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I thinks it's more like "sitting it out", I'm pretty sure they knew exactly what they where doing. But I fear like MTG moved to maximize squeezing out money fr

I thinks it's more like "sitting it out", I'm pretty sure they knew exactly what they where doing. But I fear like MTG moved to maximize squeezing out money from players on the risk of long term losses D&D will now move there, too. So I kinda expects this to only be the start of wtf. this isn't what we want moments.

tapland 4y ago
They said in their latest (december?) earnings call they would focus on increasing monetization of DnD going forward.
bee_rider 4y ago
Who knows what their corporate plan is of course… It seems a bit odd, though — card collecting games have always seemed to have a bit of a mercenary streak. I mean buying and trading cards is sort of part of the hobby, right? I think players go into it expecting some level of ongoing costs. With pen and paper RPGs, the sort of mythical ultimate campaign that many only hope to achieve could go for years and years on a couple books. I can’t think of many hobbies that provide as favorable a $:entertainment ratio. This is… not a market that is expecting to spend a lot of money…
- brianwawok 4y ago
  MTG has gone from “It would cost $3000 a year to own a play set of every new card” To “It would cost $50,000 a year to own a play set of every new card” Like yah for sure it was always for profit. But like the last few years of changes has been extreme.
  - snapcaster 4y ago
    Yeah, but isn't the meaningful metric "It would cost X to own a Tier 1 Standard Deck" or something? has that amount gone up? I only play booster draft so no idea tbh
- dathinab 4y ago
  > It seems a bit odd, though There is a difference between making money and abusing year long commitment of the community to make people spent more money then they think is reasonable (or should afford give their financial spending). People which have decades of emotional commitment are quite easy to be pressured into "over-spending", through if you do it too much it can cost you your brand and many people their hobby. To some degree you can compare it to games having "just" in-app purchases in a well balanced way even if it might be a bit pay to win and it a game using all kinds of dark patterns to squeeze out every penny no matter the moral and being pay-hug to even have a chance to compete. Like for many of the current relevant formats the entry cost for not just playing causal with your friends is around 500€ for a _single_ deck and 1000+€ for going competitive; and just to be clear that's in a context where WotC managed to not (yet) kill of their brand by going too much overboard with pricing. But it means that if you are not a well earning single that hobby isn't quite affordable anymore. *Anyway WotC basically kicked out anyone who is not at least slightly well of, because they don't make them money and I'm afraid what that could men for D&D*.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I agree that they screwed that community over. It just seems like it would be harder due to the fundamentals of the game to screw over the actual player community of D&D. There’s no competitive aspect, you can write whatever you want on your character sheet, and there’s a strong home brew tendency. If they try to gate the content behind a paywall, players can just… make it up themselves. They can go after folks publishing settings on drivethroughrpg which will be a bummer. And they can go after the sort of “play d&d on a podcast” groups (until they just switch to a different system). I think the players will be fine, though.

tapland 4y ago

They said in their latest (december?) earnings call they would focus on increasing monetization of DnD going forward.

bee_rider 4y ago

Who knows what their corporate plan is of course… It seems a bit odd, though — card collecting games have always seemed to have a bit of a mercenary streak. I mean buying and trading cards is sort of part of the hobby, right? I think players go into it expecting some level of ongoing costs. With pen and paper RPGs, the sort of mythical ultimate campaign that many only hope to achieve could go for years and years on a couple books. I can’t think of many hobbies that provide as favorable a $:entertainment ratio. This is… not a market that is expecting to spend a lot of money…

brianwawok 4y ago
MTG has gone from “It would cost $3000 a year to own a play set of every new card” To “It would cost $50,000 a year to own a play set of every new card” Like yah for sure it was always for profit. But like the last few years of changes has been extreme.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  Yeah, but isn't the meaningful metric "It would cost X to own a Tier 1 Standard Deck" or something? has that amount gone up? I only play booster draft so no idea tbh
dathinab 4y ago
> It seems a bit odd, though There is a difference between making money and abusing year long commitment of the community to make people spent more money then they think is reasonable (or should afford give their financial spending). People which have decades of emotional commitment are quite easy to be pressured into "over-spending", through if you do it too much it can cost you your brand and many people their hobby. To some degree you can compare it to games having "just" in-app purchases in a well balanced way even if it might be a bit pay to win and it a game using all kinds of dark patterns to squeeze out every penny no matter the moral and being pay-hug to even have a chance to compete. Like for many of the current relevant formats the entry cost for not just playing causal with your friends is around 500€ for a _single_ deck and 1000+€ for going competitive; and just to be clear that's in a context where WotC managed to not (yet) kill of their brand by going too much overboard with pricing. But it means that if you are not a well earning single that hobby isn't quite affordable anymore. *Anyway WotC basically kicked out anyone who is not at least slightly well of, because they don't make them money and I'm afraid what that could men for D&D*.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I agree that they screwed that community over. It just seems like it would be harder due to the fundamentals of the game to screw over the actual player community of D&D. There’s no competitive aspect, you can write whatever you want on your character sheet, and there’s a strong home brew tendency. If they try to gate the content behind a paywall, players can just… make it up themselves. They can go after folks publishing settings on drivethroughrpg which will be a bummer. And they can go after the sort of “play d&d on a podcast” groups (until they just switch to a different system). I think the players will be fine, though.