Why has there been so much hate towards MTGFinance lately?

sure would be nice if our game wasn't controlled by speculators...

if only there was something someone could do about that...

The problem is, abolishing the reserve list (or just mass reprinting the non-Reserve List things that speculators fuck with) would piss off just as many people. Plus, it takes them quite some time to plan out, print, and ship out sets. Even if they decided to say "Fuck it, we'll respond to speculation by mass-printing whatever they bought to fuck them in the ass", it'd take at least a year for that decision to result in a set with that card in it.

The solution is as obvious as it is simple. WotC needs to open their own online store. If any non special card such as a judge promo or an inventions price rises above 10usd you can buy a new copy directly from WotC for 10usd plus shipping.

This would leave the speculators to do their bullshit with the stupid cards and keep every format affordable to anyone who wants to play it.

Problems with this:

1) This would obliterate the secondary market. Period. If people could buy an Underground Sea or something like that direct from WOTC from 10 dollars, the price on a lot of old stuff would immediately crash into the ground. Some stores (who are not themselves predatory) would die overnight. Several of those stores are also Tournament Organizers- shit like Channel Fireball would basically have to close down within a month.

2) WOTC would have to print up a massive backstock of old stuff, and a massive stockpile of new stuff to meet the demand. They can't just type in "1000x Force of Will" and hit print, those orders have to go to their printers (and be in the form of sheets). It's not something they could just do as demand comes in.

3) This would damage the game itself. If the best you can hope to get for any given card is like 5 dollars (assuming the store sells it for 9), you'll never recoup the cost of your pack. People would stop playing the pack lottery, and Limited would suffer because people wouldn't be able to sell their pulls back to recoup the cost of the event.

Honestly WoTC should just file a C&D against people like Craig and Rudy. I mean, Nintendo would do it.

On what grounds? WOTC has a policy of basically ignoring that the secondary market exists. They don't sell on the secondary market, so they really have no leg to stand on. It'd be like Nintendo filing a C&D on people buying old NES/SNES games and then reselling them at twice what they paid.

This. Their design schedule is something like two years out, so anything that the players decide they want one day takes at least that long to make happen. Look at Leovold, Emissary of Trest. He was specifically created to give Tiny Leaders an official BUG-colored commander, and the format had already waxed and waned in full by the time he was released.

There are 2 HUGE differences here:

a) WoTC still manufactures new MTG cards, Nintendo doesn't still manufacture new NES or SNES ganes

b) People like Craig and Rudy buying out cards prevents people from playing the game. There are still readily available ways to LEGALLY play old NES and SNES games, such as Virtual Console.

If anything, MTGFinance is comparable to Amiibo scalpers (which Nintendo responded to by mass producing the fuck out of Amiibos)

What people don't realize is that the state of the secondary market is good for Wizards. Not because they stand to make money from it. Not in a direct sense. Rather it's a form of obsolescence for older cards. The scarcity and price barrier pushes players towards the newer sets.

a) They manufacture 'new' cards. They don't manufacture old sets. Nintendo might not be making Mega Man games for NES anymore, but they still make Wii U and 3DS games available for sale. Same thing here- WOTC prints new sets, and some reprint sets, but they don't fire up the printing press to make some more Future Sight.

b) Same thing here, again. There are readily available ways to LEGALLY play old cards: MTGO is one of them. So is buying a reprint set (in this analogy, I'd liken a Modern Masters Tarmogoyf to a 3DS port of a SNES game).

I don't know if I'd compare it to the scalping, because that involves snapping shit up offered at retail price (which was bought from distributors, who bought from Nintendo directly) and reselling online. That'd be like buying out entire stocks of Modern Masters packs, which is not what they do. They buy things on the seocndary market and flip them for a higher price (often by making sure their price is the ONLY price). That's not directly WOTC's problem, and it's not scalping. That'd be like buying Amiibos on eBay and jacking the price up.

The new sets suck though.

Disagree. The health of any format is generally better for Wizards than not; even if the majority of the cards people play in Legacy are out of print, it's still bodies playing the game. It's still a store full of people for Legacy night that might get walk-ins interested. It's still demand for sleeves, boxes, playmats. It's still demand for packs when they put a card like Paradoxical Outcome in a Standard set, or for 'pimp' shit like the Masterpieces. Do they make more money from a Standard player than a Legacy player? Probably, but it's not necessarily a "one or the other" situation.

And no, I disagree that the secondary market's current state is good for Wizards, because it's choking the life out of formats like Modern by inflating their barrier of entry to ludicrous levels.

>1) This would obliterate the secondary market.

That's a good thing.

>Some stores (who are not themselves predatory) would die overnight.

Stores should move to a new business model. Single sales is essentially gambling, and isn't much good for anyone.

>2) WOTC would have to print up a massive backstock of old stuff

Print on demand works for books. Why not cards?

>Limited would suffer because people wouldn't be able to sell their pulls back to recoup the cost of the event.

Limited players should be able to play their format without substantial financial buy-in, yes, I agree. They shouldn't have to be forced to pick between the best card and the card that will help them repay their entry fee.

>Stores should move to a new business model
And new ones would. But the fact of the matter is 99% of stores that count on singles sales for a lot of their revenue would basically fold overnight because they wouldn't be able to make that change.

>Single sales is essentially gambling
Not really. Speculating is more 'gambling' than just buying a fucking card because you need it, and buying packs is more akin to 'gambling' than speculating is.

>Why not cards?
Entirely different printing processes?

>Limited players should be able to play their format without substantial financial buy-in
Okay, the price for Limited is the price for Limited. This change wouldn't drop a draft to 5 dollars, because packs would still be 4 bucks each. All this would do is make it so your rares probably CAN'T repay the cost of your draft no matter what you pull, because why would a store buy your foil Jace for more than 6 dollars, since they can't sell it for more than 10? If Limited left you with a bunch of cards you couldn't get rid of, nobody would play it.

>This would obliterate the secondary market. Period.
That's the point.

a) and b): You're comparing $100 reprint Goyfs to $5 NES/SNES 3DS ports

c) Actually, they DID do that with rhe first Modern Masters set. Also, the fact is that cards like Goyf are NEEDED to play the fucking game optimally.

I don't agree that it's the point. If the point was to kill the secondary market, that's easily done by making Magic into a Living Card Game. Abolish the reserve list and make a full playset of every expansion available for like 40 or 50 dollars per set. Or make it so you can order any specific card from Wizards for a few dollars. If you make it so you can only buy a card if it's over some arbitrary price limit on the secondary market, that literally requires a secondary market to function.

And yes, I understand that you think the secondary market itself is to blame here, but killing it would do more harm than good right now.

The reprint Goyfs are only 100 dollars because people are willing to pay that. They do not inherently cost 100 dollars. Wizards does not sell them for 100 dollars. They put them in an 8 dollar booster pack and other people value them at 100 dollars.

If speculating is gambling, then people like Rudy and Craig are NOT speculators. There's no gambling involved when you seize control the entire market for a specific card.

If I buy a card for my deck, sleeve it up, and intend to hold onto it until I tear the deck apart (at which point I will either put it into another deck or into my trade binder), how in the fuck am I gambling?

Speculating ISN'T gambling, I'm saying that it's 'more' gambling than just buying a card is, because you're putting money into something with the hope of getting more in return. You're right that even that risk disappears if you can seize an entire market.

So then Craig and Rudy are not speculators, they're predators.

Honestly, they're the same thing anymore.

10 years ago when people complained about 'speculators' it was more sour grapes about someone preordering 3 playsets of Knight of the Reliquary for 5 bucks a card and flipping them for 80 a playset. It wasn't really all that harmful to things at that scale.

But nowadays, nobody's mad about the guy who snaps up a card for 3 bucks on prerelease day and sells it for 20 a month later. Nobody's bitching about people dumping a Time Reversal on the day the set releases because they think it's gonna crash. People are (rightfully) mad at assholes orchestrating mass buyouts and price gouging.

That's an opinion.

>And new ones would. But the fact of the matter is 99% of stores that count on singles sales for a lot of their revenue would basically fold overnight because they wouldn't be able to make that change.

That's fine.

>Not really. Speculating is more 'gambling' than just buying a fucking card because you need it, and buying packs is more akin to 'gambling' than speculating is.

Talking about the stores here, since they have to speculate on the singles to turn a profit.

>Entirely different printing processes?
Mostly because of the security measures (blue cores, etc) that wizards have to implement to protect "collectors"

>If Limited left you with a bunch of cards you couldn't get rid of, nobody would play it.

Or maybe people would play Limited formats because they enjoy playing Limited formats. And they wouldn't ever be forced with the decision between a really strong common and an otherwise-shitty chase rare. People might actually treat draft as a legitimate game mode instead of "roulette-but-with-some-MTG-attached"

>Talking about the stores here, since they have to speculate on the singles to turn a profit.
Disagree. Most stores crack a couple boxes for singles to put into their case, and sell at 'market price'. They buy singles for some fraction of what they sell at; that's not speculation.

>10 years ago when people complained about 'speculators' it was more sour grapes about someone preordering 3 playsets of Knight of the Reliquary for 5 bucks a card and flipping them for 80 a playset. It wasn't really all that harmful to things at that scale.
>But nowadays, nobody's mad about the guy who snaps up a card for 3 bucks on prerelease day and sells it for 20 a month later. Nobody's bitching about people dumping a Time Reversal on the day the set releases because they think it's gonna crash.

No, this shit is and has always been a cancer on our game.

Magic should exist for the players, not for the investors or the scalpers or the speculators.

People who play Limited because they like Limited are already picking the strong common over the shitty chase rare.

People who play Limited because they love it are also not in the fucking minority. Quit acting like some kind of special snowflake because you don't play constructed.

No, WoTC should not obliterate the secondary market, it's a trading card game. Eliminating the secondary market makes trading pointless.

What WoTC SHOULD do is adopt a more modern system, like the one Nintendo uses for the Pokémon TCG. Which is, fixing MTGO, putting MTGO codes in booster packs so people don't have to buy all their cards twice, and using the new Masterpiece Rares as a replacement for Mythics so that Rares and uncommons will have some value and buying packs won't feel as risky.

And as long as people are willing to pay 30 dollars for a card instead of buying 4 dollar boosters until they get one, investors and speculators will always exist.

Scalping is a whole other thing. That's specifically buying a product at retail price to resell for more elsewhere (like buying the FTV sets from a FLGS for 35 dollars and selling them online for 100)

>Most stores crack a couple boxes for singles to put into their case, and sell at 'market price'.

How is that not a kind of gambling?

>Fixing MTGO
Never gonna happen.

Also, using Masterpieces as a replacement for mythics isn't helpful.

It's the same kind of 'gambling' as a store buying products from their supplier for 40 dollars in the hope that people buy them for 50.

>People who play Limited because they love it are also not in the fucking minority. Quit acting like some kind of special snowflake because you don't play constructed.

I wasn't the one insisting that Limited would die if you couldn't pay for your draft with that chase rare.

>Never gonna happen
I disagree. With Hearthstone and PTCGO absolutely DESTROYING MTGO, as well as the fact that the new CEO comes from Microsoft, it may be time that they either fix MTGO, or replace it.

>Wouldn't fix anything
As long as they don't make any Masterpiece-only cards, yes it would.

Mythic rares aren't a problem. They make regular rares more common (and affordable). The problem is when too many format-warping cards are Mythic. if we made all of the rares the 'old' rare again, it would literally change nothing. Right now a mythic rare is roughly as 'rare' as regular rares were before the old system, with 'normal' rares a little more common than that. If we abolished mythics and just had the three rarities again, EVERY rare would be roughly mythic rarity again.

I hate price gougers. Landbases in edh cost more than the entire deck, and the objectively best decks require significant investment in your lands before you even get to play. There's no reason to pay 80 bucks for a zendikar fetch, or 200ish for an abu dual land that literally only allows you to play your fun cards.

That being said, you faggots whining about the price of cards and the availability of cards and "muh chinaman" are just as bad, if not worse than the jews. Why? Well, how do you manufacture artificial scarcity if you don't have a group of people bitching about how exclusive and difficult some things are to get. You insufferable droning dipshits are half the problem, but you're too stupid to realize it. Market dictates the price, and if people didn't whine all day long on the internet about certain things like damnation, I bet it would be much cheaper, and the jews would be pissed. But, just like the atraxa precon, the second you start hyping some flavour of the month bullshit, people will buy into it just to Jack the price, which creates a negative feedback loop. Just Fuck off, the lot of you and play budget formats.

>Market dictates the price
Oh my god fucking thank you. So many people don't seem to understand that the literal only reason Tarmogoyfs are 100 dollars is because people are willing to pay that.

See, I'm not opposed to paying like $30 for something like Blightsteel Colossus. I wouldn't even mind paying over $100 for special limited edition reprints with alternate art and fancy flavour text. What I absolutely cant stand are cards that are expensive for little to no reason, like the recent teferi spike, and the stuff from legends. I get it, if something is really old, really rare, and objectively broken, it deserves to be more expensive, but why in god's green fuck is angus mackenzie $100, other than lack of reprints?

The problem is that the secondary vendors, IE the people hosting the events heavily rely on selling singles. This trend manifested in the early 2000s and became fully cemented around the time Lorwynn/Shadowmoor ended and Alara rolled around.

YGO and Pokémon still get sold and still get events, demonstrating that a TCG doesn't need a this disproportional secondary market to be attractive for vendors. Konami manages this through sheer incompetence and TPC through utter disregard of the secondary market, so Wizards should have been able to do this to.

The early 2000s were the moment of truth for WotC and they decided to full-on shit on the players. Every single decision and policy they have made in the last ten to fifteen years was pure anti-consumer, pro-vendor. From the reaffirmation and strenghtening of the reserved list, to the creation of Modern, to the introduction of Mythic Rares, to the NWO and even the laughable reprint sheets of the Masters sets. All Wizards does nowadays is sell people hot garbage as the greatest thing ever, even though it fucks them squarely and only serves to protect the interests of the big vendors.

Thanks

That's how capitalism works.
People with capital start to speculate, accumulating it to the point of absurd. Then they use naivety of others promising them wealth and prosperity then actually sucking in the rest of their wealth.

Because they don't let us play.
This is a game, if we don't get to play we leave and investors are left with the least liquid asset ever because they killed the market. But they'll never get that.

MTG finance is just a bonus to the average casual player. Going to a pre release, sealed limited, or draft events and pulling a card that could pay for your event and then some is a very exciting feeling. Hell, last draft I was at, this kid in front of me during the pass around pulled a Kaladesh masterpiece and if he was smart, he sold that card for a booster box or two. I can see how it can demoralize the average competitive player and it's also for sure the reason people like myself don't want to bother even delving into standard. But that's just the TCG secondary market. It'll always be around. So giving people like Rudy shit is just so asinine. Most people are too quick to blame the business man making a living off the secondary market than they are to blame wizards for setting up their pricing standards. I'm aware they don't officially set the standard, but they're also good at manipulating the secondary market's prices.

There is a chance that this is happening and that the change to redemption is a lead up to it.

>killing vendors and markets
>trading card game needs these things to survive
>trading
>card
>trading

Fuck this game, this thread has convinced me that I should probably quit.

Rudy keeps telling people they're gonna lose money but they refuse to listen and keep buying his stuff. He's next level sales as fuck.

You obviously don't understand how supply and demand works. When all the Future Sight Goyfs were hoarded by speculators back when Modern started, and the only reprints we get are super-limited print run Mythic Rares, obviously it's going to be expensive. And people are willing to pay that only because they are competitive and they have to if they want to play an optimal Modern deck.

Wow! A foil Liliana! He must be rich!

Seriously, is this supposed to be impressive? I don't understand the point of this image

This exactly. Actually, for years people assumed that TCGs had to be stupidly expensive to succeed. But recently, Hearthstone broke this mold. And now we have the rise of the Pokemon TCG, which has actually making overpriced, secondary market centric TCGs obsolete. WoTC will have to adapt to this new digital, player centric era, or Magic will soon go the way of FoW.

I do think that Conspiracy 2 being amazing with reprints, Eternal Masters being much, much better than Modern Masters 2015 and much more available than 2013, as well as the fact that the quality of Commons and uncommons in Kaladesh and AEther Revolt being probably the highest since Time Spiral block, is a step in the right direction. However, the Breed Lethality/Commander 2016 bullshit is another big step back.

I can't help but like Rudy, he's just so charming and straightforward, hating him is like hating the water that fills it's container he's just going where the niche is.

i'm getting there myself. it doesn't help that most of the people i know are switching to edh and the price of cards to make a semi competitive deck is crazy.