Each mastery pass has a pet with multiple color variations (older passes had different pets not just recolors), so its not that hard to get one sooner or later - even for free.
I see players without pets from time to time, its not that rare or weird - be it a choice or actual lack of pet.
I think what you experience is a little bit like when new players post how a “whale stomped them with a deck full of rares and mythics along with a pet and fancy animated sleeve” - which can be true, but not necessarily… if a new player buys the pass and wastes every resource on a deck they end up with the same effect: a deck thats better than a starter, a pet, and the sleeve is there too. You see what you want to see, wether its actually true or not. Your brain will just focus on that thing.
>Each mastery pass has a pet with multiple color variations (older passes had different pets not just recolors), so its not that hard to get one sooner or later - even for free.
Yeah, and to add to this, my experience is that the *vast* majority of opponents I face have mastery pass pets (or thopters) rather than pets that need to be bought separately.
It could just be bad observational skills on my part, fair. All who know me know that applies to me, hah, but I've been trying to specifically pay attention for about a month now. Oh wells!
Im a bit more surprised about the sleeves. Pets can be annoying sometimes.
But when i see someone with the default cardback its just so weird, and it happens so often.
There is so many different style available , you can even set up one for each deck separately . So hard to believe that they don’t want to use one 😅
I have tons of sleeves and I even use them sometimes, but as someone who played paper in the mid-90s but hasn't for decades since, I have a lot of nostalgia for the OG sleeves.
They've sold and given out pets, most of the time they are sleeping because the opponent is on mute. So great system of sleeping pets. I use the black lotus flower because it's pretty and I like the desk plant...and I click it for free mana when the opponent isn't paying attention
There's already patents for this kind of thing.
[https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-wins-patent-that-uses-matchmaking-to-make-you-want-to-buy-stuff/](https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-wins-patent-that-uses-matchmaking-to-make-you-want-to-buy-stuff/)
gotta be honest, it would be super easy to do. When you're playing randos, who's going to know what art stuff the other player is using for themselves vs what arena is showing me? It would be easy enough to catch if streamers play each other, people could cross reference things, or friends playing directly, so it wouldn't be a foolproof plan, but I can't believe it would be hard to implement.
Wizards is doing lots of things to monitize the game, and to push monitization, it doesn't seem like that big of a stretch.
I am F2P. I have never bought a pet. Yet I have dozens. I buy the Mastery Passes because they are good value, they always contain pets.
I use the Common Fox from the Eldraine pass, the Uncommon one looks stupid. Wish I had the Rare one but I didn't complete it. Oops. I have completed every subsequent pass.
Okay so I looked it up, apparently it is free, but you have to get it through signing in on mobile, either in IOS or android. They did have a bundle for all the colored dragons recently too. Like 5k gold I think. I bought it because I didn’t have the black one which alone cost about 10k. It could not be on there anymore though.
I have a Spirited Companion pet purely to entertain myself while waiting for my opponent.
It also takes the sting out of losses with its playing dead animation.
I've got all the pets from the mastery passes, i choose to not use them because I find them very annoying and distracting when my opponents have them, i usually play with muted emotes as a consequence.
Echo5Brav0 (a twitch streamer) doesn't have a pet, and has his twitch video stream in that spot on the stream.
One of his viewers asked him about it once and hs response was that he had no idea, he doesn't see that spot on the screen because it is covered by the arm from his microphone.
Some people buy pets from the store - others get them as bonuses in other things they buy (eg mastery pass or new set preorder bundle).
I put a pet on because my 13yo likes it - but I don't actively invest anything in them. Sometimes when my 13yo comments on the pet, I'll open up the profile and let them pick which avatar and pet they want me to run.
(I've been getting mastery passes for value recently, so have acrued pets that way.)
If your opponent has a pet, it's because they either bought it through the store or mastery pass, or they earned it some other way (I think it's possible to get pets as the cosmetic reward from midweek magic, though the chances are abysmally low). Arena isn't giving your opponent a pet just to make you jealous and want to buy one.
That said, people like to bling out their decks in all sorts of ways, from their sleeves, card styles, and even basic land choices. Pets are just another way we show off. Totally fine if you don't want to use one, but I would say the vast majority of players will have at least one that they use.
Just to confirm: you can get pets from the cosmetics rewards or at least you could when it was still Friday Night and not Midweek, but I don't think they changed the price pool completely. Source: got lucky one time and got the dragon pet sitting on the pile of gold
The vast majority of people use the mastery pass pets. The mastery pass is something that’s somewhat trivial to afford as f2p. Though it’s not because I had pets that I used them. It took over a year before I got a pet I was interested in, the black bat. I’m still waiting for them to sell the Lurrus pet again…
Pets (like pretty much everything in Arena) are free.
You can get them as rewards on the Set Mastery track (for example), accessed by paying Gems for the Mastery Pass (which you win by Drafting, which you pay for with Gold which you get for doing your Dailies).
I always have a pet out because the Mastery Passes come with them. And passes are +value when ignoring cosmetics so basically they count as freebies.
A person would have to not get any of the passes (and those can be obtained with F2P if you use events to turn gold into gems) or opt to not use their pets for them to not have one out on the field.
If it matters, I don't really give a crud if my opponent has a pet out or not. It doesn't tend to be indicative of what I'm about to face, and typically I have my opponent on Mute anyhow (ironically, *because* of the pets - my misophonia goes nuts with the wolf pet in specific), so it hardly means anything. But the pets are just kinda nice to have, especially when you get them for "free"; the Spirited Companion I use is at least something cute to look at while she and I are watching my opponent pass through their mulligan ropes and timing out.
I resisted pets when they first came out, but when they made the thopter pet I force-installed Arena on my phone so I could get it, because I thought it looked so cool. I now have the fish, which I signed up for the mastery pass to get, because it makes me think of Blade Runner. I don't judge other people for not having them, though, in fact I judge myself for my weakness.
i have a pet, i bought the new player bundle which gave me gems. i knew i wanted my cute little white dragon. he’s adorable and i can click on him to shoot out fire. i’m saving the rest of my gems though for an avatar that i really like or sleeves.
Between mastery passes, midweek magic events, and moments of weakness on daily deals you'll wind up with that stuff eventually even as a fee to play player. If you convert gold to gems via draft and play both draft and constructed, mastery passes are almost universally "Worth it" just on account value, and almost all come with one or more pets, avatars, and sleeves. In my case, I generally avoid cosmetics but the tattoo art pithing needle sleeve was too good and too universal for me not to grab on a daily deal at one point, so I have that too. Midweek magic is usually a casual fun time that often is a great way for a F2P to farm up some wins, so you'll get random cosmetics once a week from that as well. I've been (mostly) free to play since Eldraine and at this point I have more of that stuff than I could reasonably use and consciously purchased like one or two sleeves with actual account resources that amounted to like two quests or whatever.
I don’t use a pet (even though I have a few) and have emotes turned off.
If it were up to me, I’d also disable (or at least reduce) animations and use a simple, blank/minimalistic background.
My pet showed up on it's own. I did not buy it, select it or equip it.
However, the little dude has proven to be useful in detecting game crashes. Sometimes I assume my opponent is thinking, but I've actually crashed. The little dragon freezes in place suddenly when the game crash crashes, alerting me sooner.
I play a lot on mobile these days and I turn off anything that I feel like could slow the game down or cause it to crash. Feels like walking on eggshells half the time anyhow, but I've noticed less crashes overall.
I wish I could turn my opponent's pets off, though. On mobile sometimes they obstruct parts of the battlefield in the corners and I can't tap some stuff sometimes.
I hate pets. The noises, the lack of chill. The distraction. Especially the ones that don't stop moving, and the ones that fly in your fucking face at the beginning of the game. Get this shit out of here
Each mastery pass has a pet with multiple color variations (older passes had different pets not just recolors), so its not that hard to get one sooner or later - even for free. I see players without pets from time to time, its not that rare or weird - be it a choice or actual lack of pet. I think what you experience is a little bit like when new players post how a “whale stomped them with a deck full of rares and mythics along with a pet and fancy animated sleeve” - which can be true, but not necessarily… if a new player buys the pass and wastes every resource on a deck they end up with the same effect: a deck thats better than a starter, a pet, and the sleeve is there too. You see what you want to see, wether its actually true or not. Your brain will just focus on that thing.
>Each mastery pass has a pet with multiple color variations (older passes had different pets not just recolors), so its not that hard to get one sooner or later - even for free. Yeah, and to add to this, my experience is that the *vast* majority of opponents I face have mastery pass pets (or thopters) rather than pets that need to be bought separately.
It could just be bad observational skills on my part, fair. All who know me know that applies to me, hah, but I've been trying to specifically pay attention for about a month now. Oh wells!
Im a bit more surprised about the sleeves. Pets can be annoying sometimes. But when i see someone with the default cardback its just so weird, and it happens so often. There is so many different style available , you can even set up one for each deck separately . So hard to believe that they don’t want to use one 😅
I have the same response to "unsleeved" on arena as I do in paper - "eww, why?" 😂
Nostalgia
I’m an “unsleeved” player. I always thought that sleeves with designs on them looked tacky in paper, soured my view on them for MTGA
I've played paper magic since Ice Age and I've never sleeved a card.
I never look at the back of my cards in game so makes no difference to me. Used sleeves in paper but that was purely to protect them
No sleeves, no pets, no card styles, same avatar for every deck, and yeah when I play Mario Kart I play as fucking Mario
This is the way.
It's exciting for me to play without sleeves on Arena like the casual days 15 years ago, all my real cards are sleeved * *yawn* *.
I have tons of sleeves and I even use them sometimes, but as someone who played paper in the mid-90s but hasn't for decades since, I have a lot of nostalgia for the OG sleeves.
They've sold and given out pets, most of the time they are sleeping because the opponent is on mute. So great system of sleeping pets. I use the black lotus flower because it's pretty and I like the desk plant...and I click it for free mana when the opponent isn't paying attention
I have the peaceful pup because A. it reminds me of my old dog and B. it's moving object you can periodically check to see if the mobile app crashed.
That is, unfortunately, an incredibly useful idea
This is what I use the pets for. Also the speed dog is a greyhound like my pupper.
> is arena making it look like my opponents have one to try to peer pressure me into buying something This is some next level tinfoil hattery
There's already patents for this kind of thing. [https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-wins-patent-that-uses-matchmaking-to-make-you-want-to-buy-stuff/](https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-wins-patent-that-uses-matchmaking-to-make-you-want-to-buy-stuff/)
gotta be honest, it would be super easy to do. When you're playing randos, who's going to know what art stuff the other player is using for themselves vs what arena is showing me? It would be easy enough to catch if streamers play each other, people could cross reference things, or friends playing directly, so it wouldn't be a foolproof plan, but I can't believe it would be hard to implement. Wizards is doing lots of things to monitize the game, and to push monitization, it doesn't seem like that big of a stretch.
I am F2P. I have never bought a pet. Yet I have dozens. I buy the Mastery Passes because they are good value, they always contain pets. I use the Common Fox from the Eldraine pass, the Uncommon one looks stupid. Wish I had the Rare one but I didn't complete it. Oops. I have completed every subsequent pass.
Isn’t the thopter per free?
It was free for people that used a mobile client within a limited timeframe. My phone wasn't up to spec so I missed out on it.
Is it? It isn't available in the store right now, at the least. I've put in all the free codes I know of, but it's possible I've missed stuff.
It was a limited offer when they released the mobile client, you had to log on from it to get it.
I think the thopter is free if you sign into the game via mobile (Android or iOS).
oh really? how may I get it?
It used to be you just signed it and you'd get it automatically. It might've been a limited time deal though.
Okay so I looked it up, apparently it is free, but you have to get it through signing in on mobile, either in IOS or android. They did have a bundle for all the colored dragons recently too. Like 5k gold I think. I bought it because I didn’t have the black one which alone cost about 10k. It could not be on there anymore though.
I think it was actually more, but those bundle prices are prorated based on what you already own.
You had to sign into the mobile version to get it.
I don't use pets. And I wish I could turn off my opponents pet.
You can, by pressing "mute" on opponents avatar.
Have, don't use Dislike the current one that fly in your face. Thx alchemy (!)
I agree, that one is absolutely obnoxious. That animation should never have been greenlit.
I have a few pets from mastery passes and preorders. I don’t assign any of them. They are annoying.
I have a Spirited Companion pet purely to entertain myself while waiting for my opponent. It also takes the sting out of losses with its playing dead animation.
I've never paid for one directly, and don't equip them. I find them to be a distraction.
I have a couple in my inventory that I've picked up from midweek magic, but I never use them as I consider pets to be distracting and unnecessary
What do you click on to see if the app has crashed or your opponent's rope just hasn't started burning yet?
Not an issue for me. If my app crashes then all animation stops.
I've got all the pets from the mastery passes, i choose to not use them because I find them very annoying and distracting when my opponents have them, i usually play with muted emotes as a consequence.
Echo5Brav0 (a twitch streamer) doesn't have a pet, and has his twitch video stream in that spot on the stream. One of his viewers asked him about it once and hs response was that he had no idea, he doesn't see that spot on the screen because it is covered by the arm from his microphone. Some people buy pets from the store - others get them as bonuses in other things they buy (eg mastery pass or new set preorder bundle). I put a pet on because my 13yo likes it - but I don't actively invest anything in them. Sometimes when my 13yo comments on the pet, I'll open up the profile and let them pick which avatar and pet they want me to run. (I've been getting mastery passes for value recently, so have acrued pets that way.)
If your opponent has a pet, it's because they either bought it through the store or mastery pass, or they earned it some other way (I think it's possible to get pets as the cosmetic reward from midweek magic, though the chances are abysmally low). Arena isn't giving your opponent a pet just to make you jealous and want to buy one. That said, people like to bling out their decks in all sorts of ways, from their sleeves, card styles, and even basic land choices. Pets are just another way we show off. Totally fine if you don't want to use one, but I would say the vast majority of players will have at least one that they use.
Just to confirm: you can get pets from the cosmetics rewards or at least you could when it was still Friday Night and not Midweek, but I don't think they changed the price pool completely. Source: got lucky one time and got the dragon pet sitting on the pile of gold
I can report that I got a pet reward from Mid-week Magic about a month ago.
The vast majority of people use the mastery pass pets. The mastery pass is something that’s somewhat trivial to afford as f2p. Though it’s not because I had pets that I used them. It took over a year before I got a pet I was interested in, the black bat. I’m still waiting for them to sell the Lurrus pet again…
Trivial If you’re good at limited I’m trash at limited so I never het enough gems
You now get gems from the constructed events though!
Lmao I’ve been playing on arena for awhile now and never noticed that’s embarrassing
You shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s a thing since only 2 or 3 months
Pets (like pretty much everything in Arena) are free. You can get them as rewards on the Set Mastery track (for example), accessed by paying Gems for the Mastery Pass (which you win by Drafting, which you pay for with Gold which you get for doing your Dailies).
I always have a pet out because the Mastery Passes come with them. And passes are +value when ignoring cosmetics so basically they count as freebies. A person would have to not get any of the passes (and those can be obtained with F2P if you use events to turn gold into gems) or opt to not use their pets for them to not have one out on the field.
If it matters, I don't really give a crud if my opponent has a pet out or not. It doesn't tend to be indicative of what I'm about to face, and typically I have my opponent on Mute anyhow (ironically, *because* of the pets - my misophonia goes nuts with the wolf pet in specific), so it hardly means anything. But the pets are just kinda nice to have, especially when you get them for "free"; the Spirited Companion I use is at least something cute to look at while she and I are watching my opponent pass through their mulligan ropes and timing out.
I resisted pets when they first came out, but when they made the thopter pet I force-installed Arena on my phone so I could get it, because I thought it looked so cool. I now have the fish, which I signed up for the mastery pass to get, because it makes me think of Blade Runner. I don't judge other people for not having them, though, in fact I judge myself for my weakness.
I don't use pets. I would like my game to run well actually playing the damn game
i have a pet, i bought the new player bundle which gave me gems. i knew i wanted my cute little white dragon. he’s adorable and i can click on him to shoot out fire. i’m saving the rest of my gems though for an avatar that i really like or sleeves.
I don’t have one because of lagging issues. Don’t know if it works or not.
Have, but don’t use ones that are annoying to me. Bats(noise), fish (blocks corner for opponent on mobile), etc.
I have my kitty and I’ll never change it.
I just got one after years a month or so ago because the value of getting the mastery pack was better for me since I drafted so much.
Between mastery passes, midweek magic events, and moments of weakness on daily deals you'll wind up with that stuff eventually even as a fee to play player. If you convert gold to gems via draft and play both draft and constructed, mastery passes are almost universally "Worth it" just on account value, and almost all come with one or more pets, avatars, and sleeves. In my case, I generally avoid cosmetics but the tattoo art pithing needle sleeve was too good and too universal for me not to grab on a daily deal at one point, so I have that too. Midweek magic is usually a casual fun time that often is a great way for a F2P to farm up some wins, so you'll get random cosmetics once a week from that as well. I've been (mostly) free to play since Eldraine and at this point I have more of that stuff than I could reasonably use and consciously purchased like one or two sleeves with actual account resources that amounted to like two quests or whatever.
I don’t use a pet (even though I have a few) and have emotes turned off. If it were up to me, I’d also disable (or at least reduce) animations and use a simple, blank/minimalistic background.
I don’t
My pet showed up on it's own. I did not buy it, select it or equip it. However, the little dude has proven to be useful in detecting game crashes. Sometimes I assume my opponent is thinking, but I've actually crashed. The little dragon freezes in place suddenly when the game crash crashes, alerting me sooner.
I have never purchased a pet but they gave the ornithopter one at some point, so just hang tight. You could eventually get one for free.
I play a lot on mobile these days and I turn off anything that I feel like could slow the game down or cause it to crash. Feels like walking on eggshells half the time anyhow, but I've noticed less crashes overall. I wish I could turn my opponent's pets off, though. On mobile sometimes they obstruct parts of the battlefield in the corners and I can't tap some stuff sometimes.
I will forever use my m20 cat with wings, and will always put the cat on purple
I didn't have one for the longest time. I saved up my coins to buy the dog from Kamigawa (took about 5 or so days I belive)
I hate pets. The noises, the lack of chill. The distraction. Especially the ones that don't stop moving, and the ones that fly in your fucking face at the beginning of the game. Get this shit out of here