I also dislike the Sealed Deck system. But for what its worth, the campaign/regular-deck part of the game is the same as the previous Duels games. So if you’ve unlocked everything in Duels 2012 and 2013, and you’re ready for more, then 2014 delivers. I’m enjoying it. Theres $10 worth of fun there easily.
Its just a shame about the Sealed Deck system. I would have had alot of fun with it if it was just one slot that could be wiped and restarted for free.
Tony
Fact checks:
Actually, the games originally sold for $15. They dropped to $10 the year they added the 99 cent deck unlocks and foil upgrades.
If all you want to do is play a $2 deck… well… I guess. I’ve never seen anyone actually do that though, and I’m not sure what you’d be hoping to accomplish other than play a few lop-sided pick-up games.
For a more relevant comparison, a 6-pack sealed deck tourney costs about $26 to enter on Magic Online. That comes with a bigger card pool, card ownership, tough human competition, and a chance at prizes, but yeah, $26. (To be fair, for repeated play, it tends to get a bit cheaper by using prize winnings as entry fees, selling rares if that’s your thing, and buying boosters cheaper from bots for tickets instead of cash from WotC.
Players in the MTGO casual room have generally lousy decks. You could probably win two thirds of your games with a two dollar deck. My interest in Magic was always the deck-building, though, so I understand how someone might not be interested in playing bargain rares.
I’ve bought every version of these so far and for 10€ I think I’m getting enough ‘fun’ out of them.
Sure it would be nice if they would just let us build our own decks to play against the AI already but hey, this is Magic the Gathering we are talking about! Rip-off is pretty much at its core.
The “seeding” based on account ID serves the purpose that if even if you completely delete the game from your system and clear out all saves, when you reinstall you’ll have your two slots back but each will just give you the exact same starting boosters and exact same prize boosters you had before.
Relevant to the discussion: Gamasutra: The Top F2P Monetization Tricks (via).
(Yeah, I realize Magic 2014 isn’t FTP but still.)
I love the way he uses the term “paper” for all these trashy articles he writes.
This form of insidious and exploitative game design has been becoming prevalent on iOS, but maybe the open hostility of hackers can keep this kind of garbage off of the PC.
Keep your exploitative business model out of my Magic:The Gathering!
??? He’s clearly going for an academic style. Do you have a substantive objection to his material?
And yet my experience with f2p games is the same and the reason I instantly dismiss them other than in extremely rare circumstances (planetside 2).
I don’t care for the phoney scientific explanations he injects into his articles.
And you know his work is phony because . . . ?
In the comments section, the author states that he has been working on F2P mechanics since 2001, is currently working on a F2P title, was trying to develop this area for a Ph.D. candidacy at one point, and is now trying to quantify a new intersection between computer gaming and consumer psychology. I figure he has an interest in maintaining his credibility.
And I don’t see a lot of incredulity from the comment section, either. The majority engage on substance, rather than voicing outright dismissal.
Was it peer-reviewed before publication?
Sure, by all those academic departments that declined to approve the author’s Ph.D. proposal.
I did say style.
“Paper”, at a minimum, implies supporting citations and a bibliography. His blog posts rate below Wikipedia in that regard.
P.S. Anyone can submit a paper to a journal for peer-review.
I recall reading something about a lot of Asian companies offering what appeared to be scam peer-reviewed journals (thus anyone?), but that’s as far as I go into that territory, having been engaged in the real world for a number of years. I’m sure if the author does something like that, people will get sniffy about the status of the journal, etc.
TLDR; haters gonna hate.
PS: I did say style. I’m not offering an opinion on what constitutes a “paper,” or who is required to get offended at the term’s misuse.
Is anyone actually arguing that anything he said was false or just mad because the author attempts to sound more official than perhaps he is?
scam peer-reviewed journals (thus anyone?)
I wasn’t referring to fly-by-night journals. Mr. Shokrizade could submit his “paper” to Nature today, if he wanted to. Journals don’t require academic credentials. And the people who reviewed his paper wouldn’t know his name or his title. They would reject it simply on its merits.
Well, everything he writes about neuroscience is bullshit.
There was this humorous response article Daniel Cook wrote that I think was written in response to the above article: https://plus.google.com/105363132599081141035/posts/Cyi2Am8gqGq
He’s written before about how F2P can be better for both players and developers. That doesn’t mean it always (or even usually) is. I’d argue it’s not the financial model that’s the issue, just how it’s used. I’d certainly be sad if we hadn’t gotten LoL or Dota 2, for example.
I don’t say this to defend Magic 2014, however. I’ll be skipping this one most likely, unless I get sick sometime soon. I still haven’t found a game series I like playing while bedridden and sick more than the simplified Magic games.