Patch v1.3.1 thoughts.

raidan

ChrisTot wrote:

ChrisTot wrote:

loroku wrote:

raidan wrote:

I think it's to be more friendly to new players. To help them level their planeswalkers to gain additional ribbons in quick battle. However with the inability to purchase rune packs, new players will be at a further disadvantage to gaining new cards.

I agree, although I'm still surprised people were dumping thousands or tens of thousands of runes into getting common dupes and the occasional uncommon. Apparently the devs were, too.

But you're right in that even wasting a jillion runes on 3-packs was still a possible way to increase your collection, and removing that (even if it was a poor choice) still impacts newer players.

I'm one of the people that spent 16k+ runes on the 225 packs, and now that the change is in place, I'm wondering why more people didn't do the same thing I did.
If I could do it all over again I would, and the moment I heard about the update, I updated them at every turn possible until the update went through. You can earn 3 cards in less than 15 minutes. Now you have to wait 8 hours.

Also, I've gotten plenty of rares and even had a mythic from those as well.

22,500 runes is the cost to open 100 rune packs. I was already sitting at 223/245 cards before I bought 200 rune packs. After opening 200 rune packs, I had obtained 13 rares (2 new) about 70 uncommon (1 new) and 1 mythic (1 new). So it was still effective for an almost complete collection. However for new starting players, it was a very effecient way to get most of the uncommons and the occasional rare/mythic. Now collecting is much, much, slower.

Now if you open a pack every 8 hours, it would take around 34 days to open 100 packs. Before, to get about 22,500 runes it was only about 1-7 days.

Unknown

i'm quitting this game. the daily contests were fun, for like a day.

grinding all day for that chances at a duplicate mythic is pretty repetitive.
the developers think that since players can in theory get crystals from the quick matches, that they can remove other ways to get crystal and generally make things harder for players.
no, you dont get to do that. quick matches were needed from the beginning and are a decent supplementary way to get crystals and kill time, you dont get to delete other options after finally putting that in.

i don't agree with low level planeswalkers getting less ribbons. there should be some other way of doing this other than sabotaging ppl who enjoying playing with a limited deck, or giving newbies less of a chance to win in daily contests.

and for players who have already maxed out all of the characters, runes are now useless. why give players more chances at runes if they are only used to level up planeswalkers?
in encouraging players in level up (by giving them more ribbons) every player will come to a point where mana no longer means anything to them.

for players who have spent money for mana, this update basically screws them all over. the special deal for mana looks very laughable now.

Unknown

Good thing they fixed the connectivity issues... not.

On one hand it is good to see I am not alone with my opinion. On the other hand it hurts to see so much potential for fun wasted. I am already quitting... slowly, gently,...

Unknown

I agree completely. I played some more this morning, got 2500ish runes and 0 crystals. I'd love to open packs with those runes, but I cant, and I have 7 hours until my "free" pack. Now I'm asking myself, "why did I just play those few hours? What have I gained?" Unfortunately the answer is, "some planeswalker xp and that's it". They removed the hook. Play games, open packs, tweak decks, repeat.

Lennie

we must not forget that the game is new .. let time see how the game progresses ... you can not have everything at the beginning

ChrisTot

Lennie wrote:

we must not forget that the game is new .. let time see how the game progresses ... you can not have everything at the beginning

Gotta be able to give feedback though so that the devs know what it is that makes the game better though, too!

Keegan

What, because when you play paper MtG and dump money on cards you never get duplicates? You expect the developers of this ad-free, free to play game to just give you what you want for your "hard work"? Would you rather pony up some real cash and not get what you want?

This is a game. There are supposed to be some frustration and challenges.

fruithead

ChrisTot wrote:

loroku wrote:

raidan wrote:

I think it's to be more friendly to new players. To help them level their planeswalkers to gain additional ribbons in quick battle. However with the inability to purchase rune packs, new players will be at a further disadvantage to gaining new cards.

I agree, although I'm still surprised people were dumping thousands or tens of thousands of runes into getting common dupes and the occasional uncommon. Apparently the devs were, too.

But you're right in that even wasting a jillion runes on 3-packs was still a possible way to increase your collection, and removing that (even if it was a poor choice) still impacts newer players.

I'm one of the people that spent 16k+ runes on the 225 packs, and now that the change is in place, I'm wondering why more people didn't do the same thing I did.
If I could do it all over again I would, and the moment I heard about the update, I updated them at every turn possible until the update went through. You can earn 3 cards in less than 15 minutes. Now you have to wait 8 hours.

I too fail to understand all the people in this thread desperate to drink the developers kool-aid. Why are you fighting so hard to justify a terrible decision?

When I read the new patch notes I immediately went and spent my close to 50k runes on 3 packs. I got many uncommon and quite a few rarest for my troubles, including a harbinger of the tides, a card I really wanted badly.

I have to agree that this seems to shift the game into a more pay2win friendly state. If that's what the devs are after so be it. But i think the market is flooded with those types of games, and people generally leave them behind after spending a bit of money and becoming disappointed with progression.

In its current state I can't see new players who are unwilling to spend real cash staying in. And without a growing player base this game, like any game, will peter out.

Idk just my opinion. What's really puzzling is the tryhardyness to defend the devs decision. They removed a feature without having a new one ready to implement in its place. How can that be defended?

On another note, I want to once again add my voice to those expressing disappointment in the devs lack of activity on these forums. How hard is it to have a member of the team surf the forums and respond to people's concerns? Letting a negative vibed thread like this garner so many responses with zero input from the devs is super disheartening, in addition to terrible marketing strategy.

Just my two cents.

raidan

[url][/url]I hope the patch that introduces the new places to spend runes arrives sooner than later.

I agree removing such a feature without providing anything in return is not a good strategy for keeping players.

At least they didn't remove the quick battle events. Up to 3 mythic/rares cards and 3 fat packs a week isn't bad for those who invest the time.

Keegan

If this were a game put out by a big studio, I'd be as upset as the next person. But it's not.

There are only three developers. More precisely, there is one developer, one QA person, and what I'll call the product manager. Would you like them working on the game, or reading and posting here, while keeping a work/ life balance?

I'll defend them because as of right now they certainly deserve it, with the work in patching the game as well as feature development. The game will continue to evolve, hopefully as positively as it has so far.

loroku

fruithead wrote:

I too fail to understand all the people in this thread desperate to drink the developers kool-aid.

For what it's worth, I wasn't drinking any kool-aid, but rather the odds just seemed to discourage spending even free currency on what was effectively getting tons of common dupes.

That said, I understand more now why people did it: there's not much else to do in this game, so runes were effectively free - and if you actually enjoy the game and play a lot (or for months) you're swimming in them. And 3-packs were a sort of progression: even if you mostly got dupe commons at least sometimes you didn't, and there was always a chance. Now those have been slowed down to 2 / day (sorry, but "every 8 hours" means you won't get more than 2 in a 24 hr period unless your timing is perfect 100% of the time), the only sense of progression that could happen outside of PvP matches is gone. And those are also gated by time (and generally give very low rewards for the amount of effort put in). In effect, the devs made "playing the game" a lot less attractive. There's no real gain to putting in lots of time. And until there's another rune sink, there's really NOTHING else keeping you playing.

So I feel like I see that perspective a bit better. And from the devs' side, I feel like they pulled a Blizzard: people were turning the game into something they didn't like, and were playing the game in a way they didn't intend, so they corrected it. Unfortunately, there's nothing else to do right now, so it didn't go over so well.

ChrisTot

Keegan wrote:

If this were a game put out by a big studio, I'd be as upset as the next person. But it's not.

There are only three developers. More precisely, there is one developer, one QA person, and what I'll call the product manager. Would you like them working on the game, or reading and posting here, while keeping a work/ life balance?

I'll defend them because as of right now they certainly deserve it, with the work in patching the game as well as feature development. The game will continue to evolve, hopefully as positively as it has so far.

I'm also an app developer, just not for this game. In my opinion, in addition to handling the tasks you're already working on, feedback is important. Combing the forums for an hour before/after a lunch break would be just about the most efficient thing possible. Why waste time implementing features and going in a certain direction if you're gaining feedback from the base users that care enough to join your forums? Devs beg for feedback and this forum gives it to them. They may not "waste" time responding to the comments, but giving negative feedback is certainly valuable, or at least it should be. Positive reinforcement is also valuable for the same reason. Don't be afraid to call out the devs on a greedy/bad direction. They're a few people playing for testing purposes. We're many people playing to ACTUALLY win the rewards. A dev's idea of how the game should be played is not the same as the user experience, and we should be giving them our feedback at every turn we can.

raidan

As long is no one is being blatantly disrespectful or rude to the developers, I agree that criticism should not be withheld. If it is, players may start quitting and the developers may not know why.

Everyone handles criticism differently, but when handled properly it allows for improvements.

loroku

ChrisTot wrote:

In my opinion, in addition to handling the tasks you're already working on, feedback is important.

Completely agreed. You can't stay too engaged - that will depress you too badly - but acknowledging and encouraging a community is 100% vital to gaming these days, ESPECIALLY FtP games (99% of all games).

Unknown

Hey everyone!

I agree as well. Feedback is important. We do comb the forums for your feedback, but as some of you have guessed, we don't have the time to respond to all the messages.

Just keep on sharing tactics, issues, and opinions here with each other and us too! We welcome it all, even if they hurt sometimes (as long as they are with good intentions. No one likes to be insulted ).

We also encourage to share all details about certain bugs in the bug thread. This is a far reaching game and there are more devices and players than we would ever be able to properly cover all the possible test cases for, so there will be bugs that slip through the cracks. You can help us help you by giving us tons of details so we can narrow down the source of the problem and fix it.

I know it's not fun to wait but this game is still being worked on full time, with lots more coming. That's all I can say.

Keep on posting!

Buret0

I couldn't figure out why I had so many crystals when I didn't seem to be earning any after the patch.

Taking the crystal reward out seems like a mistake. I was able to get my first big box after about a week of playing, while my friend who started the day the patch came out is going to have a much tougher time getting crystals.