Hi there, and welcome to another Daily Arena!

Today I’m going to discuss unnecessary randomness and obfuscation in Magic Arena, why it is bad, and suggestions on what can be done to remedy it. I don’t want to make the impression that I don’t love this game, I just want to make this case during the Beta when it’s more likely things can be changed so that we end up with the best version of this game possible. I will be communicating these concerns to WotC, as well.

First, Obfuscation .

Currently, Magic Arena has Obfuscation in at least two key places: Premium Currency Denominations and Wildcard Distribution.

Most free to play games these days have opted for a multiple currency model for their economies (one notable exception to this is probably Magic Arena’s biggest competitor, HearthStone). This includes a “Premium” currency that normally can only be purchased using real-world dollars (although that is not strictly the case in Magic Arena), as well as a “Soft” currency that can be earned by simply playing the game. This is a very popular model, and for the most part enables to exchange time for money, using the Premium currency to speed up progression that they would otherwise get via sinking a lot of time into the game.

Since this multiple-currency model is by far the most popular in the free-to-play game sphere, it’s not surprising that this is the model initially chosen by WotC for Magic Arena. Many games actually feature more than two types of currency, and if you look at Magic Arena, you’ll see that it actually has at least six (arguably seven) different currencies: Gold, Gems, Common Wildcards, Uncommon Wildcards, Rare Wildcards, Mythic Wildcards, and Vault Progression.

The first area I’m going to look at where obfuscation creeps in is in the discrepancy between the Gem denominations you can purchase and the Gem cost of booster bundles in the store. Due to the way these are set up, no matter which Gem denomination you purchase and which booster bundle you decide to buy with those Gems, you will always have a number of Gems left over that isn’t the correct amount for any booster bundle. This is deliberate and preys on a psychological pattern of players in which loss aversion triggers a “Sunk Cost” effect and encourages them to purchase more Gems. In this case, having unspent Gems is a losing proposition, so a player will want to purchase additional Gems in order to use their unspent currency.

I would argue that, though common, this kind of tactic used in the context of a game that is actually a good game in terms of gameplay and rewarding the time investment of the players corrupts the game. It as at best annoying for players to have to try to figure out how much the in-game items they are purchasing actually cost, and at worst predatory, encouraging people who don’t have the skill or inclination to figure out what the cost of things actually are. In Magic Arena, this is exacerbated when buying boosters by the essential randomness of their contents. The only thing that players are “sure” they are getting for their money are the Wildcards guaranteed by the Pity Timer (and, as I’ll discuss below, there’s even some additional obfuscation there).

Now, just about anyone that has talked about this form the consumer end has only talked about it in terms ranging from neutral to negative. Neutral being the response that there are plenty of ways to spend you Gems in the game, so just buying the cheapest Gem bundle is always the way to go, or that you can always purchase some number of Gem packages that divide “evenly” between some number of booster bundles, and negative being a view of this model as predatory.

The solution in this case seems fairly straightforward: Get rid of Gems. Allow players to purchase Gold, and allow anything that can be purchased in the game to be purchasable for Gold. Removing one of the intermediate currencies removes one level of obfuscation, and one level of criticism that players can levy against the game. For all the things HearthStone has gotten wrong, this is one thing they got right.

The second area of obfuscation I want to discuss is Wildcard distribution. Quite a bit of data mining has been done in an attempt to determine the average rate at which Wildcards of various rarities drop. The rate seems to be somewhere around one mythic wildcard per 18-19 packs, one rare per 11 packs (or so), one uncommon in every 4-5 packs, and one common in every 3-4 packs. If you look at good decklists in the game, what you’ll generally see is that a deck generally wants 0-8 Mythics, 11-26 Rares, 0-13 Uncommons, and something like 3-13 Commons. When I look at these numbers, I see two things: 1) Good decks tend to want a lot of Rares, 2) The rate at which you collect Rare wildcards (vs. Mythic wildcards) seems unnaturally skewed in favor of Mythics. Whether deliberate or not, this means that there is a “bottleneck” at Rare for deck-building (you will tend to have a surplus of Common/Uncommon/Mythic wildcards while not having enough Rares), while at the same time making the game appear more generous than it actually is (look at all the Mythic wildcards you’ve opened!)

This Wildcard system obscures the relative value of cards at different rarities in the game, allowing players to think that Mythics are the most valuable cards, and to be exited for opening them, while in reality it’s the Rares that are in reality most scarce, and probably what people should actually be most excited about when they see cards they want or a Wildcard.

I don’t think that this additional break-up of in-game currency across four distinct channels in necessary, or indeed good for the game or its players.

This issue also seems to have a fairly straightforward solution: Get rid of Wildcards. Replace Wildcards with a generic crafting currency, and clearly communicate the cost of each card in this currency. One question you might ask is ‘How would this currency be distributed?’ One solution would be to replace Wildcards with the amount of crafting currency that cards of their relative rarity cost to craft, but I don’t think that’s actually the best solution, as I’ll discuss below when talking about randomness in the game.

Randomness

Magic is inherently a game with a fair bit of randomness baked in. The boosters are randomized, your deck is randomized, and there is a lot of variance in the gameplay in general. Magic Arena has layered more randomness on top of this by randomizing Wildcard acquisition (the only means players have for controlling the contents of their own collection), and randomizing reward payouts for events to an extent that a player with the best possible event performance can actually end up with a worse prize than a player with the worst possible performance.

I think this extra randomness is bad for two reasons: 1) It makes it hard for players to gauge their progress, often leaving them discouraged and with the impression that they are not making any progress at all, and 2) it leads to feel-bad moments where players that have performed very well in events get rewards that are completely unexciting while they see players that won zero games posting pictures of their sick prizes…in the responses I’ve seen so far, this can have quite a demoralizing effect.

What are the solutions?

I’d argue that the solution to the issue stemming from randomization in collection progression is to get rid of wildcards and the Vault.

Replace these completely with a generic crafting currency, of which you earn a fixed amount per booster you open, and when a 5th copy of a card would be converted to Vault progress, convert it to the generic crafting currency instead. In addition to this, make the relative cost of cards in this currency clear, and allow it to better reflect (at least at the higher rarities) the value of those cards in deck building in the context of the actual rarity distribution.

I’m going to use a ¢ to denote crafting currency units, just as a convention.

First, for each booster opened , the player gets ¢100.

Commons cost ¢20, and extras are converted to ¢5.

Uncommons cost ¢80, and extras are converted to ¢20.

Rares cost ¢320, and each extras are converted to ¢80.

Mythics cost ¢2240, and each extras are converted to ¢560.

This preserves the randomness of card distributions in packs, and the excitement of opening cards of higher rarities, while also giving players a reasonable minimal progression that is easy to understand.

A counter-argument I’ve seen to this suggestion is that it looks an awful lot like dusting, which WotC has stressed they don’t want to implement in Magic Arena. My response to this argument is that the stated reasoning behind the decision to not have dusting in Magic Arena (using Wildcards instead) is to allow players to have some control over building their collections, while not requiring them to “destroy” their collections in order to acquire specific cards. The framework I’ve suggested solves issues that players obviously have without going against the reasons that “dusting” does not exist in the game.

The solution to the issue stemming from randomization in rewards is just to remove the randomization completely. Simply have a statically increasing set of reasonable rewards based on performance. When matchmaking is improved and the player base is larger, this will give players plenty of opportunity to “get lucky” and get better rewards, while not making players that perform well feel randomly penalized.

Let’s just quickly look at the current reward structure for Quick Draft, and how it might be changed to be less random. (I’m going to take it as given that for Draft you also keep the cards you drafted). There is a similar issue for Flash Constructed Events, that could have a similar fix.

Current Quick Draft Rewards

0 Wins : 50 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

: 50 Gems + 1-3 Boosters 1 Wins : 100 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

: 100 Gems + 1-3 Boosters 2 Wins : 200 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

: 200 Gems + 1-3 Boosters 3 Wins : 300 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

: 300 Gems + 1-3 Boosters 4 Wins : 450 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

: 450 Gems + 1-3 Boosters 5 Wins : 650 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

: 650 Gems + 1-3 Boosters 6 Wins : 850 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

: 850 Gems + 1-3 Boosters 7 Wins: 950 Gems + 1-3 Boosters

Suggested Quick Draft Rewards

0 Wins : 250 Gold + 1 Booster

: 250 Gold + 1 Booster 1 Wins : 800 Gold + 1 Booster

: 800 Gold + 1 Booster 2 Wins : 1600 Gold + 1 Booster

: 1600 Gold + 1 Booster 3 Wins : 2400 Gold + 1 Booster

: 2400 Gold + 1 Booster 4 Wins : 3000 Gold + 2 Boosters

: 3000 Gold + 2 Boosters 5 Wins : 4350 Gold + 2 Boosters

: 4350 Gold + 2 Boosters 6 Wins : 5700 Gold + 2 Boosters

: 5700 Gold + 2 Boosters 7 Wins: 6350 Gold + 3 Boosters

For Quick Constructed, there are some similar feel-bads due to random upgrades of awarded cards, but these seem less pronounced. What I would probably do here is just away Gold + Crafting Currency instead of Gold + Random Cards to reduce the random gambling aspect inherent in the current reward structure.

Current Quick Construct Rewards

0 Wins : 100 Gold + 3 Uncommons

: 100 Gold + 3 Uncommons 1 Wins : 200 Gold + 3 Uncommons

: 200 Gold + 3 Uncommons 2 Wins : 300 Gold + 3 Uncommons

: 300 Gold + 3 Uncommons 3 Wins : 400 Gold + 3 Uncommons

: 400 Gold + 3 Uncommons 4 Wins : 500 Gold + 2 Uncommons + 1 Rare

: 500 Gold + 2 Uncommons + 1 Rare 5 Wins : 600 Gold + 2 Uncommons + 1 Rare

: 600 Gold + 2 Uncommons + 1 Rare 6 Wins : 800 Gold + 1 Uncommon + 1 Rare

: 800 Gold + 1 Uncommon + 1 Rare 7 Wins: 1000 Gold + 1 Uncommon + 1 Rare

Suggested Quick Draft Rewards

0 Wins : 100 Gold + ¢150

: 100 Gold + ¢150 1 Wins : 200 Gold + ¢150

: 200 Gold + ¢150 2 Wins : 300 Gold + ¢150

: 300 Gold + ¢150 3 Wins : 400 Gold + ¢150

: 400 Gold + ¢150 4 Wins : 500 Gold + ¢500

: 500 Gold + ¢500 5 Wins : 600 Gold + ¢500

: 600 Gold + ¢500 6 Wins : 800 Gold + ¢850

: 800 Gold + ¢850 7 Wins: 1000 Gold + ¢850

This allows players to have a clear sense of what they are winning at different levels of performance, and also gives them more control over what those rewards mean in terms of their collections (I think most players would prefer half a Rare wildcard to a random Rare, for example).

The main argument I’ve seen against this kind of fixed reward schedule is that it makes it so there is no “catch-up” feature for new players…they have no chance of getting the higher rewards. I’d suggest that this just isn’t the case with a large player pool and good matchmaking. Players will be naturally matched against other players on a similar level and have a fair chance of earning the higher rewards.

I’d like to hear feedback on my analysis and suggestions. Do you agree, do you disagree? How would you do it differently?

As always, feel free to contact me with any comments, questions or criticisms either here, on Reddit, on Twitter at @DailyArena or on Facebook via the @DailyArenaMTG page.

Peace.

Joseph Eddy is a Father, Husband, Son, Brother, Software Developer, and Gamer. Magic is his favorite hobby, and he’s looking forward to seeing you all on Arena. He streams Magic Arena on a weekly basis (or more), but currently is unable to keep to a set schedule.