Magic: Legends, the free-to-play online action RPG, had a rough open beta launch last week, at least in terms of publicity. It was criticized for performance issues, design issues, and microtransactions, with the hard-to-get Dimir Assassin class being the biggest complaint. Over the weekend, producer Steve Ricossa explained how Cryptic Studios is responding to this criticism.

Magic: Magic:Legends has five free classes, unlocked from the start. Currently, only the sixth class, Dimir Assassin, needs to be acquired, which is not a starting class. Last week, the Dimir Assassin could only be unlocked by opening a $3 "booster pack," and that pack was the top reward. (It was also possible to acquire them with in-game currency, but it would have required a huge amount.) There were some complaints about this, and Cryptic added the Dimir Assassin to the game's Battle Pass rewards in both the free and premium versions of the game in order to fix the situation. No other monetization changes were announced, but Ricossa said the studio is "committed to working with (players) to further refine the monetization."

Ricossa also explained that the player marketplace, where players can exchange in-game currency for premium currency, will be priced at launch for Magic: Magic:Legends.

"With early players in mind, the Cryptic team is putting one million ether into the exchange at one time so that users can immediately take advantage of the currency exchange. The 1:385 exchange rate chosen was the final result of the data available from the closed alpha test, and once this supply is exhausted, the exchange will operate solely on the ether supplied by the community. Once this supply is exhausted, the exchange will operate solely on the ether supplied by the community.

Regarding the frame rate issue, Ricossa stated that the development team "made data changes to remove some excessive entities that were unnecessarily frame rate burning the game," and that they have made two performance updates so far, with more updates, and that they plan to do more. I logged back in briefly today and found less stuttering.

In the future, the tutorial will be shortened based on feedback that proper multicolor deckbuilding does not begin immediately. The tutorial seemed a bit long to me, and I wasn't too excited about the deck system adding randomness to the spell hot bar. But maybe it will get better, and by rushing things through before players lose interest. One effort to do so is doubling the drop rate for new spells.

Ricossa also outlines other issues, such as endgame planning and chat spam, in a blog post about the current status of the open beta.Magic: Magic:Legends is available at the Epic Games Store and on the Perfect World It is also available from the Arc launcher.