The response to our announcement on The Future of Magic Esports has been great—we've received tons of feedback, questions, and thoughts, and we've been reading all of it. As part of that, we held a livestream with Ben Drago and Bear Watson, the leads of our tabletop and digital play structures, to answer as many questions as we possibly could.
We want to make sure everyone has access to these answers even if you couldn't tune in, so you can watch the video above or keep scrolling down and read a near-transcript (we cut out some of the less useful stuff—like Steve's puns and Blake talking about how great blue cards are) of the conversation. If you have questions, there's a good chance you'll find some of the answers below.
Topics Discussed
- The Path: Getting Started to MPL
- Mythic Point Challenges
- Consistency – Structure. AKA: Will this change for 2021? 2022?
- Communication Moving Forward
- Rewarding Continued High-Level Play
- Regional Players Tours and Partner Events
- Coverage
- Mythic Points
- Discretionary Invitations
- Points
- Calendar
- Formats
- MPL
- How do Local Game Stores factor in?
- MPL and Rivals
- Q&A from Chat
The Path: Getting Started to MPL
Q: If I'm new, what is my MTG Arena path getting to the Rivals league? New to Rivals?
Bear: It's pretty simple, first you find a deck that you've been having a lot of success with or that you really like, hopefully not Esper, and you'll take that into the MTG Arena ladder and then if you end up at the Top 1,200 Mythic ranked players you'll gain access to certain qualifiers and tournaments. If you show enough consistent success over the year, you'll be invited to join the Rivals league. Next year we have almost double the qualification opportunities, so there's—now's a really good time to jump in and hopefully join the league.
Q: You can do that on the Limited side too, as well? You can be Top 1,200 in Limited and do the same thing?
Bear: Yes
Q: What does it look like on the tabletop side?
Ben: So your path to Rivals starts with our qualifying tier, and one of our big goals this year was to expand the opportunities for people to play and make sure that more chances to find a tournament that's close to you. So qualifier tier, there's five ways: you can play in your WPN store—that's very similar to the current Mythic Championship Qualifiers, everyone is pretty familiar with those. There's the Players Tour Qualifiers (PTQs), are going to be big and more competitive than the WPN qualifier but also have great prizes. So if you're looking for more of a challenge, that's the kind of event you should be looking at. One of the things I'm most excited about this year is the Premier Series, so the Magic Premier Series lets us take awesome tournaments like SCG tour, or promote the new one like the LATAM Magic series where players can not only play in a series of events, which people really love, but also now qualify for the Players Tour as part of that tournament series. Finally, we still have Grand Prix, those are huge parts of—the biggest kind of competitive events, you'll find those at MagicFests, and finally there's still qualifiers on Magic Online, and all sorts of formats: Standard, Modern, Limited, Pauper, Vintage, and Legacy.
Q: So that gets you to the Players Tour; once you've made the Players Tour, how does that get you to Rivals?
Ben: Players Tour events are the new regionalized tournaments, so there'll be three of those a year and each one of those will be split across three regions: the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. So much easier for players to travel to, but still have the exciting feel like you've seen at a Pro Tour championship. People who do well there get invited to Players Tour Finals; those are more exclusive, only about 100 people, but that's the last step to get you to Rivals.
Mythic Point Challenges
Q: Question from chat about the graphic—What are Mythic Point Challenges?
Bear: Mythic Point Challenges are going to be new tournaments inside of MTG Arena. Players who reach the Top 1,200 mythic rank in Limited or Constructed will have access to these tournaments for Mythic Points throughout the year. These are kind of added additional elements that we can measure your MTG Arena performance over the year, instead of just little snapshots.
Q: So to help reward the consistency again?
Bear: Yes
Q: How then do you get from Rivals to the MPL?
Bear: It's a pretty similar path. As you join the Rivals league, you'll have access to different qualifiers and tournaments both on the tabletop and the arena side and if you show enough consistent success throughout the year, you'll be able to enter into the MPL Gauntlet where you'll face off against members of the MPL to hopefully take their spot.
Consistency – Structure. AKA: Will this change for 2021? 2022?
Q: One of the things people might have noticed on the chart, was the "new" tags—we've had a lot of changes of the past couple of years, including all of this new stuff we announced yesterday. Should players expect more changes?
Bear: I think you should expect some tweaks and refinements. We got a ton of really great feedback after we put the plan out yesterday, but you shouldn't see large-scale sweeping program changes. This is the foundations of what we're committed to for a while and the team's really, really excited to build on top of it.
Ben: We understood going into the process how stressful it can be for change year after year, so if we wanted to make these changes, we want to make sure we got it right. So that was one of our big goals, especially from the tabletop side: creating a system that's going to scale and be able to grow as the number of Magic players grows over the next five, ten, 20 years.
Bear: We wanted to accommodate the number of players coming into Magic. With MTG Arena launching last year, Magic has never been bigger, so this is system needed to adapt and move along with it.
Rewarding Continued High-Level Play
Q: We talked about a couple of ways we rewarded consistency, for example GPs. What plans do we have for tweaks in that area?
Ben: We've been talking about the last couple of days, to give a little bit of background, we know that players want to play a lot, but we also want to balance that with burn-out. Don't drive the play so much that they're not having fun, and during the changes we realize the best way to gauge that is to hear from the community. So there's somethings were going to finalize over the next couple of weeks because we wanted to share the entire program and just have a dialog, this conversation, understand what's important and do the right thing. So we've been listening, I'm sure if you've been following on social media, you've seen @MagicEsports account being really active the last couple of days—so let us know what you think.
Q: Will the Players Tour level reward consistency?
Ben: It's a pretty complicated system. I won't go too much into the details, key thing to remember is if you do well at a PT you're going to get invited to the next one, do well at a PT Final and get invited to the next one. We know that's critical, and you'll see those details come out in the next few weeks. What we're really thinking about right now is, "If I do pretty good at a number of events, how will that be rewarded?" That's what we're talking about here, getting that feedback, stringing together a couple good performances will give you a shot to stay qualified, and that will include performance at Grand Prix.
Q: Getting questions about Mythic Point Challenges, can you talk about how those point toward consistence performance as well?
Bear: We just need different mechanisms in place to evaluate your MTG Arena performance throughout the year, so we have things like the Mythic Qualifiers and the Mythic Invitationals— this year the Mythic Championship—we need additional events to show consistent performance over a large sample size. That's what these are intended to do. We're going to send out more details about the events before the launch of the program next year.
Details
Q: When should players expect to get those more details about how precisely the point systems will work?
Ben: For tabletop, Mythic Championship VI in Richmond will be the transition between this year's Mythic Championships and the Players Tour. So you'll have full details by Richmond.
Bear: Very similar timeframe that we're moving toward, knowing that our programs have flexibility for when they start.
Regional Players Tours and Partner Events
Q: We've talked about growth and building the system to expand, Pro Tour Americas—they can be seen as two regions? Is it possible those events take place in South America?
Ben: In 2020 we're planning to keep them in North America, keep them in places that are accessible, Houston—places in the southern United States. But long term, we design the Players Tour so that we have that flexibility to move it around, add locations, if that makes sense there could be a Players Tour South America, PT Australia. That's what we're talking about building flexibility at the start.
Q: We have three regions now, but there could be more?
Ben: That's what we have on the table.
Q: Partner events? Bazar de Bagda running magic series in LATAM?
Ben: Really excited, it's kind of the first premier series we announced. The key thing about that, BDB has put together great series of tournaments before in the past. This one is going to have a ton of qualifier slots, and as part of that the prizes for the winners includes the support so they can get to the store. That's really important for us, too. In addition to the premier series, all the PTQs will have travel support as part of the 1st-place prize, and were also really encouraging WPN qualifiers to have that level of support so when you win your invite you have the opportunity to travel and actually play.
Q: We named some (tabletop) partner events; (is there) stuff happening on the digital side too?
Bear: As Magic has been growing, there's been a need for different types of content and different types of tournaments. We saw phenomenal, Red Bull Untapped and its really exciting to tune into Twitch Rivals and Fandom Legends. Going into next year you'll see a lot of those similar types of events. That said, if you're kind of shy from competitive play, there's a ton of streamers who've picked up MTG Arena, the MPL streams. There's a number of things you can tune into.
Q: While we're talking about regional qualifications, one of the questions we got yesterday was about balance. For example, BDB and SCG are great tournament series that not everywhere in the world has access to. How do you balance qualifications across the globe?
Ben: We're really careful about making sure everybody had the correct amount of access in terms of tournaments, so when we're scheduling like these premier series, if there's regions that don't have those kind of tournaments, we'll make sure players have access through WPN qualifiers and PTQs.
Bear: MTG Arena being a digital game, it means we want to give it to as many players that have access to it. If you have access to MTG Arena now, and if you're playing Limited, you can compete in our system next year. Top 1,000, next year its Top 1,200, we'll keep reevaluating. We expanded the qualification spots as well, opening up that funnel, more players are getting through.
Coverage
Q: Big question, coverage? What events do we know for sure will have coverage?
Bear: This year we had Mythic Invitationals, MCIII, phenomenal marquee events. So we're going to have three Mythic Invitationals, near in style, MPL Weekly play, which we're iterating and we're trying out new formats. So tune in and let us know what your thoughts are. Mentioned before the MPL streams, partner events—depending what you're in the mood for, there's plenty of things to watch.
Ben: We joke around a lot, that there's just not enough weekends available in the year. In addition to all the MTG Arena events, all nine regional Players Tours, all three Players Tour Finals, all of those will be covered, partner events. I think every weekend of the year there's going to be Magic to watch. If that's what you really want to see, you're going to have plenty.
Mythic Points
Q: What happens to the Mythic Points players have accumulated this year?
Bear: They're not going away, they still point you to the Magic World Championship in February of next year, and they're also the primary mechanism to get you into the Rivals league. If you go to Magic.gg on the schedule page, there's a lot of events that still award Mythic Points this year—so go get them.
Q: Speaking of Magic.gg and Mythic Points, are there any plans to split up the points?
A: We're going through that process now and double-checking the list to make sure it's accurate for every reference. It should be on the site relatively soon.
Communication Moving Forward
Q: We reference our great social media team. Admittingly leading up to this announcement we were quiet, we were working on this, but we've been effusive in answering questions over the past 24 hours. Which Wizards will people get after this?
Bear: It would be really mean if we disappeared. We really appreciate your patience as we get caught up on things and work with the team to dig into the program. I think you're going to see a lot more of us on this show and consistent updates on Magic.gg—if you have any questions feel free to message @magicesports on Twitter. The intention is to work with the community to build on this.
Ben: I think it's so important for us to establish this dialog, not just share our plans but get feedback for things like the Grand Prix and how that interacts with the rest of the system. Please let us know what you're thinking, you'll see us prompt with questions and you can also catch us at events. Come say hi and let me know what's important to you, because it does really matter to us.
Q: And now that we have this base, we're going to be talking a lot more, you'll see these guys back on the show pretty regularly. Dev notes?
Bear: To talk about where we're at with certain programs what we're working on the behind the scenes, we've already committed to a lot of thing. You should not see another 20-page announcement in a month.
Discretionary Invitations
Q: Discretionary slots? We're using some slots, we currently got six for the Rivals league and some number for Mythic Invitationals? Why are we keeping them?
Bear: It's pretty simple, we want to make sure were giving access to Magic players who are from traditionally underrepresented groups. We'll use these invites at our discretion for anything from regional representation, human diversity, or there's a really great opportunity to highlight someone at an event—we'll take that opportunity. They're pretty important for the system.
Q: How do I get a discretionary slot?
Bear: You don't really get a discretionary slot, because the competitive structure is fed by so many different types of events, the event is kind of going to dictate how we use those invites for. If there's under-representation of certain groups, that's what were gonna focus on. We'll lean on community members and people from those groups in the community to make sure were making the right choices.
Q: Why didn't we have this information sooner?
Bear: The biggest thing is that, Ben mentioned, we wanted to make sure we were making the right decisions for the programs. Us coming in, we had a lot of catching up to do, and the team build a pretty good foundation for us to work off of when we came in. We wanted to make sure we were making the right call for all of our new players.
Ben: There's a legacy here. I've been playing Magic since it released, and I want to make sure we do service to the players and people who put this together. We really wanted to get it right the first time.
Q: Do you want to talk a little bit about the feedback process we had working with other pros while we iterated the system behind the scenes?
Bear: Nuts and bolts—it depends on if we had an idea or if there was a mechanism we were unsure about, we either shopped it to the pros or community members. There were different parts of the plan that we iterated through. We've been in pretty consistent communication with the MPL, it was a pretty integral part of why we got here.
Ben: We also made sure not just to talk to the players in the MPL, but players of every experience level and history of the game so we get as broad as group of experiences and feedback as we could.
Points
Q: What will happen to my Pro Points?
Ben: So we've talked about, just a little bit, we'll share more over the next few weeks. We did feel that it's important to respect that legacy. We are going to be continuing, they're being renamed Player Points to sync up with the Players Tour; we'll keep those lifetime totals and make sure—we might make some tweaks, we got to scale it to make sure the Players Tour Finals fit in the right way, but we do want to keep that going. I think that's an important part of the history of Magic.
Q: How do my points transfer from 2019 to 2020?
Bear: We'll use those points to kind of create the MPL and Rivals for the partial season, and going forward we'll take the points within the individual season to tweak the system.
Q: Can I get GP byes for Player Points?
Ben: It's a good question. There's not an answer today. To tell you why, byes have been controversial for years and years, not only kind of what they do to the tournament they restrict GPs from evolving. Not saying they're going away, but it's one of the things were looking to get feedback on. Are they doing the right thing? Is there a better way to recognize performance at a GP? Also opening the door to different structures especially for Day One of these huge events.
Q: How do lifetime points—now Player Points, previously Pro Points—play into the competitive system?
Ben: There's not going to be a direct connection other than the Hall of Fame, those still matter for the HoF. We're about to go into this year's ballot—after this year, we're going to rethink what the HoF is and you'll hear more about that as we go through that process.
Calendar
Q: When will we have a calendar of events?
Bear: We're definitely working on one right now. There's a lot of moving pieces, but you can definitely be assured that if there's any events they need to have information about, or qualify for certain things, they'll have that information.
Q: Correct me if I'm wrong, there are a lot of incredible logistics that go into putting together these events, both on the tabletop and the MTG Arena side?
Ben: We're close, by Richmond, Mythic Championship VI in Richmond, we'll have the full schedule of MagicFests, PT and PT Finals. So I would look for that as the last day you'll see that. Remark: MagicFest Ghent will be the first event that starts feeding the new Players Tour.
Q: Will be go back to holding high-level events shortly after a new set release?
Ben: As a little preview, we do plan for all of the Players Tour events to come after expansions are released next year, there'll be exciting fresh metas and all-new decks.
Formats
Q: What about players wanting to qualify in non-Standard formats? Standard is our most popular competitive Constructed format, but players like other formats. What do we have for them if they want to qualify?
Ben: Magic Online is probably the most diverse set of qualifiers—five different options. Most of the WPN qualifiers and PTQ will have familiar formats: Standard, Modern, Sealed Deck. Premier Series—expect to see some experimentation. I would expect you'll see a few Eternal formats in the premier series to give you a chance to show your skills in other formats.
MPL
Q: It is possible for the World Champ to not be in the MPL?
Bear: It was intentionally designed that way, and there's conversations internally if that's too conservative. That's one of the details we're going to dig into to see if there's any merit to switching that. There was conversation within the team, where we didn't want to spike a player directly to the MPL, with that said there's merit to both sides. For that to happen though, that person would need to win three events—theoretically, it is possible, so those are the types of situations that we're [trying to] avoid but totally hear the feedback and it's something we'll dig into.
Q: Talk a little bit about the philosophy on building the MPL the way it is, to where tournament spikes don't automatically get you into the MPL.
Ben: It's a balance, and I think that you'll find a wide range of opinions on it. Ultimately our goal is to use Rivals and the MPL as a way to recognize and reward consistent good play, and that is why things like automatic qualifications don't really fit in to do exactly what we want those to do. Now certainly the World Champion will have a huge advantage going into that process. I think we'd like to see the World Champion or Players Tour Finals winner show good performances leading up to that to prove that they deserve to be there.
How do Local Game Stores factor in?
Q: How does this plan support play at local stores?
Ben: I'm excited by a ton of changes. One of the tweaks we made to the WPN qualifiers that's different from current MCQs, let our retails and partners split up that qualifiers slot and into preliminary events and finals. It's the best thing about the old PPTQ system, now one of the restrictions there, those events have to happen in 3-4 weeks and you won't have to wait months and months to figure out if you've qualified, but you get to have that experience at the same store you play FNM or go to Prereleases at.
Q: Our WPN team has been on top of this—according to them, we've received 78 applications for WPN qualifiers from regions all around the world. To put that into perspective, I think Brazil was number two on that list. For the audience, that is more applications than we received for Mythic Championship Qualifiers in any month. How do I find them?
Ben: All of these events start at store and the event locator.
MPL and Rivals
Q: Are MPL and Rivals players allowed to play in Mythic Qualifiers?
Bear: The MPL isn't because they're auto-qualified to the Mythic Invitationals. The Rivals group has their own Mythic Qualifiers they'll compete in for those qualification slots. The Mythic Point Challenges we talked about earlier, the MPL and the Rivals league will both have access to those.
Q: MPL players and Rivals players can earn up to the dollar amount in appearance fees? How do those appearance fees work?
Ben: That player support comes from attending the Players Tours. Three a year, all the Rivals and MPL players are qualified. So we'll see them there; the community fans gets to play with some of the best players we have.
Q: Why is the MPL going from 32 to 24 players?
Bear: The top level of our system is going from 32 to 70 with the expansion of the Rivals league, and reducing the MPL to 24 allows us to be a little more flexible with our content and really invest in our up-and-coming stars. It was a pretty important and necessary change.
Q&A from Chat
This portion houses all the questions from chat, in no particular grouping.
If your question wasn't answered above, check these out. If you still have questions, feel free to let us know @MagicEsports.
Q: What sorts of invites will Star City Games players be getting for the regional Players Tours? Invitational winner, open winner?
Ben: Star City Games, I've been talking to, they're going to give a preview of their structure really soon. I want to wait for them to make their announcement and I know part of that announcement will include where those qualifiers are.
Q: Will Players Tours continue at MagicFests?
Ben: Yes, all of the Players Tour and Players Tour Finals will be at MagicFests. For the Players Tours, the day before that event starts, there will be LCQ all day before the tournament starts. Even if you don't qualify yet, definitely come and take your shot; if it doesn't work out you still have the GP to play in.
Q: Do you have any nicknames?
Bear: No, Bear? "The Bear." Bear is the only nickname you need.
Q: How do WPN qualifiers, which game stores can run them?
A: So we've, without going into too many details, we are recognizing the best stores as WPN Premium stores, and so for these qualifiers we're to give priority to WPN premium, but tons of other store are going to have access to them—especially if they're building up a player base and focusing on the player experience, they should have an opportunity to host these.
Q: Priority to WPN Premium stores, but not exclusive to them?
Ben: Correct.
Q: How are streamers going to factor into the system, or are you going to make them qualify on their own merit?
Bear: They're going to have to qualify through the system like any other player, so they'll have to hit within the Top 1,200 mythic ranked players within a time frame and qualify in through the tournament. That doesn't mean we won't invite streamers through discretionary invites, because a lot of people stream.
Q: The Magic Online Championship use to have Platinum status as a prize for the winner; will it be a possibility to promote them to the Rivals league next year?
Ben: We're not promoting them to the Rivals league, the Magic Online top players will get invited to Players Tours and you'll get more details in the November announcement when we show off all the policy and use behind everything.
Q: Will there be way to qualify for the paper Players Tour in Africa?
Ben: There should be, hopefully a couple different ways. I think we already have a few WPN qualifiers in South Africa, but especially the goal with the Premier Series is to kind of be create a circuit that's much more flexible in regions where there's not a lot of activity yet. We can still support that by combining multiple events and maybe across multiple cities. So it's going to depend on if great organizers or retailers to partner with. With twice as many opportunities to qualify this year as there has been in the past, it really opens up those opportunities for places like Africa.
Q: Should I be shooting for Top 1,200 each month or just once during the qualifying season?
Bear: We'll announce those qualification paths because they'll tie into each Mythic Invitational. There will be two qualifying months per Mythic Invitational, so you'll have multiple opportunities to qualify.
Q: Will my GP finishes count for anything under the new system?
Ben: We're still talking about how GPs interact, but those will start at MagicFest Richmond, so you won't have to worry about anything before then. Richmond is the cut-off point for the transition to the Players Tour.
Q: Nationals? There is no Nationals in this plan, is that something the teams have discussed? Feedback you guys have heard?
Ben: We've talked about it quite a bit. One of the great things about the Premier Series is that it gives us that flexibility because programs like Nationals fits right in there, whether we're running things directly or with partners or others organizers. The follow-up to that is "What about the World Magic Cup?" No plans for the World Magic Cup in 2020; we know it's an awesome event, it's something we're always going to talk about. Next year is going to be about the Players Tour.
Q: Are the new Players Tours going to be the same weekend, or three consecutive weekends?
Ben: We talked about how "Ben-tember" didn't work out, so most likely it looks like those Players Tours will take place over two weekends. So there will be some overlap. Now all of those Players Tours are going to be covered in the local time zones, so if you want to watch along you'll be able to watch 16 hours of Magic in a row as we go from Asia-Pacific to Europe.
Q: Why is the system so complicated?
Bear: I think unlike any other esport, we have to balance two different platforms. With that awesomeness it a lot of complexity, lots of nuts and bolts. We want to reward consistent performance; we also want to give the dream to being able to make it to the MPL. Now that that path is clear, we can make tweaks and refinements to make the system more efficient. It's a symptom of how many Magic players we're trying to support and the difficulties of supporting two platforms at once.
Ben: The reality is, especially on the tabletop side, the real world is messy, hard, but it's really important getting people together, sitting across a table and playing Magic is really one of the best ways to experience the game. With hundreds of thousands of people playing Magic, it requires us to put together a structure that caters to players in hundreds of countries and dozens of skill levels. That's why we do that rather than having one-size-fits-all. No matter how long they've played or what level of competition they're looking for.
Q: Aside from the Mythic Championship in Richmond, are there any other events that award tabletop Mythic Points before the transition?__
Ben: No.
Q: Are there any plans for high-level Limited play?
Bear: Not at this point from the MTG Arena side. It's something we've talked about a few times. I think it requires technology that we're digging into, but it's something we've definitely talked about.
Ben: We're not ready to talk about formats for players next year. At the qualifier level, especially PTQs and Premier Series, we do want to have more Limited play there. We've kicked around some ideas for Premier Series that might just be Booster Draft. Again, going back to the fact, we have more opportunities for people to play, it lets us experiment more and see if that's really what players want.
Q: Since the Players Tour is supposed to double the number of people participating, compared to Mythic Championship Qualifiers, where are most of these new invites coming from? More PTQs, Premier Series, somewhere else?
Ben: I think they're asking, how we're splitting it up among those. It's really going to be a balance of opportunities, Premier Series is the most exciting way to use those, like we said earlier we want to make sure we balance accessibility, in areas where there's not a Premier Series more of those will be shifted over to WPN or PTQ. It's going to depend on the region, what those opportunities are, to balance that mix.
Q: MTG Arena side it's pretty obvious?
Bear: Yeah.
Q: Will Players Tour events be split-format like the current Mythic Championships, or single-format tournaments?
Ben: Our plan is for them to be split-format tournaments.
Q: Will Planeswalker Points have any relevance in the new system?
Ben: It goes back to when we go back to GP byes; right now for competitive players that's where Planeswalker Points are most important. The answer there, as we figure out how we want to deal with byes we'll kind of determine how Planeswalker Points are integrated with that.
Q: Bear, what are you most excited about that's coming up because of this new system?
Bear: Two things—one, the Rivals group. I think giving folks a home where they have a little support so they can hopefully make it to be a pro is really, really important to me. And second is the MPL Gauntlet giving people the opportunity to fight for their spot is not only interesting to watch, it's just an exciting moment for fans as well.
Ben: All those things are awesome. One of the things I'm really excited about is the Premier Series and really seeing what organizers do when they get this opportunity to experiment and innovate. SCG Tour is awesome; that's kind of one example of it. I can't wait to see what people do when they get to create custom experiences that tie into our qualifying structures.
Q: Magic.gg is our esports website. Will the website have coverage and information on the Rivals in addition to the MPL?
Bear: Yes, that's our up-and-coming stars, so you'll definitely see some coverage and focus on that group.
Q: Will we have an integrated calendar that will show that umbrella of events?
Bear: We don't want it to be an Outlook calendar with ten different views, but if you go there now there's a month-by-month you can look at. Once we have the full schedule in place, we'll make sure that's represented on Magic.gg as well.
Q: Turnover in the MPL—aren't you afraid the MPL won't change often enough, and we'll see the same players playing the same events.
Bear: We've been digging into the churn between all the systems, and we felt we landed on a good spot. We have gotten feedback that people feel it's either too conservative, or has the potential for edge cases or weird moments, and we're going to go back and dig into it there time to make some tweaks and if we do we'll announce it to fans and get additional feedback.
Q: Is there any consideration to having an MPL Gauntlet this year?
Bear: We talked a lot about it earlier in the show, the system that we had before was always going to be messy when we transition into a new system. What you're seeing now is a short-term problem for a really long-term solution; we needed to make this transition and the churn between to reward both the folks playing this year and incentivize the MPL to up their game. After this we'll move into the full season.
Q: Talk about that churn, how much churn do you expect to see between the MPL and Rivals?
Bear: It honestly depends on the format, the players involved, but roughly a quarter is what we were looking at. There's a different mechanism within the Gauntlet we have shift to increase or decrease that number.
Q: Talk about the balance between wanting to provide security for these players and also wanting to provide that churn that's so exciting with the MPL Gauntlet. How do you balance that?
Bear: For any esport, that's the delicate balance if you have any kind of promotion-relegation system, because you need to have enough stability that you can build awareness and gain a fan base, but also have enough churn that low performers can churn out and high performers can have their shot. It's honestly just nuts and bolts in the system, we get to kind of move those wherever we want. We're going to take a look at it, especially with the recent feedback.
Q: Esper Control? What are you playing on MTG Arena right now?
Bear: There was the Vampire spree in MPL Weekly, that's what I've been kicking around. I'm a black or black-green kind of person, blue not so much.
Ben: I tend to play whatever deck is best at the time. I've enjoyed playing Dinos recently, smashing people with giant monsters; it's old-school but it's very satisfying.
Blake: Anything and everything; I can't win with anything. It's actually super frustrating. I'm just terrible at Magic. What I am playing soon is Commander.
Q: What Commander decks do you have, Ben?
Ben: If UPS finds my package, I have a couple of decks. Right before this show they said the lost it.
Bear: I have a Zombie deck upstairs and a Queen of Bears deck.
Q: I want to play Magic competitively, but only have weekends available six months out of the year. Given my limited availability to attend events, what's the highest goal I could shoot for?
Bear: With six months, it's going to depend on when the events are going to line up. There's a lot of opportunities to earn points. It's not out of the question you're able to make a shot at the Rivals league, it just depends on the rest of the field. We have gotten a little bit of feedback people are looking for open qualifiers, or people with limited time want access to high-level competitive play with incremental steps, and that's something we'll look into.
Q: Why does the full season last from mid-year to mid-year rather than January to December?
Bear: We wanted to focus the rotation we wanted to do a year, like an August to August competitive season, around the core set timeframes. That's why next year is a bit messy, we have Worlds and the partial season. Going forward, you'll see the big rotation and MPL and Rivals churn around the release of the core set.
Ben: It really helps to not have your big events, your World Championships in December/January because people are really busy and would rather spend time with family.
Q: Let's touch on the MPL Weekly. We have an episode this Saturday, what are we doing differently with this MPL split?
Bear: We have each group playing a week that feeds into a Top 4 bracket. It's a little bit cleaner where we can tell really compelling stories week to week and you can follow MPL players throughout their journey. As you can see, there's MPL folks who've put out VODs and analysis, so there's content. It should hopefully be a deeper dive in the high-level competitive play were trying to show.
That was about all we had time for, but we're not done answering your questions yet! If you have more feedback, thoughts, quandaries, worries, congratulations, musings, or just plain old questions, your first best stop is by tweeting them to @MagicEsports. We'll definitely get back to you if we can, but know that even if we don't, we're taking it all in. Look for more touchpoint communications just to check in on Magic.gg coming up. We've got the first one planned for September, and will be continuing to check in regularly both there and on twitch.tv/magic.
We're thankful for everything we've heard so far and we can't wait to keep the conversation going.