Arena would RUIN Commander
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Dec. 5, 2021, 4:11 p.m. by RNR_Gaming
Eventually, commander will make its' way onto arena; it may take some time but it'll happen and it'll be a huge Windfall for wizards. However, I'm positive that commanders on arena will pose several problems.
Firstly, there are those whom are heavily invested in the old client MODO. I'd wager that there would be a massive exodus from the client that'd result in a lot of discontent. Now I'm not too familiar with modo but I've heard if you have a complete set of cards wizards would send you the set in exchange for your online cards (please correct me if I'm wrong). Now, to remedy this discontent it'd be super cool if wizards would allow modo players to import their collections to arena or credit them equivalent wild cards but that's probably a programming and logistics nightmare.
Secondly, theres no chat system in place so there would be no way to have a pre-game discussion and this removes any sort of socialization. To remedy this I could see them allowing for custom games and people just using discord as a means of communication until a functioning chat system was put in place but like with any other game with a chat function this could lead to a lot of toxic behavior.
Lastly, the nuance of decks will Dissipate. Information travels fast and people will know what's good and that cool gimmick you like won't be nearly as viable as it was. Players will play hundreds of games and commander will get stale and figured out. With the emergence of all the new deck building sites this is already happening but adding commander to arena would drastically Expedite the process. Splitting the queues into "ranked" and "casual" may alleviate some of this problem but there would likely still be trolls that'd try to pub stomp in casuals. However, the main remedy would likely be a well formatted chat/messaging system.
What do you all think? Will wizards implement commander in a way that won't be a complete dumpster fire or will they just bleed the format even more dry?
RNR_Gaming says... #3
Love different perspectives. I don't think it'd be entirely a negative thing if it was introduced but I do think it'd need to be in beta for awhile before it came to the arena platform. Also, I'm sure you could try and coordinate something on a discord where people could used tappedout and some sort of screen capture and just play that way - just getting everyone in one place may be hard. I'm still hoping life gets better for you glad you're still here and posting.
December 5, 2021 4:40 p.m.
I know it is not tappedout but people build decks via moxfield and uses them via spell table. May be able to do the same with tappedout but that is always an option
December 5, 2021 5:47 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #5
I've tried Moxfield. It's alright. I prefer Tappedout. Feels like a more engaging community here, and the site offers features Mox lacks.
December 5, 2021 6:04 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #6
My opinion starts with: the people who crave that in-person interaction will not trade it in for an online version. So I think you’ll primarily have online options (EDH or otherwise) populated by “online folks.” Most of the online folks, in my experience, are very focused on mechanics and deck success. EDH would offer different challenges/rewards than standard or brawl, but it would simply be a different burger for people who are already going to the burger restaurant. Aside from the general rule differences, I don’t expect EDH would be any different from the current Arena formats. This meager “improvement” is why I don’t think they’re going to put the necessary work into building multiplayer EDH into Arena.
December 5, 2021 6:09 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #7
Commander can never be "solved"--it is inherently suboptimal as a format. And if you tired of playing the annoying Arena Commander--guess what? You can just pretend it doesn't exist!
With Standard etc., Arena is basically the only thing keeping them alive; Commander is an intensely social format, that will always be able to thrive on kitchen tables and in LGS's
December 5, 2021 6:30 p.m.
I think there are a lot of pros and cons to edh on arena, for both the player and wotc, and it's hard to say for sure if it would ever happen. They'd have to add a long library of cards with all of the animations and flavor that arena comes with. And they probably wouldn't want those cards to be available for other formats because having modern, legacy, old rotation standard and things would drastically dilute the player base from standard which they have recently doubled down on. Wotc probably knows very well that growth in their game is finite and arena is just a compartment of magic that has it's own style and community. Adding arena to paper magic was a way of selling to the same customer twice, where now adding commander to arena would, at best, only shift existing commander players. So, I'm not sure if it's a foregone conclusion that edh will come to arena. It definitely could :) I think they tried with that other edhish format that I can't remember right now, but it just couldn't pull existing commander players off of something they love.
On the side of the players, it could be that arena edh wouldn't look the same as arena standard. Having the goal of edh typically being, have fun with friends, might not create the same drive to optimize decks the way it does in standard. Maybe it would if there was a ranking system, but having a ranking system in edh would be just the worst. I think that would make every casual edh player just go, big ewwww.
Personally, I can't get into arena, but I understand why people like it. And a lot of people like arena and like edh, which is awesome, but that doesn't mean that those same people would play edh on arena. It's like, if I really like a pizza place and I really like a Thai restaurant and I'm enjoying them both, would it add anything to my life if the pizza place started selling pad thai? Nope, I'm probably just going to keep going to both.
December 5, 2021 6:47 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #9
Omniscience_is_life - there is far less nuance in decks than there was 5 years ago despite having a much larger selection of cards. I challenge you to look around a store or heck even on this site and I'd bet the majority of decks with the same commander probably have 30-60% overlap. While I agree to an extent that it's meant to be a sub-optial/social format with the power creep of cards and general coupled with better deck building resources I'd give it another 5 years and the overlap will be 50-70%.
December 5, 2021 8:31 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #10
FormOverFunction - I don't think it'll be an over night thing or even in the next 3 years. I'll guess it'll take 5-10. They're slowly building card libraries and formatting older cards in the game. If there's money to be made it'll come. We just got a commander secret lair. We're getting commander decks with every set and we're getting another draftable commander set. Wizards knows it's a cash cow and they will cash in.
December 5, 2021 8:35 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #11
Niko9 - well the perfect time for it's implementation would of been during the covid shut downs. People were clamoring to get some games in and there was definitely a surge of people wanting to go as far as setting up webcam games on discord. Even if they'd just be selling the same product twice the overhead is much lower in a digital space and there are profits to be had.
December 5, 2021 8:39 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #12
RNR_Gaming key words: "same commander". Considering there are 1,236 legal commanders in the format, I don't think that's more than 35% of what matters in terms of homogenization.
December 5, 2021 8:47 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #13
RNR_Gaming - totally on the same page on that one. I’m not sure how much money will be in Arena though. If we were gambling with my wife’s money I would wager that Arena will be gone in ten years rather than expanding into EDH. EDH is so huge and weird, almost any attempt will fall short of satisfying enough of the EDH community to pay for the up-front work. If they had all the money they needed to convert ALL of the cards over and program them to function properly... I feel like you’d still only pick up less than half of the EDH player base. And that’s a Herculean task that wouldn’t be attempted. They would maybe do the work for the mana batteries, for old times sake, but they’d have to leave out a bunch of cards; and that would further entrench the in-person group in the mindset of “I’m never doing this online.” Just guesses, though. I’ve been wrong a couple of times before ;p
December 6, 2021 9:39 a.m.
Grubbernaut says... #14
It'd attract different players, for the same reason a kitchen table 60 card player doesn't stick around for standard there.
For me, I'd much rather see the format optimized and competitive, but I'd hate to lose the social aspect that something like Spelltable gives. However, it would be great for testing. That being said, there would definitely be a subset that simply finds a way to self police, or petition Wizards to offer that same playstyle.
Power level discrepancies are probably the number one salt inducing thing in EDH, though, and I don't think that's a solvable problem overall.
December 6, 2021 10:32 a.m.
TriusMalarky says... #15
Pioneer is going to take an incredibly long time to show up on arena. Where are we now, Kaladesh? We have another four or five years worth of cards to even get Pioneer on the platform, and those sets are backburner while new stuff like Alchemy and crap gets pumped out.
Even then, that's only back to 2012. We'd have another decade of sets at least before you can even get Modern on there, plus an entire other decade to get the rest of the sets that were ever standard legal(back to Alpha, technically), and that's not including commander precon cards since 2011, and special sets like Conspiracy, Battlebond, and Commander Legends.
"eventually" implies that WotC doesn't have at least a decade to plan the implementation of commander on arena.
December 6, 2021 11:16 a.m.
I don't think Commander will really work without the ability to have a conversation with the other players. That's something that Arena lacks and until there was a baked in solution I don't think it would work. Oh, there would be a huge initial month or two because everyone would want to try it, but so many decks and so many board states just don't work without the players being able to converse with one another.
December 6, 2021 4:39 p.m.
RiotRunner789 says... #17
Longterm, after a few more years, I figure historic brawl will have a historic commander offshoot once the card pool expands enough. Don't think commander proper will ever actually make it to arena.
December 6, 2021 5:11 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #18
Magic Arena. That's it. It's very clearly not Magic the Gathering online. Commander is the format that relies as much on the Gathering part as on the Magic part. That is probably how it became the most popular format in the first place. Looking at the way I play Commander, that could never be replaced with Arena emotes, I wouldn't even want to try and gather wildcards to obtain all the obscure cards for niche decks that I've collected in paper in the past 5 years.
If "solved" commander is something you dread, I'm afraid to inform you that it's already a subset of the format, it's the idea behind cEDH, and even those decks play out differently most of the time, because it's still a 100 card singleton format with cards available from all magic's history. The fun is less in the deckbuilding process and more in the gameplay decisions and the high rate of new information influx because every player is trying to stop every other player while also trying to win as efficiently as possible. Your resource management becomes way more important, and with all cards legal, you have access to the best wincons and answers in Magic: the Gathering. It plays out like other "solved" formats like Modern or Legacy, which also keep people interested after deck lists are published and brewing isn't required to play enjoyable games.
December 6, 2021 5:55 p.m.
I'm not sure they could run EDH on Arena.
They can't put enough cards in the client.
December 11, 2021 5:50 a.m.
golgarigirl says... #20
Arena won't do anything to commander that the current online gameplay environment hasn't already. It would just magnify it, assuming it's success.
I, personally, strongly prefer to play in person. My EDH groups are all groups of friends, and even though some of us struggle with being social (most of us are one step from being shut-ins as is), we make the exception for each other and some cardboard-slinging.
TypicalTimmy says... #2
Hello,
I work up to 80+ hours a week right now. I just hit 41h32m when I clocked out Wednesday and clocked out Saturday totaling the week at 80h42m. I only have Sundays off and, on these days, I run errands and catch up. Effectively, "no days to relax".
And working Noon - 9pm all the way up to 4am (16 hour shifts) means I also am unavailable for LGS meets. Likewise, my weekends are shot so I can not exactly play with friends - even if I had any to play with.
So, coming from the perspective of someone who's life is kicking him while he's down, I welcome online alternatives as it means people like me can log in at 2am after work and catch a game before bed. Numerous platforms exist currently for online play, so adding one more won't make much of a huge impact. Players will migrate there to check it out, and it is upon WOTC if it fails or succeeds. If it is genuinely better, players will slide over and the hobby will resume. Likewise, if it has the same quality as the War of the Spark novel, players will reject it and that will reflect in quarterlies, thus prompting change in development. But in both instances, other platforms will still exist - as they always have.
:) Just giving an opinion from another perspective, is all.
December 5, 2021 4:31 p.m.