Coalitions and newbie accessibility

THEMAGICkMAN

There is a major problem with the games accesability to new people. At first, they're thinking that the events are difficult (although the event match aking is better now than it was when i was a newbie) the quick battles are fun but pointless, the story mode objectives and daily log in rewards are the only sources of crystals and mythics are just that, a myth.
A large problem to do with this is that to progress, you meed better cards, and the best are mythics. Since the drop rates are sooooooooo baaaaaaad the onky real way to get mythics is coalitions. Its impossible to place in the top 25 for events, quick battles are even worse and getting them from packs is just not going to happen. The only other way is to buy exclusive mythics. There should be a way to get mythics as a newbie other than relying on luck or money. Coalitions are the simplest way to do this, but the top 10 is extremely closed off. an easy way to make this far better is to have 2 coalition pods per event.

The idea is that each coalition is put into a pod based on whether their overall place is odd or even. The rewards are the same for coalition placement. This would open up high level coalitions to far more people and increase the amount of high level players. Let me know what you think.


(Sorry if this seems like a half-formulated post, the idea just popped into my head and i wanted to get it up here ASAP)

Ohboy

What are you talking about?

The game is very friendly to players who play for free. It's a very gentle curve to get to mid tier. And getting into top 25 isn't impossible. In fact, it's not even that hard.

If your complaint is that a new player who doesn't play quick battle and try his best at events has a hard time getting cards...I have to say it's a pretty weird one.

THEMAGICkMAN

The problem is mythic availability. The fact that mythics are sooo rare for newbs. Because drop rates are so bad, mythics are almost unavailable. You can try as hard as you can in qb and events but after a while you hit a brick wall. Mythics should be more available to more people. Its very difficult to get mythics without being in the top 10. I would know. 2 coalition pods would fix this. Sorry if the idea came across a little badly.

Ohboy

Sorry but I disagree.

I feel the past coalition reward system has set up a perverse baseline expectation of mythics in the player base.

It's not so much that mythics are too hard to get for new players as it is the mythics were too easy for those in the loop such as yourself.

Now that the free mythic train has put on some serious brakes, everyone will be on more even ground.

Mythics are supposed to be hard to get.

Abbot_Nalaar

They just released a guaranteed mythic. I think the best thing they can do is implement a standard tier. I have been playing from day 1 and have a huge collection that they cannot compete with but if they had set rotations they stand a chance.

Kevinanth

I started playing at the end of August (f2p) and joined a top 25 coalition a few weeks later in September. Played there for a bit and then applied into a top10 coalition and shortly thereafter made permanent. I only bought my first exclusive AFTER joining the top 10 coalition. Was it hard, yup. Did it take some grinding, yup. Was it accessible, yup. Yes there's ways to make this more accessible but I think there's a lot of exaggeration about how inaccessible it is.

losdamianos

Kevinanth wrote:

I started playing at the end of August (f2p) and joined a top 25 coalition a few weeks later in September. Played there for a bit and then applied into a top10 coalition and shortly thereafter made permanent. I only bought my first exclusive AFTER joining the top 10 coalition. Was it hard, yup. Did it take some grinding, yup. Was it accessible, yup. Yes there's ways to make this more accessible but I think there's a lot of exaggeration about how inaccessible it is.

Thanks for sharing your story from the days when getting mythics or rares was possible
Unfortunately with the release of 1.9 its much harder so your story doesnt really apply to current topic

hawkyh1

should a newbie who have not mastered many of the
common, uncommon and rare cards have access to
'guaranteed mythics'?
if newbies are not the target of common, uncommon
and rare cards, then who is?
should mythics be a reward for more involved/longer
time players?
my thought is that mythics were supposed to be
special.

HH

Kevinanth

Fully retract prior statement about accessibility.

THEMAGICkMAN

the point is that you can play for quite some time, but not be able to break into the 200 people that get mythics every event, this wouldn't be a problem if drop rates weren't so bad, but they are.
with this game the learning curve is nice at first and you progress quite nicely, but then you hit a brick wall. one that you can't get past as a F2P. mythics are so unobtainable to most people that its going to drive more and more people away. And Ohboy I'm not actually in a top 10 coalition, I was, and I realise how hard people work to get there and stay there, and they totally deserve the mythics, but there are PLENTY of people outside the top 10 that work just as hard or harder and they don't get 2+ mythics a week. those people are out there, I know of quite a few of them, there are tons of people working just as hard as people in the top 10.
Perhaps I shouldn't have said "newbie accessibility" but rather:
"mythic accessibility for people who work hard at this game and still don't get far", although that really doesn't roll off the tongue very well.

Basically, if you can get into a top 10, Congrats! you deserve it! but so do many, many other people. more than just 200 people.

moogus

Ohboy wrote:

Sorry but I disagree.

I feel the past coalition reward system has set up a perverse baseline expectation of mythics in the player base.

It's not so much that mythics are too hard to get for new players as it is the mythics were too easy for those in the loop such as yourself.

Now that the free mythic train has put on some serious brakes, everyone will be on more even ground.

Mythics are supposed to be hard to get.

That would be all well and good if the class of players you speak of were part of a different league than new players. Since there is not such separation (please don't counter with color mastery; it's a joke and well know it), it is actually quite a large problem. Your logic that mythics should be difficult to acquire I agree with. However, you're simply in denial of the fact that it is close to impossible for an average (not even necessarily new) player to obtain a mythic now. There is a massive gulf between approaching impossible (where it is now) and difficult (where it should be).

Kicksnake

The issue with making Mythics now as truly rare as they ought to have been all along, is that newbies will never be able to compete with a deck running 8 or 9 mythics in it - We've all seen them. Possible solution - There are only 2 mythic slots per deck?

I have a decent collection of mythics, but I have my butt handed to me regularly by decks spewing mythic after mythic after mythic. If they want to make it more fair - limit the ability to do that. If they want to leave it wide open, let us keep getting mythics!

As it stands now, the only players getting new mythics are going to be the ones already playing a hand full of mythics. Self perpetuating cycle.

MaxMagic420

I agree totally. I have an extremely powerful card pool, yet I constantly run into mythic-only decks. Olivia followed by Decimator followed by Ulrich, Tyrant, and so forth. I can only imagine how incredibly frustrating that must be for new players, discouraging them from giving the game a chance. A lot of new players may quit entirely after that happens a few times, and that sucks. Power is one thing, but one card being able to basically win you the game as soon as you cast it isn't conducive to creating an accessible environment for new players. For example, I love world of tanks. Shining example of how FTP games should be run. But if I had started out at tier 1 with my puny light tank and immediately faced nothing but tier 7 heavy tanks, which I would have no hope of defeating, I probably wouldn't have kept playing. The curve in this game has gotten way too high. Best solution would be to alter matchmaking for new players so they don't have to deal with the op mythics until they're ready.

bk1234

My top 5 coalition has several members who have been playing for less than 4 months. We had a player at one point who completed the whole Avacyn event with a Nissa deck with only one mythic and no rares.

Mythics don't make you better or more competitive -- our questionnaire doesn't even ask about that.

Playing in the appropriate tier, making good strategy decisions and a decent amount of skill make you a top 10 player. Most of us only look at win %.

I can further this point by adding that a few top 10s have used alt accounts for subs recently -- these accounts are generally less than a month old, have very few cards and PW and are designed mostly for fun -- but because of the player skill level and being in the appropriate tier they generally do 85% or higher.

The best advice would be to join a development coalition and work with the mentors to increase your skill level.

Nitymp

bken1234 wrote:

I can further this point by adding that a few top 10s have used alt accounts for subs recently -- these accounts are generally less than a month old, have very few cards and PW and are designed mostly for fun -- but because of the player skill level and being in the appropriate tier they generally do 85% or higher. .

My alt just came 1st in this EC event, having only dropped one point - no mythics in any of the decks used.

Shame I couldn't win a mythic with that ranking though!

losdamianos

MaxMagic420 wrote:

I agree totally. I have an extremely powerful card pool, yet I constantly run into mythic-only decks. Olivia followed by Decimator followed by Ulrich, Tyrant, and so forth. I can only imagine how incredibly frustrating that must be for new players,.

3 out of 4 above mythics were paid exclusives You only encorouging Devs to lock even more Mythics behind paywall

Ampmp11

The worst thing about being a newbie is not knowing about the forums or other means of communication for the game. As a newbie you have to sift through all the random coalitions that are in 1000s that have 1 or 2 people playing but are too scared to leave because the coalition situation looks bleak. You'd feel lucky to jump into a coalition that is in the 100s scraping by hoping to make top 100 every so often.

If you found the forums you're in a better position in the game because it opens up so much more access to knowledge, coalitions and mentors. They (d3) should really add a link to the forums in the FAQ section to help the newbie experience rather than hoping they take the initiative to seek out a forum like this.

And yes you can do really well in the game as a newbie but don't expect to win every game.

THEMAGICkMAN

Ampmp11 has it spot on. I remember when I started I was afraid of joining a coalition in case I didn't do well enough, if I didn't find out about the forums or slack I'd still be that way, and a majority of players never do find the forums or slack.