The future of competitive Magic: The Gathering is evolving this year with big changes for the 2020-2021 season. Whether you prefer to play tabletop Magic or digitally (Magic Arena or Magic Online), there's now a clear path on how you can qualify for the next season's major tournaments like the Players Tour Finals (tabletop) and the Mythic Invitationals (Magic Arena), but some fans still have a lot of questions about the path to reach the highest levels of competition. Some still find the new system of organized play complicated, with many still confused on how to qualify for invitational high-level MTG events. Thankfully, the Magic Tabletop Esports team recently did an AMAA (Ask Me Almost Anything) on Reddit to answer fans' questions.
Ben Drago, Senior Manager of Competitive Gaming, and Scott Larabee, Manager of Organized Play Programs along with Athena Froehlich, Magic Esports Community Manager answered some questions about the lack of stability in competitive play, behind-the-scenes reasons that make the new system a challenge to solidify, and how how prestigious is the new Players Tour meant to be compared to the old Pro Tour.
When a fan addressed the lack of stability due to the continuous changes on competitive Magic, Ben Drago answered:
"When you change a system that has been in place, more or less, for the better part of two decades, it's going to feel unstable, unsteady, and hard to understand. The old system was limiting our ability to create opportunities to play, and we felt that making all the changes at once was the best way to transition to a new structure that will let us scale up and better meet the demands of our competitive players.
That said, we do appreciate stability. Our mantra in 2020 is to aim for stabilizing our changes so people can get used to the new system. We had to make big changes, which led to big swings and, as you state, feelings of instability. But the goal of the new system was to create a new steady state—and we did some of that system building in front of people because we also value transparency. We'll continue to build and iterate and be open (doing things like this AMAA), but the program we have now isn't going to change in the ways it did in 2019. 2020 is a year of, at most, tweaks.
Short version? 2019 was a year of change, but in 2020 our aim is to keep things stable and let people play."
For those who are confused about the new structure of organized play, they pointed out the flowcharts that were first revealed last August. Here's a chart that shows the path to the highest levels of competitive Magic:
Another fan asked if there are other ways of qualifying through Magic Arena without having to grind their way to the top of the ranks, to which Athena replied, "We recognize that more choices = more fun. We are currently working to establish new ways to play competitive Magic on Arena, that do not require maintaining Mythic Rank."
She also pointed out the Dreamhack Magic Arena Opens with a prize pool of $100,000.
When a fan asked how prestigious is the new Players Tour meant to be compared to the old Pro Tour, since he heard people saying it's four times as easy as before, Ben responded:
There isn't an apples-to-apples comparison in "prestige," but let's talk a bit about our goals with this new Players Tour system. The old system's biggest problem was that it didn't scale well. 300-500 players could attend any given Pro Tour, and that was about it. We expect the first Players Tour Series coming up to have nearly 1,000 across the three different regions. That isn't a lowering of prestige—that's a recognition that our game keeps growing. If you look at the number of players who play Magic now, 1,000 players now versus 400 players a decade ago is actually a lower percentage of players playing at the highest level, if that's how you want to measure prestige.
But we think Magic is better when more players get to play. That doesn't diminish the skill, hard work, or talent needed to reach the top of that particular pile. It just means more people have the chance to do so. And we think that's a good thing.
The Magic Tabletop Esports team also confirmed that there will be video coverage of all Players Tours and Players Tour Finals, and that they will "experiment with Players Tour Asia-Pacific and time shift the English language coverage so it's live at a better time for European and American audiences."
When asked about the behind-the-scenes reasons it was a challenge to solidify the new system, Ben said, "Creating and re-furbishing multi-million dollar competitive gaming systems are not easy. They're complex, intensive, and they require great care. It should be challenging to do something this big with so many people involved. We're proud of what we've created, and we plan to continue to make it better. That said, the challenging of creating the thing is (thankfully) behind us. :) Now we have the challenge to keep improving and tweaking along the way."
Athena went on to say that her goal is to create an easy-to-understand video series that will explain their organized play structure from beginner to Magic Pro League for both tabletop and Arena, so look forward to that.
They also went on to clarify that they will soon announce the four other members of this year's Rival League soon.
What do you think about competitive Magic's new system and their responses? Do you think the new system is better than the old? Feel free to discuss in the comments below.
Related: MTG Arena Launches on Epic Games Store With The New Set
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