RE: Are We Staking for Success or Just Staking Our Sanity? Conclave Arcana's Real Cost

I had had a quick look at conflicts the other day and realised they were out of my league. I've been buying a few CA packs and cards to keep my alt going in the modern brawl fray, so I thought there might be some worth in staking the extras to wagons only to realise I needed to buy a wagon to even start. With all my funds so going to try and get that account to stay viable in modern it wasn't happening and the chances of an airdrop on the meagre cards I have to stake was also not worth diverting anything to a wagon. 🤣

I'm not really bothered about it, as I'm here to play the game more than anything, but I hear you on the sentiment for quitting modern. I'm seeing few of the brawl frays for modern even being filled and when they are it's often just a space saver to get the wins when other teams can't fill a spot. In my GF fray I've had it where only 2 opponents turned up for 6 battles, the rest were flees. Last brawl I had 2 battles and my opponents didn't even make a full team, which was rather disappointing.

I often wait nearly a minute to get matched in modern ranked at the lower end, so there aren't that many playing compared to wild or even compared to the last Rebellion year.

It rather feels like you're constantly playing catch up and the new release will smack you back to square one. I think it's probably cheaper to rent than buy, which means less people are seeing a point in buying. That's sales (income) the game is missing out on if the bulk of sales is just the few big spenders buying to rent out. Is this why they're trying to get income in other ways? I want the game to survive, so I want them to make enough of an income to do so, but I think it needs to come more from a broad, enthusiastic player base rather than a few using it as an income and investment platform.

Looking at the approach our guild has taken to keep the modern frays viable, it's mostly been to buy a cheap bare minimum basic level 1 set for all fray levels from the market (or rent like Bug). Some aren't even playing any more other than the brawls, so they aren't incentivised to expand to better cards. I'm focusing on getting GF cards because my fray is GF, but can win the majority with the basics I have. It's only because I play in ranked that I'm aware how bad my cards are and am incentivised to try and improve what I have. The rest of the guild seem to have given up on playing in modern completely except for Bug with his rental experiment.

I do feel like loss of value of older cards doesn't help confidence in buying into the modern cards. As those older cards get combined or put on land you're likely to see them less on the lower end and mostly with the high rollers. Land is expensive as well, so that is mostly for the investors again. If people do quit modern, where does that leave us?