We recently updated the Magic Online Play Lobby (if you haven’t checked it out yet, you totally should), and while it has been well received, we’ve gotten one question quite a bit: Why did you remove so many options for Open Play?



Let’s talk about this a bit, so you can see where the design is coming from. For the entire 17-year history of Magic Online there have been two primary, recurring complaints:



1. The shuffler is broken!



2. Why is deck X playing in room Y? (Insert the deck type of your choice into room type of your choice, we’ve heard it all.)

The first complaint is relatively easy to address: the shuffler isn’t broken; humans are just bad at recognizing randomization (but that is really a conversation for another day).



The second issue is more complicated. Historically, Magic Online has given players a bunch of options and hoped that they self-select into the play area that they thought made sense. Here’s the problem: When the definitions of the rooms are subjective, players end up with expectations that can’t possibly be met.



What is “fun”? What is “casual”? What constitutes a tournament deck versus a random deck with some good cards in it? And when should that deck be in Tournament Practice instead of Just for Fun (now just called Open Play)? What does “Starting Out” mean? When am I “Getting Serious”? Unfortunately, there are no cut-and-dried answers to any of these questions; they are subjective. One of the great things about Magic is that there are near infinite ways to play, but it also means there are near infinite opinions on what “fun” means.



So, when Magic Online provides skill level choices, or other options, players expect those choices to be meaningful. Too often, however, they weren’t. We can’t stop a player from taking their Kitty Cat Tribal homebrew into Tournament Practice to throw it against the latest iteration of Tron, nor can we prevent players from taking a copy of the latest Mythic Championship deck into the Just for Fun room because they are learning how to pilot it, and when these players meet up, their fun is diminished when their play experience doesn’t match expectation.



Rather than continuing down the same road, we wanted to try something different; instead of presenting a bunch of options and setting false expectations, we wanted to present one primary question: for your selected format, do you want a best-of-three match or a single game? We think this is a reasonable, but by no means definitive, line to draw: most competitive decks have sideboards, but that’s not generally the case with more casual builds. The intention is to smooth out the decision-making process for finding a game and let players self-select between “I am looking for a quick pick-up game” and “I want to play a full match with sideboards”. Once you’ve made your choice, you’re ready to play against anyone else who’s made the same choice.

While this new system loses some options, we get benefits we think offset the losses, such as streamlined choices, improved matchmaking speed, and more realistic expectations. When you’re playing a best of three match, the expectation is now that you can face any deck, from a top tier tournament deck to that new bear tribal deck. When you’re playing a single game match, your expectation should be different brews and decks that optimize for one game.

Is this ideal? No. We would love for players to find the perfect opponent every time. In a setting where there is no entry and nothing on the line, however, most players don’t feel obligated to stay in a match where they are not having fun. Nor should they. One nice thing about online play is how fast and easy it is to concede and find a new match, particularly when players looking for a best-of-three match in a particular format are in the same lobby.

We understand that not all players appreciate this solution, but we think it is better to try new things rather than keep failing at the old thing. That said, players do have a couple tools to help them shape how they find a match.

First, creating a match and entering comments, exempts the match from the general matchmaking process. This means players will need to actively select games that include comments in order to join them. In an upcoming update, we’ll be tweaking how we display these comments to make them even more prominent in the scene to help players see these matches.

Second, challenging players directly bypasses some of the new lobby features and always uses best-of-three matches. This allows players to home in on finding exactly the kind of matches they want to play with their friends. We’ll be updating this feature to both improve its presentation and its feature set so players can better sculpt their experience.

Finally, the new Play Lobby is released, but it’s not final. As I said above, we’re trying some new things, because we think it is important to continue to improve Magic Online. We’re aware that not every change is going to be a home run, or even a bloop single over the shortstop’s head, so where we see a change isn’t doing what we want we’ll try something new.

So, that is how we got where we’re at. Let us know what you think @MagicOnline on Twitter or by sending an email to MagicOnlineFeedback@wizards.com. Thanks for your time and have fun discovering greatness in the Modern Horizons leagues.

Chris Kiritz

Sr. Product Manager – Magic Online