Common Dues Revisited WRITTEN BY Jonathan Medina

Hello Puca People! I'm back to talk about some changes made to the policy that we announced last week. (If you're not up to speed with the policy please read that article before reading this post.) As some of you know, I spent a lot of time last week reading and responding to your feedback about the introduction of dues for our Common members. The announcement drew a lot of ire from our community on social media, and the team had some internal discussions about what we could do to help our Common Members manage the new change. The following two changes came out of that discussion:

Accepting the New Terms (Account Hold)

Rather than rolling the change out to all Common members, the change will now only apply to members who have accepted our new Terms of Service. Here's how it will work: When you log into PucaTrade, you'll be presented with the new terms and given the ability to accept them. If you choose to accept them, your dues will be deducted as normal on your anniversary day each month. If you choose not to accept the terms of service, then your account will remain in an inactive state until the terms are accepted. While your account is inactive, dues will not be collected and your PucaPoint balance will remain unchanged; however, it will neither be accessible nor will it be visible to receive trades.

This option allows members to essentially put their account on hold while still keeping the same PucaPoint balance. In reading the feedback, we've found that some members have saved up a lot of points and have been waiting for the trade activity to pick up before returning to actively using the site. There are also members who are taking extended breaks from Magic in general while pursuing a degree or taking care of "life things" before returning to the game. We definitely want to provide a way for these members to return at their own pace and the terms are a great way to do that. For those who do plan to accept the new terms, we've added another change to help you satisfy the dues.

Promoting Cards to Satisfy Dues

In our initial announcement, we noted that payment of dues could be offset by the amount of points a member has spent on PucaShield for the month. The reason for this is twofold: It gives you a way to "earn" a free membership by sending cards, and it encourages sending. If we look at the PucaTrade economy in the terms of supply and demand, it's clear that we have more demand than we have supply—there are more cards on want lists than there are cards being sent—and this is why trading has slowed for many users. The reason that I bring this up is because it comes into play when looking at adding promotions as another option to satisfy the dues.

Encouraging members to promote cards adds more pressure on the demand side of things—it's because of this that we initially did not include promotions as part of the policy. However, based on your feedback, it's clear that members want more options for satisfying the dues. We want to accommodate that in the best way that we can, so we've added promotions to offset the dues each month as well. This means that any points that you've spent on PucaShield and promoting cards will be applied toward your dues. It's our hope that more people promoting cards will entice others to send and claim the promotions.

NOTE: There's a common misconception that Common members cannot promote cards—this is untrue! Common members have always been able to promote cards, you just need to go to a card's details page. You can also learn more about promoting here.

Make the World Shiny

As I wrap up this post, I wanted to remind you that this change also enables Common members to add foils to their wants lists—this will result in an influx of demand for foils. When you add the fact that promotion fees now go towards dues, I expect to see a lot of foils promoted. I've been spending the last few nights entering stacks like the one pictured above onto my haves list in preparation. It's not fancy (I did consider adding some Masterpieces for flare), but I think everyone has a stack of lonely foils like these. This is a perfect opportunity find those foils a good home. I'll be back next month with an update on how the change is going, but until then, I'm looking forward to making the trades flow.