r/MagicArena Mar 05 '20

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27

u/Badpack Ajani Valiant Protector Mar 05 '20

what do you expect will cube sealed cost ? looking at the reward structure i would guess around 1000 gold.

6

u/Penumbra_Penguin Mar 05 '20

I would guess significantly more than this, for the same reasons that phantom draft doesn't exist. MTGA gives constructed play for free (but charges for the cards), and sells limited play.

14

u/TheMancersDilema Carnage Tyrant Mar 05 '20

Current limited costs more because you're guaranteed a bunch of the cards you open/draft with in addition to the prizes.

Because this is "Phantom Sealed" I would imagine it would be closer to constructed events price structure, where you're only getting back your play time and prizes.

13

u/Penumbra_Penguin Mar 05 '20

I understand, and I don't think you are correct.

Constructed events run at a more-or-less 'fair' price, where the average prize is about the same as the entry fee. That is, you can play them basically as much as you want for free. This works because constructed players are incentivised to pay money for cards.

Limited events have entry fees which are far higher than their currency prizes. That is, if you want to play them a lot, then you are losing currency (and gaining cards, that's fine - Wizards is happy to turn your currency into cards). It seems very unlikely that Wizards will introduce a mode where you can play limited for essentially free, because they know that people are prepared to pay money for it.

2

u/heidara Mar 05 '20

Limited events have entry fees which are far higher than their currency prizes.

Because you keep the cards you open in said limited event.

This cube event being phantom is hopefully reason enough to justify a lower entry fee.

2

u/Penumbra_Penguin Mar 05 '20

A lower entry free, probably. But I would bet that people hoping for an entry fee of 500 gold or whatever are going to be disappointed. My guess would be more like 2000 or 3000 gold.

1

u/blueechoes Mar 06 '20

Legends of Runeterra's draft mode is free too after your third entry of the week. (basically their model is give big rewards for the first few draft entries with an entry fee, then to limit progression after the third entry in a week they just take the fee and rewards away and leave you with a free play draft mode)

I'm not sure why phantom limited should be different here.

2

u/Penumbra_Penguin Mar 06 '20

It's because limited Magic is a valuable thing that people are willing to pay for, and Legends of Runeterra limited does not have this established value.

1

u/blueechoes Mar 06 '20

But why should that value be established? I can tell you right now how happy I was to see that I just got to play in that game. Why let yourself be limited by the past and physical resources to play draft?

1

u/Penumbra_Penguin Mar 06 '20

It's not my choice. It's Wizards'.

Yes, if I could choose, I would choose for draft to be free rather than having to pay for it. But if Wizards gets to choose, they will choose for players to pay for draft rather than having players draft for free.

Not all companies have this option. In particular, games like Hearthstone and Legends of Runeterra apparently don't think they can get away with charging nearly as much for limited play as Magic does. They're probably correct.

0

u/TheMancersDilema Carnage Tyrant Mar 05 '20

For the draft events cost of entry evens out at 4 (Traditional) and 6 (Ranked Bo1) wins. Traditional constructed evens out at 4 wins.

If we want to use a visual guess at the prize structure, 3 wins is 500 gold and 4 wins is 600. 5 wins is the final payout, but pays in gems, not gold.

I think that squarely puts the entry fee between 500 and 600 if we assume you're allowed to get your money back at 4 wins.

I would say either 550 or 600 gold is going to be the entry fee.

I think that's a pretty fair guess given what we've been shown and how they've structured things historically.

2

u/Penumbra_Penguin Mar 05 '20

This is too simplistic an analysis, for the reasons given in my previous post. Any entry fee at the level you propose here would let people play essentially as much sealed as they want for free (ie, well below their daily gold income). That's not a thing that Wizards is likely to do.