This post is meant to help me (and you, be welcome) vent some frustration, as well as help this community grow.
To make it interesting, try to explain at least a little bit why something bothers you.
- Noisy pets. I hate them.
I’m talking about the cackling goblin, the obnoxious horses, the dumb dogs, the intrusive mice and whatever repeatedly makes any sound.
I mean, it’s a fun addition at first, but it gets old quickly. And whenever Someone gets some damage, or something else of minor importance happens, it gets commented by not more than 3 (?) sound reactions. I think I heard all of them a few thousand times by now. It’s just annoying.
Sadly, the only way to mute them for good is to mute all opponent’s text and image emotes, basically shutting off communication. Which has it’s own merit, but it’s a different thing. Why combine both in one control?
So sometimes I cruise on everything off to have more peace of mind. When I feel more open, I enable reactions again, but manually mute every opponent who has a pet which cannot behave. Sorry bros. If you want to be heard, make this useless thing shut up.
- Decks which require you to react on dozens of triggers per round. Like 0-cost artifact spam, lifegain frenzy, foodcat sacrificers.
It’s just so tedious. And some people seem to do it just for the fun of it, without any impact on the game.
Like when the Scurry Oak starts growing, I have a Ritual of Soot in Hand, but still want to use my remaining mana in their end step. I may have to click through hundreds of triggers just to wipe it all away whenever they feel they spammed enough.
- One trick shows.
Talking about Dualcaster Mage, Minion of the Mighty, some decks around Colossal Hammer. I mean, it’s nice you can make these decks which can kill you on round 2 or so (but fall apart instantly when they don’t), just in principle. But in common play, it’s just a boring waste of time. I know these decks exist, cool. I’m pretty sure you just copied it from someone else or the internet, wow. Okay, you won and the only thing good about it is that I don’t have to shuffle physical cards afterwards. Now get lost.
- Fast decks in general.
I’m aware they are necessary to keep the lategame horrors in check, but meh. Why do I put 60 cards together if I only get to see 10, and to play 2?
To me, it smells like bad game design that some strategies revolve around making your opponent unable to play (also looking at discard, counter and other locks). Again, in principle it is amazing that MTG has this flexibility and variety. But does it make for interesting and fun matches for both sides? I much prefer games which have some back and forth, not one steamrolling the other.
- Uncreative decks.
Such wow, 4 copies of each elf/goblin/whatever, which everyone else plays too. Generic UR wizards, or Boros cats with Goblin Bombardment. Seen them a hundred times, mostly losing to them. I guess there’s the crux; they are so strong you can hardly play anything else. Which ironically makes the aforementioned flexibility and variety of this originally amazing game self defeating, resulting in stale repetition.
- Overpowered / too cheap cards
Did the reanimators really need an upgrade in the form of a 2-mana Persist? Or lifegain the Ocelot Pride? Both were already strong and popular before these were added. I also consider Sheoldred’s Edict one such culprit. Just a few years ago, I (and many others) were playing Fleshbag Marauder, a creature which has “on enter: each player sacrifices a creature” or something. Now it’s a 2-mana instant with more flexibility and precision. I think it just leads to a race to the bottom, where games are decided by whoever drew their winning solution first (we give you 3 turns to make that happen). Again, I very much like that something like this is possible, but it should not be so common that it displaces other strategies, which could make for more interesting and more fun games, for both sides.
This got longer than I anticipated. Feel free to add your own thoughts independent from mine, or cheese to my whine.
My only gripe is pretty straight forward: the cost to play.
I LOVE draft, but have been unable to play it on Arena due to the high cost of entry. They allow standard play for free, but paywall draft. I know I can technically grind dailies to get enough gold, and then if im lucky enough and win enough I can earn enough back to chain another draft, but this is eventually a losing game, a bit like a slot machine.
I just have zero interest in grinding standard, and refuse to pay almost as much as physical draft for non-tangible, digital version. It feels very predatory.
I pretty much agree with all of your points, but wanted to add a few more that have gone into me taking a long Arena break:
- All rares are effectively ~$5, and mythics cost even more
One of the greatest aspects of the game pre-Arena was that there were literally thousands of cheap cards (cheap rares/mythics) to make playing off-meta or fun decks affordable. Some are even quite competitive, yet in Arena the cost for every rare and mythic normalizes around the same price. Roughly $6/rare if you buy gems for packs, or about $2.50/rare if you buy rare wildcards directly. However, there is a cap on the direct buy WCs.
Having ALL rares equalized in a rather high price forces everyone to spend their WCs on only the highest performing rares and mythics. If you only have $20 for Arena, you’re not going to spend it all on 4 jank rares for a pet deck, you’re going to use them on the top tier rares in the tier 1 decks.
I believe this has unbelievable consequences in game play all the way to player mental health, and after a while I was looking at just how much I was spending to stay current in Arena and I was sickened by it. Not even kidding here – I never had more than a few hours a week to play, so I was putting in about $200/set! I stopped in January 2024 and haven’t returned but at this point I think it’s essentially impossible for the economy to change.
- Not interested in the play patterns
This is not Arena-specific, but all of the formats available on Arena right now are inundated with play patterns that I don’t find enjoyable. Starting with Timeless, because it’s the most powerful format, I don’t even watch gameplay on Twitch or Youtube anymore because it’s not interesting. That is a huge problem I think, because it doesn’t look fun to play. You have horrible play patterns like the boros energy cards, Grief+Reanimate, all of the silly Alchemy cards like Juggernaut Peddler, and when you combine everything the game is literally decided on turn 2. That is not fun at all, in fact that feels like the opposite of fun to me. I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game. We don’t have that right now.
With Standard, often Standard players say the format is healthy or “healthier than it’s ever been” and I contest that with it’s flat out not fun to play and not fun to watch. That’s my experience. Look at the # of Twitch streamers. Look at CovertGoBlue quitting the game because he found Standard to be too unenjoyable. These are the real effects of what WoTC is doing to the format – making it faster and more powerful, more pushed rares and mythics, and way less deck design thought. The fact that Sheoldred is still in standard makes me sick.
I have been getting into Pioneer lately because I think it’s perhaps the only interesting format left to play, and with that I may get into Explorer but I really wish the card pool was equal to Pioneer. I think that’s a huge mistake they’re making in slow-rolling the card releases.
- Brawl is unplayable
If anyone can give me one reason why Nadu isn’t banned in Brawl I’ll concede, but the fact that it hasn’t been banned (as well as Rusko and Baral imo) tells us everything we need to know about Brawl: WoTC. doesn’t. give. a. shit. They don’t care at all, and the lack of not only meaningful but ANY updates at all to queuing or banlist is enough of a reason to hard avoid it all together.
This is a format where players just auto-concede to certain commanders that they don’t want to play. Imagine managing a popular game where tons of your playerbase hates aspects of it so much that they just concede to take a loss when they see a set of cards you design to be fun. This is the opposite of fun to me, and again I think it non-trivially contributes to negative player mental health.
I could go on but this has gotten long already. I appreciate the post because some of this stuff I have been thinking about for a long time.
< cash spending >
Aw, that sounds horrible! I had no idea, I don’t spend any money on this. WotC got enough from me back when I bought paper cards, and somehow I got along fine in Arena without money.
But I remember having a similar problem when we still played with paper cards. You’re forced to keep spending to keep playing with your friends, or drop out at some point. For inhouse paper, at least we could “print” proxies.
Would be nice if they considered how much each player has spent on their current deck for the matchmaking. Like high spenders have to face other high spenders, and budget players are grouped with themselves.
Though of course, in both cases, the economic incentive for WotC is to create unfair situations.
< play patterns >
I don’t know what words like Timeless, Standard or Pioneer mean, but yeah, seems we feel the same. Especially this sounds exactly like me: I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game.
Take Glissa Sunslayer for example, a black/green creature for 3 mana with first strike and death touch (which alone makes it one of the best blockers imo), it has 3 additional abilities from which you can choose one on impact. Like, what, why? This would be totally playable without these extra abilities. FS DT in itself is an extremely powerful combo, and I think there is currently no other card which has that out of the box. It can even create nasty combos by repeatedly resetting Sagas. Binding of the old Gods for example, destroy one permanent each round for the sole cost of dealing player damage. Though strangely, I don’t see it being played too often, so it seems to be fine.
I think the game would be more fun if the overall power level would be toned down a bit, but don’t expect that to happen.
Fun fact, I just conceded to a Peddler before my 2nd turn. I tried my luck a dozen times or so against that deck, which rarely succeeded and was never enjoyable. Yeah, skip.
< brawl unplayable >
Yes, Nadu is shameless. Though it has little impact on my matches, I rarely see it. I suffer much more from Persist Reanimators, and Goblin Bombardment with Ajani. Or this silly deck which mills itself, with creatures automagically returning to the battlefield.
Baral … can lead to hopeless situations, agreed. But I see Baral even less than Nadu. Could it be that counter decks came out of fashion, because aggro got too fast? Many players seem to play almost exclusively cards for 1 or max 2 mana.
Like I just lost after my first round to a Fireblade Charger with Sigarda’s Aid and a Colossus Hammer. Arena asked me afterwards wether I had fun. Mhm. Next match: Scholar of the Lost Trove gets Persist in round 3. Cool. After that: Elves swinging lethal in round 3.
Can you elaborate on Rusko, Clockmaker? Admittedly, I’ve been playing 2 or 3 Ruskos for a year or more. Before, I liked using Underrealm Lich with this frog monster which lets you draw a card whenever a land is put into your graveyard. I like recycling decks and fear Ashiok, guess I’m loss averse.
Imagine managing a popular game where tons of your playerbase hates aspects of it so much that they just concede to take a loss when they see a set of cards you design to be fun. This is the opposite of fun to me, and again I think it non-trivially contributes to negative player mental health.
Well put, I agree. I heard something when learning about game design: A mechanic, which gives something in your game a new ability, should be fun for the player using it, and for the players trying to counter it. Like maybe your warrior can raise his shield to block attacks, bot others have their abilities to penetrate shields, hit your feet or whatever. We should not just make the warrior invulnerable, with no counterplay possible. It might be fun for one player, but you want both to enjoy your game.
Can you elaborate on Rusko, Clockmaker?
I’m only referring to Rusko in 1v1 Brawl. I think Rusko is a cool card and must do pretty well in Historic but it’s definitely easier to play against in Historic. In Brawl its oppressive because it’s a guaranteed Midnight Clock on turn 3 or 4 that comes in untapped, and it has a decent wincon built into it. I think it should create the clock on cast only. A 3/3 that ramps, draws cards, and drains life all in one and pretty much removes his commander tax with the clock tokens, that is way too far. Hopefully by now the matchmaker puts Rusko in the hell queue.
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I can think of a few things I dislike about MTG as a whole (3yr standard and general powercreep of the format comes to mind), but my complaints about specifically Arena would be:
- Cost. I’d probably play more if sets didn’t cost more than an entire new game on Steam to get the preorder bundles. Why are boosters so damn expensive?
- Grind. The F2P way to get cards is to grind like a madman to get your daily wins and finish the quests. The problem is I prefer slower decks, and I’m not going to play monored for my daily chore if I can just play a different game entirely.
- BO1 standard. This is more of a personal opinion, but I wish they’d keep a separate banlist for BO1. They’ve done it in the past with Nexus of Fate, but BO1 is so dense with aggro decks. Unfortunately, the daily wins system incentivizes more quick games rather than fewer interesting games, so I understand why these aggro decks are so popular. Maybe changing the daily wins system would solve this as well without the need for a separate banlist?
That it takes players away from paper magic.
I’m sympathetic to this complaint, but COVID-19 is what took me away from paper Magic. I was out of the game for three years and I’m only back now because of Arena.
Other than the pets and to some extent the triggers, this mostly just seems like complaints about Magic itself. It also strikes me as odd to complain about decks that are too fast and decks that are too slow simultaneously…
At any rate, my main problems with Arena are the horrifically slow wildcard economy and the lack of multiplayer Brawl.
this mostly just seems like complaints about Magic itself
You’re right, I strayed from the title. Arena is where I experience MTG, I guess that’s how both got mashed together from my view.
What I still could have mentioned: Ropers, and generally unsportsmanlike behaviour. Like being a dick with emotes, being quick when you win but sluggish when you lose, abusing ‘Your Go’, spamming ‘Good Game’ when I still have or might draw a solution. I’ve also done all that, so I try not to judge too hard. Sometimes I think the whole experience is an exercise in emotion regulation.
decks that are too fast and decks that are too slow simultaneously
What I meant with fast: Decks which can kill in the first few rounds (regardless of how much time has passed
What I meant with slow: Players who physically take a long time to play (like roping on every step)
It can be both, which is the worst. Like a player scaling up his Scurry Oak in one of the first few turns to 100+ counters, while frequently taking breaks to clown around with emotes or whatever. I can’t really leave my desk, but also don’t want to surrender since I might draw a solution. Though this could be in 5 seconds or 10 minutes, who knows. Sometimes I feel this just isn’t worth my nerves and surrender anyway, even with a solution in hand.
I heard about the slow wildcard economy, so I guess you’re right. I have the opposite experience, but seen this point numerous times before; seems legit. I’ve been playing this game for many years (10?), sometimes almost all day. After some start phase, I could make whatever I needed from wildcards, without ever spending any real money. Currently, I have around 15 rare/mythic wildcards, which is a low count for me, since I just made another deck (with an accompanying post in this community). I guess it helps that I usually only play one deck, which rarely sees changes once it’s settled. Only vaguely I remember grinding for missing cards, an adventure which I did occasionally miss since then.
I can kinda see the “too fast” complaint with stuff like Brawl or other unranked modes, but in any ranked modes, winning is the point, so I feel like there isn’t really any room to complain about fast and efficient decks in ranked play. Idk which modes you tend to play, so that may or may not be relevant. At the very least, fast decks let you get on to the next match sooner.
Agreed on ropers, of course, though I don’t see a whole lot of intentional roping that often. However, I usually play Brawl, and otherwise have only have one janky ranked Historic deck that usually hangs out in silver, so I don’t know if it’s worse in higher rank tiers. More often I see people who just seem to have trouble making decisions quickly, or don’t seem to notice that they have priority until the rope starts. It’s mildly frustrating, but it usually doesn’t appear to be intentional so I try not to get too mad about it.
On wilds, I actually got into the Arena alpha test back in the day, but I’ve taken a few multi-year breaks from it since release. I’ve found that if you play consistently across the lifetime of a set, you can end up filling out a lot of it, but actually catching up on sets that you’ve missed, especially if there are years’ worth of them, is a nightmare. I’m probably going to have to wait for another rotation before I can really think about trying to get into Standard. I can’t imagine how bad it is for brand-new players…
in any ranked modes, winning is the point, so I feel like there isn’t really any room to complain about fast and efficient decks in ranked play.
I slightly disagree. I mean, mostly you’re obviously right; playing to win is foremost at home in ranked. But I think other legit points exist simultaneously.
I want interesting matches. I want the matchmaking to give me an opponent which is neither too hard nor too easy. That’s my main reason for playing ranked historic.
I want to test the deck I built, see how it fares against mature decks. I play unranked to check if I got the basics right (like land composition), and ranked to find out how viable certain ideas actually are in the current meta.
But sure, it is perfectly fine to play ranked to win (lol), and I don’t blame those who do. I just feel we can and should expect more challenge required and less luck. I lose so often with only having played 1 land, that’s just ridiculous. My deck has answers to all these threats, but asking wether I have the fitting solution against an unknown opponent in my first 8 cards puts a lot more weight on luck than on skill.
There’s another thought, not sure how to put it. Maybe it’s less about the individual match and more about different strategies competing in a shared environment. From that perspective, it’s perfectly fine to have deck A which wins versus B, but loses against C and D. Then, player skill sits at the judgement how much B we currently have, and what exactly A is. However, the current client heavily emphasizes looking at individual matches (that’s where you see that big VICTORY / DEFEATED), and I think you need 3rd party tools to get any information how good you’re doing against certain types of opponents.
I think that your last though is right on the money.
The client should show you match histories against what sorts of decks, so it’s more overall and long term than just the one match.
Bo3 works well for this too and I find I enjoy playing it more. But don’t always have the time during my commutes to bosh it out each time.
the lack of multiplayer Brawl.
But brawl is a 1v1 format.
Which is why it failed.
It seems like most of your issues are not with the Magic Arena client, but with the formats being played on Arena (namely Historic and possibly Timeless?).
If you’re into a slower, more methodical format, look into playing bo3 Standard and Explorer. Decks can still be explosive, but not as ridiculous, and typically the level of threats is about equal to the level of answers available in the format.
Alternatively, lean into limited formats. Draft decks will always require some personal thinking, every set is like a brand new format, and in limited, Tempo is key. Card advantage is key. Threats are key. Answers are key. Everything matters, and most people aren’t going to even have 4-ofs in their deck, so there’s a wider variance in cards seen. Plus, it’s a place where commons and uncommons can shine!
Also, I don’t mind when people copy decks. Some people are trying to learn how to play well and efficiently, rather than express themselves with deck building. One Standard deck I was playing last year was based on a Gruul Haste deck I saw on YouTube, and then I made it and modified it based on what I had and how many wildcards I wanted to spend. I ended up doing the same for a different deck I built in paper: start with a deck list, modify it based on what I have and how expensive buying the remaining pieces would be. I still brew my own silly decks, but there’s a reason that a meta can exist. Fine-tuned competitive decks are typically more consistent at winning than random brews.
As for my personal dislikes…
- The timer should exist in best of 1
Not just the rope system, but the chess clock. Maybe have it set to 20 minutes per player or something. It drives me nuts when I touch bo1 and realize that I’m spending so much time waiting, but I can’t quantify it. In bo3, I can hover over the timer and see that I’ve used up 3 minutes while my opponent has used 7, and at least feel justified in my impatience.
- Better deckbuilding and deck categorization options
Deckbuilding is frustrating. When I want cards that are green, it gives me all cards with green in their color identity, which I wouldn’t play in a mono-G deck. The search feature is slow and makes me wonder if my game froze up each time. Trying to move multiple of a card into the sideboard is multiple click-drags. The crafting interface feels barely slapped on, and makes it too easy for new players to accidentally spend their wildcards. And overall, while we have space for tons of decks, I really wish I could just save all of my decks, or at least a revision history of each deck so I didn’t feel the need to duplicate it along the way to have something to turn back to if my tweaks are bad. I turn to third party trackers for this functionality, but it should really just be part of the client.
- As a newer player, Draft was intimidating because it required a gem (money) investment every single time
I know this is how it works in paper Magic, but I really wish there was a way to draft and practice for free in the client. I know there’s DraftSim and you can get a group together on Discord, but that’s too much to ask of a new player. I don’t mind dropping a few bucks now and then, but the “stakes” of it all get me anxious and pushed me away from even trying it for the first year.
Not enough (any) in client tracking of match results and what the match up was.
No way to really combo off. Let me demonstrate a loop and do it X times please.
I definitely agree with some of these for sure. The uncreative decks is a big one, it’s so boring and irritating to play your 30th match in a row against the same copy/paste “good” deck over and over… That’s never been what I like about MTG, I don’t even particularly care about winning or losing, just make it interesting.
Second, that glitch where even if you set your reactions to some huge stack of combo triggers to automatically resolve, there are times when Arena will still time you out, and there’s nothing you can do about it. They should fix that.
Third, I just really want the rest of the old cards added!
I agree with most of this.
Regarding the speed/balance issues – I really just want to play Magic with a much, much lower power level than anything that is currently supported, but WotC has been pushing the power level for so long that I don’t even know if we can get back there. I would be open to playing something like Standard Pauper or Standard Artisan, but even that is probably way beyond where I really want to be. I want to turn the clock back 15 or 20 years to when 2R got you a Goblin Chariot instead of a Screaming Nemesis.
Regarding the Arena interface – I turned off voice lines and background music, changed my graphics settings to Low, and set my default pet to none, all within about a month of starting Arena. And then after a while I just started leaving my headphones off anyway. I put up with emotes for over a year, but broke down and disabled them within the past month or so. It’s been an improvement. I feel bad that I might be missing the occasional sincere “Nice” or “Thinking”, but not as bad as I used to feel about getting a premature “Good game” or a “Your Go” during a complex turn. I would love a setting to disable non-essential animations. Sleeves, pets, ripple effects in the background. I play Arena despite those things, not because of them. And the card highlighting! I realize it actually provides information but I’d still shut it off in a second.
As for sitting through combos… Arena really needs more sophisticated skipping controls. MTGO has had “Pass until end of turn” and “Pass until next turn” for two decades.
