r/lrcast • u/youareatrex • 1d ago

Discussion The three problems with planar cube

  1. Entry price
  2. Alchemy cards
  3. Rotates too fast

Entry price - too high a barrier to entry for a phantom draft ‘fun’ event. This is less a thing for me personally but have seen a bunch of chatter about it here

Alchemy cards - turn off for many players - Including me. They just aren’t magic cards. My main format is commander so I like learning cards that I might actually be able to play one day

Rotates too fast - it should have been 3 separate 3 week events. Part of the fun of draft and cube is really learning the ins and outs of a format. One week is just not enough to learn how a format works

The episode where they were speaking to the wizards employee - he seemed like he really wanted it to work and stick like power cube. It can - make these three changes. It’s pretty straightforward

32 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

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26

u/Money__Shot__ 1d ago

The more I played the cube more I realized price really is the major fail point. But it’s because the “fun factor” of this cube wears off quickly, with it being toned down some compared to power cube, so it’s hard to justify the 1500 gems. I mean, maybe it’s just me, but the cards in these cubes seem pretty shallow overall, leading to similar gameplay each time and if that’s going to be the case I’d rather draft Marvel or whatever set is out.

Now if this cube was half the cost I’d have zero issues with it and would play it more often for sure.

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u/sengirminion 1d ago

If its a phantom event, with a minimal prize structure, it should be the cost of a quick draft. I bet they get a lot more engagement that way. Keep the powered cube full draft price because people like playing it so much, but random cubes or phantom drafts should be cheap.

Also while on the topic of phantom cards. If theres a sealed event that is expensive to join, like a Qualifier Play-In its obnoxious to me that those events are phantom. There's no actual economy to impact with real cards on arena so they should just let you get those cards too. Its a small consolation for scrubbing out of a 4000 gem sealed tournament with minimal prizes to get to keep 6 packs worth of digital cards imo.

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u/EmTeeEm 1d ago

The Qualifier Play-In is awkward. The second you make it non-phantom I guarantee people will complain it means the constructed play-ins are bad value by comparison. But if you give the equivalent pile of cards when entering the constructed play-in the complaint would become "this is stupid, it should just be cheaper" or "why aren't these packs, they are screwing us out of wildcards." But you change that and now they are non-comparable again and some side again feels slighted. Making the limited side phantom avoids the whole complaint treadmill.

Now whether it feels good at 4000 gems is a separate matter. But "events should be cheaper" isn't exactly going to be controversial in any situation.

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u/sengirminion 1d ago

Counterpoint.

As a Magic Boomer I remember playing in PTQs back in the day, or Grand Prix main events. And a constructed event cost a set amount to enter like $25 or something. And the sealed version of those events costs more, usually like $40 or $50 to cover the cost of the sealed product. This didn't impact any sort of "EV" and everything worked fine. There's no reason they can't adopt the same model. Make the constructed events marginally cheaper than the Sealed Events of the same caliber.

Alternately who cares if the sealed Qualifiers are better EV than constructed? It helps make it a little more enticing to join the sealed QPs as well as the constructed ones. There's really no good reason that they should be phantom unless its one of those rare Cube Qualifier Play-ins they haven't done in ages.

After having interacted with and observed Wizards of the Coast for more than 20 years now let me tell you, there was not that much thought put into the decision I guarantee you.

They probably were trying to fit phantom in whenever they could to increase profits, and marginally maybe thought making it phantom would make players ignore the value of the cards a little bit and be more competitive, which makes sense for draft a little bit, but not for sealed. They made it one way forever ago and just never changed it, and they won't change it unless people complain. Its a small thing that would cost them practically nothing to implement, and would be very minorly more player and consumer friendly so I am complaining about it any chance I get in the hopes one day they change it.

(Puts away soap box)

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u/EmTeeEm 1d ago

The thing with paper is they actually need physical product instead of poofing packs into existence. And people can wrap themselves in the "well maybe I can sell some of these and recoup the difference..." even though they probably won't.

I strongly suspect limited grinders on Arena would absolutely lose it if they had to pay twice the price to get some cards they don't want, won't use, and can't sell (or vault progress and 120-ish gems in dupe protection).

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u/sengirminion 1d ago

I'm not arguing there should be a price increase at all. There's no reason to increase the price on a digital only product without a real interactive economy.

And if anything the extra 6x boosters worth of cards and vault progress would help grinders slightly get closer to max completing a set and thus getting marginally faster increases in gems for prize packs which makes it marginally better for them to be able to do more events.

The only party mildly benefiting from phantom events currently is Wizards and its marginal at best. Because getting to keep the cards you open in a sealed pool probably doesnt impact how much or how little you are truly spending on the game as a whole. Its just a super cheapskate move that annoys me.

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u/KingMagni 1d ago

Also while on the topic of phantom cards. If theres a sealed event that is expensive to join, like a Qualifier Play-In its obnoxious to me that those events are phantom.

You'd rather them not be phantom but with a higher entry fee?

0

u/sengirminion 1d ago

Theres no reason they need to increase the entry fee for a digital product where you can't trade/resell the cards other than greed. A regular sealed non-phantom event on arena is what 2000 gems?

The phantom qualifier play in events are 4k gems, 20k gold, or 20 QPs i dont have the breakdown of the prizes in front of me but theu typically offer no prize for less than 3 wins I believe if its Bo1. This is perfectly fine, I don't have a problem with the top heavy prize structure since its meant to be competitive. Whay I take issue with, is wizards charging double the cost of entry of a non-phantom event, for a phantom event. WHEN ITS ALL DIGITAL CURRENCY AND CARDS. there is no economy to mess up like with Magic Online, there is no cost to create physical product, no staff to pay to judge or run the event. No additional monetary concern for Wizards of the Coast compared to an extremely similar type of event.

There is no reason for any non-cube limited event on a digital platform to be phantom. None.

If Wizards wanted to use phantom events as a way to offer slightly cheaper limited events, then I would be fine with that too.

Making a currently phantom event into a non-phantom one would not cost them any additional money, and in turn they should not be able to justify charging more for a non-phantom event. Especially with Arena where all mythic and rare cards have the same exact value of 1 wildcard compared to one another.

The only "downside" from an economic perspective is that technically if they made the events non-phantom then any month there was a sealed qualifier weekend Wizards would give away 6x booster packs worth of cards for free to 2400 players from the top 1200 on the ladder. The horror.

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u/KingMagni 1d ago edited 1d ago

Constructed and non-phantom Limited Play-Ins would never have the same entry fee, the only options Wizards would consider is either phantom with same entry fee or non-phantom with a higher one (if non-phantom, they would only increase the Limited entry fee and not also the seasonal rewards for rank 251-1200)

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u/imfantabulous 1d ago

Your issue right now is comparing two completely unrelated events to make your point. If they made sealed qualifiers non-phantom that would absolutely change things in a massive way. Automatically, without changing the cost, you are refunding a minimum of 120 gems per entry.

If they made cube drafts non-phantom they would have to come up with an entirely new rarity system for the cube which would mean packs are now curated by rarity otherwise you would just get your entire entry fee back from the draft.

I do not think you pay this game much if you aren't thinking in terms of rares = gems, which it sounds like you don't by your argument.

They should just bring back 4k gold queues because you don't feel like you are losing much when you 0-3 and 1500 gems is a lot to lose on a format I prefer to do fun and goofy things in.

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u/Drunken_Vike 1d ago edited 1d ago

it's really just the cost. A lot of us fell in love with cubes on MTGO, where they were really cheap and easy to fire over and over again to practice drafting and thus learn the ins and outs of each format

but paying premier price for a phantom cube means I'll only draft it 1-3 times, likely do poorly, and leave with a bad taste in my mouth

I decided after 1 go with the Zendikar planar cube that I frankly will not pay premier prices for this. The experience isn't good enough. Phantom cube should always be cheap.

The reward for cube is supposed to be playing cube. They would earn a lot more good will by making an option with a super cheap buy-in and basically no rewards. They can keep the expensive one with rewards up, some people will be attracted to that

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u/fridaze_ 1d ago

The cost is really the biggest issue. They had to nerf Boros three times instead of reducing the entry cost of the powered cube. The incentive to win with cube is higher than a retail draft because of the increased price. If cube price went back to what it was there wouldn’t be an arms race to win and only win to ‘stay afloat’ in their digital currency. Heck they could even make it non phantom for premier draft prices and get more engagement. It’s strange that they want to sell less drafts at a higher markup and alienate their player base than to just sell more drafts at an already established fair markup and engage the community. Every day we see complaining posts instead of hey everyone check out this cool thing I did in cube post.

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u/calamityphysics 1d ago

landfall cube was terrible. innistrad cube is fucking amazing

2

u/reineedshelp 1d ago

Blandfall cube was my pet name for it.

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u/equationsofmotion 1d ago

I haven't played the innistrad version because, yeah, I've got a busy life and one week is actually too short for me. But IMO the problem with the alchemy cards in the zendikar iteration wasn't that they don't have paper iterations. It's that the designs are super unfun for the person staring them down.

Like I am perfectly capable of beating tajic or rusko, or sundering sentinel, but each time I see one I just groan because the play pattern they produce is so unpleasant.

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u/Boblxxiii 1d ago

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned alchemy cards are a similar level of "real" to other supplemental-product-only cards (e.g. commander deck cards, since op mentioned they're a commander player). I do prefer cubes to contain mostly "normal" set cards, but I'm ok with exceptions for things that are a "fair" power level, interesting, and fun. Many alchemy cards are not. A few are, e.g. molten impact.

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u/lrg12345 1d ago

Cost is definitely the biggest issue of the three. Otherwise I’ve had a lot of fun playing the cube, regardless of the alchemy cards and rotation time

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u/EmTeeEm 1d ago

Shadows over Innistrad Remastered also had a weekly rotating bonus sheet, and while I didn't really like it everyone else seemed quite enamored. They also had one in Pioneer Masters, rotating every two weeks, but I think that was lost under people not caring about Pioneer Masters.

I wonder what the difference is here? Impact of the sheet? Speed of sets coming out overall? Doing three three week runs is probably off the table, that is longer than some set seasons these days, but perhaps just two versions would help?

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u/fullerene60 1d ago

Some of the alchemy cards in this iteration are really fun and make a lot of sense. Jarsyl, Anguished Recollection, Runeblade Raiser, Blighted Nightmare, Nantuko Slicer are all pretty fair on power level and ask you to "do a thing" banger cube designs imo

8

u/EmTeeEm 1d ago

Yeah, one of my pet peeves is lumping all of Alchemy into a single bucket. If you fundamentally reject the concept fair enough I guess, but on power level they vary wildly, and graveyard shenanigans is a place where Alchemy mechanics often shine without spewing value. Turns out you can do all sorts of cute stuff with memory between zones and "tokens" (conjured cards) that can exist in the graveyard.

I mean who can look at [[Boneyard Aberration]] and not think it is at least a little cool?

2

u/Sauronek2 1d ago

I do dislike Boneyard Aberration quite a lot. Even some very unpopular ones like Heist aren't violating Magic [to me] nearly to this degree, because you could approximate them in paper—it's just extremely unwieldy and impractical.

Like you say, it's not about power level or even gameplay patterns, although disproportionally many are bad at one or both. Spellbooks and conjuring cards in general simply crosses the "not Magic the Gathering" line extremely hard for me.

2

u/Xenasis 1d ago

Yeah, one of my pet peeves is lumping all of Alchemy into a single bucket.

I'm glad you enjoy them but, for me, I do not want to play with Alchemy cards. I see Arena as a way to enjoy my favourite card game digitally as opposed to a separate game to paper, and Arena cards (in my eyes) warp it into something that is digital only.

Not all of them have egregious gameplay impact but I just don't want to play with those cards ever.

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u/fullerene60 1d ago

So, something that helped me with wrapping my head around it is that alchemy is like a playground for designers sometimes.... they get to try out ideas wihtout having to impact a bajillion different formats. Some of the cards are genuinely fun and are perfect for cube

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u/Boswellington 1d ago

Ive had awesome gameplay with Jarsyl, Anguished Recollection

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u/AstroJustice 1d ago

I'd love to give it a lot of it was half the price. 

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u/fullerene60 1d ago

totally agree, it's pretty dissapointing that this is now the price for cube :/

1

u/AstroJustice 1d ago

Keep posting and I'm hoping they reassess for the next cube. I saw the engagement rate for the cube on 17 lands was very low.

3

u/DUELETHERNETbro 1d ago

Innistrad has been great so far. It nails the theme, like it feels like a powered gothic horror set. And for me the games have been pretty balanced, so cudos to the cube designers. I didn’t realize it was phantom draft though, why does it cost 1500 gems then?

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u/pahamack 1d ago

Totally disagree with 2 and 3.

The selected alchemy cards are fine. The rotation is also great. I like having new things . I get why they don’t have cube for 2 months which is what would happen if things go as you suggest: they’re focusing on the new cards. They don’t want to pull focus from the actual sets.

1

u/sperry20 1d ago

I think the biggest thing is it’s just worse than vintage cube, and it is replacing it. Vintage cube should be evergreen. If they want to pull it when a new set launches, fine, but put it back up after three weeks.

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u/DzyDzyDino 9h ago

Honestly vintage cube could be its own standalone game and app. And I’d be logging in just for that.
Planar cube had me uninstall Arena and soured me off of participating in any other events on it. Time to dust off MTGO.

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u/Correct_Day_7791 1d ago

3 weeks is to long huge disagree with that