Everyone complaining about the Psychic Frog Horizon Hideaway Event, get ready to read this thread. So I didn't quite understand the whole hideaway event and I was collecting tickets like we all are. I went in to the ticket redemption area and saw they had draft tokens. I unfortunately assumed that once I redeemed tickets for a draft token I would be able to purchase a second draft token. That was why I waited until I had enough tickets for two draft tokens before "purchasing" the hideaway with some gems I had. That was when I found out I couldn't get more than one draft token. I then contacted customer service to refund my gems and take the draft token back. Following is the email thread between Me and MTG Customer Service:

Me: "I purchased the psychic frogs hideway for 2800 gems seeing that the draft tokens were 300 psychic tickets. I figured spending 2800 gems and to be able to buy draft tokens for 300 psychic tickets would be an ok deal. Little did I know that once I purchased the hideaway I could only buy one draft token. There's literally nothing else in the hideaway that I want other than draft tokens so I could have gotten nearly 2 drafts for the price I paid for the hideaway. I'd like you to take away the hideaway and refund my gems and take away the token that I purchased with the tokens. I'll just draft with the gems like normal. You need to make it more clear that you can only get one token for 300 tickets... Thank you"

MTG Customer Service: "Hello,

Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast Customer Service! I would be glad to look into your request for a refund for the Psychic Frog Horizon Hideaway Prize Wall.
To be able to provide the refund your access to the Prize Wall will be removed. We will not be able to provide access back to the Prize Wall in future updates.
If you still would like the Prize Wall cost back please feel free to reply to this ticket.

I’ll be glad to help you further if you have any other questions or concerns!"

Me: "Sorry, your response is not clear to me.

So you can refund the gems I spent on the Hideaway Prize Wall and then of course I'm locked out of the prize wall understandably right now and can't access anything. As you saw, I only redeemed tickets for the one draft token which I have not touched as assumed you would also take that when you refund my gems.

However down the road if the prize wall for this or later down the road another similar thing were something I was interested in, I would still be able to purchase into it and again get access correct?

Thank you"

MTG Customer Service: "Hello,

Thank you for emailing us back. We will not be able to provide access back to the Prize Wall in future updates. This includes not being able to purchase it in the future. If you still would like the Prize Wall cost back please feel free to reply to this ticket."

Me: "So this prize wall is temporary and has a limited lifespan. Am I to understand that when a new completely different one comes along that my account personally is going to be locked out of it and all future such promotions? How is that fair to me as a user? I can understand not being able to purchase the current hideaway again, but to be "punished" for life for requesting a refund seems kind of stiff retribution?? "

MTG Customer Service: "Hello,

Thank you for emailing us back. Your feedback about MTG Arena is very valuable to us. In order to provide that feedback or product suggestions about MTG Arena, please do so here. In that forum, which is also where you go to report and upvote bugs, you and other players can create new feedback entries, and upvote each others' entries if you feel they reflect your own experiences and suggestions. This feedback is reviewed directly by the Arena development team."

So that was my conversation with Customer Service. As you can see if I choose to request the refund, I'll essentially be "banned for life" from ever using that or any such part of the Arena game. That's what you call a harsh penalty for a misunderstanding of how that prize wall works. Yes, now I can see why the prize wall is such a bad deal when you can't get multiple of the same items from it. Looks like I'm just out gems now which is a shame.

Man I got excited seeing a purple frog then I saw the paywall and had a full blown meltdown about it. This is why I uninstalled it and then proceeded to explain to my partner about predatory practices in a free to play game.

TLDR: The F is wrong with Wizards for thinking a pay-walled store was a good idea

It's a terrible system that doesn't even provide enough value to be a decent proposition. I can *afford* it, I have more than enough gems piled up, but it's not even worth spending "free" gems on. I honestly thought it was a really neat idea at first, before I realized it had an entry fee. Why even let people accumulate tickets if they can't spend them? Why not unlock tickets once people actually buy into the system? I know why, but it's absolutely shameful to see this continuing predatory policy.

Giving tickets and pushing the store only to find out you can't even spend your earned tickets without shelling out 20 bucks for the privilege of shopping in their stupid digital store is an absolute joke. Every single person working on this and implementing it should feel like a scumbag, because they are. This game never ceases to milk every last penny out of loyal players. Remember, they don't care about you or your experience. If you died tomorrow they'd sell a commemorative deck sleeve of you for $69.99 plus tax.

It's also worth noting that in order to purchase enough gems, you HAVE to buy more than needed to gain access to this event.

It's predatory.

Your frog hideaway event all players cant use tickets and we are leaving the other players left behind. You cater to only pay2win players who cheat to play ... authentic players dont pay2win you need to fix game so I can buy gems with coins and give me 50000 gems, 50 packs to open just to correct the game for me

Definitely not sure why it is over 2500 gems. Especially since these are cards/sleeves for online only. If it is something that i wants i can spend just as much on the packs and have a better chance of pulling the card i want and just wait for the rest to come up on deal of the day later.

The prize wall just feels bad. This is supposed to be an extra thing to do during the summer, it is going to be very short because the fall release comes early this year. It should feel special as a summer event were you get more value than usual instead it is clearly the worst value we have seen in a pass so far.
Every single pass has been made making sure you can complete it with 4 wins a day, this one even doing 5 wins a day you will be short more than 100 tickets in order to unlock everything.
While I understand you are not going to give away gold and gems like in a regular pass, and that the pet is basically replaced by the avatars (we get both sleeves and avatars in this pass), there is no reason to give less packs than a regular pass, even if you wanted to give out non hm3 packs it should still be 20, given the limited playability of this set, you should give more, not less. This is not paper.
Even flavor wise is weak, if this is supposed to be the psychic frog event why is there no frog avatar? or sleeve? Not even a single style for the card is available in the pass (not to mention that was the perfect pet to include) It would have been so easy to give a frog avatar and sleeve to anyone that unlocks the shop just to make it feel in theme, but we don't even get that it is just another pass, but with more steps and worse value.
I think you can still fix this, make a festival (all access would be good) offer some of those extra styles that were added and are not in bundles and a generous amount tickets with every style as rewards, so that everyone that invests in the shop can get the whole value with their normal play patterns. And try to make it fun next time, the whole mystery thing with Ravnica was great, tons of free stuff, tons of engagement, and that was a regular set, no reason it cannot be done for the summer events.

I agree. This will cost $18.98 or $19.99 USD *BEFORE* being able to use the tickets we're earning through dailies? Enough already, Hasbro Co! Stop seeing WOTC as your cash cow just because they are successful and actually have a product people want. Remove the gem requirement on this in-game store; we're already forking in for gems or product with codes.

Awful value for a significant amount of gems. Especially with bloomburrow otw.

Yeah.... this is real bad value for any user of the game. I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to pay for this nonsense.

Offer me a decent product at a fair price? WoTC could never, apparently. MSRP on physical products? Who besides everyone else does that? Paywalling an event and then handing out event currency that you can’t spend unless you pay a ludicrous entry fee to a “shop” that exists only in a digital game that will inevitably shut down. I’m tired of these companies pretending renting is owning and charging us upfront for things they will eventually take away, let alone charging **** near $30USD JUST TO ACCESS THE SHOP. Disgusting is the only word really.

This system is one of the most predatory systems I have ever encountered. It's like a textbook example on how to push every psychological button to get you to spend money.

I thought the same. I was kinda excited to get back into playing with the new modern cards! I thought this is a cool waay to reward players for playing but NOOOOOO. They haave to charge us a crazy amount for skins basically. This is just a far worse masterypass. Wizards needs to remove the gem paay wall entirely.

And not only that, but it may be causing some of the bugs happening to different players, I’m on mobile so I might git different bug. But pay walls are more annoying and if getting the pay wall or event removed Would fix the bugs, so be it.

Completely agree. I saw the tickets and the shop and was like "oh cool, they finally added a new, and fun looking, meta progression system" and then I saw that it required gems and thought, "oh, it's a cash grab instead of something fun for the players. Way to prioritize greed over enjoyment."

I'm not a whale, but I pay real world money into the game with each new set, and sometimes I buy cosmetics. That said, there is no chance I buy this. It's just gross. It took something that could be fun and layered blatant greed all over it. Way to spoil it folks!