Quote from: Greentongue on November 22, 2022, 02:06:43 PM
The 'wanker" is the one that doesn't say up front that they have the high end cards and then stomp the other players with them.

Ah OK, that makes sense.

Still, I am staggered by the dodginess of the business model, or rather why it hasn't been called out more yet. Maybe it has, and I missed it. Or maybe the D&D wokewashing is just working as intended.

Quote from: Marchand on November 23, 2022, 06:19:04 AMStill, I am staggered by the dodginess of the business model, or rather why it hasn't been called out more yet. Maybe it has, and I missed it. Or maybe the D&D wokewashing is just working as intended.

As an ex-magic player who quit specifically for the reasons of power creep and addiction grabbing, it's somewhat complicated. It has absolutely been called out, but the game is played in many different types of formats.

A popular one (I think the most popular one) is drafting. You make a 1-time use deck from random cards from a collection that your friends invest in together, and there are mechanics to deck making by itself. So even if unbalanced, the unbalanced nature is a game in it itself.

There is also that many boardgames or cardgames of such manner can become stale because similar to chess the best moves have been optimized so much that there is basically nothing new to do. So new cards can mix things up, and generally its hard to make new cards that are just lateral moves.

Now, all that apologia is out of the way: It's absolutely a pay-to-win game that preys on gambling addicts. All collectible trading card games are. In addition the amount of ways Wizards has been abusing its addicts has very steadily gone up over the years:
Way more releases, new rarities that demand more investment of money for cards, and generally sloppier balancing.

This has been called out DECADES ago, but it just sorta became a staple.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 27, 2022, 12:20:08 AMThis has been called out DECADES ago, but it just sorta became a staple.

I stopped playing M:TG after the Ice Age expansion when it was clear how the game was going. That was 1996 or so.

However, as bad as WotC has been with M:TG, they were super costumer friendly compared to Decipher. Decipher took pay-to-win to the extreme level by making all the good and desirable cards incredibly rare. I remember buying several boxes of boosters for their Star Wars game, spending $130 and getting only one named character in the entire bunch. No Vader, or Luke, or Han, or even Chewbacka. Just one R2-D2. But some random blurry dude from the background scene where they talk about the exhaust port, I got 15 of him. Their Star Trek game was just as bad. Which is a shame because both games were actually fun and well designed.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on November 28, 2022, 05:47:09 PMI stopped playing M:TG after the Ice Age expansion when it was clear how the game was going. That was 1996 or so.

It was Scars of Mirrodin for me (2010) but I started playing in 2009. 'Wait so you can just make something do effectively double damage and destroy indestructible things for 1 more mana? How is that fair?'

I remember vaguely when Magic started to get popular.  I was really into Battletech and my gaming group was all set to start a mercenary campaign of B-tech and Mechwarrior (2nd ed.).  Suddenly my friends were carrying around briefcases full of Magic cards and no one wanted to play Battletech any more.  I had amassed a huge collection of minis for that game and couldn't find anyone to play with.  There was no way in hell that I was going to start a new addiction.  I just couldn't afford it. 

Besides, this whole magic thing is just a fad.  It will pass in a couple of years...right?

My experience with Magic is that your mileage varies dramatically with the format. Practically all WotC sanctioned constructed formats are garbage. Standard rotates too fast, Modern is INSANELY expensive, and Legacy? You may as well close your retirement fund and start anesthesia to have a kidney removed.

That said, I don't remember Draft ever being a terrible experience while I was playing, and Cube and EDH (Commander) are surprisingly good formats. Cube is a DIY draft environment and EDH technically has a separate rules committee and is not maintained by WotC. You could think of these formats as Magic: The Gathering's equivalents to OSR in RPGs. But that's a bit more flattering than it really deserves.

The straw which made me draw the line with MTG was when they banned Splinter Twin from Modern to push people with Splinter Twin decks into building an Eldrazi deck instead (with cards then in Standard.) This was a case of straight-up greed, and is a great example of WotC making decisions which benefit them directly rather than decisions which benefit them because they benefit the game.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 27, 2022, 12:20:08 AM
This has been called out DECADES ago, but it just sorta became a staple.

I think most gamers just accept the business model and either quit or move on.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on November 28, 2022, 05:47:09 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 27, 2022, 12:20:08 AMThis has been called out DECADES ago, but it just sorta became a staple.

I stopped playing M:TG after the Ice Age expansion when it was clear how the game was going. That was 1996 or so.
...

I stopped at little before that right as Ice age hit the shelves - never bought after that. WTF is all this 'format' shit?

But I do wish I kept my black and white deck for nostalgia, rather than selling it off.

FWIW - it seems WotC is just gonna double down on what they are doing with MtG:
https://kvgo.com/ubs/hasbro-inc-webinar

Around 15-20 min in they go into magic - and they are all-in... At 24:00 & 27:00 in they hate on the criticism's on flooding the MtG market...
(In their defense they rightly do not give a fuck about the secondary market.)

The ultimate question is are they driving real growth? Or still riding a bubble?

They mention no internal metrics that allow them to distinguish between the two...

Quote from: Jaeger on December 10, 2022, 05:48:29 PMAround 15-20 min in they go into magic - and they are all-in... At 24:00 & 27:00 in they hate on the criticism's on flooding the MtG market...
(In their defense they rightly do not give a fuck about the secondary market.)

Uhm, what.
MtG is a collectible trading card game.
The only reason cards have any value at all is the secondary market. Without that, they could sell their boxes for 20 bucks and people still wouldn't buy it.
Why do you think MtG Arena is stagnating basically since it came online? It lacks an entire aspect of the game. And several other things... okay, granted, Arena kind of sucks...

Well, there's articles like this floating around, as Hasbro's stock was downgraded due to falling sales. So yes, not just an internet rumor.

https://www.polygon.com/23458064/magic-the-gathering-overprinting-hasbro-stock-downgrade

Quote
A Bank of America analyst says Hasbro is "destroying the long-term value" of Magic: The Gathering by overprinting cards. The dire warning was accompanied by a double downgrade of Hasbro stock — from "buy" to "underperform" — as its valuation fell more than 5% before trading began on Monday.

"Hasbro is overproducing Magic cards which has propped up recent results," wrote research analyst Jason Haas. "Card prices are falling, game stores are losing money, collectors are liquidating and large retailers are cutting orders."

Hasbro has recently touted the performance of its Wizards of the Coast business unit, which includes Magic as well as the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game. Haas notes that Magic alone accounts for some 15% of Hasbro's annual revenue and some 35% of its annual earnings. Sales of the collectible card game nearly doubled over the pandemic, and Hasbro has urged that growth onward with additional new releases throughout 2021 and 2022. But Haas believes that the end of that growth curve is looming on the horizon, in part because "Magic has grown primarily by extracting more revenue from each player rather than by growing its player base."