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redditoverpriced overpowered online cards ruins mtgo
I sent this email as feedback about Magic the Gathering Online. The background is that most of the cards only cost around $0.02 to $1.00. But there are some in the $3 to $9 range, and even a few that are $10 to $80 – and I think this specific detail ruins the game. There are so many other ways they could bring in income, besides this dubious and harmful strategy of making a few specific cards so rare that they resell for such obscene prices.
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overpriced overpowered online cards ruins mtgo
Here are some ideas for what to do instead of having ($80 Jace the Mind Sculptor online virtual cards) and ($22 Vengevine online virtual cards):
1) Lower the cost of the online virtual cards to 50% of the physical printed cards. Instead of $3.99 for a Worldquake booster pack, make it $1.99 (or $1.98).
1b) Or, give players the option to buy a physical-virtual packs for 150% the physical price (such as $6 for a Worldquake booster pack). But what if I instead of paying $12 for a physical starter deck, I could pay $18 for a physical starter deck and an online copy of the cards? Or $12 for the physical deck, $6 for the online deck, and $15 for the physical-virtual deck. I realize the details could be more complicated.
1c) Make it a lot easier to redeem virtual cards to physical cards. At the moment I’m planning only to play Standard format, so it would be nice if I could at least redeem all my old cards for physical copies.
2) Reduce the scarcity of super-rare physical and viritual Magic cards. $360 for 4 copies of Jace the Mind Sculptor is obscene. Even $88 for 4 copies of Vengevine is pretty obscene. And if I want to collect both a virtual and physical deck, then it’s $720 for 8 copies of Jace the Mind Sculptor. $720 every 12 months would be $60/mo. I’m not even against paying more than $60/mo for virutal + physical Magic cards + related merchandise + tournaments. But this is $60/mo (ie, $720 for 1 year) for just Jace the Mind Sculptor cards! It’s obscene. Magic shouldn’t be about who spent the most money on their deck. It should be about deck design and honest good-sport strategy, fun, art, etc. Why not explore other ways to increase revenue – ie, methods that don’t hurt the game?
3) Increase the scarcity of other cards to make up some of the cost difference.
4) Charge a little more for tournaments and events, directly, or indirectly such as food. Or promo material, deck matts, t-shirts, food, etc.
5) There’s a World of Warcraft Mt Dew. Why not make a deal for some Magic-branded Mt Dew, or other drink (Brain Toniq?). Sell magic branded stuff that isn’t Magic cards. Posters, action figures, official tokens and life counter dice.
6) Require anyone who uses a dice or coin flip to use a specific certified Magic die or coin – this is also an anti-cheat, and you should require them to flip a specific way (such as roll the dice in a cup, rather than in your hand). Require people to use an electronic card shuffler, and sell them at the event for anyone who doesn’t already have one. Worried about damaging player’s cards? Don’t worry, because in this new world of Magic, no single card is worth more than $5, so bending a few cards is not a big deal, even if it didn’t happen, though it shouldn’t.
6) Sell print publications. Print magazines with very well organized rules details, and lists of the cards (just like you have for the gatherer card database, but a physically printed visual spoiler magazine, organized by card color and mana color, then sorted by coverted mana cost). Or an iPad app (both an iPad game, and an iPad interface to resources like the gatherer card database, maybe even integrated with software to help create deck lists).
7) A more radical idea would be to just charge a monthly fee ($10/mo or $50/mo) for access to 4 (untradeable?) copies of every card, for Magic Online.
Some people might take Magic-branded stuff as consumerism. But if they are educated and think about it rationally, it’s so much better than ruining the actual game with overpriced overpowered $80 Jace the Mind Sculptor cards. And a lot of it could be marketed as "support the Magic community" – because that’s really what the idea is.
For me personally, I’d much rather pay $20 for a Magic T-Shirt, $10 for a Magic art poster, buy $3 Magic-branded Mt Dew throwback instead of $3 regular Mt Dew throwback, etc… Than be faced with the choice – do I really want to pay $360 for 4 Jace the Mind Sculptors. Frankly, No, I am not going to. And in the end, there is so much competition out there, that I really don’t have to. I can play chess, or Go, or YuGiOh, or Warhammer, or D&D, or Poker, or video games, or go out to dinner and watch a 3d IMAX movie, or a million other things. None of your customers (ie, the Magic community) are really hostages. I want the Magic to survive and thrive and grow. But in the long-term, I really think that these $80 Jace the Mind Sculptor cards are a big turn-off, are hurting the game, hurting the Magic community, and damaging the game’s long-term profits and potential customer base. In the end, I totally realize that, economic viability as a company, is what Wizards needs to keep Magic alive and thriving. So please think long-term and stop it with the $80 Jace cards.
Thank You for listening,
Peter Mowry ("Pem")
Pem (Admin) :: Aug.08.2010 :: Games, tcg :: 4 Comments »
None of the ways you just mentioned actually bring the price of Jace down. The only true way of doing this is to reprint him in a consequent core set in the future.
It’s simply supply vs. demand. For quite some time, blue white control was very popular and the archetype carried over.
Unfortunately, since SoM just debuted and people will be opening less packs of the previous set, Jace’s price will either stabilize at 80 bux, or go up even higher.
They do need to change this. i only play physical but im starting to see almost every center card going up to about 5-10 dollars.
and considering you buy them in multiples i cant see making a decent deck for less then 50 dollars
Amen. I know ridiculously expensive cards are nothing new in mtg, but mtgo has always had a reputation for being cheaper than paper magic.
The real deal breaker is that you NEED 4x Mind Sculptors in just about any competitive deck that runs blue. Now that’s just stupid and a sure sign that a card is broken.
My ideal standard environment is one where there are many viable competitive decks for many different play styles and colors that range from relatively inexpensive to sky-high. We just don’t see that anymore, and magic is stagnating as a result. There are what, three or four viable standard tourny decks right now? Very lame.
The spirit of creativity in deckbuilding is being sucked out of mtg. It’s being replaced by ridiculously overpriced, overpowered, MANDATORY cards.
Oh, and don’t even get me started on dual lands…
Yea, I like so many things about MTGO, even the unique idea of owning your digital cards, rather than paying a monthly fee. I like MTGO better than other card games, even poker, for example. And relative to other video games, it’s great to have it as an example of a turn-based competition-heavy cerebral-heavy online game. For example, I might call it, in some ways, better than StarCraft 2, primarily because it’s turn-based. I especially love the whole thing about the constantly changing standard format (ie, a new deck every 3 months). It’s awesome.
But when you combine that with (overpriced cards valued at $15 to $80 per card, and needing 4 per deck), it arguably ruins an otherwise awesome game. The specific scenario of having cards like Jace the Mind Sculptor at $80 when you can have 4 per deck (would be $320!), or even some of the cards that are $15 or $20 (4 per deck would be $60 or $80)… It creates an unnecessary barrier.
I think it can be argued that it actually takes away from the overall economy of the digital cards. Other online games with digital items (EverQuest, World of Warcraft, etc) managed to have economies where in-game items were worth more real money than any MTGO card… Without requiring the average player to pay anything above the $15/mo monthly fee for WoW.
At least in my experience, it’s very easy for the average half-serious player to spend significantly more than $15/mo for MTGO, which in the end means it costs more than WoW. Of course WoW actually costs more than $15/mo if you count the initial purchase of the account and expansion packs. But if anyone buys a deck with 4x Jace the Mind Sculptor cards in it, even once, it’s hard to argue that WoW doesn’t less.
As for the dual lands comment… Idk if it’s so bad, I guess reduces the amount of luck for a deck that isn’t mono colored. I think the other most significant meta problem with MTG / MTGO is keeping the amount of dumb luck low (yet still be a card game).
Anyway, let me at least clarify that I still do, overall, love MTG / MTGO.