Community

You have a point. I was thinking actually about the counter in that we as players decide what we're willing to pay for a given card (the secondary market).

However, despite the fact that Primeval Titan is $21, Snapcaster Mage is $26, Darkslick Shores is $14, and Sword of War and Peace is $46, it's still much cheaper to buy these cards if you want them than to open packs. Packs are at a lottery-level of gambling. ~%20 make their money back in the form of trading cards, ~%80 never see a penny of profit (their money turned into cards of equal value or higher value.

Now, while it's true that as players we could all just deny paying what these cards are worth, we won't do that because it truly is cheaper to buy singles, despite our secondary market making them so expensive.

If I had things my way, you would get a lot for $30 worth of packs. As is, you just don't really see a lot of value in packs. You spend $30 on packs and on average you see like $10 worth of cards. If I had my way, you would spend $5 on a pack and get $5 worth of cards (not necessarily the cards you want, that is all a game of chance, but $5 of cards you can use to find the cards you want-- the experience of a trading card game).

As is, packs are just not worth the fancy casing they're printed in. They're neat, they're fun, they're a lottery, but they're not feasible for someone trying to just play MtG. You play a stiff premium for that fun you get out of a pack, because after that moment of tearing and perusing, you're left with a lot of throwaway value. (The invention of limited tries to give these worthless piles a chance to provide more fun for the value.)

Things need to change. Cards need to become more available. I'm not saying the packs have to be a quarter each-- this doesn't have to cut deep into their pockets. One obvious solution is based on the fact that they don't want to change booster prices-- just include more cards in a pack. You don't even have to change the number 15. Make it 7 commons, 5 uncommons, 3 rares/mythics. You print the same number of cards, you have the same pack prices, you see just as many packs bought (because players actually have more incentive to buy them-- you don't lose profit by making players happier, you make them more likely to buy packs, it's called positive reinforcement. :/), and you make players happy and the game more affordable by slashing the prices of every uncommon almost in half, and the price of rares/mythics in a third.

As for me, I'm a normal, money-valuing member of the playerbase. All of us know packs are rip-offs. We very rarely buy packs just for the fun lottery aspect, we're much more logical than that, we like to see results from our actions. So we don't buy packs. We draft packs sometimes (the fun is arguably worth it), we play sealed for new sets, we play constructed elsewhere. In all these cases, we enter tournaments and put our skills on the line just as much as the luck we see from the games/prize packs. That's where the real value is-- winning 15 packs for $15. That's the only place we're willing to participate in the MtG experience.

For everything else, there's ebay.