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HomeNewsGames NewsPokémon Pocket makes me wish MTG Arena was more generous

Pokémon Pocket makes me wish MTG Arena was more generous

MTG Arena may be a great way to fit more Magic: The Gathering matches into your life, but its in-game economy really is the pits. The funny thing is, it didn’t bother me much until recently. The base game is free, after all, so I figured this must just be the way it has to be.

But Pokémon TCG Pocket has changed all that. Suddenly, I’m confronted on a daily basis with another trading card game, one that doesn’t require I play it endlessly to access its cards. Rather than racking up match after match, whacking a piñata until treats fall out, I can play whenever I want to and still get the same two packs each and every day.

Genetic Apex Pokemon TCG Pocket packs

Now of course, Pokémon TCG Pocket is not comparable to Magic: The Gathering on a gameplay level. Personally, I like Magic more than the regular Pokémon TCG anyway, and what Pocket offers is a very streamlined, but also far inferior form of that.

Pokémon Pocket also focuses far more on the pack opening experience than Arena. Some have dismissed it as purely a pack-ripping simulator, and while that’s a little unfair, since enough people get enough enjoyment out of the game that there’s even a small but growing competitive scene, it’s clear that opening packs is placed on roughly equal footing to playing matches.

You could argue that Pokémon Pocket has to give its packs away for ‘free’, because if it made you play matches to access them, its playerbase would collapse. MTG Arena games are more fun, so perhaps this title can get away with locking its rewards behind in-game activity.

However, what MTG Arena’s quest structure means in practice is that players earn fewer cards, as on the days where you can’t invest enough time to complete your dailies, you won’t have the opportunity to earn gold.

MTG Arena economy panel

In the past few months, I’ve found myself resenting the grind, which can make games of MTG Arena feel more like work than play. Time after time I’ve caught myself finishing up a match and then re-entering the queue, not really because I’ve decided that I want to, but simply because I haven’t completed a particular mission yet, or finished a draft.

Games should be fun, and there’s something to be said for Pokémon Pocket’s decision to divorce earning cards from playing matches. It really cuts out the drudgery that seems to come with so many F2P titles.

In terms of how generous the two games feel, Pokémon Pocket gets a big leg up by providing its packs on a timer, but I also think it gives out better rewards overall.

A quick comparison makes this easy to see. If you’re a F2P player on Arena you can get 500 or 750 gold from your daily quest and a maximum of 750 gold per day for racking up 14 wins. That’s a maximum of either 1,500 or 1,250 gold total. Packs cost 1,000 gold, so even if you’re playing a life-damaging amount of MTG Arena, you get to crack fewer packs than Pokémon TCG Pocket gives you for free.

Of course, the true calculation would need to factor in a lot more, from the daily hourglasses and wonder picks of Pokémon Pocket to wildcards, packs you unlock through XP, and the option of playing draft on Arena.

But even if that resulted in closing the gap, that still doesn’t look great for MTG Arena, for one simple reason . Even though Arena packs are three times the size of Pokémon Pocket packs, which should tip the scales in Magic’s favor, the simple fact is: you need far more cards to play.

MTG art showing hands reaching for fictional money.

This is mainly because the card pool on Arena is much larger. There are thousands of cards coded into the client. What’s more, MTG Arena decks are three times the size of Pokémon Pocket decks, and you need to have four copies of your best cards instead of two. There are also tons of different MTG formats, all with a distinct list of important cards which you need to pick up.

To feel like you have a reasonable collection and can experiment with different decks on Arena, you need to put a lot of work in. And with the rate at which Magic: The Gathering sets are now coming out, you can never let up. It turns what could be a fun, casual experience into something almost stressful.

Compared to Pokémon TCG Pocket, not only does MTG Arena feature a frustrating grind, the juice it gives doesn’t feel worth the squeeze.

Obviously, it would be naive of me to assume that Pokémon Pocket will remain as generous as it is now forever. It’s still right at the beginning of its life cycle, still trying to get as many new fans on board as possible.

It’s perfectly possible, in fact it even seems likely, that the game may slowly start to lower its reward rates once enough players have downloaded the app, gradually finding more ways to entice fans to spend money.

Furthermore, MTG Arena is a more complex game than Pokémon Pocket, and probably needs to make a lot more money to pay its costs.

But I can’t predict the future, and I don’t know the inner workings of The Pokémon Company or Wizards of the Coast. I can only speak selfishly, of my own experience as someone who enjoys trading card games. And recently, that experience has been one of sighing at MTG Arena’s stingy economy, and wishing for just a couple free packs.

For more fab reads, check out our guides to the most expensive rare Pokémon cards ever sold on the secondary market, and our list of every MTG set ever released.

Source: Wargamer

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