought up on pre-Net Deck magic. But in Arena I simply gather enough cards for 1 or 2 of the top tier decks so I can get to Mythic. There's zero point being a 'Johnny'. I can only afford to be a 'Spike'.

This is a great video guys, as a passionate player of the game it is delightful to see you spotlight this horrible and sad economy situation! We can just hope Wizard truly listens this time and makes long term investments & drastic changes. If not, I believe many people will quit this game (Arena not mtg specifically).

I’ve been playing Arena since just before War of the Spark. It was my on ramp back into the game, because the last time I’d played was some extremely kitchen table play during the previous Ravnica visit. When I started, I did all the research into the best way to build collections on Arena, did my first ever limited events, and played pretty frequently. I’m a stubborn person, and resolved myself to never pay in money if I don’t think it’ll help me long-term. I was broke, with no real expendable income for expensive hobbies (one of several reasons I came back through Arena, the ostensibly free option, rather than paper). To date, the only purchase I’ve made is a new player bundle ($15 USD) for the discounted gem rate, because it’d let me buy into the mastery pass every set provided I played enough. And I did play enough! You know those little set recap emails Arena sends out that tell you how much you played since the last set dropped? I was consistently in the top 5-10% for number of games played. All this to say that I’m one of the most committed free players on Arena. And you know what? It still beats you down and tries to wring your money out of you at every turn. I’ve had to make compromise after compromise to stay afloat, and I’m still sinking. I may not have spent more than 15 bucks, but my friend who refuses to play Arena (and frankly, good for them!) still feeds me all their codes from Twitch promotions and prerelease kits and such. Even playing as much as I do, it’s outright impossible to build decks for 4-of formats, so my constructed play is all Brawl/Historic Brawl. And all those games played? It’s exhausting playing so much Magic nonstop! I’ve hit multiple burnout points where I’d played so much that I simply couldn’t bring myself to even launch the client for weeks on end. You’ll notice I said I WAS in the top 5-10% of games played each set. For recent sets, I’ve been playing less and less because it’s all so draining. I never have the wildcards I need EVEN playing exclusively singleton, Arena is releasing more and more content with less and less ways for free players to keep up, and honestly, I’ve run out of patience. I undeniably have fun playing Arena, but that fun has come at an increasingly steep cost, both in time and emotional investment. I just don’t have the ability to keep going, despite how much I want to keep playing this game I love. The Arena economy isn’t just hostile to paying players, it’s hostile to everyone. My disappointment at Arena’s new “Alchemy” thing being another format, rather than an economy rework, was immeasurable, and ultimately the last straw for me. Yes, it’s cool they want to explore the digital design space, I actually think that’s a great idea! But if it comes at the expense of players then you can just throw all that hypothetical benefit right in the garbage. As much as players do want a digital format that stays fresher than Standard, it fundamentally has to come on the back of a radical improvement to card collection. You mention the idea of frequent free phantom drafts, and I honestly don’t think that’s radical enough. Give us REAL free drafts! They don’t even need to have decent rewards. Just having a repeatable source of a few packs a week would be such an incentive to try the game and keep coming back. And yes, it would be a bandaid fix for a much larger issue, but it’s a start, and far better than anything we’ve been promised so far.

Totally right about free weekly phantom drafts. I played all the free drafts like the kaladesh remastered one. I can remember what the series was called. They had a series of free phantom drafts for a brief time. It was much more fun to be picking cards for a deck, rather than compromising to pick misc cards for constructed. This is the closest thing arena could do to my favourite way to play magic, kitchen table cube.

The phantom draft idea is awesome! They really should do this on Arena.

You're a gem. A gem and a half. Goldfish is lucky to have you! Great edits and delivery.

All of this! While I've stopped playing for the time being until we get a paper-equivalent non-rotating format (Pioneer, anybody?), when I did play, one of the most frustrating experiences was feeling like I was locked into the same deck for months or years after spending my wild cards to craft it. Even when I *like* the deck, that gets old, and it would be so nice to have more variety, but often times I didn't want to take the risk of crafting something new only to find out that it didn't play as well as I hoped. Some sort of trading system for wild cards really needs to be added, because it's so hard to have more than one deck if you're not willing/able to spend a lot of money.

Predatory is a good word for it except, the, "prey" doesnt usually run straight into the jaws of the predator. Repeatedly. Every time.

Stumbled upon this video and it immediately earned my sub. So many content creators just don't understand how bad this economy is for the average free-to-play or budget player. I agree with nearly everything stated here. With the addition of Alchemy I have started looking for another game to play. I just cannot play in a way that is fun and creative on Arena anymore. There are just too many card that I cannot afford (while my collection is crammed with too many cards I don't need). It's really a shame. But thanks for the video!!

Real quality production there and great content. Thanks Phil.

Excellent points and your transition to humor is seamless. I was educated and laughed all along. Glad my LGS is comfortable with allowing in-game play. Even then.. I rather just play on camera or other means. So ridiculous the price on stuff you technically don't own!

A very well put together summary of the most pressing issues. I stopped playing arena around Strixhaven. I don't like/am not good at drafting and getting all the daily quests was the most frustrating thing in the world. One day the fatigue of grinding every day won over the need to keep up as a F2P player. Also your editing skills once again are overperforming :D

High Salutes & love for this video guys. I started playing MTGA when War of the Spark just came out and spent a lot on the other decks to build competitive decks. That's were WOTC caught me. That's kinda the Marketing Strategy I guess & if you don't keep up it's gonna cost you. I really hope this video gets to WOTC. HAPPY NEW YEAR GUYS.

This video is so good and needs more eyes on it! I personally deinstalled Arena after the Alchemy announcement and several months of not playing it. A free phantom draft would definitely get me back into it. Also I like the suggestion of TCCs Prof introducing a pre-version of Pioneer as a kind of way to work towards a non-rotating deck that I can get better with. Also Pioneer is the best constructed format and people should play it more

As far as the Alchemy and rebalancing cards, I already know a very simple, elegant, everyone-wins solution. When you boot up MTGA after a patch that rebalanced some cards, it should give you an inescapable full-screen popup right away that says: "Memory Lapse cost has been changed from 1B to 2B. Do you want to keep your copies, or destroy them and gain that number of wild cards?" Repeat for every card that was changed that pack (not just the "nerfed" cards, all changed cards). This way Wizards isn't just handing free wildcards (and therefore losing potential profit), they're LIQUIDATING the value that players have worked for. And for the people who don't care about minmaxing their value, they can just mash through the "no thanks I'll accept the rebalanced version instead" button until all the cards have been addressed. The only valid reasons I can imagine for Wizards not handing out wildcards after a rebalance are that a) they dont want to lose out on potential profit by giving out free stuff, and b) they don't want to make things more confusing for the new/casual players by requiring them to re-craft the cards. My approach handles both of those, and is also very clean to execute from a UI and database sense. Aside from all that... for the economy in general, Wizards just needs to bit the bullet and embrace the Hearthstone Dust system. There should only be one resource pool which cards can be crafted from. Rarer cards cost more. And users need to be able to convert their own cards into this resource, at some amount of loss. That's the healthiest and most flexible way to manage value and collections in a non-tradeable trading card game.

Good Video! Arena doesn't only do a bad job for newer players, it does something wich is actually hurting Arena's income: It scares away the whales. People who are willing to spent 150€ and more on each standard release can't even keep up with the content anymore. Those people now even struggle to have a variety of competitive decks, let alone brew janky stuff. And to be honest: You don't become a whale to be able to play the bare minimum needed to have fun in the Game. People often say you don't need every card of each set. But some people, and those are the whales, WANT those cards not only to have all competitive decks at their disposal, but to brew janky stuff, play them in historic Brawl, compete in janky events and so on. And its getting painfully expensive to do so. The amount of Side product (wich is also very hard/expensive to collect) thrown at collectors/whales in this Game is just WAY too overwhelming. Even Whales have spending limits, and they get exeedingly stretched in Arena. For many, many whales I know Alchemy was the last nail in the coffin. They simply quit the Game because they won't be able to collect a reasonable collection for their spending limit anymore. Anyways, this trend isnt new, it started with Jumpstart, and from then just got worse and worse. People who pay for this Game are actually leaving, and if they don't they cut spending or, as in my case, simply stop spending and try to live of their accumulated wildcards for as long as possible. Wizards does something even the most predatory games have a hard time doing: They're scaring away the Whales. This only gets worse by the fact that Arena isn't new player friendly at all. New players that are willing to cash into the game find themselves presented a bill so High, its simply not reasonable to do so. Especially if they want to cash into historic it's just unreasonable to do so. For F2P Standard players the economy actually didnt get much worse (except the fact of the increased amount of rares/mythics per set), but if you actually want to brew around, even standard is incredibly eypensive, as you need to collect AT LEAST 4 sets too even get a start, wich does get devaluated very quickly as those cards sink into the bottomless barrel that is historic. Another BIG Problem is the FOMO based economy of this Game. If you take a break for a few month, you miss out on so much its really hard (as in: expensive) to catch up again. So people who take a break might actually not want to come back, because they don't want to spend hundreds of Euros to have a decent collection again. Let alone missing out on something like Jumpstart or an Anthology. Im actually getting anxieties thinking about the new LotR Set beeing released to Historic and maybe even a new Jumpstart. At this point its actually a given that my wildcards WILL burn out at some point and I will stop playing this Game wich I actually like a lot. This is NOT the usual nerdrage. This is a serious economy problem, and the Video doesnt even scratch the surface of the serious problems this Game has economywise. Players, mostly whales, are actually leaving or stop paying. Wizards SHOULD take this seriously, because it is. But sadly, they won't. Theyre actually rubbing it in with pleasure by putting a bigger price tag on the Game every few month and cutting on daily deals, free events, free rewards and so on. Many people are really pissed about that and I think this time they might actually have gone too far. I've seen lots of Nerdrage in my time, but nothing was as persistent and as well supported by facts than the economy outrage on Arena.

As an ex-hearthstone player, I was instantly in love with this game the moment I heard about it and recognized it as the best card game. I love the mechanics, the incredible art and its variety. But I also happen to live in a country with a broken economy... So I am forced to be a ftp player. I loved the free decks arena gave me when I started playing the game. And that aspect of trying out different decks and cards is still the primary reason why I love magic. So, you know where Im going with this. Free to play magic is broken. It forces you to play meta decks and makes the overall experiance dull. My fav format is Historic Brawl because I only need 1 copy of the cards. I made a new deck recently and ran out of wildcards so Im porbably gonna drop mtga for a while until some free event comes up. Im not even talking about the physical game.

Love your suggestions. In addition to dusting: Instead of doing the three free packs for each set for the first 2 weeks of the set they should give out set specific wildcards. 2 Mythic, 6 Rare, 8 Uncommon, 14 Common that can only be used for cards in the new set. They also should give you a set specific draft token. That will let you get introduced to the new set and build a new deck to try out. I also like the idea of doing collectors boosters that would have special playboards, pets, sleeves, and card styles.

Missed you man! I'm sorry that the arena economy has made it hard for you to make content! I hope they fix it soon. It's really, really easy to fix, too. They have so many different games to emulate that work great.

Ive never complained, ever, about this game. I just took it for what it was and just played. I had my "system" going, playing some limited (dont have much time) and getting gems+packs to maybe buy the season pass for each set, while focusing on historic (ive been playing for years now so i have most of the good cards). This alchemy thing is the most greedy shit they've pulled so far. Almost all of the cards are rare/mythic with extremely powerful cards + shit cards at the same rarity to make you get even more packs in order to get the full playset of the op cards. At the same time, you now know they might just nerf the strongest ones so unless you are throwing money at the game, you dont really know what to craft. This month i did my mythic run for the free packs and ive started playing hearthstone again, its sad cause ive been playing mtg arena for years but i dont want to put up with this shit

I'm still early in the video, but the comment "Arena stifles creativity" really hits home why I stopped playing Arena, and started playing Commander. Well, playing paper Commander for the brief window between delta and omicron. Now I'm back to staring at my paper collection and dreaming of better days.

This was a great video. I'm am old magic player, off and on since Revised. I just came back to the game after some time off. I installed MTGA for the first time now as it was just coming online by the last time I took a break. If I didn't like limited I would have probably already uninstalled it by now. I don't see a way I'll ever catch up and play Historic. I did get a lot of wild cards from playing limited, but not nearly enough to experiment with.

Great video, I would actually love if MTGGoldfish featured more content like this in the future.

when hearthstone has a better economy you know your doing something wrong

This was amazingly edited, and genuinely entertaining!

Great video! The editing was super clean, but I would have loved it if it was a bit more toned down. The constant effects and motion were a bit annoying. Thanks for the awesome discussion king

The thing with MtG, that made me love it so much for a long time is indeed the possibility to test stupid decks, strange unplayable combos, just having fun when 1 out of 8 times you can put your impossible combo to use! But with Arena, that is completely impossible. I don't think that the "economy" per se is the problem, the major difference in gameplay between the paper and Arena versions is the fact the you can test a deck in paper even if you don't own the cards. Now that would be my idea for the game: if you want to play ranked, and then you want to play competitive magic, you should own the cards, but the friendly play version should make all cards available for you to play with, so the most enfranchized could test their own jank, and the newbies could actually test different decks without becoming broke, or without choosing one deck, from netdecking, and the meta flip over just right after they finally build it. Also, give more prizes for playing, not so much for winning, I agree with that 100%.

Phil, I'm so happy you are part of the Goldfish crew. You make some of the best magic content. Keep up the awesome work.

Hello, Just found the channel its great! Great video and excellent points. So I never played magic until a friend got me into arena. Experimented with decks and no info/$$ except chatting about cards with my mates. Made a black drougr necro deck.. got to gold on alchemy. So often fighting the same lists, rarely something different or creative. Just hit diamond on alchemy, with a black/red treasure deck I made, still with no money invested.. the grind damnnn but the sweet victory over payed for decks is sweet running into the same decks both obviously bought and op or white/any colour lol is boring which sucks pay to win and copying decklists combined makes this feel grossly money hungry people being forced into the same meta in order to win to play the decks they want is wrong, it stifles creativity absolutely for new players especially this is a rough time, also yeah i can basically never play limited lol wish i could

I love the part about draft. I think draft sounds like a lot of fun, but with the pandemic and my limited budget I haven't ever done in person draft and it's really frustrating to lose so often on arena since I'm not very good and then not be able to draft any more.

This is a great video! I do feel bad for beginners trying to get into MTG arena but are faced with the daunting task of dealing with a shit economy, on Arena, but also the potential of cards becoming nerfed with no buy back or reimbursement. Until WOTC FIXES this I would recommend any new players either go MOTO or Paper for competitive magic.

Very on point, good usage of memes, solid S tier review.

I’ve learned to work around this by just simply not caring what I play. I have a hbrawl deck where I only spent 1 mythic rare (which was randomly pulled from a pack right before making it) on Omnath (I saw another person playing it and thought it might be fun) and no more than 10 uncommons and commons on some multicolored lands to fix my mana, and everything else was from my own collection from misc pack opening due to winning or cards gotten from free event decks. It somehow absolutely crushes both life gain (because you are effectively stalling, meanwhile I am doing the exact opposite) and control(because if they counter my big x spell, I got more in my hand, and also recursion on that original spell)

I really want a yearly update from you on this going over what got better and what got worse.

the arena economy ,Is like buying NFT that you dont own

So since this subject is coming up, I've said this a few places. The economy broke me. I'm a +7 year vetren and I was in the beta. The economy is so bad I no longer play arena. I realised I was playing not for fun but just to keep up with the grind. I'm a brweing by nature I like playing jank for a bit and then moving on to something else. In arena this is impossible, since I cant afford to put money into the game. So I've switched to Legends of Runterra. That one not only is it possible to collect everything It's likely just by playing the game consistently. Also with how much I've collected I can usually brew a new deck once a week (sometimes longer if I'm missing all the champions) which means it dose not matter if its off meta, I can have fun with it and move on. Arena its a meta deck or nothing. So ya I'm done maybe if they fix things ill come back, or if they make a solo roguelike mode, but for now I quit playing 2 weeks ago and its only made my life better.

Thank you for this video. This is dead on based on my experience. The spark you speak of has been mostly fizzled for me because of the economy in place. I used to love jumping on and playing and that has been basically destroyed. While I’m an experienced MTG player, the draft system on Arena is still very disheartening because I spend a lot and lose a lot. I find myself not interested in limited as a format at all mainly because I’m a Commander player and limited requires a lot of practice. Arena could provide that but not at this steep of a price. I hope they find some way to deal with these issues because, as you said, this is the best game in the world. It deserves better than this.

Fair criticism presented with humor and good production. Excellent content, thank you! My heart goes out to anyone on Arena who isn't a limited enthusiast. I've managed to find a way to maintain enjoyment on Arena as an FTP player but it took awhile and multiple rage-quit-uninstalls. Had to realize the house will always win (took me awhile, dropped on my head as a kid). I just click away for a half hour or so before work performing "community service" (a.k.a losing) to get whatever gold I can to eventually earn enough to draft. This is not what interests the audience with the concerns you point out. I've basically checked out of the economics of the video game entirely. I spend about $25 once a quarter to "enjoy" (get tilted) some sealed pools from the new standard legal sets. BTW - have to share - Eagerly opened my first sealed pool from VOW the day it dropped and had Sorin, Bloodvial Purveyor and Concealing Curtains in my pool with good removal and good green cards to ramp it all out - and the client crashed before I could play a game! Got my gems back from WOTC but that was a once in a decade sealed pool and I never got to play it. Are we having FUN!

This was well reasoned and beautifully explained. It’s safe to say that Arena has evolved beyond what WOTC wanted or thought it would be and now the in game economy needs to catch up.

This is one of the best videos I've seen on this content. It acknowledges that there are more factors than just WCs in play, and it provides ACTIONABLE SOLUTIONS to the problem, although I still believe dusting would ultimately do nothing. I really appreciate this take. Well done!

Thank you for explaining the wildcard system to me. I started on arena in the last week and couldn't understand why I can't just buy a single card. Right now I'm just doing daily quests to save for getting the 20 pack bundle for free. The down side to arena that I can see is that green/blue infinite combo decks that are all exactly the same are annoying. Nobody tries anything different so as soon as you see that scute swarm get played, you know the game is the same as the last.

I love this video and the tone of your take on the subject. I would also add that a lack of any kind of secondary market is what really stifles Arena. MTGO is horribly janky to get started with, but you can buy and trade individual cards! Paper is easier to get started in, but there is still no wizards sanctioned way to buy singles. If arena just had trading or SOMETHING to allow players to interact in that way, you can BET there would already be a thriving scene for arena buy/sell/trade.

It's honestly very ironic that this is released today. I swapped to MOTO literally yesterday, and despite a few hiccups with learning the interface, phantom drafting and the various free trading bots are instantly so much better than the years I have been playing Arena, despite not being able to keep any cards or getting really low-power ones. The community feels instantly just makes a better impression.

This is such a good video. I just wanted to say I've been playing mtg for a long time in paper. I don't pay for anything on arena because I'd rather pay that same money on physical cards, but when I do play arena its mostly to just do my quests and sometimes a draft with my friends spectating to help since I'm bad a limited. So I basically just get on to do the bare minimum in hopes of getting enough wildcards or gold to do another draft so that I can play once the sets rotate or a meta deck comes out that I think is good enough to partly invest my wild cards in. I almost never completely finish a deck I invest in this way and those wildcards feel like they are a waste once the sets rotate unless they are used in a historic deck and even if they are I personally aren't likely to spend even more wildcards to make that historic deck better.

Great video, becomes godly video with that final statement.

Hey beginner here started a couple weeks ago and got lucky dropped sixty bucks and made the werewolves deck I wanted that turned out kinda meta but then I got to high diamond and the meta decks are insane white aggros so I tried to play some drafts and had no idea what was going on glad somebody is putting content like this out here

i think the biggest problem has always been the mana bases. every deck starts with at least 8 rare wildcards… also when you preorder the new sets you’ll end up with like 1 temple garden and 2 watery grave etc when i’m trying to build a RG deck. you can’t even do anything with the duals you didn’t need. it’s so easy irl at a prerelease to 1:1 these lands when people are building certain decks.

I highly doubt that Arena is sustainable mid-long term with it's constantly worsening economy. I used to be a whale on Arena, spend money on packs,skins,drafts, cubes etc. At one point I used to own 98%of all available cards but I quit the game with the alchemy announcement and won't return to the game until it majorly overhauls the economy.

Really good video, and you make some very good points. I've been on Arena since the beginning, and I to spend a good amount of money on Arena. I don't really mind because it's my entertainment/hobby, but I for the life of me don't know how A new player makes it. I've had friends (paper Magic players) show interest and try in out, after many games of not even seeing how you can win they give up and stick to paper. New players don't start with Meta decks, and no one wants to lose every game. Magic is a great game, but there's some changes that need to be made. Good content, keep it up.

Happy to have found this video. I've taken a 2-3 month break from Hearthstone to play MTG Arena (Which I was SO excited about finally being able to play on ios) but it's to the point now where progress has stalled unless I SPEND MORE REAL MONEY! In hearthstone, at least I knew I could set out to craft the card I want or gold upgrade my favorite card by grinding for dust and turning to my existing collection for extra crafting dust. Seems in MTG, my entire collection is basically WORTHLESS aside from the cards I crafted to make a Net deck that could help ensure the wins I needed to acquire gold so I can at LEAST get myself a few more packs so I get the next to zero chance that I'm going to open the particular mythic I want or the ever rarer random wild mythic. I will keep playing, but just not that much and I don't plan to put in any more $ as it's so damn overpriced for fun things like sleeves and full arts, etc. I wish it the economy was thought out better with the many users in mind and not just the money collecting creator.

Free phantom draft sounds amazing, you're so spot on for what I'd love to have to get me to play more than the dailies

I've been playing Arena since it was first released. When they did the beta reset, I had a near complete arena collection through grinding drafts. Since the reset I have mostly played limited and only took a few months off during eldraine and theros limited. Due to being competent in draft I have been able to craft nearly any deck I have wanted to try as I cap out a set through draft and reward packs. Even when they changed the number of rares and mythics, I was able to keep up. Even with the absurd Historic Horizons patch, I was able to build the decks I wanted - even jank decks. Finally I ran out of wild cards for Alchemy. Not a big loss for me as I prefer draft, but it would be cool if I could gift these cards to someone to help them get into the game I love. Seems like Wizards was dead set on getting us to have no wild cards built up, and I have to say, it is pretty predatory. For the first time in a long time I have been getting back into paper magic. At least there I can recoup some costs and give friends decks to jam with.

First of all, the way the top of your front monitor lines up perfectly with the top of the back monitor, AMAZING. And yea, I am one of the players that love to draft but end up losing and feeling bad so I uninstalled ARENA and haven't played in a long time. Will redownload and play a bunch if economy changes are made though.

Got suggested this video about a week after it came out, but spot on and totally agree with every point.

12:40 Thank you! I hate it when Timmy are just like "Just draft" like sorry but I have a life outside Magic. Sometimes I go outside and go to my classes I know crazy I can't play 3 hours a every single day just to maybe be able to make one deck that will then get nerfed a month later.

I appreciate the shoutout to Limited which really is the most economical way to open a set. I would add that Sealed is the best value. I don't think you get wildcard progress for the first 6 packs, but you do get 3 packs automatically in your prizes (which is a better ratio than Draft) which do get wildcard progress and the idea is to open some of the cards in Sealed and then "fill in the gaps" with wildcards. If you want to get a good start on a set's collection, do Sealed. (Also don't forget to craft uncommons/commons at some point for max vault progress). Also, if your first draft is on Arena, you will be in bronze-tier fwiw, so you'll generally be playing against other bronze-tier players unless you play Traditional for some reason. That said, the economy could definitely be improved for constructed-only players.

I've said for a long time now that every win should give 100 gold and every loss 50 so that way there is still some incentive to play considering FNM gives promos just for playing and packs for participating it wouldn't do anything but help the game same with exp 100 for win 50 for loss

Omg. This speaks to me so hard, and that makes me sad. I have a VERY addictive personality. I have been able to limit myself to $100 an expansion, but my god is it hard. And even then. I'm constantly complaining about how horrible the experience is. If I were to play in paper I would need to spend at least $100 just to make one deck, so that's my justification, but still... why can't the game be fun to play while I shovel money into the gaping maw of WOTC?

Brilliant man, brilliant contention(s), brilliant communicator.

I honestly just gave up on arena, I have been dropping 200-300$ a set to keep up. Stopped entirely after the new innistrad set. Haven’t looked back since. Back to playing hearthstone and runeterra spending way less and playing competitive with many decks

I love the point of this video, "User Experience and Loving the Game" you are spot on! When I play paper MTG with friends and they have one of the "Meta" decks (7:14) that everyone is playing it is nice to say "Do you have any other decks that I can play against?" Wouldn't that be a great feature to have in Arena? An option to NOT PLAY AGAINST certain cards. Who else is sick of playing against the Epiphany or decks? I come to play and have fun just like the main point of this video, creativity. WOTC needs to have this feature. Awesome video and agree with it.

Phil is the best addition to this channel hands down. I don’t even play 60 card formats but there’s only been 3 creators that have me engaged with 60 card content. Now it is 4! Right on Phil, this content is top notch.

It feels like every new set makes the entry fee to play Historic higher and higher. At some point it will be basically unattainable for new players and that's just sad.

This is an excellent video and really explains very well the problems with Arena recently.

Well thought out video. I quit Arena a year ago and it looks like things got worse, not better.

Amazing Video. Absolutely hits the nail on the head with the problem with arena stifling creativity. MTG is supposed to have a place for non-spike players, and arena does not have any space for them.

I have fun drafting, and I was able to get a decent collection because of that, but even then, there are some formats with very high variance, like Midnight Hunt, and that can also quickly make things prohibitively expensive in both time and money invested even if you like and do well in limited

Thank you sir. Very well said with solid points of discussion! The economy is the reason I stopped playing Arena sadly.

Terrific commentary. I agree on all points. There should be a dusting system for unused cards. And also, do I really need twelve Ghaltas?

Thanks for the insight, I was concidering to pick up Arena but coming from YGO Master Duel this game way too greedy for me.