I've made jokes in the past about F2P models that stood for Forced2Pay instead of Free2Play; however, I have never experienced a game that was more true to this than Magic The Gathering Tactics.
I will not be giving this game a detailed analysis, simply because it doesn't deserve one. I will, instead, recap my experience of the two hours I spent with this game, from which you may take from at your leisure.
The moment I signed on, I decided to check out the prices first. The conversion is 100 points to 1 dollar, 1 dollar to 10 coins. Booster packs costs 400 points.
Armed with this information, I checked the tournaments. There are three types of tournaments available: the basic type costs 1 coin to participate in, with weak rewards; the next tier of tournaments has a significantly larger buy-in of 30 points, with also significantly better rewards; and the last type is Draft, which is also the one that Pearz and I have been looking forward to the most. Therefore, it particularly saddened me to find out the buy-in for Draft is 20 coins and 3 booster packs; this amounts to 14 dollars.
There is, of course, a single-player campaign as well. After six missions, you finish the first chapter of the game; along with that, you are now level 6, gaining you one talent point to spend. Every time you level, you are given a free card - however, it is a completely random card that, at least for me, has yet to be of the color I'd selected at the start.
I also noticed that a daily quest unlocked for me; upon completion, I received 2 coins (yay~). I would have gladly continued the campaign - however, to my utter shock, I now had to buy them.
With nothing left to do in the campaign, I strolled over to the auction house. It made sense that none of the cards I got from my starter deck could be sold; however, I found it more than ridiculous that the cards I earned from levelling up could not be auctioned off. It was to no further surprise that the card prices actually on the auction list were well beyond my 2 cents.
So, there I was, literally at the end of the my rope regarding things to do, when I decided to try the basic tournament. This was when I realized that this tournament is based off time, as in: in x hours, the player who holds the most wins gets the prize. This I do not mind. What I do mind is that EACH match you wish to play costs you 1 coin.
Sorry, MTG Tactics, the last lonely coin in my wallet is not enough to keep this game installed on my computer. Oh, Sony, you Make Believe indeed.
~*+ Rho
