Magic: The Gathering Arena

Were we simply talking about the game of Magic: The Gathering, it would be straight five stars, no question about it to me. What an incredible experience of a game, a quarter of a century of genius game design built on the foundation of one of the most powerful and solid rules systems out there. Every new set they release is a slam dunk and I honestly have barely any complaints on the gameplay side, even within this digital version.
That said, Magic Arena is a lazy, barely functional, greedy mess of poor decision after poor decision. Play paper Magic or use Cockatrice.

People that say "this game would be better if not for capitalism" are reaaaaally missing the point of what an actual trading card game is. Magic: The Gathering is one of the epitomes of capitalism when it comes to its trading/collecting side, and that feeling it's reinforced by its mechanical/competitive side. It's been an expensive time sinker in the real world, and it's a expensive time sinker in the digital world.

Magic: The Gathering is a fantastic TCG because it's both flexible and easily manipuled so the meta can normalize, but it's having a load of banning problems for a long time now. That being said, it's a matter of metagame, so if you don't really play competitively, then it's all okay. The problem is, the standard and modern formats get stale pretty quickly, as the deck configuration is, at its core, about eficiency. Fast and furious, and you can't get a second wind otherwise. You HAVE to use staple cards to win, unless you play an antimeta/budget deck (which are oddballs by themselves).

The best iteration of Magic is the Commander system, because it just becomes flexible for a big part of its experience, and it's not as expensive because you can use literally any decent card. The game's velocity is way more relaxed and, unless you DON'T want to have any fun with people and look for efficiency builds only, you can replace loads of old broken cards with newer alike stuff. Yes, there are staples, but the important ones are mostly mana rocks and some key lands, but you can perfectly omit those for lesser-powered cards or... just buying a Commander pack, which come packed with all the stuff you need for the colors of your choice. It's just cheaper all around.

And that's my main problem with Arena, because it serves the purpose of being a standard platform, even if Historic is interesting in all of itself. Brawl is okay, but it absolutely pales in comparison to Commander's whacky activities. Commander is arguably the greatest format Magic has ever created. It's just not the same, and one thing this game needs as soon as possible is social implementation and systems.

Like, the game is so fucking barren of anything to do other than just playing, and that's quite the sin considering how Magic is not only a cash hole, but also a social experience. You bond with the people you play, create little tournaments, talk about the cards, discuss about stuff, related or unrelated to Magic. Even start making your own cards and design skeletons. You can't do that inside of Magic Arena. Sure, Discord exists, and Reddit exists and obscure forums too, but it should be a feature of its own, because once again, it's a social game. Form clans, groups, make related activities, follow other players, seek decks inside the game, yada yada yada. All of these things don't exist here, and it fucking sucks.

Oh, also this platform has been feeding upon MTG's worst ideas to date, like Secret Lair's concept, but that's a whole problem for Magic itself, not Arena. If you wanna get a gatcha-boost or get into the game in a free-way, or play some Historic (because that game mode is personally very fun and I'm eager to see how it will grow), play Arena. If you actually want to have the time of your life with friends? Stick to Cockatrice or Tabletop Simulator.

The game client is fucking dogshit - it crashes, it's woefully unoptimized, and it doesn't even reveal your opponent's decklist once a match is done.

On top of that, everyone in this game netdecks, which is expected for a CCG.
I feel like 80-90% of these decks are decks that most casual players would not enjoy playing against in real life.

This game has a more predatory economy than the real life lootbox of actual MTG. the game of Magic is super fun and I love it but I would never recommend someone use Arena as anything more than a tutorial for how to play.