timmytaplands
Member
This is a grab bag of ideas for improvements to MTGO's trading system. I have heard Daybreak address the MTGO economy in interviews. My impression is that most of the focus right now is around card availability. While that's great and important, I think it ignores a lot of things about MTGO's trading and collection system are either antiquated, unintuitive or strange.
These issues are a large source of player frustration and friction. They're also issues that aren't often verbalized by players, because most don't really care enough about trading to want to fix it. Instead there's just a general sense among many players that trading is scary or something to be avoided. I believe if the UI were streamlined a lot of these frustrations would go away and people might actually enjoy trading and managing their collection. As such, this thread will be more focused on reducing these frictions within the actual trading system (and less about card availability and the cost of playing MTGO).
1. "Always bring X tickets into a Trade"
When players open a trade on MTGO, they select a binder to show their trade partner. It's very common for players to try to buy cards only to realize they selected a binder which has no tradeable tickets. Of course, you can show the Full Trade List binder, which is a default binder that can't be deleted. However, this shows the other player your entire collection. That means if you have more than 400 tickets you show the other player all of them.
Imagine if you were trying to buy a slice of pizza--would you show the cashier how much money is in your bank account when paying? You probably wouldn't, even though you could argue there is no harm in doing so. I think a helpful thing would be to have a setting or default binder that always brings 400 tickets (or however many you have, if less than 400) into a trade. Currently there's never a reason to bring more than 400 tickets into a trade anyway.
This issue alone probably results in thousands of trades being cancelled or going nowhere.
An easy-to-implement solution to this would be that New Trade Binders always have 400 event tickets by default (or however many tickets you have, whichever is fewer).
2. Unified Trade View
Another unintuitive part of MTGO's trading system is that you only see the partner's trade binder instead of your own. You can drag cards from their trade binder into your side of the trade, but you can't drag your own cards in and out of their side of the trade. You also don't know which of your items your trade partner can see (unless you go double-check the binder you showed them in the collection view).
A visual explanation of the ideal trade view is from Baldur's Gate 3. Both player's inventory are shown on screen. You can drag items from either player's inventory into the others and that facilitates the trade. Currency can be shown as an item in a collection but can also be shown as an integer value at the top of the trade window. The only difference between Baldur's Gate 3 should be that there should be cutouts at the bottom to show what each player will get in the trade (which IMO MTGO gets right already).
3. Server-Side Trading and Chat History (ie Trade Ledger)
This probably already exists in some form. Give players access to it. The trade ledger should show a Trade ID, the cards traded on both sides, a timestamp, and the chat history if possible. Chats are important to store because because trades are done with bots, and bots store bot credit.
4. Send cards to friends:
Once we have a good ledger set up for trades, allow players to send cards to eachother while skipping the Trade UI entirely. Why is this important? Because it allows people to rent cards quickly. Players on both system can refer to the ledger if there's ever a dispute (I.e. "I thought I gave that card back to the rental service"). These should show up in the trade ledger of course.
5. Event Tickets and Item Quantity Limits:
I'm aware there are legal and technical considerations around how the event ticket system and trade quantity limit are currently designed. I'm only bringing up these ideas in case they haven't been considered since the Daybreak transition. Are there any changes/improvements to the event ticket system that can be made? For example, can there be fractional tickets? Is it possible that more than 400 event tickets can be sent in a trade? These would greatly reduce frictions in the economy that are difficult to see at first glance.
Without knowing all the considerations, here's an example of how you could send more than 400 tickets in a trade: Create an item called a ticket bundle that behaves like a booster pack except it always has 100 tickets inside.
6. UI Improvements to Speed Up Trading:
Get rid of the lag when a trade finishes.
Whether a trade is successful or is cancelled, always let the user close the dialogue boxes by hitting enter or escape.
"New Product Obtained" window:
Have a button in the bottom right called "Add All To Active Trade Binder".
Make each item in the window right clickable and have the same dropdown on rightclick thats in the collection view (add to trade binder, etc)
These issues are a large source of player frustration and friction. They're also issues that aren't often verbalized by players, because most don't really care enough about trading to want to fix it. Instead there's just a general sense among many players that trading is scary or something to be avoided. I believe if the UI were streamlined a lot of these frustrations would go away and people might actually enjoy trading and managing their collection. As such, this thread will be more focused on reducing these frictions within the actual trading system (and less about card availability and the cost of playing MTGO).
1. "Always bring X tickets into a Trade"
When players open a trade on MTGO, they select a binder to show their trade partner. It's very common for players to try to buy cards only to realize they selected a binder which has no tradeable tickets. Of course, you can show the Full Trade List binder, which is a default binder that can't be deleted. However, this shows the other player your entire collection. That means if you have more than 400 tickets you show the other player all of them.
Imagine if you were trying to buy a slice of pizza--would you show the cashier how much money is in your bank account when paying? You probably wouldn't, even though you could argue there is no harm in doing so. I think a helpful thing would be to have a setting or default binder that always brings 400 tickets (or however many you have, if less than 400) into a trade. Currently there's never a reason to bring more than 400 tickets into a trade anyway.
This issue alone probably results in thousands of trades being cancelled or going nowhere.
An easy-to-implement solution to this would be that New Trade Binders always have 400 event tickets by default (or however many tickets you have, whichever is fewer).
2. Unified Trade View
Another unintuitive part of MTGO's trading system is that you only see the partner's trade binder instead of your own. You can drag cards from their trade binder into your side of the trade, but you can't drag your own cards in and out of their side of the trade. You also don't know which of your items your trade partner can see (unless you go double-check the binder you showed them in the collection view).
A visual explanation of the ideal trade view is from Baldur's Gate 3. Both player's inventory are shown on screen. You can drag items from either player's inventory into the others and that facilitates the trade. Currency can be shown as an item in a collection but can also be shown as an integer value at the top of the trade window. The only difference between Baldur's Gate 3 should be that there should be cutouts at the bottom to show what each player will get in the trade (which IMO MTGO gets right already).
3. Server-Side Trading and Chat History (ie Trade Ledger)
This probably already exists in some form. Give players access to it. The trade ledger should show a Trade ID, the cards traded on both sides, a timestamp, and the chat history if possible. Chats are important to store because because trades are done with bots, and bots store bot credit.
4. Send cards to friends:
Once we have a good ledger set up for trades, allow players to send cards to eachother while skipping the Trade UI entirely. Why is this important? Because it allows people to rent cards quickly. Players on both system can refer to the ledger if there's ever a dispute (I.e. "I thought I gave that card back to the rental service"). These should show up in the trade ledger of course.
5. Event Tickets and Item Quantity Limits:
I'm aware there are legal and technical considerations around how the event ticket system and trade quantity limit are currently designed. I'm only bringing up these ideas in case they haven't been considered since the Daybreak transition. Are there any changes/improvements to the event ticket system that can be made? For example, can there be fractional tickets? Is it possible that more than 400 event tickets can be sent in a trade? These would greatly reduce frictions in the economy that are difficult to see at first glance.
Without knowing all the considerations, here's an example of how you could send more than 400 tickets in a trade: Create an item called a ticket bundle that behaves like a booster pack except it always has 100 tickets inside.
6. UI Improvements to Speed Up Trading:
Get rid of the lag when a trade finishes.
Whether a trade is successful or is cancelled, always let the user close the dialogue boxes by hitting enter or escape.
"New Product Obtained" window:
Have a button in the bottom right called "Add All To Active Trade Binder".
Make each item in the window right clickable and have the same dropdown on rightclick thats in the collection view (add to trade binder, etc)
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