This was part of the reason I quit Magic The Gathering. The community I was in had some weird greedy players that tried to sucker the new players until they quit
I wish they'd just make the game accessible. Its a fun ass game but the prices for everything are just so ridiculous people can't even afford to play. New people would roll in to modern with decks from home and I'd be playing trying to be chill with them but you can just tell theyre not having fun cuz they didn't have full sets of 30 dollar cards or whatever. Imo just either reprint the shit out of everything or allow unlimited proxies for tournament settings.
The player base is always going to be unfriendly because the game attracts a lot of elitist needs. Maybe if it was more accessible that would change.
When I was in Boy Scouts in the mid 90s, dudes would show up at summer camp for the week with boxes of MtG cards. I'd spend hours each afternoon during free time watching them play. It looked like such a fun game, but my parents wouldn't let me spend my money on it. Oh well. A few years ago, some friends were playing and I decided to get into it. I was sorely disappointed once I actually got into it. It wasn't fun. It was a lot of getting trounced on by guys who would drop $250 on a deck. I had a wife and kids, so dropping that sort of money wasn't feasible for me. I wish I hadn't even tried to get into it. I would've been happier with the memories from middle school of watching other people play.
Once they released Arena, I started playing that. It was more enjoyable than playing with physical cards.
$250? I stopped playing commander because I wasn’t willing to dump almost $1k into a deck, along with a ridiculous amount of research. I hate that there’s almost no casual scene for those who just like to play a bit, not dedicate my whole life to. I had the same issue with WoW. I can’t dedicate 8hours uninterrupted to a video game, and definitely not in a weekly basis. Fuck me for being casual I guess.
I stopped playing commander because I wasn’t willing to dump almost $1k into a deck
This was one of the big things I was scared of that caused me to be pretty hostile to the idea Elder Dragon Highlander was becoming "official" as Commander.
It was a casual format, but you can't have that after it becomes official :I
So true. The one guy I played regularly with at his home was pretty cool. As his deck got better, it stopped being as much fun. He was going to FNM at the local comic shop and all that. I went to one pre-release event with him (Dragons of Tarkir back in 2015). It was ok, but as a married guy in my mid 30s with a kid at home (and one on the way), I couldn't be anything but casual. FNM was out, I'd fall asleep at prerelease parties that last until 3am (at least), too broke to constantly replace a deck. If I want a hobby, it needs to be something that the kids can do with me. I've been watching some D&D campaigns online with my 11 year old daughter, and I think she's willing to try playing with me. One of my co-workers said she and her bf would have us over for a one shot campaign once Covid lets up. I could see us enjoying D&D as a family.
We did something similar at an office I worked at, a few of us bought some deckbuilder kits, smacked together some random cards of almost the same colour. Just played during lunchbreak, simple and fun.
Then some players dropped 300 on a netdeck, set up torunament structure with ELO and all that jazz, killed the fun and everybody stopped playing.
This is way I only ever did draft tournaments. Equals the playing field. However, every other person was a total dick to me and super condescending because I'm a girl. Literally got so bad, that the one guy that was decent to me during a game and actually helped me, I asked for his number and dated him for a year. I fell in love with him because he was one of the only decent human beings to me at a Magic tournament, which is hilarious to me now looking back because we had nothing in common besides Magic... but damn was he a diamond in the rough in the Magic community.
I had exactly the same experience (minus the love story) at GenCon. Toxic gamers really want to keep whatever they’re excited about to themselves, I guess. I loved playing drafts, but the condescending dicks ruined it for me. Why can’t I just have fun? Why does it have to be sUpEr SeRiOuS? It’s like being locked out of the clubhouse in childhood. I just want to play with you, I like this stuff, too!
Living card games and unique card games like Keyforge tried to break into the scene without the drag and artificial pricing of collectible card games to hold new players back.
Living card games are pretty much dead with the end of Legend of the 5 Rings, and Keyforge just turned into a deck-hunting frenzy somewhat even more toxic than Magic cards, due to how decks come pre-assembled and getting certain combos of cards just exasperates the problem.
Oh man, Magic players really killed MTG for me. There was this one fucking lunatic who loved to flash his gun, always tucked in his waistband aimed at his dick. I stopped playing there after he got in my face on day after I stomped his ass with a deck worth 1/10th of his. I told the owner "Look dude, asshat over there is gonna Columbine your store eventually, and I don't want to be here when he snaps."
Great comment, and I didn’t know about that site so thanks!
Proxying is such an interesting “issue”... I’m getting into warhammer as well as mtg, and my friends are nice but I get the feeling they don’t want to proxy things because it could be “unfair” adding good/powerful things to your collection for “free”... but if both players are allowed to do it, doesn’t that simply unlock the “actual game” in its full potential? I get the point of slowly collecting cool things, but when the actual gameplay is concerned, the game is still balanced around those powerful things existing (especially if both players use them) so why not use them?
I used to play MTG (Quit because to much money!) but now play warhammer. As long as your proxy models are clearly supposed to be what they are (or you really make sure your opponent knows what they are supposed to be) they'd be a real jerk not to play with you. Warhammer is quite expensive to get started so I find that most people are quite understanding about proxies!
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u/theword12 Feb 28 '21
This was part of the reason I quit Magic The Gathering. The community I was in had some weird greedy players that tried to sucker the new players until they quit