Displeasure with MTG Arena
I know probably no one is going to read this but I would like to express my displeasure with MTG Arena (perhaps Magic the Gathering as a whole).
I used to play Historic about a year ago. It was a great format and I was able to attain Mythic status playing Gruul Aggro in Historic Best of 3 constructed.
Then in April 2021, Strixhaven was released. With the addition of the Mystical Archives, it shifted the meta towards control based decks and my Gruul Aggro deck was no longer viable to play. I asked that you ban some of the Mystical Archive cards (which you did) but then you continued to make changes to the format. Those recent changes you made in the past year (Alchemy, Digital Only Cards, card rebalancing) turned Historic into a format I no longer wished to play.
So now I am primarily a standard Best of 3 player since that is the only format on arena that mirrors a paper format. For the last two months (Jan and Feb 2022), I played Mono Green and was able to again achieve Mythic Status.
With the release of Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, Mono Green became a deck that I feel is no longer viable because it gets run over by the new Naya Runes deck that emerged out of Kamigawa. To make matters worse, since the standard rotation at the end of 2021, you decided to include every board wipe and exile removal imaginable into the format. As a result, standard is unplayable for me. I cannot progress past Platinum and cannot find a different deck that I can play effectively.
I wound up wasting almost all my wild cards in the pursuit of finding a deck that I can play which I feel is now impossible. So now standard is ruined for me as well.
That leaves Historic Brawl as the only format I can play but that has its own issues (busted two mana commanders that are two strong, Paradox Engine based decks, counterspell decks, removal decks, etc).
I feel that there is no format currently on Arena that I enjoy playing anymore. I don't play Draft since I am not good at building decks on my own.
On yesterday's stream you mentioned about some features that may be coming to Arena in the near future. While I hope that some of those features may help improve the gameplay experience, the fact of the matter is that Magic is becoming a game that I no longer desire to play.
I began playing Magic when the game first came out in the 1990's. I gave up when it became apparent that I didn't understand what I was doing and could not win games or build decks that worked.
I only came back in 2017 to fill a void when all my friends moved away. I wanted to give Magic a second chance and thought with enough time, I would get better and learn to enjoy the game.
I was wrong. I see now that you are not interested in creating a fun and exciting game but one that wears people's patience thin and irritates them to a point where the quit playing.
I am not at that point yet but I feel I am close. While I am hoping that some of the new features you have planned for Arena will come to fruition soon, I am somewhat skeptical about the future.
I am willing to see what happens in the next couple of months but if I feel things don't improve, I may be abandoning this game.
-
ajbartomeo#54143 commented
I didn't think it was possible that you would create a format worse than Historic, but you succeeded with the new Explorer format. I think maybe the time has come for me to stop playing MTG Arena for a while.