When human drafts will be out, will you only play against the players that drafted with you or other human "drafters" outside of the ones you drafted with?

Will you also be queued against bot drafters?

Do you have plans to link our DCI numbers with our Arena accounts? That way we could get goodies for playing in all our paper events rather than 1 per account codes.

One of those learnings was that it’s challenging to keep our draft bots performing well when the draft format is always available. When we were using this rotating schedule (pre-M20), we were able to keep the bots in better shape.

So it's not a consumer participation issue, it's a technology issue? If I'm reading it right.

As a player with a very limited income who is only able to play via a free to play method can you explain why when in this update when you address the fact that you have removed the free entry for so many events your replacement to address this is 48hr event's on a Monday with the ability to use the precons you let us have

With each monthly update it feels more and more like if player's like me don't want to play standard 24/7 you don't want us playing.

I personally feel that the very first option of these being brawl pre cons when there has been a large vocal push back is insulting to those people

Will you at least let us have "workshop" event's where we can play with our own collection

What are you currently focused at? I’m kinda worried about the game’s optimization atm

There have been so many great questions and we're doing our best to answer as many as possible. We're going to continue answering questions for another 15-20 minutes or so before we get back to shipping tomorrow's game update.

Thanks for the answer and the follow-up.

This is probably going to get buried but I was wondering if you could explain the feedback buttons that we occasionally get at the end of matches. The ones that ask how you enjoyed the match. What kind of data were you hoping to get from them and what kind of data have you gotten so far?

When is Lord Of Atlantis getting added to Historic?

One thing that I think would be pretty cool is if I could buy codes for gems in Arena from my LGS. That way I could sell old cards I have lying around from drafts and use store credit to purchase gems on Arena. My LGS would get extra business, Arena would get extra business, and I'd be able to get more value out of my old cards that I'm not currently using. Win-win-win.

Is the current state of the friends list and direct challenge seen as acceptable social functions for a game in 2020? I was hoping they would be updated as the system seems rushed and basic.

Will MTGA ever come to consoles?

What is a good estimate for when human drafting will be coming out?

It would be nice to have the standard shakeup ban more cards than it currently does. It ends up missing a few each time, or there becomes one strongest deck because it mostly seems like banning one or two cards from the tier one meta decks but isn't enough to really shake things up.

When will you add custom keybindings? LSHFT+ENTER is an incredibly cumbersome key stroke.

I understand why some store items might be gems only, but why are some cosmetics only available for purchase with gold? Gems are generally considered the premium currency and the one that gets WotC actual money, yet gold is the actual limited resource. Why not offer either option for those gold-only items?

Thank you for your response. Quick follow up question. How are you improving the bots? How are we not going to get an Eldraine 2.0 where the set is great to draft with people but the bots force all drafts to go the same.

Hello, some eternal format questions I'm burning to ask the Arena team:

• What is the intended difference between the Historic and Pioneer formats? (Will these formats merge? Will Historic eventually become Pioneer + older cards added in anthology releases? Is Historic intended to be a lower or higher power format than Pioneer?)

• Considering how Arena currently points players towards standard as the "most accepted way to play" by permanently limiting the availability/reward for other formats (e.g. time restrictions for Historic Ranked, economy restrictions for Historic non-ranked, time & economy restrictions for Brawl), I am very intrigued by the State of the Game section where they mention that "MTG Arena's formats, goals, and outlook are clearly changing from the Standard-only direction we originally built the game on... Magic is more than any one collectable card game. It's dozens of formats and event types that cater to a diverse player base, from Brawl brewers to Standard Spikes." Can the team please elaborate on how this outlook applies to Historic & the upcoming Pioneer release? Currently, Historic has paywall, calendar and economic restrictions to the point where support for the format appears grudging at most. How can even the most dedicated Arena player justify dropping $1000 and a bajillion wildcards on Pioneer staples when it currently seems entirely possible that Pioneer will be offseason Thursdays only - with a 10,000 gold entry fee?

• Commander/EDH is obviously an extremely popular format. With Historic Brawl being explored with an upcoming event (a massive step towards full EDH), do the Arena team have any thoughts on allowing EDH format/decks in Arena?

• Arena has some delicious eternal cards hidden away - the Momir Vig & Theros Vintage events let us play with Black Lotus, Griselbrand, Jin-Gitaxias etc. Are there any plans to make these craftable for use with casual games in our friend lists?

Thanks heaps for your consideration and for the work you've done. I love Arena and am keen to see what you guys come up with!

I understand the logistics of why you would not want to go through programming every card in all of the Pioneer sets (although for a while I thought that the rules engine of Arena was specifically designed to make this not a problem?) and I think most everyone is happy with the idea that skipping some cards will make the sets come out faster. But do you have a concrete plan to add cards into Arena in an 'emergency' contingency?

Just for the sake of a random example, it is very plausible that in six years there is some card printed that combos with a random uncommon from Origins or Fate Reforged or some other set, but that wasn't included in the remastered pioneer set, and the combo is strong enough that it creates a tier1/2 archetype deck that lots of people are playing in paper and on Magic Online. Would there be a hotfix that puts the card onto Arena to make sure the meta of the format isn't fragmented across different platforms of play? If you would add the card, how early would the card be added? Would it happen after a PT weekend once the deck breaks out into the public eye, or would it take longer, or shorter? How popular would the deck need to be for you to consider adding the card, given that there are some pet decks that people play and take to FNM and Magic Fests which don't show up in more competitive play, but are still actively played by many people?

If I recall correctly, the remastered sets announcement used the phrase "only the most relevant cards." How can we tell what the most relevant cards are in a format that is only a few months old and, looking towards the future, what the most relevant cards will be in, say, 2028 after however many new Standard legal sets have been released?

Decks that use a large number of activated effects (like the various cat-oven decks) tend to be fairly miserable to play against, purely due to the amount of clicks needed to resolve a turn. Are there any plans to speed up this process? Is there even a way to speed it up?

Can you please elaborate on the deck sharing? I would like to teach my father how to play the game. He lives faraway from me and I wanted to share some cards with him and play with direct challenge. Will I be able to share some decks in the future although he doesn’t own those cards?

We originally built MTG Arena for Standard players. Now we're moving beyond Standard, and that means going places which aren't exactly balanced for our Standard-focused rewards structure.

I am honestly curious why something like Brawl, which utilizes the standard card-pool, requires a separate reward structure? What makes it fundamentally different than "normal" standard play that dictates a different reward structure?

The Traditional bo3 draft event can feel very long to play. Experienced drafters with above average winrates play up to 6 bo3s and hence up to 18 games with the same deck. I also like watching streamers play limited, and I've seen streamers drop out of the event after a 3-0 so they can start a new draft and hence have a larger variety of decks.

How was the maximum number of matches in the bo3 event originally determined, and do you think this number is still optimal? Have you ever considered changing it? (Note I'm not asking about adjusting the rewards; one could conceive of a bo3 event with a maximum number of 3-5 bo3 matches, while holding the expected cost and rewards the same.)

Hey Team - thanks for doing this! I've been a MTG player since all the way back - circa Ice Age. I appeciate that nowadays, with the easy availability of posted lists and solved metas, the difficulty in creating a queue which would cater towards "casual"/"kitchen table" type play - in that, regardless of structure, the playerbase will quickly optimize lists. Nevertheless, most of my enjoyment from the game was and is around coming up with odd, off-meta brews - building around [[Arcane Adaptation]] is a good example - the only issue being that while cards like this are immensely attractive to a brewer, they are effectively unplayable in any competitive queue. While I recognize that there is effectively no way to render any play-queue non-competitive (nor a good description for what I would be after), I'm just curious what the current thinking around the Magic experience as it might pertain to the Timmys and Johnnys (the Spikes are covered). Outside of direct challenges with friends, is there anything I might look forward too which might be aimed towards a mad brewer approach to this lifestyle game? Just curious as to what sort of wild ideas could be being floated by the team in terms of maintaining the game's appeal to the different types you identified so long ago? Thanks.

Can you tell us any details of the remastered sets? Like, the philosophy of how they are being developed?

What are the plans for the vault, we were told over a year ago that the it was temporary and yet it is so here, without any mention of any kind of update. What are the plans for the vault?

• What are you plans for cube? Will it be a standard, historic or some other cube? The number one feature I would like to see in mtga is a cube with human drafting.
• Can we do asynchronous human drafting, the same as eternal? It has all the benefits of bot and human drafting.
• Where is the most effective place to leave feedback for the arena team? It feels like there is no good system to leave feedback.
• Why are we not seeing the Theros board outside of draft and events?
• Could you share more data with the community on a regular basis? It seems like there are many questions that the community has that would be easily answered if we had information on things like popularity of formats.
• What is the recipe for the perfect burrito?

As someone that likes to play a lot of jank, sometimes the win-only based nature of the daily rewards is pretty rough. Has there been any thought to giving "partial credit" for loses?

Will Historic ranked eventually be available at all times?

Are multiplayer formats being considered? Regular Multiplayer, Two-Headed Giant, Emperor, Multiplayer with limited range, etc.

When human drafting is released, do you plan for it to completely replace bot drafting? In both Ranked and Traditional?

Also, gotta ask: any idea when this will happen?

Anyway we can save or revisit closed drafts? Sucks that you can 7-0 but you can't see the list after that seventh win.

2nd Question : What are your plans to bring the Gathering back to MTGA as of now we don't have chat or guilds/clans no way to foster community in game. We can't interact with anyone in any meaningful way?

Any plans to help under-supported tribes in Historic with some card drops, you know like Dwarves, Minotaurs or kobolds?

Chris Cao answered another post about why WOTC was out-sourcing some work to another company (one that does mostly Xbox work) and said that it was for platforming porting.

What platforms are they working on if it's not console? Are they working on MAC/Mobile then?

Will Amonkhet Remastered and future remastered sets be playable in Historic?

when are we getting a mobile app?

Are there still plans to add deck sharing to Direct Challenges? Most of my friends don't play Magic. I've convinced a few of them to play Arena with me, but they (understandably) don't want to spend time unlocking decks first. It would be nice if I could just lend them decks and play.

I would personally like a free queue as well, but limited daily rewards really puts a damper on that concept.

If that is the alternative, a paid queue might be better, but it would be nice if the 'Brawl Hall" at least gave some rewards beyond the single card. Paying 10k just for the privilege of playing feels extremely bad; even just some minor further rewards would reduce the sting there.

Are there any plans to help out those of us who haven't been onboard since beta to get caught up in order to participate in historic or, later, Pioneer? I started with M20 so I barely have the wildcards to keep up in that format much less crafting older cards. I get that I was late to the party - but I'm sure I'm not alone.

Can you please give us a rough estimate of how long you're imagining it will take to get Pioneer up and running on Arena? 1 year? 3 years? 10 years? You must have some idea, thanks!

Thanks, Chris. I live and die by jank.

Are there still plans to add deck sharing to Direct Challenges? Most of my friends don't play Magic. I've convinced a few of them to play Arena with me, but they (understandably) don't want to spend time unlocking decks first. It would be nice if I could just lend them decks and play.

Hello all, happy to be here. Thanks for all of the great questions over the last few days, and a big thank you to the mods for helping out with this. We're going to hop in and answers questions here, and also from the last thread if those questions aren't repeated here.

I was a huge fan of the Kaladesh, Aether Revolt and Amonkhet blocks and was really sad to see that they weren't added to historic. Aditionally I love pioneer. When can we roughly expect non-standard blocks hitting Arena? And how high of a priority are they in developement?

A while ago(Nov state of the game I think?), there was mention of letting your friends use your decks in direct challenges. Is that still in development? Do I understand the idea behind it correctly? My card collection is extensive while my buddy has barely any but wants to play w/ me. This feature would do a lot to enable a more fair playing level between him and I if he can use my decks to play with against me.

I would personally like a free queue as well, but limited daily rewards really puts a damper on that concept.

If that is the alternative, a paid queue might be better, but it would be nice if the 'Brawl Hall" at least gave some rewards beyond the single card. Paying 10k just for the privilege of playing feels extremely bad; even just some minor further rewards would reduce the sting there.

Is there any plan to connect paper magic with arena? The idea of buying a booster pack and getting some sort of in game currency with arena would be a great way to connect the two ecosystems.

Hi. Here as a "tool" developer, with a question that's a bit more geeky.

A few months ago, ya'll pushed a change that completely changes the log file format that various tools rely on to get game information. This caused a lot of churn and required us to make many updates in a very short amount of time to restore functionality.

You've started including sample "log files" in your patch notes on occasion, which is nice, but leads into my question:

Will WotC consider putting out public "API" documentation for the log file, and the various events within, as well as keep it up to date when patches change the format?

Right now, to develop a tool, someone must start by reverse engineering the logs, or by building off of someone's already existing work. With a publicly available and updated API and documentation, developers of tooling would have a much easier time maintaining their applications, spending less time worrying about updates randomly breaking features, and more time building new features for players to use.

Agreed, people seem to love this new format but its growth is stifled by this entry fee. I honestly believe this would be the most popular way to play on MTGA if it didn't feel like WotC was trying to prevent people from playing it.

Hi. Here as a "tool" developer, with a question that's a bit more geeky.

A few months ago, ya'll pushed a change that completely changes the log file format that various tools rely on to get game information. This caused a lot of churn and required us to make many updates in a very short amount of time to restore functionality.

You've started including sample "log files" in your patch notes on occasion, which is nice, but leads into my question:

Will WotC consider putting out public "API" documentation for the log file, and the various events within, as well as keep it up to date when patches change the format?

Right now, to develop a tool, someone must start by reverse engineering the logs, or by building off of someone's already existing work. With a publicly available and updated API and documentation, developers of tooling would have a much easier time maintaining their applications, spending less time worrying about updates randomly breaking features, and more time building new features for players to use.

Are older sets eventually coming entirely along with their draft formats?

Any idea of when Arena is coming to Mac?

My take for the question on the ranked draft schedule change.

The mentioned drop in participation is indeed curious. I assume it means lower popularity of draft overall, not just the latest set. And then here's what would be interesting:

• How big was the drop? How it was measured, in absolute values or relative to the game population?
• During this period of having two drafting sets in parallel, important things happened: a) Brawl and Historic ranked release; b) rotation — people may have opted to buy more packs and get cards quicker than usual; c) Game release — more complete newcomers may naturally mean lower relative draft popularity. What made you think the paralysis of choice impacted participation more than these things?
• They say, bot preferences created an unpleasant draft "meta" both for M20 (with bows) and even more for Eldraine (with mill), did you consider this as the reason for the popularity drop?
• What does worry me is that new players no longer have access to a "free" draft option on the latest set, and may have less inclination to try a "paid" version for the first time in their life, as well as trying older sets. Do you find this concern not relevant?
• It would be natural to assume that "specialty constructed" events popularity also dropped since the introduction of 2500 gold entry fee. The ones during Festival of Fae may have not because of great styles, but for the ones in December that most likely happened. Was this drop lower than drop in draft participation?

It was recently announced that there was an outsource of some Arena dev work to another company, are you able to say what they will be working on and what does this open up the internal team to work on? Should we expect to see more major features roll out in the coming months?

Can you please explain the rationale behind the 10,000 gold entry fee for the brawladays event. In addition, is this something your team plans to keep in place long term?

Agreed, people seem to love this new format but its growth is stifled by this entry fee. I honestly believe this would be the most popular way to play on MTGA if it didn't feel like WotC was trying to prevent people from playing it.

Hi. Here as a "tool" developer, with a question that's a bit more geeky.

A few months ago, ya'll pushed a change that completely changes the log file format that various tools rely on to get game information. This caused a lot of churn and required us to make many updates in a very short amount of time to restore functionality.

You've started including sample "log files" in your patch notes on occasion, which is nice, but leads into my question:

Will WotC consider putting out public "API" documentation for the log file, and the various events within, as well as keep it up to date when patches change the format?

Right now, to develop a tool, someone must start by reverse engineering the logs, or by building off of someone's already existing work. With a publicly available and updated API and documentation, developers of tooling would have a much easier time maintaining their applications, spending less time worrying about updates randomly breaking features, and more time building new features for players to use.