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Tolarian Community College Prof if you know anything about code, you wouldn’t say that’s not possible, it’s completely possible, it’s just numbers, and the fact that tech is where it is, it’s naive to believe it’s so archaic they don’t know how to fix it.
The intro payoff is pure gold. Quickly becoming a favorite watch. Maybe it's the interruptions, maybe it's the Brexit jokes, whatever it is I'm lovin' it.
Like some people here, I work in IT, occasionally with developers, and often times "legacy code" cannot be easily repaired or updated, even with additional resources. This problem is compounded when you consider that the code may not have been well-documented or well-commented. Arena is the update to MtGO. I see WotC eventually getting Arena deployed across multiple platforms, making sure it is stable, and then begin adding older sets or otherwise finding a way to migrate the MtGO player base to Arena. Edit: I don't think WotC would be as susceptible to lawsuits as we think when the Terms of Service for most digital games specify that any real world currency used is for licenses to the associated content and that those licenses can be revoked or otherwise altered at any time. I'm surprised so many people sunk so much into MtGO, especially when considering how many people were likely also partaking in Paper MtG as well.
Magic Online's development status can't really be finished by its nature unless WOTC just stops making new magic cards and subsequently changing/adding to the rules. Calling it a beta is nonsense, it's a finished piece of software that has extremely regular updates.
The Prof going all "customer support from hell"....That was...wow...I work in customer support of a software developer myself. I promise we aren't THAT bad.
@@darkonekosuke2 Yeah. I think a lot of that stereotypical "horrible customer support person" is often due to their experiences with first level support. I'm not saying people working in first level support are bad, it's just that I've heard from a lot of people, that when they called "customer support of company X" they got forwarded from one guy to the next until some random dude finally solved their problem. The company I work in...we support guys are basically all levels of support. If a customer has a problem we're not sure about we ask a co-worker or ask them to describe the problem in as much detail as possible (written, if possible), then we try to replicate it and/or forward it to the guys in development. But we won't forward calls a bazillion times, because we usually can help customers ourselves.
ThorsShadow that’s some of it, but that’s how my company is set up too and sometimes (not always) I’ll get a cold transfer from someone who heard the one word they needed to send it my way and didn’t even try
I absolutely love and appreciate the fact that Professor speaks so clearly and not only English native speakers have a chance to understand him. I cannot say this about the British guy... Professor, couldn’t you stress out to your partner that not only native speakers are watching your videos?
I mean, sure, with enough time and resources they could fix Magic Online, but with that time and those resources they could build a new magic online from the ground, burn it down for laughs, and add the old cards to Magic Arena. Legacy code can be so extremely arduous to deal with that it’s not uncommon for companies to recreate old software from the ground, simply because it’s easier. It’s honestly a matter of time before Magic Arena or another program to replace Magic Online, and it’s not due to bad management or lack of attention, it’s simply because that's how it works
In a perfect world, Arena would support all major formats from legacy to brawl and we could trade/buy/sell singles on the platform. Maybe we can dream.
You two have good chemistry together. Very entertaining to listen to. I enjoy building decks with what I have instead of netdecking. It makes winning sweeter.
The thing about Direct Challenge is that it's a quick and dirty shortcut that was implemented to give the players a way to challenge their friends while the developers keep working on proper friend list and custom game systems.
I hope mtgo doesn’t go anywhere anytime soon. It allows me to proxy decks cheaply and quickly and makes it so I can play whenever wherever. It took me about 3 hours to get over the learning curve and it was very worthwhile. So what if it isn’t the prettiest interface given its power? I find Arena to be so annoying on so many levels - I find mtgo’s quiet subtlety so relieving after enduring Arena’s obnoxiousness.
How much does anyone want to bet that the reason Pauper never gets any traction is because some Marketing exec hears the name of the format and goes "Pauper?! Who would ever want to be asociated with poverty? it makes us look bad!" I can bet a rebranding, like EDH to Commander would work wonders for promoting the format.
So long as Pauper remains based on being affordable, it will never have a snappy brand. EDH had to change because it's pure inside baseball - "Elder Dragon" references an outdated aspect of the format because the Elder Dragons mostly play no role and "Highlander" is just referential (the connection of the singleton rule and "there can only be one!" makes no sense if you aren't aware of the movie Highlander and, subsequently, that quote). "Commander" addresses these fundamental problems by being understandable without outside knowledge and without making false implications about how the format works. WOTC is an American company, and America loves fiscal opulence and individualism, some might say to the point of elitism. "Common" is already a pejorative term in our minds. In marketing speak, "budget" is a pejorative. Any format based on affordability will never see marketing support because Magic is (intentionally or not) sold as a game where you flash wealth. It's a collectible card game, it's based around collecting - which is costly. Seriously, I tried to think of another name for Pauper while writing this comment and came up totally blank - "Common Man" is the only one I could think of that was snappy and didn't have some kind of self-deprecating element. Pauper is not just a problem because of poverty, it's also a problem because it forces WOTC to admit that too many of the game's accepted formats are stupidly expensive because they refuse to try changing that.
Re: MGTA vs MGTO - This situation reminds me of the early days of Apple where they had two brands of computers that were being supported at the time, the "Apple" and the "Macintosh". Once it became apparent that the Mac was the "superior" machine, a simple business decision to focus their time and attention on the Mac and ultimately kill off the Apple. The writing is on the wall for MTGO. It may not happen immediately, and there may be unforeseen ramifications, but MTGO is going the way of the dinosaur, and not in the Ixalan sense.
U/B Death's Shadow is a pretty decent Legacy deck that can be played with shock lands instead of duals, if you are in the market for a budget Legacy tempo deck.
And thats why, despite playing mainly ygo, magic and my werewolf-commander will always has a special place in my heart. Hearing people saying "the games are to short" is not something you hear in ygo because 99% of players just go with the degenrate 1-2 turn-matches and think thats fine. Going in to long game and topdeck-mode makes card-games so much more better then boring fast crap.
I would really appreciate if the professor would release his Ultimate cube list!! I’d actually also like a video on the other cubes, but that one first!!! And of course his guide on making the boosters, as everyone has his own scheme. Please, please, please, with a cherry on top!!!
First of all, I love this podcast. It's become my favorite Magic-related podcast by far. In regards to the best of three, tournament mode argument, I definitely see that a tournament mode would make the client so much better. I've thought about it myself, and there's no real good reason for leaving it out (at least down the line). However, a tournament mode should never replace being able to challenge for Bo3's or even Bo5's, if that's what you want to do. However players want to play, you should facilitate it, especially because it's not a difficult thing to add to the game, and it lets people play the game the way they want to play (or at least gives us more options). You have to be extremely cynical to think that a game should only facilitate play that earns you money, and I honestly don't think that's the main (or sole) motivation behind the a lot of the choices being made (although, there are no doubt other voices influencing the developer's direction, such as Hasbro's). Another important thing about the direct challenges being the platform for tournaments is that it let's you accomodate for bad connections, and for other things that somehow went wrong, so that you can just agree to restart the game on your own terms. But when they do get around to a tournament mode, they need to let you rejoin, if you dropped out, and they need to let the creator of the tournament customize a wide range of things like: number of players, legal formats, number of games per match, stipulations etc. As a matter of fact, direct challenges should have a number of options as well. Imagine being able to choose wacky game modes, like the Kibler one, or Singleton... or some odd format that you come up with with your friends, like singleton Ixalan-block, where every creature gains haste as an ETB trigger or a "Every creature has Legendary" format (I'm not saying either's a good format, but having the option to make up your own format and play with friends would be incredible). We also need a spectator mode that allows us to see both players' cards in hand, which could be integrated into the twitch interace, so that the viewers can interact and get a good sense of what each player is working with. Lastly, what if you kept your 5th copy of a card, and you were able to take 3 cards of a certain rarity and turn it into a wild card? They could just have an animation pop up, where the 5th copy of a card turns into a fragment of that rarity color, and once you have three or five (whatever they find to be most balanced), the fragments would join together as a wild card of that rarity. That would incentivize you to get more packs, and it would make it easier for people, who play a lot or actually spend money in game to build up their collections. And the booster pack prices would feel like more of a reward, plus it would distract our primate minds with more flashy animations.
Saying "They just aren't paying enough efforts to MTGO" is kind of pointless. If you are a programmer, and you've read someone else's code, you'll understand. Sometimes, it takes more time to understand the problem and fix it, than writing a solution from the ground up. It's hard for non-programmers to imagine that, but that's how complex a system can get. There are books on dealing with "legacy code" as we call it.
@@XiaosChannel I think they were pointing out that it's more a problem that they let those bugs and mistakes linger unaddressed for so long, instead of having them dealt with back when the original programmers were still around and making the base program. Yes, fixing bugs long after the programmer who made them left is difficult (an understatement I'm sure) but not caring enough about those bugs to have fixed them earlier, and allowing a product to go online with such noticeable bugs is worth criticizing.
@@Shenaldrac agreed. they probably didn't think other card games like hearthstone would beat them lol, didn't pay enough attention to the online scene.
As a programmer myself, I know the pain of sifting through god awful code, but the thing is the wizards have enough bloody money to pay people to fix this if they really wanted to. Its not that its too hard, it's that they are lazy, and it would be too much effort in their eyes.
46:12 I think it's pretty clear, looking at everything from Mark Rosewater's responses to questions on his blog to just how WoTC runs the game in general, that Wizards does in fact think that the playerbase are a bunch of mouth-breathing brainlets who need to be babied.
the bit about tournament modes in Street Fighter and Smash is actually kinda interesting since while they both have lobby systems, the most recent installments either lack one entirely or have one that's too limited in its structure for use in actual tournaments (since usually they only support best of one, single elimination). Most large fighting game tournaments are open-entry and get entrants in the hundreds, if not thousands (Street Fighter V at Evo 2016 had a whopping five thousand entrants), so having multiple consoles is a necessity. And since tournaments are run using local multiplayer rather than netplay (since most fighting games don't support netplay over LAN), you can't use tournament modes for running a serious tournament. That said, those games *do* offer more in terms of customizing match settings and supporting tournament play - most games give you a choice between rematching your opponent and going back to character select. The latest Smash game lets you save and load match settings to easily switch between different rulesets.
Hey prof! I just wanted to thank you for all the videos you've put out over the years. I used to play mtg as a teen but I stopped around the original Ravnica block because college is crazy expensive. Never thought that I'd come back to play the game since it's still crazy expensive and the only lgs in my area closed late last year. Still kept watching your vids because they were awesome. Started playing mtg arena last week after watching your video on it and since you're talking about it in this vid, I thought I'd thank you for keeping my interest in magic burning through my hiatus. So thanks Prof!
I still don't understand the decisions around Arena wildcards. I've been grinding for like a month and a half. I have about 50% of available commons, and I got excited when I saw the holiday Pauper event. Then I realized that I only had eight wildcards and needed maybe 15 to complete the core of any competitive deck. While I was comfortable with some substitutions, this meant I was going to only get one shot at my deck selection. What is crazy is I have over 20 Uncommon and at least 10 Rare wildcards. I hadn't used any wildcards since I built my very first deck, and at that point I had run out of all rarities of wildcards, so they all started from the same point. It makes no sense to me that I am gaining Common wildcards at a slower rate than Rares. Understand I'm not complaining about plentiful Uncommon and Rare wildcards, but it just seems odd that I would need to make substitutions to a deck because I'm unable to obtain currently in-print Commons. Has anybody else had this problem? I guess it is a minor gripe compared to the Rares thing though. I'm currently saving up wildcards so I can move into a new deck when Ravnica Allegiance comes out, so I'm sure lack of Rares will bite me then!
I'd love to see a video on how you build your UMA cube and what changes you made. I also fear if I do it, I probably won't find 7 other people that have time for it at the same time.
I haven't had the opportunity to play Magic Arena yet, but having played fan-made simulators for other TCGs (such as YGOPro and the now-defunct Dueling Network for Yugioh or untap.in for TCGs in general), I'll say that the one problem I've had with MTGO comes from its position in regards to the two types of simulators I've used - automated and manual/freeform. MTGO is obviously an automated simulator, in that it had code that automates certain procedures for card effects, but the problem that I've found as someone who's relatively new to Magic is that it's in a weird position where it just... doesn't automate enough. MTGO gives you *constant* prompts about whether you want to respond to actions or play instants/sorceries, whereas fan-made automated simulators I've used for other games will just skip that prompt entirely if you don't have something to respond with. And looking at it, I wouldn't be surprised if that feature you see in other simulators was a design choice inspired by MTGO - these simulators are made by TCG fans, and while they're designed for other games, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of their developers have experience with MTG and specifically MTGO, and wanted to make sure their preferred game's simulator didn't have the same problems. Meanwhile with manual/freeform simulators... it's definitely something that's more for enfranchised players, and one of the downsides is that you need judges on standby like you would while playing in paper. I think if Wizards did decide to make a second client, making it a freeform simulator may be the way to go, albeit with the caveat that may not be a competitive platform but more of a testing ground.
If I had a way to get a digital collection of my paper collection (mostly pauper stuff) with no further cost than the game itself (10, 20 bucks even) I would gladly play in Magic Online but I'm not paying double for an awful client and a monetary system that it's not needed in videogames. This may sound dumb at first but a) you need players to challenge in the first place and b) engaging paper players to go online and viceversa it's a great way to do grow both playerbases. I don't think there's ever a proper incentive to pay around 150 bucks to "play my cards online" from time to time after having purchased them already. And certainly I'm not trusting Wizards, even less with digital (Magic Duels, ehem ehem).
@@Lexender I tried it a bit, and while it's very solid, I really miss some old cards. Don't get me wrong, maybe I end up playing limited from time to time there, but Standard often doesn't attract me as much due to limited cardpool resulting in "good" cards and "bad" cards mostly.
@@MaeseEidos the problem with free programs is, in my experience, a lot of the players are bad (not all obviously) and will just quit if they don't like your deck since they have no skin in the game. I remember I was trying to test storm in legacy on one of the free magic programs and a couple matches in a row people just quit mid game. Then you have idiots like desolator telling people to just quit when you run into uw approach control last standard. It depends what you want. If you want serious games and serious people I think you're unlikely to find it on a free program. That is literally the reason I felt forced into mtgo if I wanted to play online.
I realy think they should add sets like Ultimate Masters into Magic Arena, and let people draft them it would be a nice way for them to build those older cards into arena.
Instead of fixing mtgo, they could add all old cards to arena. It would probably take the same amount of time. Maybe even less. The biggest hurdle would be acquiring the cards you need for a legacy deck under arenas economic model, I think.
Prof it is possible for them to rewrite magic online. It would not be cheap; it would be expensive. Wizards has been very vocal about not being able copy over information to MTGO but in all honesty it is really just them not wanting to support the older product.
Its crazy how watching this now really shows how poorly MTGA are mishandling Modern cards, with their occasional Modern Bundles with cards such as ulamog and unaccessable by wildcards and not in packs. I totally forgot these cards were even attainable till some random tron player got queued against me.
Why not just ban all reserve list cards from commander and legacy? Or at the least, why not print more gold-bordered non tournament legal versions like collectors edition? Maybe put them in a core set or masters set as a masterpiece?
I don't agree with some of the Legacy hate in some of the comments. It's one of the most interesting, fruitful, diverse formats and while some decks are oppressively expensive as they both say, it's possible to build an affordable Legacy deck. Fwiw, I think it's a healthier format than Modern rn.
So you think a meta with over 70% of the decks running the same 16 - 20 cards and only around 4 different deck archetypes is a healthy format? Legacy is really fun, don't get me wrong. But the format is ass when it comes to health. Creativity is not rewarded, new sets rarely effect anything, and supplemental products hardly help with the cost. Modern is completely opposite of this. There is a load of creativity or new decks that pop up or win tournaments all the time, new sets can bring new tools like Arclight Phoenix or Creeping Chill, and supplemental products cut costs sometimes up to $40 on expensive cards and help with affordability. And there is a lot of interaction in Modern. People just focus on goldfish games or the "two-ships" games that get shown on cameras here and there. Modern is fine, Legacy is fine, Standard is fine for now, and all other formats are their own things.
I dont care about mtgo being flashy. I actually prefer the minimalistic approach to the program. If I wanted to play a flashy digital card game I would just play hearthstone, which has larger prize pools. Magic does not translate well in the digital format like arena. I will make it a point to never support wotc if they drop mtgo for arena as I'm sure many other would too. Although I am sure I am a minority, it will still hurt consumer confidance simillar to the way chronicles did.
Hopefully they'll put arena codes with this expansions products. I started playing with arena, and if it came with a code for arena, I'd buy a booster box fore sure.
I'd actually consider buying a box if they'd do that. I'm on a pretty low budget and that would be a great way to increase value significantly without any further costs for WotC. I've been playing MtG for many years now but yet have never bought a whole box due to the high cost/risk ratio.
Welcome to the game, man. I believe they said they had plans to do something like that eventually. I hope you get into paper magic some day. I think paper magic is so much more fun. Hanging out with people slinging cardboard, and collecting the cards. It's a great experience. Especially if you already know the rules and stuff from playing online because I know it can be intimidating going to a store to play if you're still unsure of what you're doing, even though most people are very helpful.
Prereleases are going to have a code for a free sealed event in Arena, they are by far the best MtG event, and it's new player friendly too. You should totally check them out
One thing Pleasant Kenobi said was that having Sideboard would make people want more Wild Cards and want more packs, and that is not true, with a Sideboard you just need one deck to play vs any other deck competitively, while in Bo1 you end up having to build way more than one deck, and if they go the Hearthstone one for tournaments like they did for the Player of the Year Playoff you would need at least 3 to 5 decks. So if WotC wants to be greedy it makes more sense to them to actualy go for Bo1 style decks and no Sideboarding, and i believe they were testing it in the PotY Playoff.
I think most of arena's problems with it's economy would be fixed if you can cash in wildcards for playsets, or atleast like 2 of the cards. Crafting in Hearthstone works because you only ever need 2 of a card, but in magic you need 4 and that makes everything way harder.
Even though I kinda like Brexit, Vince's jokes around it are amusing at worse and bring a smile and laughter at best. As long as he isn't being mean, calling me stupid and uneducated about economics, I don't mind him talking about things that matter to him. To be fair, I'm not a Brit so it's not really a politic that I care about. :-) I like watching you both. It's so cool how you bounce off each other so well, and how Vince chides the Prof. You're characters have attained synergy
A way in which pauper makes them money, I think of that when I have my addiction to cracking packs. Some commons can be good. That being said, I only have two pauper decks, paper decks. 😂 I said addiction! 😁
I'm not certain why the drive towards killing Modern as it's the most widely celebrated format for competitive play. I realize that WoTC wants Standard and Limited to be "the thing" as it ensures that players have to constantly purchase new cards to play. I would think having a widely diversified (yet streamlined) portfolio of formats for both in-person and online play would be the most well rounded way to build your strategy. Furthermore, while I agree that Arena has massive potential, I've personally done several large scale (multi-million dollar) projects and at the end of the day, if it makes financial sense for WoTC to make Modern on Arena, they'll do that. I realize that Prof stated that it would take a long time to do but I would counter that point in that this is simply a matter of investment dollars. They could hire more people to code the cards (I have yet to see any hard numbers on how many programmers to cards per week) in a shorter period of time. I'm curious what WoTC actually thinks about Modern and Legacy. I'm also curious what they think about paper products. It makes sense that they would continue to support both digital and paper formats as long as it is highly profitable to do so. -mM
wait? wizards is ditching modern? please someone explain me whats happening i was pondering in investing in a modern deck to start playing competitively. So i shouldnt ?
Best of one formats, and aggro the only archetype. Monored aggro, monowhite, redwhite, monoblue... etc. Gotta play fast. (A bit annoying facing those almost every game).
It's funny about the reserve list. There's no legal reason they can't remove it, as the promise made under the previous company wasn't even legally binding, and even then, it was a previous company. There is nothing holding Wizards to the reserve list, and it would be amazing to see a "reserve masters" set where we see an entirely reprinted set comprised of the reserved list, especially the amazing dual lands with the combined symbols.
Magic’s dynamic is just changing. MTGO isn’t going to be able to compete with the likes of Hearthstone. That’s why we have MTGA. In a generation more invested into their electronics, it makes sense that Wizard’s is putting efforts into MTGA. It’s where the market is at. I don’t think paper will die though. There is a feeling playing with paper that online doesn’t give you.
I’m one of the few players who jumped from mtga to modo but I imagine I’m rare. I know modo looks like 1999 tax software but part of me likes the interface of it. As mtga has made it clear bo3 isn’t their priority it has become apparent the game isn’t targeted at me. I also want to learn modern so there’s that
For those wondering about those old embarrassing PK videos... I'll just leave these here: ua-cam.com/video/E1N7YiuH908/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/_y4ge9Z479A/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/i4Sv4XDsHkk/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/McOuchvWmDo/v-deo.html
Dies To Removal is also available on SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/tolariancommunitycollege
Listen on iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dies-to-removal/id1444537761?mt=2
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Lol that bit at the start was great!
Why doesn’t the podcast appear in iTunes for so long?
You play the perfect part......you sure you acting.........lolololol
Any chance of it coming to Google Play?
Tolarian Community College Prof if you know anything about code, you wouldn’t say that’s not possible, it’s completely possible, it’s just numbers, and the fact that tech is where it is, it’s naive to believe it’s so archaic they don’t know how to fix it.
The skits at the beginning of these videos are pure gold! Amazing stuff! 😂
Pure gold is to run a scam business and nobody notice because it is in plain sight.
Lol it killed me at "my last 3 checks have bounced."
@@deltablaze77 And he kept going to work talk about dedicated
The intro payoff is pure gold. Quickly becoming a favorite watch. Maybe it's the interruptions, maybe it's the Brexit jokes, whatever it is I'm lovin' it.
Like some people here, I work in IT, occasionally with developers, and often times "legacy code" cannot be easily repaired or updated, even with additional resources. This problem is compounded when you consider that the code may not have been well-documented or well-commented. Arena is the update to MtGO. I see WotC eventually getting Arena deployed across multiple platforms, making sure it is stable, and then begin adding older sets or otherwise finding a way to migrate the MtGO player base to Arena.
Edit: I don't think WotC would be as susceptible to lawsuits as we think when the Terms of Service for most digital games specify that any real world currency used is for licenses to the associated content and that those licenses can be revoked or otherwise altered at any time. I'm surprised so many people sunk so much into MtGO, especially when considering how many people were likely also partaking in Paper MtG as well.
lol magic online is still on open beta? lmao
@No you who would ever want to play commander online lmao? commander is a social kitchen table format to play with friends. that's it.
@No you I mean MTG is basically the definition of loot box hell isn't it?
@@NoPr0bl3ms commander is a format to play magic. That's it.
Magic Online's development status can't really be finished by its nature unless WOTC just stops making new magic cards and subsequently changing/adding to the rules. Calling it a beta is nonsense, it's a finished piece of software that has extremely regular updates.
The Prof going all "customer support from hell"....That was...wow...I work in customer support of a software developer myself. I promise we aren't THAT bad.
ThorsShadow some of us are man and it is just a delight talking to a customer who got one of those
Well, that is your impression ;)
@@darkonekosuke2 Yeah. I think a lot of that stereotypical "horrible customer support person" is often due to their experiences with first level support. I'm not saying people working in first level support are bad, it's just that I've heard from a lot of people, that when they called "customer support of company X" they got forwarded from one guy to the next until some random dude finally solved their problem. The company I work in...we support guys are basically all levels of support. If a customer has a problem we're not sure about we ask a co-worker or ask them to describe the problem in as much detail as possible (written, if possible), then we try to replicate it and/or forward it to the guys in development. But we won't forward calls a bazillion times, because we usually can help customers ourselves.
How about on a really REALLY bad day?
ThorsShadow that’s some of it, but that’s how my company is set up too and sometimes (not always) I’ll get a cold transfer from someone who heard the one word they needed to send it my way and didn’t even try
I absolutely love and appreciate the fact that Professor speaks so clearly and not only English native speakers have a chance to understand him. I cannot say this about the British guy... Professor, couldn’t you stress out to your partner that not only native speakers are watching your videos?
I mean, sure, with enough time and resources they could fix Magic Online, but with that time and those resources they could build a new magic online from the ground, burn it down for laughs, and add the old cards to Magic Arena. Legacy code can be so extremely arduous to deal with that it’s not uncommon for companies to recreate old software from the ground, simply because it’s easier. It’s honestly a matter of time before Magic Arena or another program to replace Magic Online, and it’s not due to bad management or lack of attention, it’s simply because that's how it works
In a perfect world, Arena would support all major formats from legacy to brawl and we could trade/buy/sell singles on the platform. Maybe we can dream.
You two have good chemistry together. Very entertaining to listen to. I enjoy building decks with what I have instead of netdecking. It makes winning sweeter.
My lgs has a 30 proxy legacy tuesday. It's an awesome starting point for beginning players.
At about the 15min mark you talk about set cubes you have created. It'd be great to see more about these in a video or series of videos.
The thing about Direct Challenge is that it's a quick and dirty shortcut that was implemented to give the players a way to challenge their friends while the developers keep working on proper friend list and custom game systems.
12:42 Jim Sterling introduced a lot of people to Boglins
#1 Boglin Boy
Boglin Watch is prime television.
Yall have come a long way from episode one, loving the podcast guys!
I hope mtgo doesn’t go anywhere anytime soon. It allows me to proxy decks cheaply and quickly and makes it so I can play whenever wherever. It took me about 3 hours to get over the learning curve and it was very worthwhile. So what if it isn’t the prettiest interface given its power? I find Arena to be so annoying on so many levels - I find mtgo’s quiet subtlety so relieving after enduring Arena’s obnoxiousness.
"Truth of the matter" is that they will resell us our old desires and cards in a new system experience at some point.
How much does anyone want to bet that the reason Pauper never gets any traction is because some Marketing exec hears the name of the format and goes "Pauper?! Who would ever want to be asociated with poverty? it makes us look bad!"
I can bet a rebranding, like EDH to Commander would work wonders for promoting the format.
So long as Pauper remains based on being affordable, it will never have a snappy brand. EDH had to change because it's pure inside baseball - "Elder Dragon" references an outdated aspect of the format because the Elder Dragons mostly play no role and "Highlander" is just referential (the connection of the singleton rule and "there can only be one!" makes no sense if you aren't aware of the movie Highlander and, subsequently, that quote). "Commander" addresses these fundamental problems by being understandable without outside knowledge and without making false implications about how the format works. WOTC is an American company, and America loves fiscal opulence and individualism, some might say to the point of elitism. "Common" is already a pejorative term in our minds. In marketing speak, "budget" is a pejorative. Any format based on affordability will never see marketing support because Magic is (intentionally or not) sold as a game where you flash wealth. It's a collectible card game, it's based around collecting - which is costly. Seriously, I tried to think of another name for Pauper while writing this comment and came up totally blank - "Common Man" is the only one I could think of that was snappy and didn't have some kind of self-deprecating element. Pauper is not just a problem because of poverty, it's also a problem because it forces WOTC to admit that too many of the game's accepted formats are stupidly expensive because they refuse to try changing that.
Re: MGTA vs MGTO - This situation reminds me of the early days of Apple where they had two brands of computers that were being supported at the time, the "Apple" and the "Macintosh". Once it became apparent that the Mac was the "superior" machine, a simple business decision to focus their time and attention on the Mac and ultimately kill off the Apple. The writing is on the wall for MTGO. It may not happen immediately, and there may be unforeseen ramifications, but MTGO is going the way of the dinosaur, and not in the Ixalan sense.
Keep up the fantastic work. I didn't realize I needed a MTG focused news show in my life, but here I am.
U/B Death's Shadow is a pretty decent Legacy deck that can be played with shock lands instead of duals, if you are in the market for a budget Legacy tempo deck.
And thats why, despite playing mainly ygo, magic and my werewolf-commander will always has a special place in my heart. Hearing people saying "the games are to short" is not something you hear in ygo because 99% of players just go with the degenrate 1-2 turn-matches and think thats fine. Going in to long game and topdeck-mode makes card-games so much more better then boring fast crap.
agreed. When that sort of thing happens I just call it and shuffle up for another game, screw short games.
Merry Christmas Prof ! … and any associates, friends and clearly family ! … not to mention (and thus mentioning) anyone reading this !
I would really appreciate if the professor would release his Ultimate cube list!! I’d actually also like a video on the other cubes, but that one first!!! And of course his guide on making the boosters, as everyone has his own scheme. Please, please, please, with a cherry on top!!!
THANK YOU! for pronouncing Bogles correctly and correcting him
Yes!!
points deducted for “nemesi” though 🙄
First of all, I love this podcast. It's become my favorite Magic-related podcast by far.
In regards to the best of three, tournament mode argument, I definitely see that a tournament mode would make the client so much better. I've thought about it myself, and there's no real good reason for leaving it out (at least down the line). However, a tournament mode should never replace being able to challenge for Bo3's or even Bo5's, if that's what you want to do. However players want to play, you should facilitate it, especially because it's not a difficult thing to add to the game, and it lets people play the game the way they want to play (or at least gives us more options). You have to be extremely cynical to think that a game should only facilitate play that earns you money, and I honestly don't think that's the main (or sole) motivation behind the a lot of the choices being made (although, there are no doubt other voices influencing the developer's direction, such as Hasbro's).
Another important thing about the direct challenges being the platform for tournaments is that it let's you accomodate for bad connections, and for other things that somehow went wrong, so that you can just agree to restart the game on your own terms. But when they do get around to a tournament mode, they need to let you rejoin, if you dropped out, and they need to let the creator of the tournament customize a wide range of things like: number of players, legal formats, number of games per match, stipulations etc. As a matter of fact, direct challenges should have a number of options as well. Imagine being able to choose wacky game modes, like the Kibler one, or Singleton... or some odd format that you come up with with your friends, like singleton Ixalan-block, where every creature gains haste as an ETB trigger or a "Every creature has Legendary" format (I'm not saying either's a good format, but having the option to make up your own format and play with friends would be incredible).
We also need a spectator mode that allows us to see both players' cards in hand, which could be integrated into the twitch interace, so that the viewers can interact and get a good sense of what each player is working with.
Lastly, what if you kept your 5th copy of a card, and you were able to take 3 cards of a certain rarity and turn it into a wild card? They could just have an animation pop up, where the 5th copy of a card turns into a fragment of that rarity color, and once you have three or five (whatever they find to be most balanced), the fragments would join together as a wild card of that rarity. That would incentivize you to get more packs, and it would make it easier for people, who play a lot or actually spend money in game to build up their collections. And the booster pack prices would feel like more of a reward, plus it would distract our primate minds with more flashy animations.
Saying "They just aren't paying enough efforts to MTGO" is kind of pointless. If you are a programmer, and you've read someone else's code, you'll understand. Sometimes, it takes more time to understand the problem and fix it, than writing a solution from the ground up. It's hard for non-programmers to imagine that, but that's how complex a system can get. There are books on dealing with "legacy code" as we call it.
True, but it also doesn't excuse mistakes and the amount of bugs in the program. Making a whole new program is no excuse to let the old one die
@@ashra8281 yeah, say that again after you've dealt with someone else's 10 years old code.
@@XiaosChannel
I think they were pointing out that it's more a problem that they let those bugs and mistakes linger unaddressed for so long, instead of having them dealt with back when the original programmers were still around and making the base program. Yes, fixing bugs long after the programmer who made them left is difficult (an understatement I'm sure) but not caring enough about those bugs to have fixed them earlier, and allowing a product to go online with such noticeable bugs is worth criticizing.
@@Shenaldrac agreed. they probably didn't think other card games like hearthstone would beat them lol, didn't pay enough attention to the online scene.
As a programmer myself, I know the pain of sifting through god awful code, but the thing is the wizards have enough bloody money to pay people to fix this if they really wanted to. Its not that its too hard, it's that they are lazy, and it would be too much effort in their eyes.
46:12
I think it's pretty clear, looking at everything from Mark Rosewater's responses to questions on his blog to just how WoTC runs the game in general, that Wizards does in fact think that the playerbase are a bunch of mouth-breathing brainlets who need to be babied.
the bit about tournament modes in Street Fighter and Smash is actually kinda interesting since while they both have lobby systems, the most recent installments either lack one entirely or have one that's too limited in its structure for use in actual tournaments (since usually they only support best of one, single elimination). Most large fighting game tournaments are open-entry and get entrants in the hundreds, if not thousands (Street Fighter V at Evo 2016 had a whopping five thousand entrants), so having multiple consoles is a necessity. And since tournaments are run using local multiplayer rather than netplay (since most fighting games don't support netplay over LAN), you can't use tournament modes for running a serious tournament.
That said, those games *do* offer more in terms of customizing match settings and supporting tournament play - most games give you a choice between rematching your opponent and going back to character select. The latest Smash game lets you save and load match settings to easily switch between different rulesets.
Mono Blue Minotaurs was the video that got me watching Vince. It's good.
Hey prof! I just wanted to thank you for all the videos you've put out over the years. I used to play mtg as a teen but I stopped around the original Ravnica block because college is crazy expensive. Never thought that I'd come back to play the game since it's still crazy expensive and the only lgs in my area closed late last year. Still kept watching your vids because they were awesome.
Started playing mtg arena last week after watching your video on it and since you're talking about it in this vid, I thought I'd thank you for keeping my interest in magic burning through my hiatus. So thanks Prof!
MTG arena is free
I still don't understand the decisions around Arena wildcards. I've been grinding for like a month and a half. I have about 50% of available commons, and I got excited when I saw the holiday Pauper event. Then I realized that I only had eight wildcards and needed maybe 15 to complete the core of any competitive deck. While I was comfortable with some substitutions, this meant I was going to only get one shot at my deck selection. What is crazy is I have over 20 Uncommon and at least 10 Rare wildcards. I hadn't used any wildcards since I built my very first deck, and at that point I had run out of all rarities of wildcards, so they all started from the same point. It makes no sense to me that I am gaining Common wildcards at a slower rate than Rares. Understand I'm not complaining about plentiful Uncommon and Rare wildcards, but it just seems odd that I would need to make substitutions to a deck because I'm unable to obtain currently in-print Commons. Has anybody else had this problem? I guess it is a minor gripe compared to the Rares thing though. I'm currently saving up wildcards so I can move into a new deck when Ravnica Allegiance comes out, so I'm sure lack of Rares will bite me then!
I'd love to see a video on how you build your UMA cube and what changes you made. I also fear if I do it, I probably won't find 7 other people that have time for it at the same time.
AH! Prof is the first UA-camr I've heard pronounce Bogles right, I'm so proud. :)
The Maxx really pulls my eyes to that shelf.
Bogle: a goblin of phantom like creature.
Pronounced: Bow-gle
Glad to see this could get in before Christmas! Cheers Prof!
I actually really wanna start legacy. But I really wanna fully finish my modern mill deck. One day I'll get into it
This is my favorite UA-cam series
All I could focus on was the opportunity to rudely interrupt you!
XD
I haven't had the opportunity to play Magic Arena yet, but having played fan-made simulators for other TCGs (such as YGOPro and the now-defunct Dueling Network for Yugioh or untap.in for TCGs in general), I'll say that the one problem I've had with MTGO comes from its position in regards to the two types of simulators I've used - automated and manual/freeform.
MTGO is obviously an automated simulator, in that it had code that automates certain procedures for card effects, but the problem that I've found as someone who's relatively new to Magic is that it's in a weird position where it just... doesn't automate enough. MTGO gives you *constant* prompts about whether you want to respond to actions or play instants/sorceries, whereas fan-made automated simulators I've used for other games will just skip that prompt entirely if you don't have something to respond with.
And looking at it, I wouldn't be surprised if that feature you see in other simulators was a design choice inspired by MTGO - these simulators are made by TCG fans, and while they're designed for other games, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of their developers have experience with MTG and specifically MTGO, and wanted to make sure their preferred game's simulator didn't have the same problems.
Meanwhile with manual/freeform simulators... it's definitely something that's more for enfranchised players, and one of the downsides is that you need judges on standby like you would while playing in paper. I think if Wizards did decide to make a second client, making it a freeform simulator may be the way to go, albeit with the caveat that may not be a competitive platform but more of a testing ground.
These Podcasts are fantastic. Keep up the good work, gents.
If I had a way to get a digital collection of my paper collection (mostly pauper stuff) with no further cost than the game itself (10, 20 bucks even) I would gladly play in Magic Online but I'm not paying double for an awful client and a monetary system that it's not needed in videogames. This may sound dumb at first but a) you need players to challenge in the first place and b) engaging paper players to go online and viceversa it's a great way to do grow both playerbases. I don't think there's ever a proper incentive to pay around 150 bucks to "play my cards online" from time to time after having purchased them already. And certainly I'm not trusting Wizards, even less with digital (Magic Duels, ehem ehem).
Arena is great tho, give it a chance.
@@Lexender I tried it a bit, and while it's very solid, I really miss some old cards. Don't get me wrong, maybe I end up playing limited from time to time there, but Standard often doesn't attract me as much due to limited cardpool resulting in "good" cards and "bad" cards mostly.
X-mage it's free and you can build any deck you like.
@@colvinatchison344 Thanks for the info. I was indeed looking into it, seems like the best one.
@@MaeseEidos the problem with free programs is, in my experience, a lot of the players are bad (not all obviously) and will just quit if they don't like your deck since they have no skin in the game. I remember I was trying to test storm in legacy on one of the free magic programs and a couple matches in a row people just quit mid game. Then you have idiots like desolator telling people to just quit when you run into uw approach control last standard. It depends what you want. If you want serious games and serious people I think you're unlikely to find it on a free program. That is literally the reason I felt forced into mtgo if I wanted to play online.
I’m enjoying these so much as I cook breakfast!
I realy think they should add sets like Ultimate Masters into Magic Arena, and let people draft them it would be a nice way for them to build those older cards into arena.
They could be event-only legal or even only Phantom Drafts, that way people would be encouraged to buy them in paper.
Instead of fixing mtgo, they could add all old cards to arena. It would probably take the same amount of time. Maybe even less. The biggest hurdle would be acquiring the cards you need for a legacy deck under arenas economic model, I think.
Triple Innistrad cube list please
Yeah ok, I'm going to bring it up. If you're playing legacy and having fun, PLEASE stream some.
:D
I'll try and convince him.
Prof it is possible for them to rewrite magic online. It would not be cheap; it would be expensive. Wizards has been very vocal about not being able copy over information to MTGO but in all honesty it is really just them not wanting to support the older product.
They would have to made it from the ground up.
At that point they may as well add everything to Arena instead.
Its crazy how watching this now really shows how poorly MTGA are mishandling Modern cards, with their occasional Modern Bundles with cards such as ulamog and unaccessable by wildcards and not in packs.
I totally forgot these cards were even attainable till some random tron player got queued against me.
Ayo its me! Poggers :D
Im kinda stupid but its ok!
great video, and yes mono Blue Minotaurs was a AWESOME VIDEO!!!!!!!
Hey you remembered us in South Africa woop. WOTC sure dont.
As an American in the deep south I would have to drive, on average, 5 hours to go to GP's unless they are in Atlanta which is kinda rare nowadays.
Prof, if you want a cheap and competetive Delver Legacy list that can play without Duals, UB Shadow should be your thing.
I saw a video of Vince and his friens eating 200 mcnuggets. I can vow that he has filmed video's that do not represent his current content.
Are you a super fan?
I just bumt in to it.
It was pretty funny.
Why aren't they selling wildcards for gold and gems?
The first video of Vince's I saw was the minotaurs.
The beginning kinda reminds me of the old Magic commercials from the 90's where the guy sends back his goblin because it sucked.
Now here is a good question is prof going to make a video of the event going on in MTGA
?
Love your playful bantering; don't boggle me bro
Why not just ban all reserve list cards from commander and legacy?
Or at the least, why not print more gold-bordered non tournament legal versions like collectors edition? Maybe put them in a core set or masters set as a masterpiece?
I've been wanting new gold borders cards for a long time.
Or just do away with the reserve list and print cards to bring Legacy and Vintage back to life.
man I love the idea of non tournament legal masterpiece reprints of reserved list cards.
Wut lol
No reserve list in legacy would pull away much of the appeal to it. On commander on the other hand i would support that
I don't agree with some of the Legacy hate in some of the comments. It's one of the most interesting, fruitful, diverse formats and while some decks are oppressively expensive as they both say, it's possible to build an affordable Legacy deck. Fwiw, I think it's a healthier format than Modern rn.
So you think a meta with over 70% of the decks running the same 16 - 20 cards and only around 4 different deck archetypes is a healthy format?
Legacy is really fun, don't get me wrong.
But the format is ass when it comes to health. Creativity is not rewarded, new sets rarely effect anything, and supplemental products hardly help with the cost.
Modern is completely opposite of this.
There is a load of creativity or new decks that pop up or win tournaments all the time, new sets can bring new tools like Arclight Phoenix or Creeping Chill, and supplemental products cut costs sometimes up to $40 on expensive cards and help with affordability.
And there is a lot of interaction in Modern. People just focus on goldfish games or the "two-ships" games that get shown on cameras here and there.
Modern is fine, Legacy is fine, Standard is fine for now, and all other formats are their own things.
13:50 aka the time the Prof made me smile so wide it hurt.
20:25 around our LGS we often say that MTGO is built on the bones of dead interns.
That opening skit. *perfect*
Prof, do you have a list for that 3×INN cube? I'm trying to build one but I'm not sure how.
If you are curious as to why wizards will never remove the reserve list it's because of promissory estoppel
I dont care about mtgo being flashy. I actually prefer the minimalistic approach to the program. If I wanted to play a flashy digital card game I would just play hearthstone, which has larger prize pools. Magic does not translate well in the digital format like arena.
I will make it a point to never support wotc if they drop mtgo for arena as I'm sure many other would too. Although I am sure I am a minority, it will still hurt consumer confidance simillar to the way chronicles did.
Hopefully they'll put arena codes with this expansions products. I started playing with arena, and if it came with a code for arena, I'd buy a booster box fore sure.
I'd actually consider buying a box if they'd do that. I'm on a pretty low budget and that would be a great way to increase value significantly without any further costs for WotC. I've been playing MtG for many years now but yet have never bought a whole box due to the high cost/risk ratio.
Welcome to the game, man. I believe they said they had plans to do something like that eventually. I hope you get into paper magic some day. I think paper magic is so much more fun. Hanging out with people slinging cardboard, and collecting the cards. It's a great experience. Especially if you already know the rules and stuff from playing online because I know it can be intimidating going to a store to play if you're still unsure of what you're doing, even though most people are very helpful.
Prereleases are going to have a code for a free sealed event in Arena, they are by far the best MtG event, and it's new player friendly too. You should totally check them out
Ayyy I'm early. I love this podcast Prof, keep em going!
Keep putting out awesome videos prof!
Where is the link to that article?!! D:
Drafting in paper i managed to get a hierarch, then karn, and closed it out with a snap in my last pack
Honest question, does anyone know the chance of there being guest's on the show?
One thing Pleasant Kenobi said was that having Sideboard would make people want more Wild Cards and want more packs, and that is not true, with a Sideboard you just need one deck to play vs any other deck competitively, while in Bo1 you end up having to build way more than one deck, and if they go the Hearthstone one for tournaments like they did for the Player of the Year Playoff you would need at least 3 to 5 decks.
So if WotC wants to be greedy it makes more sense to them to actualy go for Bo1 style decks and no Sideboarding, and i believe they were testing it in the PotY Playoff.
Did you guys take this script from Steve Rubin's IRL event?
Prof and the contest for the ultimate masters booster box
How hard would it be to give a value to all of the mtgo cards and transfer the value to arena in the form of gems?
I'll pay attention to Arena when it can handle the older formats.
love the energy keep it up
I split my lip when the vid cut to Prof typing.
I thought Boglins was a deck that gave hexproof to all goblins.
I think most of arena's problems with it's economy would be fixed if you can cash in wildcards for playsets, or atleast like 2 of the cards. Crafting in Hearthstone works because you only ever need 2 of a card, but in magic you need 4 and that makes everything way harder.
Loved the intro
Even though I kinda like Brexit, Vince's jokes around it are amusing at worse and bring a smile and laughter at best. As long as he isn't being mean, calling me stupid and uneducated about economics, I don't mind him talking about things that matter to him. To be fair, I'm not a Brit so it's not really a politic that I care about. :-) I like watching you both. It's so cool how you bounce off each other so well, and how Vince chides the Prof. You're characters have attained synergy
A way in which pauper makes them money, I think of that when I have my addiction to cracking packs. Some commons can be good. That being said, I only have two pauper decks, paper decks. 😂 I said addiction! 😁
Pack to Power isn't something that should be looked highly upon. "Trading up" is just a euphemism for ripping people off.
Damn Vince has an accurate youtube handle, his accent is very pleasant indeed
I bought and paid Magic Online for RM80. Never ever I regret buying things before this.
Love these so much :)
I'm not certain why the drive towards killing Modern as it's the most widely celebrated format for competitive play. I realize that WoTC wants Standard and Limited to be "the thing" as it ensures that players have to constantly purchase new cards to play. I would think having a widely diversified (yet streamlined) portfolio of formats for both in-person and online play would be the most well rounded way to build your strategy.
Furthermore, while I agree that Arena has massive potential, I've personally done several large scale (multi-million dollar) projects and at the end of the day, if it makes financial sense for WoTC to make Modern on Arena, they'll do that. I realize that Prof stated that it would take a long time to do but I would counter that point in that this is simply a matter of investment dollars. They could hire more people to code the cards (I have yet to see any hard numbers on how many programmers to cards per week) in a shorter period of time.
I'm curious what WoTC actually thinks about Modern and Legacy. I'm also curious what they think about paper products. It makes sense that they would continue to support both digital and paper formats as long as it is highly profitable to do so.
-mM
wait? wizards is ditching modern? please someone explain me whats happening
i was pondering in investing in a modern deck to start playing competitively.
So i shouldnt ?
Best of one formats, and aggro the only archetype. Monored aggro, monowhite, redwhite, monoblue... etc. Gotta play fast. (A bit annoying facing those almost every game).
No Merfolk in Legacy Professor?
It's funny about the reserve list. There's no legal reason they can't remove it, as the promise made under the previous company wasn't even legally binding, and even then, it was a previous company. There is nothing holding Wizards to the reserve list, and it would be amazing to see a "reserve masters" set where we see an entirely reprinted set comprised of the reserved list, especially the amazing dual lands with the combined symbols.
nharviala no legal reason doesn't change the fact that it would crash the market
Magic’s dynamic is just changing. MTGO isn’t going to be able to compete with the likes of Hearthstone. That’s why we have MTGA. In a generation more invested into their electronics, it makes sense that Wizard’s is putting efforts into MTGA. It’s where the market is at. I don’t think paper will die though. There is a feeling playing with paper that online doesn’t give you.
I’m one of the few players who jumped from mtga to modo but I imagine I’m rare. I know modo looks like 1999 tax software but part of me likes the interface of it. As mtga has made it clear bo3 isn’t their priority it has become apparent the game isn’t targeted at me. I also want to learn modern so there’s that
What's the Blood Moon change?
For those wondering about those old embarrassing PK videos... I'll just leave these here:
ua-cam.com/video/E1N7YiuH908/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/_y4ge9Z479A/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/i4Sv4XDsHkk/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/McOuchvWmDo/v-deo.html
Great episode
ugh i used to shuffle power cards......and all my duel lands.......i shutter at the thought today.