Developer Update was rolled out on the official channel of MTGA. Here is highlights:
- Core 2019 releases July 12. Should be a 0-downtime update. 3 packs for everyone, plus the “new player experience” which will let people earn some packs, some starter decks, etc. Will be skippable for players who don’t want to play through it.
- No wipe with this update. No word on when the final wipe will be.
- Big wave of invites coming July 20, including giving current players codes to invite their friends.
- Wildcards: deterministic counters for each pack opened that count up to the next wildcard, so it’s more predictable.
- Vault/5th card: No longer get vault progress just for opening packs, but a changed value for 5th+ copies of cards. Still a work in progress.
Under the current system, you get 3% vault progress per pack opened, plus more for 5th plus copies of cards–e.g. if you open a common that you already own 4 copies of, you get an additional 0.1% progress, 0.3% for an uncommon, etc. That means that most of the progress is from the 3% for opening a pack, with the 5th+ cards adding a smaller amount. Under the new system, you will not get the 3% for opening a pack. However, we’ll get a larger amount for 5th+ cards–but they didn’t say how much, and they said that they’re still working on this to make it feel better. Overall, they expect vault progress to stay similar. They didn’t disclose any of the changed values, and they said that this is still being adjusted.
This means that vault progress will be much faster for people with large collections and much slower for people with small collections. Also, this will make vault progress from drafting substantially faster, because the plethora of 5th+ commons, etc. will now be worth more, but the loss of the 3% progress from opening a draft pack instead of a normal pack goes away. We’ll have to see if they adjust draft prices to compensate.
- Details on all of the new economy adjustments on July 11.
- Some new, more casual/brewtastic events planned–details to come. Current events will largely continue.
- Expanded language support.
- Support for PayPal purchases.
Here is the video:
