Pre 1.3.1

Unknown

Pre-Release Notes

Patch Notes 1.3.1!

- Random crash in all game areas is now fixed.
>About time!

- All new daily free booster packs.
- Increased Mana Runes reward from winning encounters in all game modes.
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements...
>That seems ok.

- Winning a Quick Battle rewards more Runes, 300 Runes per win.
- The number of Ribbons won in a Quick Battle is dependent on the player’s PW level now.
>Does it really matter? People play with people of about the same level, please explain.

- New rewards for replaying an Encounter

The second Objectives for Encounters give 250 Runes (rather than 8 Crystals).
- The prices of all offers are displayed in USD. Players have been charged at the right price as displayed in the confirmation prompt. The right prices / currency are now displayed.

>So, we've always had enough runes and not enough crystals. Now you're giving more runes and less crystals. Seems to me like you're pushing players towards purchasing more. I, for one, am not paying a single crown. Nada. Tůdle nůdle. Why should I pay for unfinished product? Buy half a house now, we'll give you the roof later!
Giving a booster with 0 to no chance* of getting a rare or mythic and taking away the option to save for a pack is a bad move. I liked fighting for crystals - I will not fight for runes. Cons simply outweigh the pros.
Fixing bugs is a must. Taking away fun is a no no.
Please comment.

The_Leftist

I did notice that they are going to great lengths to reduce the amount of gold we can get, which kind of makes sense as their In App Purchases are terribly priced (in my opinion), and it would make sense to reduce gold earned instead of dealing with the headache of raising IAP amounts and have to dish out all kinds of gold to players who already made purchases so they didn't make them feel cheated. And one 3 pack every 8 hours isn't a lot, but at 300 runes per quickplay win, that means by buying 3 packs, the runes from 125 quickplay wins will on average net you a mythic as well as about 7 rares. So, playing consistently still outweighs paying gold as long as you have the time to do so, and are smart enough to save any gold you get for future planeswalkers. Newer players will benefit from the 3 packs since it can be a hard decision to either level walkers or buy packs.

They have to make moves to get people to spend money. They will do this by limiting gold, and releasing expensive planeswalkers and hoping they catch you with you pants down and no gold so you spend either $5 for one, or $20 for all of them.

All in all, the update brings promise to a balanced and fun game that has the ability to draw revenue from people who can't play all day every day.

Unknown

They have to make money on their product in some fashion. And seeing as how it's a "free to play" game that is going to be like every other game that is "free to play". You can play all you want but no one said it was free to win. And that brings me to one of my favorite things of this game, the fact you can play and not really have to wait for a counter every 5 min. or once you use up an "energy" type thing.

Like it has been said, very fun game so far minus some bugs, but that comes with develiping a game. It'll draw in MTG players and mobile players alike. Both groups love spending money so I can see it making plenty of money.

Unknown

I see it quite differently. I'm ok with them making money, not okay with the way they chose. Their attitude towards players is EA-like
I am sorry, 'cause it is fun - except lots of horrible bugs and general unfinishedness - I see me leaving the game this week.

Unknown

The biggest problem is with their pricing. They need to cut their prices in half tbh. I would have spent like $50 on this game by now if I felt I was getting any bang for my buck. Instead I just bought the starter pack, which is the only $ efficient purchase and haven't dropped a penny since. Whoever is in charge of monetization for this game doesnt know what they are doing. Games like Hearthstone give you 2-3x the value for the same prices. And HS is a game with actual PVP. To have prices this horrendous on an app with no pvp and a smaller player base is just silly imo.

loroku

InfiniteGXT wrote:

The biggest problem is with their pricing. They need to cut their prices in half tbh. I would have spent like $50 on this game by now if I felt I was getting any bang for my buck. Instead I just bought the starter pack, which is the only $ efficient purchase and haven't dropped a penny since. Whoever is in charge of monetization for this game doesnt know what they are doing. Games like Hearthstone give you 2-3x the value for the same prices. And HS is a game with actual PVP. To have prices this horrendous on an app with no pvp and a smaller player base is just silly imo.

I can still see it both ways, honestly.

Their prices are high - WAY too high - but that's one option for monetization: you just go after the whales and they keep your entire game afloat. Hearthstone has literally millions of players, so if each one of them spends 10 bucks here and there, that will be fine. But this game has thousands, and even if ALL of them spend 10 bucks here and there (which never happens), the game will run out of money in no time. They need whales - a small number of guys spending hundreds or thousands of dollars - to keep this game up. So some players will spend 10 bucks but others will spend lots, and they're focusing on the few spending a lot.

It's a theory, anyway. I could be wrong. But either way it works out better than trying to get thousands of people to spend lots of money.

Unknown

I have played games where there were a huge number of complaints of bugs met with nothing but silence. Give them credit where it's due, they have at the very least said they know of, and are qorking on said bugs.

The pricing I won't pretend to know about as I have only played a hand full of mobile games. They do seem a little steep to me either way and I agree they could lower the prices.

Overall I have no reason not to give them any raring short of atleast a 3.5/5. Lower prices and game development will raise the rating in my opinion.

Unknown

loroku wrote:

Their prices are high - WAY too high - but that's one option for monetization: you just go after the whales and they keep your entire game afloat. Hearthstone has literally millions of players, so if each one of them spends 10 bucks here and there, that will be fine. But this game has thousands, and even if ALL of them spend 10 bucks here and there (which never happens), the game will run out of money in no time. They need whales - a small number of guys spending hundreds or thousands of dollars - to keep this game up. So some players will spend 10 bucks but others will spend lots, and they're focusing on the few spending a lot.

I have heard this explanation before, and it doesn't really make sense to me, because betting on "whales" dropping tons of money is kind of a gamble, isnt it? What happens if the whales dont drop money? If they lower their prices, then if they do get whales, the whales will still be spending a lot of money on them, but so will the average consumer. If they dont get whales then they are still making money from the average consumer.

I dont get how making prices so high that only the rich would spend money on them is a better strategy than making prices reasonable enough to capture income from both the rich and average consumer. In fact lowering their prices would mean that whales are getting even more of an advantage for the amount of money they are spending, meaning they could potentially spend even more than they would have because its more efficient per dollar.

Regardless, whales generally spend the most in games where their money will give them a leg up over the average player. This game doesn't even have pvp, so they have even less incentive to spend money than most games where that would be a viable business strategy.

loroku

InfiniteGXT wrote:

I have heard this explanation before, and it doesn't really make sense to me, because betting on "whales" dropping tons of money is kind of a gamble, isnt it? What happens if the whales dont drop money? If they lower their prices, then if they do get whales, the whales will still be spending a lot of money on them, but so will the average consumer. If they dont get whales then they are still making money from the average consumer.

I dont get how making prices so high that only the rich would spend money on them is a better strategy than making prices reasonable enough to capture income from both the rich and average consumer. In fact lowering their prices would mean that whales are getting even more of an advantage for the amount of money they are spending, meaning they could potentially spend even more than they would have because its more efficient per dollar.

Regardless, whales generally spend the most in games where their money will give them a leg up over the average player. This game doesn't even have pvp, so they have even less incentive to spend money than most games where that would be a viable business strategy.

Have you ever worked in a fundraising job? How about selling luxury goods? It's always better to get a few big spenders than a lot of little spenders. I think the thing people don't realize is how much difference the big spenders really are. Every now and again you can work it the other way, but generally, especially if the population is smaller, you want the big fish. And lowering prices actually makes it worse, since the total number of little fish you will attract still won't make up for how much you lost from what the big fish would have spent had you kept the prices high. Why do ferrari dealers stay in business? I am sure they'd do a lot worse if the price of a ferrari were lower.

As for why, there are a lot of reasons people do this stuff. I don't pretend to understand them all myself. Power is an obvious one but not even close to the only one. I am sure collectors could be one angle.

Anyway this is still all speculation. We don't really know their business plan.