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Holding Cube drafts the same time as the MVW and TSE drafts is really difficult for some of us. I don't mind the current Cube structure, but I'd much rather pay 14 tix to play in Classic drafts. Holding both at the same time just means I can't Cube.

Anyone have an estimate for how often Cube drafts are happening this time compared to previous ones?

Sep 27, 2012 -- 12:57PM, tcclemson wrote:

Unfortunately, this payout system was complete a failure, and hopefully they will learn from this.

This is what I mean by not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

It looks to me like the cube drafts are firing like there's no tomorrow. If that, on the second day of cubing, is already considered a complete failure, I wonder just how popular the cube drafts need to be so that they are considered a resounding success.

just wanted to comment.. I will be skipping all cube drafting because if I am not sure whether or not I like cube and the prizes I win may be unusable/untradeable for me.

Sep 27, 2012 -- 8:56PM, Echuck215 wrote:

Sep 27, 2012 -- 2:01PM, WotC_K wrote:

Conversations like this are an important part of that process so thank you all for your constructive feedback.

In that spirit, I'll say this:  I've always seen cube drafts as being "for fun" rather than "for value".  Maybe I got a pack or two sometimes, but I was ok paying mostly for the fun of it.

That said, the new swiss prize structure feels like a kick in the teeth.

If I play in a swiss cube, not only do I have no chance of getting something of value, even if I win outright, I still have to pay two more tix to enter the next one.   You say in your article you wanted people who cube just for fun to be able to enter cube again just by cubing.  But we can't.  We have to pay a minimum of two extra tix each time.  (Why would you say you can pay for swiss cube just by swiss cubing, when you clearly can't?)

This structure hurts, no matter how good a player you are:  if you aren't winning many games, you're still paying a bunch of tix to enter each cube, and every once in a while you get a discount. 

If you win much closer to 100% of your games, then very quickly, "cube tickets" become worthless to you.  Once you have enough to enter a cube draft, the rest of your cube tickets are worthless.  Literally worth nothing.

People keep claiming that a cube ticket is worth .6 of an event ticket.  But it isn't.  The first 10 on your account are each worth about .6 of an event ticket.   The rest on your account are worth 0.   Nothing.

THIS. This is exactly how it is.

I was very happy to see the Cube return as I love playing the format (I have a paper cube as well and I LOOOOVE the idea of cube, it is the king of draft formats in my opinion) and I really really wanted to play.
As I read in the announcement that the swiss queues were for the people who "just wanted to play"I was joyous and thought "PERFECT, this is JUST for me!"

WRONG

Soo soo wrong..

Not only do the swiss cubes have the worst payout, meaning they have NO REAL PRODUCT! but to make matters much much worse the cube tickets are untradable.

But in my opinion the worst idea about this is definitely the additional payment of two "real" tickets to enter any cube draft, including swiss. If this wasn't the case, at least if I won a swiss draft I could sort of go "infinite" by entering the next and if I won it the next and so on. But including additional costs of 2 real tickets just to enter another cube draft where, again, I can win NOTHING of real value.. 

This system feels like a kick in the nuts and really exploitative.
I really hope that the people responsible read this and learn from this. Even though the queues fire off very well and this is probably a VAST financial success for MTGO, this doesn't mean it is good to continue this way. I urge everyone to boycott this payout system by not playing the queues.
Make your voice heard!

For most people, all of MTGO is actually only a little more flexible than the cube payout. The only way to turn any of the "winnings" into real money is to go through enormous hoops, so most people just reuse their winnings to play more. The cube payout does this but limits you to only playing cube so its a pretty decent deal for the average Joe who just wants to play cube, but its definitely unconfortable for everyone else: People winning a lot will end up with lots of cube tickets, people who only want to play a once or twice end up paying full price because they cant reuse any winnings they might get elsewhere.

I for one have been convinced by the people's responses to my arguments that there are definite shortcomings in this system, given the target market. I'm trying to think what ways it could be improved with the existing limitations:

- Can't give out event tickets (that would risk the "gambling" issues)

- Giving out boosters devaluates that booster considerably and makes the prize structure worthless near the end of the drafting period due to the popularity of the cube drafts.

- If boosters are given out, try to keep it in multiples of the number of sets in the block to avoid the infamous disparities that can happen. Usually 3. But it could be 2 if used with lowryn/eventide and it would have to be 4 is used with master's edition. 

- Demand for cube is super high and Wizards MUST take advantage of it to monetize it properly.


I think if tix were made tradeable, with the current prize payout the following would happen: Bots would quickly get  surpluses of them from whenever people decide they have had enough of cubing, and the buy value of these tix would go down, specially near the end of the cubing period. People would probably be even more up in arms about them. However, bots would have to keep the sell value at a decent value knowing that eventually another cube period will come demand for these tickets will shoot up, as long as they are worth less than .6tix. I guess its a good deal for bots!

I suppose one way to solve it is to leave the cube queues as a permanent thing so that people get enough of them and eventually reduce the number of fired queues so that it would be feasible to give out boosters as prizes without devaluating them considerably. This would basically mean that entering a cube would be equivalent to entering a constructed event with a slightly higher cost of entry but without the requirement of cards. The one big, big drawback is that cube would lose a lot of what currently makes it special since it would just be another format.

Perhaps another way would be to allow the use of boosters from any expansion or select expansions as the cost of entry. Say, 2 boosters + 2 tix so that the queues themselves consume the prices they give out.



Personally, I think the best thing they can do is to offer queues that require a small number of cube tix and ONLY give boosters, albeit a small number of them, as prizes. This might also help to keep a balance in the price of a cube tix if they were to become tradeable.

For example, something like: Single elimination, 4-6 cube tix and 1 or 2 ticket entry (need to monetize), winner gets 2 boosters, second place gets 1 booster. 

I haven't worked out what the values would have to be to have a comparable EV to the other events, but the idea is that you can play once or twice in the other cube events that hand over cube tickets, and then play one (or two if you did well) of these with your winnings and end up with some universal MTGO credit (tradeable boosters).

Also, perhaps announce the existence of a weekend in the future where there would be queues with an entry that requires exactly 2 cube tickets (plus whatever number of event tickets are needed to balance it with the prize structure) with a minimum payout so that people know they will have a way to get rid of their cube tickets with the opportunity to get prizes.

Its all about the perception and making people feel that they can get something valuable to them for playing.