What's funny is I like the 2nd place guy's deck better. That might be a matter of taste but it seems like it should handle things just fine. OTOH I am not a good player so what do I know?
My suggestion on how to make Pauper unattractive to grinders... In the past, Pauper DE's cost the same and paid out the same as all other DE's. Why not hold true to the name of the format? Reduce the entry cost and scale the prize payout down so as to keep roughly the same ratio of tix in versus packs out?
DE's are 6 tix to enter with prize payout of 11 packs for 4-0 and 6 packs for 3-1. Why not make it 3 tix to enter with 5 packs for 4-0 and 3 packs for 3-1?
The event would be scaled down but would require the same time commitment, making the tix/hour rate unattractive to grinders. At the same time, it would make competitive play more affordable for players who play to enjoy the format and/or are playing the format due to budget constraints.
I agree the need to separate the grinders from the casual players. In general, the payouts from MTGO are extremely low for the time you need to put in. Wizards could attract grinders to events with higher entry fees and higher payouts. Grinders will choose the events with the highest value and because of the low costs and equal payouts that used to be pauper and momir.
By having higher ticket and prize events for standard, modern, legacy, etc, wizards could give people incentive to invest in those decks and leave pauper to those just starting the game. For some reason wizards seem to be unwilling to go that route. I guess that they want people to play magic for fun and are just blind to the fact that some people are always going to grind for value.
I like to play pauper casually, I like to have some competition, but even before it was hard to find the time to do a daily event. I don't want to play 2-mans and 8-mans where I am going to lose money. Cweaver is completey right about the tickets. As long as people are playing events, the tickets have to come from somewhere and they all come from the MTGO shop orginally.
I don't have problems with grinders in general. What I do have is a problem with an incentive that draws grinders into a format that should appeal to a lot of newer players. Wizards needs grinders, because grinders spend TIX. However, Wizard should keep grinders and new players apart until the new players are ready for that level of challenge.
Pauper is a good format for new players to get used to competitive play. Subsidizing grinders in that particular format makes little sense.
As long as they dont shut down the player run events things I can live with whatever happens. Different payouts for events with different investment requirements makes sense though. But cutting pauper events altogether just feels shortsighted when its such a popular format. I dont think you force many people to play more expensive formats by not offering more budget formats. People that pay the higher cost events I think like those events and are ok with the investment and are going to play them, regardless. The only way to increase participation in those events is by increasing their EV not by cutting the availability of other events.
Pauper has a huge following of people who play the format because they love the format. I could wax poetic about it, but now my options of playing the format are only casual if I ever want to earn on it. I think fundamentally if you are a better player than your opponents, you shouldn't be slowly throwing away tickets. At this point, with Theros packs as they are, you have to win 60% of your matches to just break even in 8-man queues.
Given that this is pretty unreasonable for any new player to achieve, Pauper certainly doesn't meet the requirements for new players that way.
Even further, does it matter how Wizards gets the tickets? Secondary market or otherwise, there is only ONE WAY tickets come onto the market. Someone buys them from the Store. The in-game store. I'm starting to get rather annoyed that no one sees this no matter how much I scream it at the top of my lungs on every website and social media. It's pretty clear that drafts will continue to fire regardless of whether Pauper exists. Drafts are always firing, some people play Magic only to draft and they are very clearly the majority. Limited Resources is the biggest Magic podcast and that's not even remotely close.
Taking away the value of Pauper means we regress to a more casual format. The last 3 Pauper Daily Events haven't fired, and I have doubts that this weekend will be much better. This leaves 8-man queues which, at this point, only grinders can actually win at.
This also takes away demand for older format drafts. I know I drafted Tempest and Masques a total of 7 times looking for Pauper staples primarily. I wouldn't have drafted either of these formats if not for Pauper.
About the monetary restrictions: I feel like I'm the person you particularly called out, although I'm sure it wasn't directed at me. I spent an initial $100 on MTGO buying a RDW deck late last year. I invested another $100 when I ran dry. After that bit ran dry, I was ready to quit MTGO until I discovered Pauper. Pauper gave me an entry into a world I didn't know existed where I didn't have to dump another $100 to buy new cards and decks for. This was important to me, since the $200 I had spent over the 3 months was financially a burden. I couldn't afford to do it again for sure. I since played Pauper, and invested in 2 real life prereleases: M14 and THS. I invested in MTGO Prereleases: DGM, M14, THS, Modern Masters. I draft a lot. I can afford to spend $25 a month or so on the game, and Pauper had given me an outlet so that I could continue to play the game. I support Wizards and real life card stores whenever possible because I love that they give me this format that I enjoy.
There's also no other format you can "brew" in without breaking the bank. You aren't building a Modern deck of any variety without $200+. In Pauper you can do that, and people come up with new amazing ideas about once a month. Some of these ideas warp the format. Some of these ideas are from unknown folks who had a huge love for Metalcraft White Weenie(look at the 12th place list here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital...)
But why would people even think about Pauper when the other offerings are clearly better value? Other offerings that don't require a minimum 7 hours commitment with Premier Events? Other offerings where they don't have to learn a format from scratch that they have to achieve a ridiculously high win-rate to even break even?
No, I think this slowly kills Pauper or drives it back down to the player run event level. This is a shame, since there is a huge real life following of people who enjoy Pauper because we enjoy playing the all-common format. https://www.facebook.com/pauper.revolution
I'm going to get off my soapbox now. I know this has all been said before, and it's been said by me. I'm a huge Pauper enthusiast, and I shall continue to play in spite of all this.
What do you think the overall effect would be if MTGO based logins on IP addresses? Would it cut grinders, or just make them a bit more inconvenienced?
My guess is that Pete has a similar opinion that a lot of players hold - do your own thing as long as it doesn't rain on my parade. The 'grinder' here is often double or more queuing which means making opponents wait (even the best at it will make some opponents wait unnecessarily). The overall behavior of grinders has also theoretically impacted queue and tournament structure, and generally not for what a lot consider the better. In the end MTGO is trying to serve 2 different end goals of players and they clash often. Some people play for the fun of playing, others play to win.
Same rationale for WotC not giving more prize support for more expensive constructed formats (Classic/Legacy, and even to some extent Modern). It's lazy of WotC to simply say that one prize fits all, and then turn around and say, "well, this format is not good (for many of the reason's that Pete outlines above) for MTGO so, let's just cut out the DE's that had the highest EV".
What they really need to do is vary the prize support by format. Would it be so hard to have prizes scale from Momir, pauper, Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Classic(Vintage when it arrives)? I would imagine most Legacy and Classic/Vintage players would be willing to pay higher entry fees if prizes were aptly adjusted as well. I've heard the tired excuse regarding gambling and laws surrounding prizes and whatnot, and while I'm no lawyer, but that can't possibly hold up in court (or at least make it any more of an issue than what they are already doing).
I agree with you on why WOTC is doing it, but disagree that bringing them back would be a bad thing for MTGO as a whole.
" The grinders played the best available deck, and played to win. As a whole, they were not very talkative, and the ones I played were often multi-queuing. This meant that their opponents spent a lot of time waiting."
"Getting a bunch of grinders into the format has another negative impact. If Pauper is supposed to serve as an entry level format for newer players, then grinders are the worst possible thing to lure into the format. Grinders tend to win, and win quickly and efficiently. That’s their job. Grinders stomp unprepared or inexperienced players, and getting stomped is not fun. By some estimates, 25 to 50% or more of the players in Pauper Dailies were grinders, which would make for a very harsh and unfun environment for the new players that the format is supposed to support."
"And, even having said that, now I am going to brace myself for a ton of personal attacks and insults, most of which have no relationship to what I said. That’s sad, and depressing. And if you wonder why some of the best Magic writers quit – that’s why. (After almost 15 years of this, I don’t quit, but I am way, way more cynical and bitter than I used to be.)"
I'm not quite sure what the requirements are that make someone a grinder, but whatever they are, it sounds like you do not have a very high opinion of them.
Nice article! I like your analysis of the grinders. Personally, I play a lot of momir. And Wizards gets very little from me, so cant really blame them for sacking the format. Well, I still have the 2 mans and 8 mans. I dont think they are per se bad for their business?
I saw you posting in the "I love MTGO" thread. Hopefully that means you are not all bitter and cynical ;-) It would be a Dark day if you ever dropped out of the community...
This is a fundamental truth of Constructed magic. It's a tough pill to swallow in many ways. I mean, I wish Classic/Vintage was a little cheaper and appealed to more people, but it doesn't. You kinda have to take the bad with the good.
For Pauper enthusiasts, that pill is know that people aren't there because they enjoy the play or the community, they just enjoy beating you and winning the prizes doing it because they are good at magic and the decks take almost no effort (read: money - time spent acquiring cards at minimal cost) to pick up.
However, if I were part of the pauper group (whom I have a soft spot for) I'd still be mad. And here's why - PRJ didn't quite go far enough down this rabbit hole, I think. The reason Pauper is losing it's dailies is because WoTC doesn't or are unwilling to have the payout match the buy-in to the format. So the reason they lost dailies is rally because WOTC doesn't want to spend time and effort to allow you to play for simply less prizes, which would be an ideal solution for the pauper players, even if it might shine a harsh light on a more true representation of the player base when all the grinders left the format.
Because there is nothing wrong with Grinders in a format, IMHO. It's all about their bottom line for WoTC on this one. They think that by taking away pauper, they can get people playing other formats (formats that push the sale of packs through needing Mythic Rares and Rares, which is all the rest) , which increases their bottom line.
I'm not, and never have been, enamored of WOTC's cookie-cutter approach to tournaments. Imagine if there was a kind of decree that every sanctioned paper event had to have a payout exactly the same regardless of format... it's just laziness or a lack of resources to pay attention to what needs to happen.
Thanks for replying! I love to hear from the readers. As far as how I tapped and used it on, sometimes In the haste of the moment I tap the wrong lands and curse myself under my breath as i realize it. lol
As far as the Perilous Research I hadn't thought about doing anything in response to Oubliette, but now that I know that trick I sure will use it.
and finally I had every intention to draw a card at that point, I just clicked okay without doing so.
I like your list, my only problem is that I can't reliably cast Fabled Hero. I think it would be better to up the land count to 22, sacrificing the single Dauntless Onslaught for it.
How do you feel about Soldier of the Pantheon? All lists on mtggoldfish run 4. I don't like him (very few multicolored spells in Block), but it lends to explosive starts.
Oh btw, i increased the extra prizes Im adding to the first few events. It will be double prizes for the first 2 events now and 5 tix to someone tied for highest attendence at the first 3 events (must complete at least 2 rounds each event for the attendence to count).
Again we dont have a decision on the exact first week for the event but it should be soon. good luck guys.
What's funny is I like the 2nd place guy's deck better. That might be a matter of taste but it seems like it should handle things just fine. OTOH I am not a good player so what do I know?
Looks like the deck will pick up a bit in popularity. It just won the GP!
We went with celestial flare on reddit! :d
Might not the answer to Blood Baron be himself?
One of the main reasons pauper prices have dropped is Masques block drafts this week, Saga block drafts next week.
jvs
Great article as always, Pete.
My suggestion on how to make Pauper unattractive to grinders... In the past, Pauper DE's cost the same and paid out the same as all other DE's. Why not hold true to the name of the format? Reduce the entry cost and scale the prize payout down so as to keep roughly the same ratio of tix in versus packs out?
DE's are 6 tix to enter with prize payout of 11 packs for 4-0 and 6 packs for 3-1. Why not make it 3 tix to enter with 5 packs for 4-0 and 3 packs for 3-1?
The event would be scaled down but would require the same time commitment, making the tix/hour rate unattractive to grinders. At the same time, it would make competitive play more affordable for players who play to enjoy the format and/or are playing the format due to budget constraints.
Next week's flashback draft format is Urza block. The "announcement" was buried in one of the MTGO week articles.
I agree the need to separate the grinders from the casual players. In general, the payouts from MTGO are extremely low for the time you need to put in. Wizards could attract grinders to events with higher entry fees and higher payouts. Grinders will choose the events with the highest value and because of the low costs and equal payouts that used to be pauper and momir.
By having higher ticket and prize events for standard, modern, legacy, etc, wizards could give people incentive to invest in those decks and leave pauper to those just starting the game. For some reason wizards seem to be unwilling to go that route. I guess that they want people to play magic for fun and are just blind to the fact that some people are always going to grind for value.
I like to play pauper casually, I like to have some competition, but even before it was hard to find the time to do a daily event. I don't want to play 2-mans and 8-mans where I am going to lose money. Cweaver is completey right about the tickets. As long as people are playing events, the tickets have to come from somewhere and they all come from the MTGO shop orginally.
I don't have problems with grinders in general. What I do have is a problem with an incentive that draws grinders into a format that should appeal to a lot of newer players. Wizards needs grinders, because grinders spend TIX. However, Wizard should keep grinders and new players apart until the new players are ready for that level of challenge.
Pauper is a good format for new players to get used to competitive play. Subsidizing grinders in that particular format makes little sense.
As long as they dont shut down the player run events things I can live with whatever happens. Different payouts for events with different investment requirements makes sense though. But cutting pauper events altogether just feels shortsighted when its such a popular format. I dont think you force many people to play more expensive formats by not offering more budget formats. People that pay the higher cost events I think like those events and are ok with the investment and are going to play them, regardless. The only way to increase participation in those events is by increasing their EV not by cutting the availability of other events.
Pauper has a huge following of people who play the format because they love the format. I could wax poetic about it, but now my options of playing the format are only casual if I ever want to earn on it. I think fundamentally if you are a better player than your opponents, you shouldn't be slowly throwing away tickets. At this point, with Theros packs as they are, you have to win 60% of your matches to just break even in 8-man queues.
Given that this is pretty unreasonable for any new player to achieve, Pauper certainly doesn't meet the requirements for new players that way.
Even further, does it matter how Wizards gets the tickets? Secondary market or otherwise, there is only ONE WAY tickets come onto the market. Someone buys them from the Store. The in-game store. I'm starting to get rather annoyed that no one sees this no matter how much I scream it at the top of my lungs on every website and social media. It's pretty clear that drafts will continue to fire regardless of whether Pauper exists. Drafts are always firing, some people play Magic only to draft and they are very clearly the majority. Limited Resources is the biggest Magic podcast and that's not even remotely close.
Taking away the value of Pauper means we regress to a more casual format. The last 3 Pauper Daily Events haven't fired, and I have doubts that this weekend will be much better. This leaves 8-man queues which, at this point, only grinders can actually win at.
This also takes away demand for older format drafts. I know I drafted Tempest and Masques a total of 7 times looking for Pauper staples primarily. I wouldn't have drafted either of these formats if not for Pauper.
About the monetary restrictions: I feel like I'm the person you particularly called out, although I'm sure it wasn't directed at me. I spent an initial $100 on MTGO buying a RDW deck late last year. I invested another $100 when I ran dry. After that bit ran dry, I was ready to quit MTGO until I discovered Pauper. Pauper gave me an entry into a world I didn't know existed where I didn't have to dump another $100 to buy new cards and decks for. This was important to me, since the $200 I had spent over the 3 months was financially a burden. I couldn't afford to do it again for sure. I since played Pauper, and invested in 2 real life prereleases: M14 and THS. I invested in MTGO Prereleases: DGM, M14, THS, Modern Masters. I draft a lot. I can afford to spend $25 a month or so on the game, and Pauper had given me an outlet so that I could continue to play the game. I support Wizards and real life card stores whenever possible because I love that they give me this format that I enjoy.
There's also no other format you can "brew" in without breaking the bank. You aren't building a Modern deck of any variety without $200+. In Pauper you can do that, and people come up with new amazing ideas about once a month. Some of these ideas warp the format. Some of these ideas are from unknown folks who had a huge love for Metalcraft White Weenie(look at the 12th place list here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital...)
But why would people even think about Pauper when the other offerings are clearly better value? Other offerings that don't require a minimum 7 hours commitment with Premier Events? Other offerings where they don't have to learn a format from scratch that they have to achieve a ridiculously high win-rate to even break even?
No, I think this slowly kills Pauper or drives it back down to the player run event level. This is a shame, since there is a huge real life following of people who enjoy Pauper because we enjoy playing the all-common format. https://www.facebook.com/pauper.revolution
I'm going to get off my soapbox now. I know this has all been said before, and it's been said by me. I'm a huge Pauper enthusiast, and I shall continue to play in spite of all this.
What do you think the overall effect would be if MTGO based logins on IP addresses? Would it cut grinders, or just make them a bit more inconvenienced?
My guess is that Pete has a similar opinion that a lot of players hold - do your own thing as long as it doesn't rain on my parade. The 'grinder' here is often double or more queuing which means making opponents wait (even the best at it will make some opponents wait unnecessarily). The overall behavior of grinders has also theoretically impacted queue and tournament structure, and generally not for what a lot consider the better. In the end MTGO is trying to serve 2 different end goals of players and they clash often. Some people play for the fun of playing, others play to win.
Same rationale for WotC not giving more prize support for more expensive constructed formats (Classic/Legacy, and even to some extent Modern). It's lazy of WotC to simply say that one prize fits all, and then turn around and say, "well, this format is not good (for many of the reason's that Pete outlines above) for MTGO so, let's just cut out the DE's that had the highest EV".
What they really need to do is vary the prize support by format. Would it be so hard to have prizes scale from Momir, pauper, Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Classic(Vintage when it arrives)? I would imagine most Legacy and Classic/Vintage players would be willing to pay higher entry fees if prizes were aptly adjusted as well. I've heard the tired excuse regarding gambling and laws surrounding prizes and whatnot, and while I'm no lawyer, but that can't possibly hold up in court (or at least make it any more of an issue than what they are already doing).
I agree with you on why WOTC is doing it, but disagree that bringing them back would be a bad thing for MTGO as a whole.
" The grinders played the best available deck, and played to win. As a whole, they were not very talkative, and the ones I played were often multi-queuing. This meant that their opponents spent a lot of time waiting."
"Getting a bunch of grinders into the format has another negative impact. If Pauper is supposed to serve as an entry level format for newer players, then grinders are the worst possible thing to lure into the format. Grinders tend to win, and win quickly and efficiently. That’s their job. Grinders stomp unprepared or inexperienced players, and getting stomped is not fun. By some estimates, 25 to 50% or more of the players in Pauper Dailies were grinders, which would make for a very harsh and unfun environment for the new players that the format is supposed to support."
"And, even having said that, now I am going to brace myself for a ton of personal attacks and insults, most of which have no relationship to what I said. That’s sad, and depressing. And if you wonder why some of the best Magic writers quit – that’s why. (After almost 15 years of this, I don’t quit, but I am way, way more cynical and bitter than I used to be.)"
I'm not quite sure what the requirements are that make someone a grinder, but whatever they are, it sounds like you do not have a very high opinion of them.
Nice article! I like your analysis of the grinders. Personally, I play a lot of momir. And Wizards gets very little from me, so cant really blame them for sacking the format. Well, I still have the 2 mans and 8 mans. I dont think they are per se bad for their business?
I saw you posting in the "I love MTGO" thread. Hopefully that means you are not all bitter and cynical ;-) It would be a Dark day if you ever dropped out of the community...
Good analysis, Mike.
I never really understood Grim Lavamancer. But that makes a lot of sense!
My God, Im a bad constructed player :-)
yeah still waiting on jam to add Theros cards to the deckbuilder.
The UG Flash deck is missing 5 sideboard cards, which looks like they should be: 2 Triton Tactics and 3 Bident of Thassa.
This is a fundamental truth of Constructed magic. It's a tough pill to swallow in many ways. I mean, I wish Classic/Vintage was a little cheaper and appealed to more people, but it doesn't. You kinda have to take the bad with the good.
For Pauper enthusiasts, that pill is know that people aren't there because they enjoy the play or the community, they just enjoy beating you and winning the prizes doing it because they are good at magic and the decks take almost no effort (read: money - time spent acquiring cards at minimal cost) to pick up.
However, if I were part of the pauper group (whom I have a soft spot for) I'd still be mad. And here's why - PRJ didn't quite go far enough down this rabbit hole, I think. The reason Pauper is losing it's dailies is because WoTC doesn't or are unwilling to have the payout match the buy-in to the format. So the reason they lost dailies is rally because WOTC doesn't want to spend time and effort to allow you to play for simply less prizes, which would be an ideal solution for the pauper players, even if it might shine a harsh light on a more true representation of the player base when all the grinders left the format.
Because there is nothing wrong with Grinders in a format, IMHO. It's all about their bottom line for WoTC on this one. They think that by taking away pauper, they can get people playing other formats (formats that push the sale of packs through needing Mythic Rares and Rares, which is all the rest) , which increases their bottom line.
I'm not, and never have been, enamored of WOTC's cookie-cutter approach to tournaments. Imagine if there was a kind of decree that every sanctioned paper event had to have a payout exactly the same regardless of format... it's just laziness or a lack of resources to pay attention to what needs to happen.
One thing I would note about the burn deck, if you drop the fetches, drop the lavamancer, it isn't nearly as strong without fetches.
Thanks for replying! I love to hear from the readers. As far as how I tapped and used it on, sometimes In the haste of the moment I tap the wrong lands and curse myself under my breath as i realize it. lol
As far as the Perilous Research I hadn't thought about doing anything in response to Oubliette, but now that I know that trick I sure will use it.
and finally I had every intention to draw a card at that point, I just clicked okay without doing so.
I like your list, my only problem is that I can't reliably cast Fabled Hero. I think it would be better to up the land count to 22, sacrificing the single Dauntless Onslaught for it.
How do you feel about Soldier of the Pantheon? All lists on mtggoldfish run 4. I don't like him (very few multicolored spells in Block), but it lends to explosive starts.
Oh btw, i increased the extra prizes Im adding to the first few events. It will be double prizes for the first 2 events now and 5 tix to someone tied for highest attendence at the first 3 events (must complete at least 2 rounds each event for the attendence to count).
Again we dont have a decision on the exact first week for the event but it should be soon. good luck guys.
X-