Steve Ricossa, the Executive Producer for Magic: Legends has released a State of the Game: Open Beta article which details some of the changes headed to the game. The article identifies and clarifies some points on monetization, end game, performance and more.
Magic: Legends has seen hundreds of thousands of players flocking to the game since the open beta went live March 23rd. With so many people playing, there’s really no better way to obtain feedback, even if some of it hasn’t exactly been stellar for Cryptic. Luckily in the latest State of the Open Beta: Week One address, Ricossa states that the team is watching and listening, and they’ve already begun to respond to some of the feedback. He states performance is just one example that the team has been ardently working to remediate. Serverside tuning and data changes have been made in the past week to handle load and combat framerate issues. Performance problems in totality won’t be fixed overnight, but Ricossa stresses that they will continue to work on them.
When it comes to monetization, one of the major sticking points to many players, Ricossa wants players to know that they aren’t against making changes, and he addressed several issues that were brought up over the past week. Some reddit players have been concerned about the monetization, and recently accused Cryptic of deleting posts related to booster pack odds and other monetization concerns. Perfect Worlds community manager took to the reddit to explain that they are seeing and hearing the feedback, and that they are not trying to "hide from the truth". Missing posts on the forums were likely caught by the spam filter, and that the team is not trying to bury the issue.
Ricossa pointed out some changes in monetization in the State of the Game. For example, the Dimir Assassin class and Nightveil Stalker Spell will now be unlocked at level 50 for free and premium Battlepass tracks. By doing this, all players will be able to access the class strictly through gameplay. Monetization is a common sore spot for players and Cryptic states they will continue to refine this aspect of the game as development progresses and feedback is examined.
Ricossa also divulged information about the Currency Exchange. According to the State of the Open Beta, Cryptic provided a one time seeding of 1 million Aether so that users could use the exchange upon the launch of open beta. The exchange rate provided for Aether was essentially determined by data from the closed beta, but once the 1 million in seeded currency is gone, the exchange will function solely on the Aether of the Magic: Legends community.
Ricossa touched on several other aspects in the article, which should certainly be read in earnest if you plan on playing the game through to end game, as details revealing the state of end game were also provided. Part of the end game now revolves around the Realm system, which Ricossa believes may have been “understated” in the blogs:
“The full depth of the Realm system may have been understated in the Realm blogs we had on the run up to launch. This player progression system features 4 work stations each with 10 levels, 5 land colors with 10 levels of attunement each, and the main overall ‘Aetheric Core’ structure with 10 levels of progression. Each station will provide you new benefits such as higher quality artifact drops, the ability to craft world enchantments, significant reductions to spell page costs to level spells, unique artifacts, and roughly 30% of all spell unlocks come from this system. “
-Steve Ricossa, Executive Producer, Magic Legends
As with most games in beta (even open beta) features will continue to change. While it’s unlikely any major overhauls will happen, players should expect ongoing feature tweaks alongside performance and QoL improvements as the game heads to its proper launch later this year.
