The Steam page is live for Magic 2015—Duels of the Planeswalkers! I know you've been eagerly waiting for a release date. Dates for other platforms are still incoming, but in the case of Steam, July 16th is the official day. GET HYPED!
I gotta say, my microtransaction sense is tingling something fierce.
I'd also be a little surprised if the "Expansion" sets really contained all those hundreds of cards. I think they're more likely to be a small amount of cards from that set. Not reassuring that there are no numbers on any of them.
Yea, did some digging. Hope you guys who like multi are down for Pay to Win competition:
In addition to showing off the new, cleaner game board, the improved interface, and the auto-complete deck building AI that Jon Bolding got to see at PAX East, I learned a few new things about Duels 2015. For starters, much to the chagrin of everybody that's going to play Duels 2015, there are Premium Booster packs, only purchasable as microtransactions. These boosters host a completely separate set of cards for your collection, so if you want to acquire every card in the game, you'll be forced to farm rewards and pay cash. Wizards knew that premium boosters would likely aggravate a decent portion of the playerbase, so there are safeguards to keep it from being too much of a pay-to-win scenario. Your collection is limited to four of any common, three of any uncommon, two of each rare, and one of each mythic. This will keep players from just buying a hundred boosters and building the uber-competitive super-decks that you'll see at the tournament level of competitive play. It's a welcome restriction for players like myself, that tend to avoid microtransactions.
Steam Forum link listing out the cards that are supposedly behind the (random) paywall.
I don't really play multi, I think I played one game of 2 headed last year to finish of the achievements, so I don't know how much I care. Definitely means I don't care about the 35 dollar pack though.
Well, 10 bucks is a good deal for the vanilla version. I don't think it's that bad.
My question is, does there happen to be a way to collect all the cards in the game without throwing more REAL money at it? Like can all of them eventually be unlocked with playing the hell out of the game? Do you get boosters for free for doing so well? Or is it LITERALLY you cannot get all cards in the game filled out without also paying them lots of money? Cause that's going to suck as I played a lot of Duals online and this one I might have to sit out.
From what I understand there is a list of cards that are only available from "Premium" boosters. They're nothing super special, I mean come on, we're talking stuff like Squadron hawk!
From what I understand there is a list of cards that are only available from "Premium" boosters. They're nothing super special, I mean come on, we're talking stuff like Squadron hawk!
Young Wolf, Gather Courage, Aura Gnarlid, Mold Shambler, Garruk's Packleader, Doubling Season, Paragon of Eternal Wilds
Maelstrom Archangel
Darksteel Axe, Millstone, Blasting Station, Galvanic Juggernaut, Darksteel Ingot, Hall of Triumph, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Sorry at work so the list was blocked. Thanks for posting it up here. Some of those cards stand out for potential for me (Stoneforge/Squadron Hawk existing but missing Jace ... curious how bad you can make that old blue white control deck. Also Double Season is potentially fantastic along with a few others).
Ugh ... probably still drop 10 dollars on this but ... I am a bit worried. I need to get my hands on the REST of the cards everyone gets ...
Well, I think they've finally gotten to my limit. I felt like last year's iteration was the weakest so far, and this looks to take that and add shitty microtransactions to the mix, so I'm done.
I'll be happy to go back to the game when they stop actively making it worse each year and removing fun features.
Buying boosters to crack open and hope to randomly get the card I want when there's no trading or secondary market equivalent in the game makes absolutely no sense to me, so I'm skipping that entirely. It's too bad, though, since some of the cards listed as booster only are genuinely fun cards to play in a deck.
So what are the card collections you get from the "Complete Bundle" ? Are those cards that you can normally unlock in the base game, or are they also additional cards that you can't otherwise get in the base game? I have no interest in the "Special Edition" crap, nor am I interested in "foil stickers," so I'm thinking I want the base game only. However, if those 5 card collections had a fair amount of guaranteed cards that I couldn't otherwise get through play, I might be willing to shell out the extra just for that.
If they could do it like, say, Mass Effect 3 or something, so you earn a currency from playing that you can spend on boosters, or you can just buy them with actual money if you're impatient, then fine I'm on board. But having it be literally only with money, I don't like that. I'd rather the base game were more expensive than to have them do that.
If they could do it like, say, Mass Effect 3 or something, so you earn a currency from playing that you can spend on boosters, or you can just buy them with actual money if you're impatient, then fine I'm on board. But having it be literally only with money, I don't like that. I'd rather the base game were more expensive than to have them do that.
Agreed. It's more or less removed any desire I have to play the game, even if I'd probably enjoy it without those extra cards.
The inclusion of extra content for money in this fashion has somehow decreased my desire for the base game. Psychology is weird. There's probably a smarter way to package these cards that would not bother me.
The funny thing about ME3's multiplayer is it was so clearly designed for the grinding but it really never bothered me. The top pack took something like 6 rounds of silver (normal) play, maybe like 2 hours? That gave you a random chance to unlock one of ten progressive levels for a gun or a new kit (or one of like 5 visual customizations for that kit.) It was colossally grindy.
Didn't matter to me, it probably helped it was collaborative play and not competitive.
I was pretty keen on DOTP 15, but with the whole cards that are only available for cash , I'll probably pass. I get that out of regular Magic, I don't need it in DOTP.
And they are putting stuff like Stoneforge Mystic on there? That feels paytowin to me. Which Magic, of course, is but up until now DOTP wasn't.
The funny thing about ME3's multiplayer is it was so clearly designed for the grinding but it really never bothered me. The top pack took something like 6 rounds of silver (normal) play, maybe like 2 hours? That gave you a random chance to unlock one of ten progressive levels for a gun or a new kit (or one of like 5 visual customizations for that kit.) It was colossally grindy.
Didn't matter to me, it probably helped it was collaborative play and not competitive.
It helps that ME3 multi was a ton of fun and the pack system never felt unfair.
Stoneforge is probably not that big a deal, I don't see any great equipment to aim it at and it can only ever be a two of here. Still not thrilled by the decision.
That leads to an interesting question....what the fuck does it do when you open a pack with your "third" Stoneforge Mystic in it?
You don't get extra. You unlock them in you collection and the number you can use is limited to rarity.
I don't feel like checking the forums for a confirmation but those cards listed as pay-only might be part of the 10 codes they give away. If they are then what a shame because the card collection is bad. IMHO of course.
XBL - ArchSilversmith
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
This all sounds horrible. I was really excited for this. Now...I don't know.
I liked DotP because it was Magic without the insane expense and pay-to-win garbage. I remember in college I had friends who spent hundreds of dollars on cards and would grin as they steam rolled my cheap decks. When they would brag, I would always counter by pointing out that they were smiling like an idiot after spending hundreds of dollars on essentially a pile of paper (with really nice artwork) to win games with no prize. They spent $texas but not $$$texas so they couldn't do well in tournaments. On the other hand I did make a pure nuke deck that didn't play to win (I don't think it even really could), but to just annoy the crap out of them by surviving long enough to explode the battlefield over and over while countering their spells, lol. So much trolling. I must admit that kind of stuff is part of the fun of it all I suppose.
Anyways, I think Magic is a really neat card game but I don't like pay-to-win. I hope this isn't as bad as it sounds.
DarkMecha on
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
You don't get extra. You unlock them in you collection and the number you can use is limited to rarity.
I don't feel like checking the forums for a confirmation but those cards listed as pay-only might be part of the 10 codes they give away. If they are then what a shame because the card collection is bad. IMHO of course.
I really really doubt it. I don't think they're stupid enough to put those behind a paywall and not trumpet the fact that they'll be released for free later.
What I was saying about "extra" is that we have been told Premium Boosters have random contents so do they have a mechanism in place that means my third Stoneforge Mystic (which can not be used in any fashion in the game) will instead become a Doubling Season or whatever.
The reason I thought of that was because even super grindy ME3 did something to replace pure useless duplicates.
Also, the Ipad version is out though uses a different model being free as base with more add ons. There, Premium Boosters are selling for $1.99 each.
If they could do it like, say, Mass Effect 3 or something, so you earn a currency from playing that you can spend on boosters, or you can just buy them with actual money if you're impatient, then fine I'm on board. But having it be literally only with money, I don't like that. I'd rather the base game were more expensive than to have them do that.
Agreed. It's more or less removed any desire I have to play the game, even if I'd probably enjoy it without those extra cards.
The inclusion of extra content for money in this fashion has somehow decreased my desire for the base game. Psychology is weird. There's probably a smarter way to package these cards that would not bother me.
Its 100% the same for me. If something is part of the game, and only available as 'pay to win' DLC it hurts my enjoyment of the game, even if I have no intention of ever playing online. If for example, the 'base game' with 300 cards was 5 bucks, and you could either pay $30 to have all the cards available (say, 1000) as unlocks, or pay $3 for a 10 card random pack then I'd view the 'complete game price' as a known $30 and gladly pay it.
So what are the card collections you get from the "Complete Bundle" ? Are those cards that you can normally unlock in the base game, or are they also additional cards that you can't otherwise get in the base game?
Quoting myself since I found out the answer -- looks like the "complete bundle" version just starts with all of the cards in the basic edition pre-unlocked. No additional cards, you just don't have to grind for them. Since evolving a deck build as my card pool slowly increases is something I enjoy (Shandalar, anyone?), it sounds like the basic game is going to be MORE fun for me than either of the more expensive versions. Which seems odd, but I'm not arguing.
I'm miffed about the premium-only boosters, but assuming they have a decent card pool aside from that, I can just pretend they don't exist. I don't really play this multiplayer much, if at all, anyway, so I shouldn't run into situations where I'm disadvantaged by their existence.
I'm with Jormungandr on the pay-to-win stuff, it simply won't affect me. I'm downloading the game now, I'll hopefully return with some impressions soon!
Help us celebrate yesterday's iPad launch of Magic 2015—Duels of the Planeswalkers with an AMA with the game's Lead Designer, Nik Davidson!
Leave questions below and he'll begin answering in this thread at about 10:00 AM PT. I sort of just told you everything that was in the thread title, so congratulations on learning it twice!
XBL - ArchSilversmith
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Guy handled himself fairly well for being thrown to the internet lions.
One thing to note that the Premium boosters are semi random in that they will not flood you with duplicates, he's says that the most you'd ever have to buy to unlock all cards is 14 boosters. So 28 internet fun bucks.
Anyone with the iPad version care to share your thoughts? I was thinking about picking it up on that platform if I did buy it. I enjoy playing Hearthstone there, would be fun to have another mobile tcg.
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
Anyone with the iPad version care to share your thoughts? I was thinking about picking it up on that platform if I did buy it. I enjoy playing Hearthstone there, would be fun to have another mobile tcg.
It seems competent enough. The free version is extremely bare bones (about 4 or 5 real fights), but after the 10 buck unlock it seems like a pretty decent chunk of content. You generally unlock cards in packs of 10, I think 6 common, 3 uncommon and 1 rare, with the occasional larger pack with more rares and a mythic for defeating a "boss" in the exploration mode. There seem to be somewhere between 40 and 50 encounters in the main campaign, though I am not sure if any more open up after you beat it.
There are nine starting decks, loosely themed after the Ravnica guilds. I chose the Simic one, advertised as relying on bouncing creatures with enter the battlefield effects, which turned out to be terrible. The difficulty has been spot on so far, but that might be because I am bad at deck building. You have to rely on luck to unlock cards that are relevant to your deck and I have found myself going through long streaks of not finding anything remotely useful for my deck despite it containing many weak cards. On the other hand you can switch colors at any time and already have a decent library.
Mechanically it is solid, you can easily see what's going on and the pace seems spot on. I did crash several times, but that seems to be because I had not updated my ipad in a while, as I have not crashed any more since doing so.
Are the challenges/puzzles still in? I adore those and that may be enough to tempt me into it for PC.
Nope, or if it exists I can't find it.
It also turns out that the card pool is a lot more limited than I thought it was. I was grinding out cards in one of the planes when suddenly I stopped getting new packs, it seems that I have unlocked everything that is available there. I expected I would be unlocking cards for ages, but from what I have seen it looks like you can unlock everything in maybe 10-15 hours.
Are the challenges/puzzles still in? I adore those and that may be enough to tempt me into it for PC.
Nope, or if it exists I can't find it.
It also turns out that the card pool is a lot more limited than I thought it was. I was grinding out cards in one of the planes when suddenly I stopped getting new packs, it seems that I have unlocked everything that is available there. I expected I would be unlocking cards for ages, but from what I have seen it looks like you can unlock everything in maybe 10-15 hours.
So..,
Yeah I'm passing on this one.
I'll use that money for more pieces of my planned UR Artifacts deck on MTGO when M15 hits.
Posts
Though with it being more "Real Magic" than before they probably don't want to take the knees out from the M15 real release.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
I'd also be a little surprised if the "Expansion" sets really contained all those hundreds of cards. I think they're more likely to be a small amount of cards from that set. Not reassuring that there are no numbers on any of them.
But no doubt they want to sell some booster packs with microtransactions. I hope the cards are easier to unlock this time.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
from Escapist.
Steam Forum link listing out the cards that are supposedly behind the (random) paywall.
I don't really play multi, I think I played one game of 2 headed last year to finish of the achievements, so I don't know how much I care. Definitely means I don't care about the 35 dollar pack though.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Did anything ever get explained about that?
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Yea, I'm going to feel no pain giving them ten bucks.
I do start to wonder what the hell the difference is between Duels and MTGO conceptually.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Well, for one thing on MTGO you can own more than four of a common, three of an uncommon, two of a rare and one of a mythic.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
My question is, does there happen to be a way to collect all the cards in the game without throwing more REAL money at it? Like can all of them eventually be unlocked with playing the hell out of the game? Do you get boosters for free for doing so well? Or is it LITERALLY you cannot get all cards in the game filled out without also paying them lots of money? Cause that's going to suck as I played a lot of Duals online and this one I might have to sit out.
I posted a link to the list up above.
Confirmed pay only cards:
Sorry at work so the list was blocked. Thanks for posting it up here. Some of those cards stand out for potential for me (Stoneforge/Squadron Hawk existing but missing Jace ... curious how bad you can make that old blue white control deck. Also Double Season is potentially fantastic along with a few others).
Ugh ... probably still drop 10 dollars on this but ... I am a bit worried. I need to get my hands on the REST of the cards everyone gets ...
I'll be happy to go back to the game when they stop actively making it worse each year and removing fun features.
So what are the card collections you get from the "Complete Bundle" ? Are those cards that you can normally unlock in the base game, or are they also additional cards that you can't otherwise get in the base game? I have no interest in the "Special Edition" crap, nor am I interested in "foil stickers," so I'm thinking I want the base game only. However, if those 5 card collections had a fair amount of guaranteed cards that I couldn't otherwise get through play, I might be willing to shell out the extra just for that.
Agreed. It's more or less removed any desire I have to play the game, even if I'd probably enjoy it without those extra cards.
The inclusion of extra content for money in this fashion has somehow decreased my desire for the base game. Psychology is weird. There's probably a smarter way to package these cards that would not bother me.
Didn't matter to me, it probably helped it was collaborative play and not competitive.
And they are putting stuff like Stoneforge Mystic on there? That feels paytowin to me. Which Magic, of course, is but up until now DOTP wasn't.
It helps that ME3 multi was a ton of fun and the pack system never felt unfair.
That leads to an interesting question....what the fuck does it do when you open a pack with your "third" Stoneforge Mystic in it?
I don't feel like checking the forums for a confirmation but those cards listed as pay-only might be part of the 10 codes they give away. If they are then what a shame because the card collection is bad. IMHO of course.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
I liked DotP because it was Magic without the insane expense and pay-to-win garbage. I remember in college I had friends who spent hundreds of dollars on cards and would grin as they steam rolled my cheap decks. When they would brag, I would always counter by pointing out that they were smiling like an idiot after spending hundreds of dollars on essentially a pile of paper (with really nice artwork) to win games with no prize. They spent $texas but not $$$texas so they couldn't do well in tournaments. On the other hand I did make a pure nuke deck that didn't play to win (I don't think it even really could), but to just annoy the crap out of them by surviving long enough to explode the battlefield over and over while countering their spells, lol. So much trolling. I must admit that kind of stuff is part of the fun of it all I suppose.
Anyways, I think Magic is a really neat card game but I don't like pay-to-win. I hope this isn't as bad as it sounds.
I really really doubt it. I don't think they're stupid enough to put those behind a paywall and not trumpet the fact that they'll be released for free later.
What I was saying about "extra" is that we have been told Premium Boosters have random contents so do they have a mechanism in place that means my third Stoneforge Mystic (which can not be used in any fashion in the game) will instead become a Doubling Season or whatever.
The reason I thought of that was because even super grindy ME3 did something to replace pure useless duplicates.
Also, the Ipad version is out though uses a different model being free as base with more add ons. There, Premium Boosters are selling for $1.99 each.
Its 100% the same for me. If something is part of the game, and only available as 'pay to win' DLC it hurts my enjoyment of the game, even if I have no intention of ever playing online. If for example, the 'base game' with 300 cards was 5 bucks, and you could either pay $30 to have all the cards available (say, 1000) as unlocks, or pay $3 for a 10 card random pack then I'd view the 'complete game price' as a known $30 and gladly pay it.
Yeah, iPad gets it earlier.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Quoting myself since I found out the answer -- looks like the "complete bundle" version just starts with all of the cards in the basic edition pre-unlocked. No additional cards, you just don't have to grind for them. Since evolving a deck build as my card pool slowly increases is something I enjoy (Shandalar, anyone?), it sounds like the basic game is going to be MORE fun for me than either of the more expensive versions. Which seems odd, but I'm not arguing.
I'm miffed about the premium-only boosters, but assuming they have a decent card pool aside from that, I can just pretend they don't exist. I don't really play this multiplayer much, if at all, anyway, so I shouldn't run into situations where I'm disadvantaged by their existence.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
One thing to note that the Premium boosters are semi random in that they will not flood you with duplicates, he's says that the most you'd ever have to buy to unlock all cards is 14 boosters. So 28 internet fun bucks.
It seems competent enough. The free version is extremely bare bones (about 4 or 5 real fights), but after the 10 buck unlock it seems like a pretty decent chunk of content. You generally unlock cards in packs of 10, I think 6 common, 3 uncommon and 1 rare, with the occasional larger pack with more rares and a mythic for defeating a "boss" in the exploration mode. There seem to be somewhere between 40 and 50 encounters in the main campaign, though I am not sure if any more open up after you beat it.
There are nine starting decks, loosely themed after the Ravnica guilds. I chose the Simic one, advertised as relying on bouncing creatures with enter the battlefield effects, which turned out to be terrible. The difficulty has been spot on so far, but that might be because I am bad at deck building. You have to rely on luck to unlock cards that are relevant to your deck and I have found myself going through long streaks of not finding anything remotely useful for my deck despite it containing many weak cards. On the other hand you can switch colors at any time and already have a decent library.
Mechanically it is solid, you can easily see what's going on and the pace seems spot on. I did crash several times, but that seems to be because I had not updated my ipad in a while, as I have not crashed any more since doing so.
Nope, or if it exists I can't find it.
It also turns out that the card pool is a lot more limited than I thought it was. I was grinding out cards in one of the planes when suddenly I stopped getting new packs, it seems that I have unlocked everything that is available there. I expected I would be unlocking cards for ages, but from what I have seen it looks like you can unlock everything in maybe 10-15 hours.
So..,
Yeah I'm passing on this one.
I'll use that money for more pieces of my planned UR Artifacts deck on MTGO when M15 hits.