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Why Magic Online Will Suck
An anonymous reader sends us a link to this funny dissection of online gaming. The writer obviously speaks from bitter experience. :)
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Half the entertaining value of a Magic "gathering" is seeing the people who show up...some are quite interesting based on my memories from high school a few years ago.
Online version just won't have that for a draw.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I read this when penny arcade posted a link to it. I, unfortunatly, would have to agree that the unpleasent population in many online communities is much too large. I haven't tried magic online but I do know a couple of things that can help clear some stuff up in the article. The article talks about duping making everyone's account get erased. They have a protection mechnisim in place that goes like this. Each card is "born" when a deck is opened, it has a unique identifier to that specific card on the server and using that they keep track of all transactions the card has been in. Thus, if a card was duped, they could follow all the transactions back to the original duper and >ONLY ban their account. I beleive that in the contract it does say that you do own your virtual cards, not them. This would probably protect you from some of the nastyness. Now, granted, there's a lot more that can go wrong, but I don't think it's as horrible as the article implies.
And yes, it's the game that "you-know-who" plays.
... Voldemort?
Yes, I did play with him. For a long time, actually - don't ask about it.
Who is "you-know-who"
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The author goes on and on about how cheating will be rampant online and if you dup cards that we could end up with lots of dupped card being traded or worse yet that these cards could be traded in for actual magic cards.
On and on he goes about how dangerous this online version will be... but here's the catch:
If you can get physical cards for your online cards then you're playing Magic Online when you play at your local store. The meta game is now the same game. How can you tell if someone's "real life" deck isn't stacked with duped cards from his online deck?
Well you can't. And guess what, the game was hacked a long time ago, in real life. Richard Garfield never envisioned people buying crates of the cards to get four of the rare ones in their deck... the game was hacked with money.
So next time you lose at Magic the Gathering at your local hobby store, you can call the guy a cheater. I mean, can he prove he actually bought all those cards?
I have some hope that M:tG:OL might actually work -- unlike other online games you have something serious to lose besides access -- the card collection you have built up. The biggest problem with online games, as this article points out, is the lack of repercussions to being an ass.
If you've invested a lot more that time into something (eg. bought lots of boosters) then getting kicked off for breaking the terms of use might be enough of a feedback loop to keep some modicum of control.
On most online games you just re-register under another name.
Of course then the issue is -- will they really kick off somebody who has bought $10000 worth of cards ...
They will just have to have a very anti-cheating policy.
That and if it is a least reasonably popular, it will make a whole lot of money, and they will be able to hire alot of coders to stay ahead of the cheaters.
Blizzard, Everquest, and games of that type are at a disadvantage because they only get like $10 a month from their subscribers, MtG subscribers will pay much more as they pay $3 dollars per pack of cards. Adding the fact that the cards can be redeemed for real cards will really draw the MtG fans as well.
As long as WotC pumps a good portion of the revenue into coders to fend off the cheaters, I don't think that they will have much problem. Bandwidth wise WotC is looking at a much more attractive position then the MMORPG's as the ping times won't have to be nearly so low to have a good game.
So lets add up the points shall we?
1. Less Bandwidth required (Less cost)
2. Higher Subscriber Revenues (More revenue)
3. Tangible product extremely cheap to produce
= a large amount of profit to pay coders
Sure their will be bugs, I wouldn't recommend trading with people in the first 2 weeks, for example. But I believe that it won't be nearly as much of a problem as this article's author seems to believe.
I remember a few years ago when the PC version of Magic was released. I thought it was funny. The original game's advertisement was "All you need is a deck, a brain and a friend." I guess that last requirement was a bit much for some of them.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Now my victory dance will be substantially less embarrassing.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
... but an accurate description of the current status of Diablo II online. The supposedly secure realms have been hacked to pieces. Many people charge items to help other players, sell items on ebay, and focus on the repetitive play that the game rewards.
One of the latest hacks, for example, which I find particularly funny, can program mouse and keyboard actions so that you keep creating games and killing the same monster over and over again soley for the purpose of getting the items the monster drops. This bot works - the prices within the trading economy have already gone down about one half because of the flood of all the items from players running it.
A good online game should not be based on rewarding this kind of repetitive behavior that a bot can perform (quote stolen from LB talking about Tabula Rasa.
I've played this game years ago, back when legends and the Dark were out. Well, after looking what they were doing, they were adding "new" rules and making half-assed cards basd on older, and more powerful, cards. Then you have the Tier1 and Tier 2 playing sets. To play on the upper set, you have to BUY NEW CARDS.
This continual upgrading scheme (for paper,. nonetheless) is what ran me away. I play for fun now, and spend half the time trying to figure out the stupid new variations on the original rules.
Then again, the rules change every other week. How can they update the game so that the new rules are correctly in effect? Still, Online or offline, the game still stinks these days.
The simple fact that many "hardcore" Magic players who have a real-world card collection worth hundreds or thousands and numbering in the many thousands of cards, will most likely not want to effectively start over building their cardbase online, esp. given the very valid points that the author of the article set forth.
I used to be into Magic, and still have my collection, but, if I'm going to pay for cards, I would much rather play with the whiny post-pokemon chits up the street at the card shop who throw a fit about me being cheap because my deck "isn't Type II"....Because next time when he comes up to me begging for a sweet trade for the foil whatever he got, i can smile and say "not interested." Can't do that online. at least, not with the same effect
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Richard Garfield never envisioned people buying crates of the cards to get four of the rare ones in their deck...
Never envisioned it without also having visions of dancing dollar signs, you mean.
Seriously, the whole point of putting rare cards in any collectible card game is so that people will buy crates of cards to get them...
Is because the Wizards have the intention to charge full retail price for virtual cards. That's right, the same money you could spend in a store, and get real physical cards and at least have something to look at (or take elsewhere) when you're done playing. For this idea alone, I don't see how it can work very well beyond a very dedicated core of people.
Unlike most MMORPG games, MTG: Online isn't going to charge a monthly fee. The draw for EverCrack, Ultima Online, etc is that you pay your 10 bucks same as everyone else, and it's what you do in the game that makes you better or worse than everyone else. MTGO, it's all about the size of your wallet and how much you can afford to spend on getting better. Sure, some of you can say "but you still have to know how to play the game or 10,000 dollars worth of cards don't help". Yeah, true. But during the beta, I estimated that it would cost well over $500 to become "competitive" at the game, with little or no way to change that. Things would be pretty even for about a month, and then the "Mr. Suitcase" players would overwhelmingly dominate the game, much like that one guy who figured out Magic just a little too early at your local comic/card store and whipped the crap out of almost everyone on a regular basis.
My major attraction though, was Tournaments. This is where MTGO really lacks IMO. A typical tourney with 128 players (or so) can and will take up to 8 hours to finish. 8 hours! And you can't leave and go anywhere else either, cause the round might finish early and you'd default by not showing up! I tried a few of these tournaments and they don't have the appeal of a physical tournament where you can go and mess around doing other things (like side tournaments) since you have to sit at the game for a solid 8 hours (or until you lose).
Yeah, it'll suck if hackers do their thing, and if people rip other people off.. but it has to get people to play first if that's going to happen, and I don't think it will.
What they should do (this is just a thought of mine) is sell the regular cards in stores, but print a unique serial number on each one, then you can enter those serial number onto your online account. That way your virtual deck can be the same as your real deck.
People guessing serial numbers shouldn't be a problem if there is a delay in entering the number and it uses a large enough base with enough digits.
Also, no teenager stench, which is always a bonus...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-1
c-hack.com |
Magic: The Gathering is a brilliant game. I have played it since 1993. I have watched the development of the game from day one. Richard Garfield is a genius, and all people in the CCG industry need to tip their cap to him whenever they design any game. That said, it uses a horrible business model, one that was never intended to work on a real player level. This shows up on the tournament level and will show up in MTGO.
When the game was designed, the most powerful cards were the rarest. Black Lotus, a card that lets you get 3 mana for free (where you normally only get to produce one on the first turn and two on the second and so on), is one of the rarest of all tournament-legal Magic cards. This was done because Wizards naively believed that hardcore players couldn't collect all of the cards, so the harder it was to get something the more powerful it should be.
Unfortunately, the tournament players learned that to compete you HAD to have one copy of each of the "Power Nine," the most-abusable cards in the game. Cards quickly spiraled into the $20, $30 and even (gasp) $50 range! If those cards weren't restricted to one-per-deck (where most cards are four-per-deck), their prices would have been even higher on the secondary market.
Well, Wizards learned that those cards were too powerful and stopped printing them. Again, naively assuming that if you limit the supply that eventually things will become more fair. That wasn't what happened -- the cards became more and more expensive. Today, to get the "Power Nine," you're talking about $800 or more.
Wizards learned that having a group of "haves" and "have nots" was not good for the long-term success of the game. So they created a new tournament format that didn't use any really old cards. This was called Type II, and eventually called Standard. What the Standard tournament format did was to "ban" hundreds of cards without specifically choosing to do so. Invalidating the early players' purchases.
If Magic was an online game from day one, they could have tweaked the costs and gameplay effects of their most-broken (and most-useless) cards. But in Magic, you are stuck. Since MTG-Online must mirror MTG-card board, you get all of the drawbacks of being online but none of the benefits.
Further, when you are dealing with an online game the FIRST priority must be "how will the abusers play this game?", because if it isn't you are screwed. With MTG-card board you have tons of social gaming groups that don't have to deal with the tournament gaming scene. This is extremely unlikely to happen in MTG-Online. Again, since it is linked to a nine-year-old game with sloppy, very complex rules, problems arise.
And my biggest point: Magic is just too expensive. To play in a constructed Standard tournament with just one deck, you usually need to spend $100. Many of the most popular decks run north of $200. And these use cards that are IN PRINT! Then, when Standard has a set rotation (banning another 700 cards to make room for the new sets that have just been released) you need to buy more and more.
You can avoid this by entering Sealed Deck tournaments, but then you are paying around $20 to make a deck with a limited set of cards. I like them, but how many $20 tournaments can you enter a month? Even one every other week makes MTGO a $500/year online game.
For the record, to play any of the online CCGs that I have developed, players need to spend $10 to jump in, $35 to have a serious tournament deck and about $100 to have a full "play set" of any given expansion.
When Wizards gives up on MTG-Online, much like it has the Magic Interactive Encyclopedia and the original Magic PC game, the people who have spent their money will be left with exactly nothing. Our games allow peer-to-peer play (albiet awkwardly) such that if something ever happens to us, you can keep on playing.
Disclaimer time: I speak for Blue Sky Red Design and myself only, not for my employer, our parent company or World Wrestling Entertainment in any way.
Online wrestling as a trading card game? WWF With Authority.
Of course, if you were just interested in playing the game on a friendly basis, and didn't bother attending the tourneys, there were always the counterfeit cards.
Back in Toronto, there was at least one manufacturer who's product was indistinguishable from the real thing. A complete set - that's f$cking everything that was done to date - in triplicate, used to cost ~$80 cdn.
Which is kinda frightening when you consider how many people are well into the thousands 'invested'.
As for the online game, geez, I'm pretty sure the same thing will happen. Don't think I'm in the the minority here, when I say I really hate to lose because some moron with money has a better deck than me. I like the game (any game, in fact), to be a fair competition, not who has the most spare cash in the RW.
If this online Magic game were to sponcer a "get-together" like dating clubs, how many people would actually show up after the amount of smack delt online?
"Oh, so you're The Verminator... I'M GONNA RIP YOU STINKIN' HEAD OFF!!! NOBODY TALKS ABOUT MY MOTHER LIKE THAT!!!"
Hell, I'd pay just to watch....
You need a FREE iPod Nano
the whole point of putting rare cards in any collectible card game is so that people will buy crates of cards to get them...
Actually the creator thought that a most people would have two starter decks and 4 booster packs. The reason for rare cards was to help balance the powerful cards. No one at wizards thought that magic would be as popular as it became and there was no way to predict it. Richard Garfield thought you'd never actually see all the cards, and rare cards would make the game more interesting.
The dollar signs came later.
The expense is the reason I gave up on MtG. After dropping about $200 on cards, I realized that it was going to cost way too much to ever keep up. Mind you, I spent some of it about 1 tournament before some of my cards became unusable.
The tournament system was ridiculous in our area. It was the same people over and over, with no qualified judge, because WotC wanted way too much time and money to certify someone. Our nearest official judge in Lubbock, TX - which meant a three hour drive for him just to sit around and arbitrate. I don't think he ever really enjoyed it and in the end, I believe he quit working as a judge.
In the end, I watched the Magic community in our town switch over to other games. It stopped being fun and the requirements of running a real tournament were too high. I think the main discouragement for me was realizing that the point system in place meant that no one from our group was ever going to get outside the county (anyone from our group would have been OK).
I don't get it - competition can be fun without being as anally organized as WotC made it. They managed to take a game that looked great and played pretty well and turn it into some sort worldwide bizarre Darwinistic system. For what? Grins? I doubt it.
I think that maybe DnD and most paper-and-pencil RPG's are more fun because you can't make a tournament system work in that way. In the end, I went back to my book games and that's where I am now.
Never again.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Hi. My nick is Prior Restraint, and I'm a Magic addict.
("Hi, Prior!")
It's been four years since my last game, (applause) but I still have to take it one day at a time.
("Amen!")
I can still remember how it all started: I joined a gaming club in college because -- surprise! -- I'm not a very sociable person. At first, it was all RPGs, which was "okay". I mean, I had dabbled a little in high school, even ran a campaign once, and it didn't affect me, right?
Then, suddenly, I found myself going to cons. Talk about your unwashed masses! (cynical laughter) That's where I met The Pusher. He was doing free demos, trying to set up tourneys with the con coordinator, that kind of thing.
And I ignored it. I mean, it's a card game; it was beneath me, you know? But not everyone did, ("That's right!") and you know what? I started seeing it in my club's office.
Show of hands: How many here got their first deck for free? Quite a few, I see. That's how I got pulled in. My former S.O. had been into this... this "game" -- and don't think that word wasn't carefully chosen to make you think it's safer than it really is. ("Preach on!") My very own S.O. handed me a deck after I asked what all the fuss was about. Blue-green, as I recall. Even came with a Sol Ring and a Wall of Flesh.
I got in at the worst possible time: revised edition had only been out for a little while, and popularity was sky-rocketing. I began learning strategies, and we all know where that leads -- say it with me, now: "I just need one... specific... card".
Oh, but those... Pushers... at WotC know better than that. Oh, yes they do. Suddenly, revised is going out of print, and fourth ed. is on the way. Now what do you do, my friends? I'll tell you what I did: I found myself debating the merits of doing without a couple of textbooks in order buy a full set of dual lands! That is what Magic does to people, ladies and gentlemen. First, you give up certain luxuries, like eating on campus instead of ordering pizza. But it's a slippery slope, my friends, ("That's right!") and pretty soon, you're eating ramen noodles twice a day; drinking Pabst, or worse yet, Milwaukee's Best; and living in contested gang territory for the lower rent!
("Don't hold back!")
And the rule changes! Cumulative upkeep? Of course! Cooler cards need that sort of balancing. Buried vs. destroyed? Sure! I can probably muddle my way through it.
I stuck by my new master all through fourth edition. This time, it was green-black. I joined a group that played for ante. When I lost my Sorceress Queen to a rookie mistake (I failed to make good use of my Pestilence), I knew I had hit rock-bottom.
But, my friends, that was the turning point for me. For the first time, I was truly seeing my situation as it was. Now, I'd like to tell you I tossed out my cards and never looked back, but... we know that only happens in the movies.
("Tell it like it is, Prior!")
*sigh* And so, I kept playing. I stopped with the ante; I no longer considered going to tournaments, and that was good. But I kept playing, anyway. I couldn't shake it, because I kept telling myself I could control it. Despite everything, I still said to myself, "Self: you've got a decent deck. Nothing too fancy, but it can hold its own. You can play with it 'just for fun', and still avoid the treadmill that has you chasing after cards".
Does anyone know what lesson I failed to learn? Oh! I think I heard it in the back: I forgot about WotC's plans for me. I forgot about new editions, and new rules. So, all of a sudden, fifth edition comes out, and my deck can't stand up to the phasing and flanking bullshit cards people throw down at me. I'm right back at square one. It was the day I caught myself at the comic book store fondling the fifth ed. boosters that I knew I had to go cold-turkey, or not at all.
To this day, though, I find myself tempted. I have co-workers into their thirties who still play. Last week, I caught a glimpse of some seventh edition cards: everything's about the graveyard now. "How appropriate," I thought, and yet I was tempted. Right this minute, as I type, I know that in a box in the closet behind me are some cards I was too weak to throw out back then, and too weak to dig out right now. Perhaps someday, I'll have the strength to face them down. Until then, they are a constant reminder of the daily struggle to lead a normal life.
Thank you for your time.
I had a friend... Let's call him Mike. Mike became bored with magic when he realized that he was spending hundreds of dollars per deck to change his proxy cards (fake cards for testing purposes) into real cards. A well-designed proxy deck will basically win every time, btw. He was sick of it.
He sold off all of his cards, and gave me his land / commons (somewhere I have a grocery bag full of living lands, wyrms, forests, etc) and bought two special starter packs that contained a starter and two boosters each. He proceeded to trade with people... collecting unwanted cards and trading bits here and there for things that other people wanted. He would hook people up for cards that they were looking for in exchange for a small cut, and he was a good dealmaker. Within a week, his deck was competitive again (he knew the power of common green), and within six months he was trading legends / antiquities and his collection rivaled that of his old deck... And within the year he was bored again and gave me all of his cards.
The moral of the story... Lots of people are going to be spending lots of money on this online game. If you can spend 10 hours playing a game every day, can you really resist buying a booster every morning? I used to be one of those people. We didn't put any value into common or uncommon cards, or even crappy rares. It sounds like there will be a lot of room for friendly tag-a-longs who are willing to ingraciate themselves by not taking the game seriously... and who don't have to pay any money to play.
Sounds fun. Where can I sign up?
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
if you've ever played tribes 2 you can vote to kick certain players out of the game. if someone's cheating it's usually obvious and they get booted pretty quick. if someone's just causing trouble by trying to boot honest players, people vote no about kicking the honest player and the troublemaker ends up getting booted next.
i'm not sure how this would work in a one on one card game, maybe some sort of point system where kick requests are reviewed by moderators but the solution is democratic self regulation by the players themselves.
it works because 90% of gamers are pretty honest people and just want to have a good time...
I played MTGO quite extensively during the free beta period. Stopped when they went live and started charging far too much.
1) Cards you buy for MTGO are not stored locally, but in a large database WOTC has back at their co-lo. It is conceivable that duping/illegal card hacks are possible, but the Leaping Lizard folks have been going out of their way to make sure that doesn't happen. Of course, that setup hasn't stopped all the duping hacks in Diablo II...
2) As was mentioned in another post, WOTC is charging real-life prices for MTGO cards. Same price per pack as if you went to your local store and got a physical set. This wouldn't be terrible if it didn't lead into...
3) You don't own your MTGO cards, nor is WOTC liable to replace them beyond $15. This language was inserted into the TOS about 2/3 of the way through the beta period and caused a huge shitstorm amongst the beta testers. So let's say you've spent $1000 on MTGO cards, and there's some sort of database corruption and your account is hosed. You're now out $985 with nothing to show for it.
See, the thing is that WOTC adamantly does NOT want MGTO to compete with standard MTG. They believe that if they charge less for MTGO (say, something like $0.50 US/booster) that all the MTG players will defect to MTGO. (Never mind the fact that physical MTG is on its last legs anyways.) They're right to a degree...I do think there would be some defecting, but not nearly as much as WOTC is panicking about. As it is, a significant portion of the beta testers pledged to quit as soon as the game went live, and from what I've seen most of them stuck to their guns.
It was a pretty cool game, the advance variation of the French defense. I got to make the classical bxh7+ sacrifice, he brought out his king to g6 (no choice), and I was pushing that poor fool right into a mating net. When BAM, there's a big flash on my screen and his king is back on its home square!
"What the fuck was that?"
"Ha, ha! I got the recall king upgrade! My king can teleport home to its recall square three times per game!"
All right, two can play at this game. I went over to the secure server, gave them my credit card, and bought a couple of upgrades of my own. Then I went looking for the punk.
This time I played the king's gambit, 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. nf3 g5. I let him have it with 4. bxf4xg5.
"How'd you take both of those pawns?"
"Ha, ha, punk! I've got double dragon bishops!"
The punk's eyes widened as he realized there was no way to save the queen in his position.
Now that we're both wised up, the games are more even, so it's not as much fun any more. There's too much trivial complexity and it takes hours to play a serious game.
But we still like to beat up newbies. My favorite target is this one guy, GMKasparov. He would be an okay player except that he never spends any money for hypercastling or semi-transparent pawns or range-attack rooks. But he got me good last night with this weird "en passant" powerup. I think he must have a cheat client, because I couldn't even find "en passant" in the powerup catalog!
When I heard of the online version I was breifly hopeful. I thought maybe since it doesn't involve the sale of cards it might actually be a fair game and be worth getting in to it. But then I see that, nope, its the same thing, only now you pay money to get the privlege to pretend you have a rare card (think about it - increased price through scarcity will fail utterly in an electronic forum where scarcity is completely artificial.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.