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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Some information from MTGA's new Game Director Jay Parker

I skimmed through yesterday's Weekly MTG video and here are some summarised answers from Jay Parker, our new Game Director:

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  • Standard rotation will come in with the set codenamed "Archery" (expected September 2019), and there will be a new format (like "Arena Modern/Wild") to allow playing with your rotated cards. Nothing mentioned about Kaladesh block or prior.
  • They would like to put Arena on all other platforms wherever people would like to play Magic, but it may be a while yet.
  • They have no intentions of allowing people to disable animations.
  • Popular one-off events (e.g. Singleton) are not expected to become permanent right now to avoid the player base from being stretched across multiple queues. Follow up quote: "We’re interested in offering more ways to play that stick around longer, but there are factors we need to weigh to do that properly. We’ll keep watching the key numbers here for opportunities to do more like that, we just need to be careful to keep the whole experience playing well for everyone."
  • Friendlists will come hopefully soon.
  • They would like to implement multiplayer but it will require a huge overhaul so might be a distant project.
  • They would like to implement non-AI drafts but it would be difficult from the back-end, and even if it's possible, human draft queues may not fire as frequently as people would like. May be more likely once friendlists get released. It is relatively high on their priority list though so it's another case of "when not if" so hopefully will be seen in the not-too-distant future.
  • No plans for in-game chat against strangers, chat between friends are coming.
  • There are plans to enable changing of keybinds.

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All in all nothing too groundbreaking but still interesting to have an update on their direction. Disappointed they didn't pick a question to answer on Brawl/Commander/EDH. It does sound like a number of things holding MTGA back from what the we want is the playerbase size, so I hope that if we grow the player base through positive word of mouth and the new Netflix show, we will scale up to a point where WotC doesn't have to worry about stretching the player base too thin or slow queues. The future looks bright for us! :D

Let me know if you want me to add any other interesting answers to the main text, I skipped on a few questions that I didn't consider interesting for brevity. There are timestamps in the first pinned YouTube comment.

  • Wizards Jay
    Posted 6 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    So i was the person asking for better Command the dreadhorde UI. Here is what i meant.

    [[Command the dreadhorde]] is pretty taxing card. We are operating in 2 different zones. We need to pay close attention to our life total as well as what we already has chosen. Meanwhile, Arena doesn't make it easy. Life total is covered. We don't know what we picked from other GY. We don't know how much damage we will take currenty (ofc player count in head, but mistakes happen). The spell also autoresolves once all possible targets are chosen without confirmation.

    So here is what card should do if given attention. Show current life total. Show current cumulative CMC of chosen cards. Show already picked cards on the bottom of the screen like during casting [[Planewide Celebration]] with different outlines indicating owner. Demand confirmation if total damage would exceed current life total of the caster.

    EDIT: Hey, my first Sliver Medal! Thank you!

    Thanks for clarifying. Those are good suggestions, and we'll see what we can do.

  • Wizards Jay
    Posted 6 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Wouldn't a rotating game mode queue (a la League's rotating game modes) be something that is of interest?

    Definitely an interesting idea. There are lots of fun ways to play Magic, and we want that to be the case in Arena as well. As with many things, we’re going to experiment and see what works. Expect to see variations on this theme as we go forward.

  • Wizards Jay
    Posted 6 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Thanks for the write up. To nuance one point that I may have fumbled in the video: on making Singleton or other event types permanent, we’re interested in offering more ways to play that stick around longer, but there are factors we need to weigh to do that properly. We’ll keep watching the key numbers here for opportunities to do more like that, we just need to be careful to keep the whole experience playing well for everyone.

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