I greatly thank you for this article that provides what I always wish for: real, verifiable data to base any discussion or opinion on. I honestly despise doomsaying as an attitude, as I think it often hints at personal issues (some people feel better by believing things around them are dire for everyone else, too), and more importantly, actively damages the environment through negativity and self-fulfilling prophecies.
The fact that I think what you just did here is brilliant and needed is the reason why I want to challenge a notion you expressed at the beginning, when you wrote, "we are in troubled times with Magic's Digital Product. Casual play is way down, community/chat is non-existent, most formats have seen a decrease in players joining events".
Now, this was clearly not the topic of your article and I know you only wanted to establish the basic setting for what followed, which actually contrasts with that original notion of doom. So I'm not actually challenging YOU here, but I think reflecting on that sentence complements the ending statement of the article.
So, I ask: do we have hard data for those claims?
"Casual play is way down": Do we have numbers for casual tables firing? Numbers of connections per day? Did WotC release any data on this regard?
"Community/chat in non-existent": What exactly are we talking about here? A community doesn't express itself uniquely via in-game chat. If anything, the V4 chat makes more difficult to develop a community from scratch, but it doesn't prevent for a community that already exists to meet and chat like it always did.
"Most formats have seen a decrease in players joining events": Again, based on what? Do we have a clear picture of events not firing in the last three months? And which formats are "most formats", exactly?
(Even if all this was substantiated, after a change which is pretty much still happening, wouldn't a temporary decrease just be physiological, and on par with every other switch of this type? People need to reacquaint themselves with the new interface and all that. Humans hate to read manuals/being forced to learn new things.)
I can provide some data of my own, anyway. During the last three months:
– number of articles on PureMTGO is the same or larger; number of hits on those pages is the same or larger. Source: PureMTGO
– number of players joining online PREs is the same or larger. Source: Gatherling
– financial assessment on the online secondary market is healthy and not consistent with any kind of crisis. Source: mtgGoldfish
– I'm told KTK is the most drafted format ever. No source for this, though, but the quantity of events firing in the lobby speaks for itself.
– A lot of new players are joining the fold, I see them in my events, especially Modern.
In my book, all this concurs to depict a very healthy situation: people are still building decks, writing about them, playing Limited, playing PREs (which is just one step higher than casual). And now, for the first time in many years, we've actually the chance to address what the client is doing wrong with the hope it'll be fixed. I'd say it's the best moment to be active in MTGO, and as you pointed out, it's even going to be better.
Hey, a little less negative, okay? You need to push the positive of the format. You should also spend more time looking at the Vintage events outside of MTGO, like BoM, Eternal Weekend and Vintage Super League. Don't just trash VSL: it includes four players who have made the finals of the Vintage Worlds Champs, plus a bunch really solid players. If you feel that the VSL meta is inbred, then talk about how, why, and what is different about the online meta. Don't just gratuitous bash other Vintage players and events: the online community is not large or strong enough to survive infighting and a circular firing squad. If someone or some group is supporting Vintage, then support them.
Good news for Vintage: this weekend I played 3 Vintage DEs instead of the usual 1. I couldn't play on Friday so maybe more fired but on Saturday I played 2 so at least 2 fired as well as 1 on Sunday. This means that reducing the number of events has probably helped a bit.
"The secondary market has largely collapsed already" I haven't seen evidence of that. Collapsing in some areas yes (Dragon's Maze = 23-25 a set but since it costs so much to redeem and it isn't relevant in most formats that isn't too hard to understand.).
Collapsed? Not yet. Cards still have value to intermediary bots. Where the market has been failed for a while is in player to player trading but that happened pre V4 afaik. The bots seem to be going strong.
VMA has strongly declined to a certain level but it has not collapsed. It may yet, but I suspect the decline had a more concrete cause than player disaffection. Probably the wearing off of excitement of the set + hoarders selling off their stock piles in a panic over v4 led to a depresssed market. At least that is what I suspect, having no proof one way or the other.
The main thing is people who are selling out now, are probably still hoping to buy back in at a later date. That hope may dwindle to nothing if WOTC doesn't do something to repair the damage done to date.
The secondary market has largely collapsed already. Most of the development updates I've read have stated that stability is the primary and practically only concern.
SO your premise is that the WOTC people in charge of deciding what gets fixed (first or at all) aka the triage unit, are cynically deciding to forget about keeping their casual player base in the hopes that that won't matter because they will make up for the losses (and they will suffer losses through the collapse of the secondary market if the casual base completely disappears) by increasing the amount of drafters even though most people who draft will only draft if they think they can get some positive value (ie offsetting the costs) from doing so, even if they don't make the finals of the 4332s and 84s?
Because that seems unlikely to me. As I see it, there is a critical mass that the MTGO player base needs in order to support the draft leavings sales (aka the Secondary Market). And if that collapses, drafters will suddenly have no reason to sell their cards (pennies on the dollar would be foolish indeed) and thus have less incentive to draft repeatedly since they won't be making some of their losses back.
Keeping in mind that MOST drafters don't go infinite on winnings.
It is frustrating that the chat doesn't permanently stay docked and that you have to re-dock it each game. Sometimes it doesn't give me the option to dock it at all either. If it was just permanently docked it would be close to being as good as the V3 chat.
I'm actually not saying that casual players are the cause of the crashes. I'm saying that having a bunch of casual players not spending money on the servers that already seem fragile enough is probably not going to help the situation.
I believe that the current round of crashes seems to be related to what you are describing, but I don't think there are a bunch of WotC people saying that what we need right now is more casual players. They are focused on protecting their revenue sources, and any ideas that are brought up to support casual players are going to meet scrutiny with the server stability issue.
Of course without the css it wrecks it a little for the comments but you can see it works. The HTML was c/p from the ap based on your list with the line break removed.
Yeah just like Jam's this one separates the list into main and sideboard based on the first empty line. So remove the empty line between wind-scarred crag and mantis rider. That wasn't generated by MTGO so you must have done that by accident.
Paul, I really, really appreciate what you've tried to do with that, but I'm writing my next article and getting tons of bugs. First list I tried is below, it throws up a bunch of "undefined" links in the middle, and with other lists I'm getting errors like randomly duplicated cards, some cards not showing or formatting randomly dying. Sorry, but I'm not able to work through it for my next article.
I docked my chat during the ptq today. I also docked it while recording some two mans last week. It was never used in the ptq, and rarely used in the two mans, but I docked it just to see if people would talk or would respond to being talked to.
For the text heavy pieces, I wouldn't focus so much on the suggestion of images to break up "walls of text", but more on the idea of formatting your articles. (I assume Paul is referring to the same when he mentions 'sophistication'). Using bold, italics, differing font sizes or List Formatting can really help convey your message. Break down text into sections, separate out definition lines, etc. Formatting provides you more control over your words and helps establish a flow for your readers.
When discussing your previous articles, you should provide the hyperlink. It demonstrates consideration for readers, both new and old. Also, easier navigation increases the chances that someone WILL go back and look. A win-win for all parties involved.
In regards to the video pieces, I think this week's was an improvement over the one from two weeks ago because you added an introductory text to it. I will say that when you start yawning in the video, it really killed my own interest in it. I'm not sure if a "re-take" would be too much of an inconvenience, but maybe find a way to apologize for it with some color commentary?
For a new writer, you are trying to sell some big ideas and that's great. Judging by some of the comments here, you obviously believe that the content of your words alone is enough to seal the deal. However, a little bit of "showmanship" could increase that chance even further.
I am curious where you get this idea that it is the casual players that crash the servers. It isn't. It is the way tourneys are configured that crash the servers. It is the stress of having x number of people in an event that crash the servers. The casual players aren't causing any of that stress.
I do feel you on the spending part. I think for most players drafts are a sucker's bet and sealed is even worse. The house always wins. That said, there has to be some pay off so some get lucky and continue. I was fairly near infinite with shards but that ended quickly enough when shards was replaced with the 3 set packs.
As for the whining well that is pretty natural amongst gamblers eh? As I said, if Blizzard had not burned the bridge I might be more interested in hearthstone but really MTG is where it is at for me anyway. The rest of the card games are just bad substitutes. At least so far.
If magic crashes whenever it reaches (I'm not sure of the numbers) 7000-9000 players online at once, then there really isn't room for players to be playing matches in the casual room. To me, that is a monumentally huge issue that needs to be addressed. If that is not addressed, then any community call to increase casual support is going to fall on deaf ears.
Most of the suggestions that I and many others have made for Magic Online to increase casual support has already been done by Hearthstone.
casual game quitters - In Hearthstone token gold prizes are awarded for winning a casual game, I've faced very few quitters in Hearthstone.
extra cards and items are useless and cluttering up collections - In Hearthstone extra cards can be converted into dust which can be used to forge desired cards
Tournaments take too long - In Hearthstone, arena is similar to a draft but the matches can be played whenever you want to play them. No waiting.
Special format support - Is not really there in Hearthstone, but there are player vs. computer matches set up with specialized opponents and player decks that offer some variety.
Magic Online can't work on any of these things until they have enough virtual real estate to house casual players and competitive players.
Catering only to the serious players is a short term strategy. It isn't doing much to support the game and future serious players of the game in the long term. But, if the server space isn't there, what else can you do?
I haven't played much magic in the last three months. I'm tired of spending $12-14 in drafts and feeling like I'm playing a loser's game over and over again. The high cost of playing also makes people into jerks. It's painful to watch a losing opponent whine and complain about luck and bad draws and how terrible it is to lose money on the game when they're playing a swiss draft. If they weren't putting so much money into the game, I'm betting they would feel better about it.
I'm a nickel and dime gambler and Magic Online is just too high stakes for me. In Hearthstone, anyone can go infinite without much skill involved. It's all about how fast you want to develop your decks.
I appreciate the appreciation, as well as the recognition of my focus on quality over quantity. Glad to see I have a devoted fan.
I would like to add, though, that there is quite a bit of interesting, quality content on this site, and you should definitely give the other writers another chance. It's a great community, and it wouldn't exist without everyone's contributions.
Meanwhile, I'm going to keep doing what I do. Check back next week for the newest article in my series on Relevance Theory.
I greatly thank you for this article that provides what I always wish for: real, verifiable data to base any discussion or opinion on. I honestly despise doomsaying as an attitude, as I think it often hints at personal issues (some people feel better by believing things around them are dire for everyone else, too), and more importantly, actively damages the environment through negativity and self-fulfilling prophecies.
The fact that I think what you just did here is brilliant and needed is the reason why I want to challenge a notion you expressed at the beginning, when you wrote, "we are in troubled times with Magic's Digital Product. Casual play is way down, community/chat is non-existent, most formats have seen a decrease in players joining events".
Now, this was clearly not the topic of your article and I know you only wanted to establish the basic setting for what followed, which actually contrasts with that original notion of doom. So I'm not actually challenging YOU here, but I think reflecting on that sentence complements the ending statement of the article.
So, I ask: do we have hard data for those claims?
"Casual play is way down": Do we have numbers for casual tables firing? Numbers of connections per day? Did WotC release any data on this regard?
"Community/chat in non-existent": What exactly are we talking about here? A community doesn't express itself uniquely via in-game chat. If anything, the V4 chat makes more difficult to develop a community from scratch, but it doesn't prevent for a community that already exists to meet and chat like it always did.
"Most formats have seen a decrease in players joining events": Again, based on what? Do we have a clear picture of events not firing in the last three months? And which formats are "most formats", exactly?
(Even if all this was substantiated, after a change which is pretty much still happening, wouldn't a temporary decrease just be physiological, and on par with every other switch of this type? People need to reacquaint themselves with the new interface and all that. Humans hate to read manuals/being forced to learn new things.)
I can provide some data of my own, anyway. During the last three months:
– number of articles on PureMTGO is the same or larger; number of hits on those pages is the same or larger. Source: PureMTGO
– number of players joining online PREs is the same or larger. Source: Gatherling
– financial assessment on the online secondary market is healthy and not consistent with any kind of crisis. Source: mtgGoldfish
– I'm told KTK is the most drafted format ever. No source for this, though, but the quantity of events firing in the lobby speaks for itself.
– A lot of new players are joining the fold, I see them in my events, especially Modern.
In my book, all this concurs to depict a very healthy situation: people are still building decks, writing about them, playing Limited, playing PREs (which is just one step higher than casual). And now, for the first time in many years, we've actually the chance to address what the client is doing wrong with the hope it'll be fixed. I'd say it's the best moment to be active in MTGO, and as you pointed out, it's even going to be better.
Tx for sharing- justified hole is very welcome these days.
In another note, i enjoy playing your robots deck with some Minor modifications
Very much!
Hey, a little less negative, okay? You need to push the positive of the format. You should also spend more time looking at the Vintage events outside of MTGO, like BoM, Eternal Weekend and Vintage Super League. Don't just trash VSL: it includes four players who have made the finals of the Vintage Worlds Champs, plus a bunch really solid players. If you feel that the VSL meta is inbred, then talk about how, why, and what is different about the online meta. Don't just gratuitous bash other Vintage players and events: the online community is not large or strong enough to survive infighting and a circular firing squad. If someone or some group is supporting Vintage, then support them.
:D glad you did too. Let me know if you have any other issues.
That and randomly after some concessions (who conceded doesn't matter as long as someone in the match conceded.)
Thanks, glad I checked back before posting the article :).
I have to redock every time I log in
Odd, it stays docked for me about 90% of the time, I only rarely have to re-dock the chat.
Good news for Vintage: this weekend I played 3 Vintage DEs instead of the usual 1. I couldn't play on Friday so maybe more fired but on Saturday I played 2 so at least 2 fired as well as 1 on Sunday. This means that reducing the number of events has probably helped a bit.
"The secondary market has largely collapsed already" I haven't seen evidence of that. Collapsing in some areas yes (Dragon's Maze = 23-25 a set but since it costs so much to redeem and it isn't relevant in most formats that isn't too hard to understand.).
Collapsed? Not yet. Cards still have value to intermediary bots. Where the market has been failed for a while is in player to player trading but that happened pre V4 afaik. The bots seem to be going strong.
VMA has strongly declined to a certain level but it has not collapsed. It may yet, but I suspect the decline had a more concrete cause than player disaffection. Probably the wearing off of excitement of the set + hoarders selling off their stock piles in a panic over v4 led to a depresssed market. At least that is what I suspect, having no proof one way or the other.
The main thing is people who are selling out now, are probably still hoping to buy back in at a later date. That hope may dwindle to nothing if WOTC doesn't do something to repair the damage done to date.
I wanted to dock it to the bottom, and could not do that, I just want to try it as many different places as I can until it feels right.
The secondary market has largely collapsed already. Most of the development updates I've read have stated that stability is the primary and practically only concern.
SO your premise is that the WOTC people in charge of deciding what gets fixed (first or at all) aka the triage unit, are cynically deciding to forget about keeping their casual player base in the hopes that that won't matter because they will make up for the losses (and they will suffer losses through the collapse of the secondary market if the casual base completely disappears) by increasing the amount of drafters even though most people who draft will only draft if they think they can get some positive value (ie offsetting the costs) from doing so, even if they don't make the finals of the 4332s and 84s?
Because that seems unlikely to me. As I see it, there is a critical mass that the MTGO player base needs in order to support the draft leavings sales (aka the Secondary Market). And if that collapses, drafters will suddenly have no reason to sell their cards (pennies on the dollar would be foolish indeed) and thus have less incentive to draft repeatedly since they won't be making some of their losses back.
Keeping in mind that MOST drafters don't go infinite on winnings.
It is frustrating that the chat doesn't permanently stay docked and that you have to re-dock it each game. Sometimes it doesn't give me the option to dock it at all either. If it was just permanently docked it would be close to being as good as the V3 chat.
I'm actually not saying that casual players are the cause of the crashes. I'm saying that having a bunch of casual players not spending money on the servers that already seem fragile enough is probably not going to help the situation.
I believe that the current round of crashes seems to be related to what you are describing, but I don't think there are a bunch of WotC people saying that what we need right now is more casual players. They are focused on protecting their revenue sources, and any ideas that are brought up to support casual players are going to meet scrutiny with the server stability issue.
1Island
5Mountain
4Mystic Monastery
3Plains
4Swiftwater Cliffs
3Wind-Scarred Crag
4Mantis Rider
4Monastery Swiftspear
4Seeker of the Way
2Crater's Claws
4Defiant Strike
3Feat of Resistance
4Hordeling Outburst
2Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
3Singing Bell Strike
3Treasure Cruise
3Arc Lightning
3Disdainful Stroke
1Erase
1Jeering Instigator
1Mindswipe
2Ride Down
4Suspension Field
4Suspension Field
3Disdainful Stroke
1Island
5Mountain
4Mystic Monastery
3Plains
4Swiftwater Cliffs
3Wind-Scarred Crag
4Mantis Rider
4Monastery Swiftspear
4Seeker of the Way
2Crater's Claws
4Defiant Strike
3Feat of Resistance
4Hordeling Outburst
2Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
3Singing Bell Strike
3Treasure Cruise
Sideboard:
3Arc Lightning
3Disdainful Stroke
1Erase
1Jeering Instigator
1Mindswipe
2Ride Down
4Suspension Field
3Disdainful Stroke
Of course without the css it wrecks it a little for the comments but you can see it works. The HTML was c/p from the ap based on your list with the line break removed.
Yeah just like Jam's this one separates the list into main and sideboard based on the first empty line. So remove the empty line between wind-scarred crag and mantis rider. That wasn't generated by MTGO so you must have done that by accident.
Paul, I really, really appreciate what you've tried to do with that, but I'm writing my next article and getting tons of bugs. First list I tried is below, it throws up a bunch of "undefined" links in the middle, and with other lists I'm getting errors like randomly duplicated cards, some cards not showing or formatting randomly dying. Sorry, but I'm not able to work through it for my next article.
3 Flooded Strand
1 Island
5 Mountain
4 Mystic Monastery
3 Plains
4 Swiftwater Cliffs
3 Wind-Scarred Crag
4 Mantis Rider
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Seeker of the Way
2 Crater's Claws
4 Defiant Strike
3 Feat of Resistance
4 Hordeling Outburst
4 Jeskai Charm
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
3 Singing Bell Strike
3 Treasure Cruise
3 Arc Lightning
3 Disdainful Stroke
1 Erase
1 Jeering Instigator
1 Mindswipe
2 Ride Down
4 Suspension Field
I docked my chat during the ptq today. I also docked it while recording some two mans last week. It was never used in the ptq, and rarely used in the two mans, but I docked it just to see if people would talk or would respond to being talked to.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely take all of that into consideration.
I'm actually not that new of a writer...I've been writing for slightly more than three years now. I am obviously new to this site, though.
I'd like to add some constructive criticism.
For the text heavy pieces, I wouldn't focus so much on the suggestion of images to break up "walls of text", but more on the idea of formatting your articles. (I assume Paul is referring to the same when he mentions 'sophistication'). Using bold, italics, differing font sizes or List Formatting can really help convey your message. Break down text into sections, separate out definition lines, etc. Formatting provides you more control over your words and helps establish a flow for your readers.
When discussing your previous articles, you should provide the hyperlink. It demonstrates consideration for readers, both new and old. Also, easier navigation increases the chances that someone WILL go back and look. A win-win for all parties involved.
In regards to the video pieces, I think this week's was an improvement over the one from two weeks ago because you added an introductory text to it. I will say that when you start yawning in the video, it really killed my own interest in it. I'm not sure if a "re-take" would be too much of an inconvenience, but maybe find a way to apologize for it with some color commentary?
For a new writer, you are trying to sell some big ideas and that's great. Judging by some of the comments here, you obviously believe that the content of your words alone is enough to seal the deal. However, a little bit of "showmanship" could increase that chance even further.
Hoping for some great pieces in the future,
- Gio
I am curious where you get this idea that it is the casual players that crash the servers. It isn't. It is the way tourneys are configured that crash the servers. It is the stress of having x number of people in an event that crash the servers. The casual players aren't causing any of that stress.
I do feel you on the spending part. I think for most players drafts are a sucker's bet and sealed is even worse. The house always wins. That said, there has to be some pay off so some get lucky and continue. I was fairly near infinite with shards but that ended quickly enough when shards was replaced with the 3 set packs.
As for the whining well that is pretty natural amongst gamblers eh? As I said, if Blizzard had not burned the bridge I might be more interested in hearthstone but really MTG is where it is at for me anyway. The rest of the card games are just bad substitutes. At least so far.
I'm talking about the bigger picture.
If magic crashes whenever it reaches (I'm not sure of the numbers) 7000-9000 players online at once, then there really isn't room for players to be playing matches in the casual room. To me, that is a monumentally huge issue that needs to be addressed. If that is not addressed, then any community call to increase casual support is going to fall on deaf ears.
Most of the suggestions that I and many others have made for Magic Online to increase casual support has already been done by Hearthstone.
casual game quitters - In Hearthstone token gold prizes are awarded for winning a casual game, I've faced very few quitters in Hearthstone.
extra cards and items are useless and cluttering up collections - In Hearthstone extra cards can be converted into dust which can be used to forge desired cards
Tournaments take too long - In Hearthstone, arena is similar to a draft but the matches can be played whenever you want to play them. No waiting.
Special format support - Is not really there in Hearthstone, but there are player vs. computer matches set up with specialized opponents and player decks that offer some variety.
Magic Online can't work on any of these things until they have enough virtual real estate to house casual players and competitive players.
Catering only to the serious players is a short term strategy. It isn't doing much to support the game and future serious players of the game in the long term. But, if the server space isn't there, what else can you do?
I haven't played much magic in the last three months. I'm tired of spending $12-14 in drafts and feeling like I'm playing a loser's game over and over again. The high cost of playing also makes people into jerks. It's painful to watch a losing opponent whine and complain about luck and bad draws and how terrible it is to lose money on the game when they're playing a swiss draft. If they weren't putting so much money into the game, I'm betting they would feel better about it.
I'm a nickel and dime gambler and Magic Online is just too high stakes for me. In Hearthstone, anyone can go infinite without much skill involved. It's all about how fast you want to develop your decks.
Tina,
I appreciate the appreciation, as well as the recognition of my focus on quality over quantity. Glad to see I have a devoted fan.
I would like to add, though, that there is quite a bit of interesting, quality content on this site, and you should definitely give the other writers another chance. It's a great community, and it wouldn't exist without everyone's contributions.
Meanwhile, I'm going to keep doing what I do. Check back next week for the newest article in my series on Relevance Theory.