Rewards don't feel rewarding.

Ultimadan

Getting the same rare dupes over and over again in QB and events doesn't feel rewarding.

Earning packs and opening nothing but commons (often multiples of the same common in the same pack!) doesn't feel rewarding.

Spending about a months worth of crystals on a big box to get one dupe rare doesn't feel rewarding.

Removing mythics from the prize pool doesn't feel rewarding unless you're one of the top 2 coalitions.

I'm starting to wonder why we bother with events at all outside the event rares (and even then Thalia is still MIA unless you were one of the lucky few that got her from a pack).

Lucapaco

In about 6 weeks I got total of 1 rare card from event and free packs (I play all events and I open at least 2 free packs a day). Rest of it was mostly common and uncommon dupe. I got cards to play and finish all events, but how beginner can even start to compete without buying big packs? This game became very P2W
I started playing Heartstone few days ago ... In every pack You're getting Rare cards, I got even Epic and Legend cards form the free packs. Here is completly different

James13

On the other hand I just had a fat pack reward that gave me 5 different rares.

And my prior event progression reward booster gave me a new mythic (Ulrich).

I was on a dry spell, but it was suddenly pouring new higher-end stuff on me.

Oaklanbash

I am P2P, but not a whale by any stretch. In Kaladesh I have gotten one mythic from top 10 coalition, one mythic from a Big Box from saving crystals, and one mythic from a KLD event pack. I only buy the occasional mythic card (Olivia/Emrakul/GnG) when they appear to be completely game changing, and I try to keep up with all of the PWs. That being said... I get a lot more packs than a complete F2P player because of my coalition and occasional purchases. I can't imagine having much fun with this game if you didn't start from the very beginning, or pay some scratch here and there.

ZW2007-

I have an alt account which earned a rare for the personal reward in nodes and a rare from the coalition reward. I earned two Kaladesh rares from nodes. That account now owns 1 out of 40 rares available in the Kaladesh expansion. To be clear, I earned my very first ever Kaladesh rare, and then proceeded to get a dupe of that same rare (and not even a playable rare at that). Some quick math tells me there's a 2.5% chance of something like that happening. I win odds like that in this game so frequently, I think I should start playing the lottery. And I know some of the rare's are locked behind an exclusive wall but I didn't feel like counting how many.

huntly

My experience has left me feeling very unrewarded. I have played for free since I began just b4 bfz was added and continue to not pay for anything because everything seems overpriced. Particularly big boxes are a gamble with no guarantee of getting a mythic no matter how much you spend. I have had less and less interest in spending time on this game because lack of reward for effort. The newest update might push me out as the less than 24 hr time constraint and more difficult secondary objectives make reaching progression more stressful.(though I'm sure that reduces the number of top score ties)

Ohboy

Everyone should be getting on average enough crystals to open a box each week by playing

1) events to full progression
2) an hour or so of qb 3 times a week before it ends to hit the top few brackets(top 150?)

That's not counting the two boosters per event and daily rewards which include 2 boosters a week.

If you're only getting enough crystals to open a box a month, the reward system is not the problem.

Ultimadan

Oh I have plenty of crystals. The problem is that the drop rate is absurdly low and dupes are way too common to just be bad rng that it generally just isn't worth spending them.

Ohboy

Ultimadan wrote:

Oh I have plenty of crystals. The problem is that the drop rate is absurdly low and dupes are way too common to just be bad rng that it generally just isn't worth spending them.

Why would you be hoarding crystals?

Planewalker? They don't cost more than a box on average.

What secret item have you been buying?

span_argoman

Ohboy wrote:

Everyone should be getting on average enough crystals to open a box each week by playing

1) events to full progression
2) an hour or so of qb 3 times a week before it ends to hit the top few brackets(top 150?)

That's not counting the two boosters per event and daily rewards which include 2 boosters a week.

If you're only getting enough crystals to open a box a month, the reward system is not the problem.

Not everyone is in Platinum.

QB ranking rewards
Top 150/50/10: 20/30/80 (doubled for the weekend)

Event progression rewards
Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum: 25/35/45/55

Platinum ranking rewards
(I do not know that of the rest)
Top 100/50/25: 30/40/60

Assuming the same event distribution as this week (5 events but 1 without ranking rewards), we get:
(Assuming top 150 finish in all QBs and all progression rewards hit)
QB: 20 + 20 + 40 = 80
Progression: 25/35/45 x 5 = 125/175/225

Which is 205/255/305 for Bronze/Silver/Gold.

Assuming equal ranking rewards for the other tiers to Platinum and consistent top 100, you get 30 x 4 = 120.

So for Bronze/Silver/Gold that's 325/375/425 crystals per week.

Either case is hardly a Big Box every week. Not once every month either though.

Also that "1 hour just before QB" is hardly guaranteed as it could be the tail end of a bracket and you may not have enough time to even reach top 150. And not everyone has a Nahiri Zoo deck to rake in 150 points/hour.

Not to mention European players who don't have that option unless they want to be sleeping at 3am almost half the days in a week.

That's not even factoring in you saying "everyone" and then specifying requiring ranking 150 or higher for QB in brackets of 3000 (that's 5%). The remaining 2,850 people must be there to enjoy the experience of QB matches.

I'd suggest not being so condescending before doing the math.

Ohboy

span_argoman wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

Everyone should be getting on average enough crystals to open a box each week by playing

1) events to full progression
2) an hour or so of qb 3 times a week before it ends to hit the top few brackets(top 150?)

That's not counting the two boosters per event and daily rewards which include 2 boosters a week.

If you're only getting enough crystals to open a box a month, the reward system is not the problem.

Not everyone is in Platinum.

QB ranking rewards
Top 150/50/10: 20/30/80 (doubled for the weekend)

Event progression rewards
Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum: 25/35/45/55

Platinum ranking rewards
(I do not know that of the rest)
Top 100/50/25: 30/40/60

Assuming the same event distribution as this week (5 events but 1 without ranking rewards), we get:
(Assuming top 150 finish in all QBs and all progression rewards hit)
QB: 20 + 20 + 40 = 80
Progression: 25/35/45 x 5 = 125/175/225

Which is 205/255/305 for Bronze/Silver/Gold.

Assuming equal ranking rewards for the other tiers to Platinum and consistent top 100, you get 30 x 4 = 120.

So for Bronze/Silver/Gold that's 325/375/425 crystals per week.

Either case is hardly a Big Box every week. Not once every month either though.

Also that "1 hour just before QB" is hardly guaranteed as it could be the tail end of a bracket and you may not have enough time to even reach top 150. And not everyone has a Nahiri Zoo deck to rake in 150 points/hour.

Not to mention European players who don't have that option unless they want to be sleeping at 3am almost half the days in a week.

That's not even factoring in you saying "everyone" and then specifying requiring ranking 150 or higher for QB in brackets of 3000 (that's 5%). The remaining 2,850 people must be there to enjoy the experience of QB matches.

I'd suggest not being so condescending before doing the math.

So basically it's really much more than a box a month isn't it.

And surprising as it sounds, the remaining 2850 people in qb actually do seem to be there to enjoy the experience as you imply. I suspect half of them are dummy accounts to tell them when's a good time to hop on. The others give up after a few games or were just testing decks. I've been guilty of all 3.

Same thing happens in the lower tier events. It's not hard to get a good ranking if you play every node. My alt account is in Bronze and placed when I tried. I'm not sure if it's even easier now as the better players scramble to go up a tier for the better rewards. I'll try next event.

hawkyh1

Ohboy wrote:

Everyone should be getting on average enough crystals to open a box each week by playing

1) events to full progression
2) an hour or so of qb 3 times a week before it ends to hit the top few brackets(top 150?)

That's not counting the two boosters per event and daily rewards which include 2 boosters a week.

If you're only getting enough crystals to open a box a month, the reward system is not the problem.

point 2 top 150 players assumed to be everyone of up to 3000 possible
players is a little misleading?

HH

jackvett

span_argoman wrote:

Not everyone is in Platinum.

Ohboy stays in gold, FWIW. Dunno why he/she won't wear that badge proudly on his/her chest.

also, the more people who game QB brackets, the less likely it works for everyone. he's the guy who's all about status quo so one can only assume he got drunk and posted that comment

span_argoman

Ohboy wrote:

So basically it's really much more than a box a month isn't it.

And surprising as it sounds, the remaining 2850 people in qb actually do seem to be there to enjoy the experience as you imply. I suspect half of them are dummy accounts to tell them when's a good time to hop on. The others give up after a few games or were just testing decks. I've been guilty of all 3.

Same thing happens in the lower tier events. It's not hard to get a good ranking if you play every node. My alt account is in Bronze and placed when I tried. I'm not sure if it's even easier now as the better players scramble to go up a tier for the better rewards. I'll try next event.

Basically, but also nowhere close to once a week like you say "everyone should be getting". You're as far off as the once a month comment (both by a factor of one).

Good for you that you find no problem placing with your alt. Although without any information as to how developed your alt is compared to the other players in the same tier, we can't know for sure what is the actual reason for your alt being able to place well.

Also I don't know how many of the more devoted players have alternate accounts, but if your base is the 5% that gets the Rares each QB round, you guys need a lot of alts to be making up even a significant proportion of the player pool. Sure there are definitely players who just take part to test decks and players who play for fun. But the ratio is 19-to-1 for your threshold, so even with the above groups I would think there are more players who try for rewards than just 5% of the player pool each time.

Not to mention the discouraged newer players who maybe have level 50 QB decks running at 5-6 minutes a match, gaining them 50 to 60 points per hour. Compared to the 120-150 points per hour beasts like Nahiri Zoo, one can understand how newbies would be disincentivised to challenge for QB. Any lead they build up can be wiped out so easily.

And don't try to claim it was always like this. In the part the fastest decks were maybe slightly sub-4 minutes per game (including loading screens and all that) so newbies with 6 minute matches still could overcome their deck strength deficit by sheer determination. It was only 50% more points an hour (60 vs 90). Now it's up to 150% more points an hour (60 vs 150). That's way harder to overcome by putting in more time.

Just some numbers for those of us who have been in Platinum/Gold so long we forget what it's like for newer players:

1. It's ~270 games of QB to level up a mono-colour planeswalker. And ~535 for a dual-colour. At 5 minutes per game, that's 22.5/44.6 hours to level a planeswalker from level 1 to 60. Sure you have the various daily rewards, event rewards and story mode to help you for your first planeswalker or two. But the rest?

2. If you don't have 5 competent planeswalkers and decks, you aren't likely to be hitting all the progression rewards even. And now they raise the prices of the origins 5 to 50 crystals each, good luck to new players who have to pay that price for planeswalkers who will very quickly outlive their usefulness (or inadvertently contribute to the player being stuck at the level that they are at). And they aren't the only planeswalkers with raised prices. Koth at 295 instead of 250 and Nahiri at 700 instead of 550 crystals?

Seriously at least be respectful of the fact that not all players are playing the same as you for various reasons (not getting the right mythics, starting later when it has become harder to catch up, not being able to join that competitive a coalition, wrong timezone, etc.). A little less snark goes a long way.

Ohboy

log scale for this? Really?

But fine, I admit my calculations were a bit off. Point still stands though. Boosters and boxes are getting easier to get.

The part about QB isn't off though. You don't even need to be in the final bracket of a qb to achieve this. That's the weird part. And I too admit that was quite a surprise to me when I found myself aiming for just the top 150.

No idea what Jack's talking about though. I've been in platinum in every event since platinum was a thing except for the last holiday event. I made a point to get there early because there was less competition for top 5 back then.

span_argoman

Ohboy wrote:

log scale for this? Really?

But fine, I admit my calculations were a bit off. Point still stands though. Boosters and boxes are getting easier to get.

The part about QB isn't off though. You don't even need to be in the final bracket of a qb to achieve this. That's the weird part. And I too admit that was quite a surprise to me when I found myself aiming for just the top 150.

No idea what Jack's talking about though. I've been in platinum in every event since platinum was a thing except for the last holiday event. I made a point to get there early because there was less competition for top 5 back then.

No, I don't see how that was the point. I bothered to type all that in response to you because you insinuated that anyone only earning enough crystals for a Big Box a month has a problem with how they play the game. That was your point that I was addressing. Obviously you used 'everyone' as an exaggeration but I wanted to explain to you that there are whole groups of people who can't even hit the "basic requirements" that you set and that your 'everyone' probably doesn't even cover the majority of the active players.

That's why I highlighted the problems European players face with competing for ranking in QB. Point differentials earned closer to the end of the QB period are more valuable because there's less time for others to catch up to you. It's hugely dispiriting for them to invest a few hours into QB to build a lead, and then wake up the next day to find that they were pushed out of the top rankings. Almost as dispiriting is to see that they built a buffer that was 100-200 points too much and they could have saved that hour or two of grinding to do something else. Ditto for the new players and building a lead in QB only to see it rapidly erased by veterans running monster QB decks.

Countering your point is also why I highlighted that newer players likely cannot hit all progression rewards because they don't have enough competent planeswalkers and decks.

These are the issues that people have been trying to get across to the developers, about timezones, about how the events are now pretty much tailored for Platinum/Gold and are not properly scalable down to the people in the lower tiers of Bronze & Silver who actually belong there. The current secondary objectives aren't really making the matches harder to win for Platinum (and probably Gold) players cause top-tier cards are so strong and the AI is weak enough that winning is fairly easy to achieve in most cases (not all) even after tweaking decks to meet the objectives.

So what you really get is the perverse situation that Bronze & Silver players need a higher win rate to hit progression rewards than Gold & Platinum players. With a weaker inventory. Against decks that can be comparable strength all the way up to massively stronger decks thanks to a bunch of mythics. And also likely competing with less than a full squad of top-tier max level planeswalker (or even having less than 5 planeswalkers in total).

Most games start out easy to reel you in then make it harder and harder to match your increasing mastery of the game and available resources, but this game ends up being the other way round due to the way events are designed and how vast the difference in power level is between coveted mythics and the rest of the cards.

So if you intend to make an apology, it should be to the people whom you wrongly insinuated something about and pertaining to what you insinuated. Not about calculating the drop rates wrongly although that can be a reason to explain why you're apologising. Or if not an apology (because how many people are willing to apologise to anonymous people on a game forum anyway), you can at least take back the snarky statement.

If you're wondering why I keep hounding on this issue, it's because I think it's highly dangerous to be blaming the players for not being able to progress in the game when we are able to see that the system quite clearly disadvantages certain groups. There are certain things that players have to take responsibility for like whining too much about all aspects of the game without weighing or at least discussing the consequences of the changes they propose and then whining again when the developers go ahead and make the change and something else goes wrong. But there are other aspects of the game which could be improved to make the game more entertaining to all (because the purpose of a game is to be entertaining, while earning money for its makers). It's also cause I think there is too much snark on the forums but some of the other snarky posters aren't even worth responding to.

And yes I used a log scale because we are talking about the rate at which someone is opening packs from playing this game which influences how quickly their inventory builds. Your ballpark of 1 BB a week is twice as fast as what I calculated which is twice as fast as Ultimadan's estimate. These are huge differences in reward rate. I'm fairly sure such large changes in reward rates would influence interest levels in the game.

Salubri

I have to agree with the sentiment that the rewards don't feel rewarding. I'm in the Central Time zone and I work the graveyard shift. I'm basically having the same issues as the European players. My job also prevents me from putting in the hours needed to do anything much in QB. I've only been playing this game since September and I only have 5 Mythics. That's including one purchase of the recent Mythic card purchase. I'm also in the platinum tier because I mastered cards, which I believe is what the intention of the developers is. I'm only missing a few PWs. I have spent money on this game but, only twice. The SOI big box and fatpack combo and Dovin. I used to be able to get all the progression rewards which made the events and game with it. Now I don't. I'm only playing now to get my $50 worth out of Dovin. After that I don't see a point of continuing.

Ohboy

span_argoman wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

log scale for this? Really?

But fine, I admit my calculations were a bit off. Point still stands though. Boosters and boxes are getting easier to get.

The part about QB isn't off though. You don't even need to be in the final bracket of a qb to achieve this. That's the weird part. And I too admit that was quite a surprise to me when I found myself aiming for just the top 150.

No idea what Jack's talking about though. I've been in platinum in every event since platinum was a thing except for the last holiday event. I made a point to get there early because there was less competition for top 5 back then.

No, I don't see how that was the point. I bothered to type all that in response to you because you insinuated that anyone only earning enough crystals for a Big Box a month has a problem with how they play the game. That was your point that I was addressing. Obviously you used 'everyone' as an exaggeration but I wanted to explain to you that there are whole groups of people who can't even hit the "basic requirements" that you set and that your 'everyone' probably doesn't even cover the majority of the active players.

That's why I highlighted the problems European players face with competing for ranking in QB. Point differentials earned closer to the end of the QB period are more valuable because there's less time for others to catch up to you. It's hugely dispiriting for them to invest a few hours into QB to build a lead, and then wake up the next day to find that they were pushed out of the top rankings. Almost as dispiriting is to see that they built a buffer that was 100-200 points too much and they could have saved that hour or two of grinding to do something else. Ditto for the new players and building a lead in QB only to see it rapidly erased by veterans running monster QB decks.

Countering your point is also why I highlighted that newer players likely cannot hit all progression rewards because they don't have enough competent planeswalkers and decks.

These are the issues that people have been trying to get across to the developers, about timezones, about how the events are now pretty much tailored for Platinum/Gold and are not properly scalable down to the people in the lower tiers of Bronze & Silver who actually belong there. The current secondary objectives aren't really making the matches harder to win for Platinum (and probably Gold) players cause top-tier cards are so strong and the AI is weak enough that winning is fairly easy to achieve in most cases (not all) even after tweaking decks to meet the objectives.

So what you really get is the perverse situation that Bronze & Silver players need a higher win rate to hit progression rewards than Gold & Platinum players. With a weaker inventory. Against decks that can be comparable strength all the way up to massively stronger decks thanks to a bunch of mythics. And also likely competing with less than a full squad of top-tier max level planeswalker (or even having less than 5 planeswalkers in total).

Most games start out easy to reel you in then make it harder and harder to match your increasing mastery of the game and available resources, but this game ends up being the other way round due to the way events are designed and how vast the difference in power level is between coveted mythics and the rest of the cards.

So if you intend to make an apology, it should be to the people whom you wrongly insinuated something about and pertaining to what you insinuated. Not about calculating the drop rates wrongly although that can be a reason to explain why you're apologising. Or if not an apology (because how many people are willing to apologise to anonymous people on a game forum anyway), you can at least take back the snarky statement.

If you're wondering why I keep hounding on this issue, it's because I think it's highly dangerous to be blaming the players for not being able to progress in the game when we are able to see that the system quite clearly disadvantages certain groups. There are certain things that players have to take responsibility for like whining too much about all aspects of the game without weighing or at least discussing the consequences of the changes they propose and then whining again when the developers go ahead and make the change and something else goes wrong. But there are other aspects of the game which could be improved to make the game more entertaining to all (because the purpose of a game is to be entertaining, while earning money for its makers). It's also cause I think there is too much snark on the forums but some of the other snarky posters aren't even worth responding to.

And yes I used a log scale because we are talking about the rate at which someone is opening packs from playing this game which influences how quickly their inventory builds. Your ballpark of 1 BB a week is twice as fast as what I calculated which is twice as fast as Ultimadan's estimate. These are huge differences in reward rate. I'm fairly sure such large changes in reward rates would influence interest levels in the game.

I play a lot of qb and can definitely relate to the timezone issue. QB ends early in the morning for me, and I basically have to play all night before work or risk losing the lead overnight a lot of the time. It is however not an issue unless you're trying to get into the top 10.

Not really agreeing with your assessment of the event progressions though. The hard to hit objective is worth one point out of 7 on average. It's definitely harder for the lower tiers with weaker decks to hit max progression, but it's not the doom and gloom you're describing. If you're also saying that it's hard for the lower tiers to hit the first bonus, then it's actually serious. But that has not been my experience. Not after a few weeks of play anyway.

I do agree I was probably too harsh and apologise for my tone. But the complaints about drop rates wear on me, and I saw someone who wasn't even doing the minimum complaining about it, so I snapped. For what it's worth, I apologise.

span_argoman

Ohboy wrote:

I play a lot of qb and can definitely relate to the timezone issue. QB ends early in the morning for me, and I basically have to play all night before work or risk losing the lead overnight a lot of the time. It is however not an issue unless you're trying to get into the top 10.

Not really agreeing with your assessment of the event progressions though. The hard to hit objective is worth one point out of 7 on average. It's definitely harder for the lower tiers with weaker decks to hit max progression, but it's not the doom and gloom you're describing. If you're also saying that it's hard for the lower tiers to hit the first bonus, then it's actually serious. But that has not been my experience. Not after a few weeks of play anyway.

I do agree I was probably too harsh and apologise for my tone. But the complaints about drop rates wear on me, and I saw someone who wasn't even doing the minimum complaining about it, so I snapped. For what it's worth, I apologise.

Thank you for being gracious enough to apologise. And yes I agree that the complaints on drop rates are wearying. But I believe people will complain about drop rates unless each Big Box always drops at least one mythic. And then after some time they will start complaining about consecutive dupes. So I myself just ignore them as much as I can.

On QB and events, I run a casual coalition so I've a good number of people in lower tiers. And from what they tell me, it isn't that easy.

QB-wise, quite a few of them rarely ever get into the top 150. There are various reasons but I would say the primary ones are that they're not able to invest those consecutive few hours of grinding that QB requires or are not able to join at opportune timings, both due to life commitments. And of course those who face timezone issues (Europe) or for whom QB ends during work hours (Asia/USWC).

Event-wise, people just may not have the right cards to build a deck that can win and score the secondary objectives. There are cases where they will have to choose between sticking with the better chance of winning or an attempt at more points with a more uncertain chance to win. Yeah that can be the case even for the first secondary objective. Some people lack the removal cards, some people lack the right supports, and some have to play the exorbitantly costed common or uncommon creatures to hit the objectives in events like Terror in the Shadows or Emrakul's Corruption.

Also one advantage you'll have as a veteran player playing an alternate account is knowledge of the meta and how best to counter various obstacles. Even with guidance from experienced players, newer players mainly have to figure this out for themselves unless someone is able to guide them through a match or two.

And you have the unfortunate folks like Salubri who rushed to Platinum too fast and are now struggling to keep up.

My opinion is that certain parameters should change for the lower tiers to make it easier for them to hit progression. Right now they have to meet the same objectives compared to Gold/Platinum but with a comparatively diminished card pool.

An easy solution would be to just reduce the points required to hit progression for lower tiers, and hopefully their game system is flexible enough to allow that change. Another option is to give them easier secondary objectives, but you have the problem where coalition members in lower tiers might be able to contribute points better to the coalition than higher tier members which is not ideal cause it then encourages slumming.

An idea for lower tiers is to give them two 5-boosters on the first card pack event progression instead of one. In terms of the chance to get powerful mythics this should be a negligible increase in chances, but it increases the rate at which they can collect the basic common and uncommon cards needed to properly participate in events. The final progression reward can stay as one pack because those who can reach that reward level are already decently well equipped for their tier.

And I would say keep it at one booster pack only for Gold and Platinum because they don't need the bonus pack. Sure people will whine about the "unfairness" of it, but Gold and Platinum get much more crystals compared to Bronze and Silver which is the more important currency one needs for acquiring mythics (by saving up for Big Boxes, RNGesus permitting).

Ultimadan

Ok I'll concede that my estimate on big boxes was a ways off. For what it's worth I haven't actually spent any of my crystals since opening 3 of the mythic packs. The packs everyone considers to be by far the best value offered so far (which I agree with!). And surely enough, opening them got me 3 dupes. The packs by far most likely to give some kind of progression still didn't despite only having somewhere around 10-15% of the total mythics. For my 1050 crystals, I got 10 quick battles worth of runes. Regardless, somewhere between 1 to 2 weeks is probably a better estimate of how quickly one can get a big box.

Not even doing the minimum though? That's a completely unfair comment. I hit every event and get every progression reward. I hit every QB and get at least rank 150, sometimes higher if I have time. I'm still working on the back end of the story for the crystal rewards there but what more can I possibly be doing to progress? I don't have the time to grind for rank 1 in QB and I'm not in a top 10 coalition.

I honestly feel as if I've hit a wall at the moment. With the RNG nature of progression, it could take 2 packs or 2000 packs before I ever find a new card to use and that's assuming the card is worth playing at all.

I completely get that people are getting tired of all the drop rate complaints. I'd much rather be posting something positive about the game, or just lurking. But outside of dropping loads of money on the exclusive mythic bundles, sometimes it can just feel as if there's no real way to progress in this game.

norjee

In away the fact that people complain about being unable to compete cause they have a hard time farming crystals to be able to open enough boxes is pure genius on d3's part. Cause the game is very very much pay-to-win. Complaining about rewards shows people treat the game as an relatively open accessible casual game, blind to the fact that it's mostly the dept of their wallets that decides how well they can do.

As mentioned in other comments, even if a person can dedicate hours each day to play the game on a regular basis to consistently farm 2 big boxes a month, the chances of getting the right (mythic) cards that synergize well are astronomically small. For events you need the right combo times 3 or 4 (dual color pw's help) times. Assuming each set has 30 mythics, and you get a mythic from each big box, that's a 1 out of 30 change you get the right mythic from your first big box, but rarely one will be enough, you want 2. So that's 0.03 * 0.03 = 0.001 = 1 out of 1000 chance that 2 big boxes give you what you need. At a rate of 2 boxes/month, you see it'll take some time to get a good deck.

Of course, if you win events and/or are in a top coalition, chances increase dramatically as you actually win mythics. But there is a pretty big wall to actually get in such a position (and it's certainly not achievable for the average player with time constraints to actually maintain such a position). The amount of free boxes you can open ultimately has little effect on that, chances of getting a good deck out of it are simply too small, yet apparently big enough that it is perceived as possible by the average player.

At the same time, the specific mythic offers, often the strongest ones (playing against olivia still feels like playing against stacked deck) can be directly bought, and are pretty much needed to break the wall to be able to get the real goodies and actually win as opposed to being content with a position in the top 200. I'm sure the plan is that eventually people realize that buying a game changer card is the only reliable (where unreliable means muddling through mud for literally months trying to pull the right card) way to improve your chances.

I now realize i'm not really going anywhere with this comment, all i want say is this game is a big illusion in more than one way. The game tries to give you a feeling skill matters, but the huge randomness in gem board and cascades combined with your card pull means there really is little skill involved, te quality of your deck determines the win. To add insult to injury, the AI is so terrible that the game isn't really about winning it's about being fast or meeting objectives, which again, needs the right cards. This brings the second illusion, there is no multiplayer, you're not playing against other people, and as such there is no real competition, your rank doesn't indicate how skillful you are, it indicates how much time/money you sink in the game. You can't play against friend and beat him. Then there is the illusion of reward, you gain some nice shiny pictures (which you can get get cheaper and in a more tangible fashion by buying paper magic cards), all you can win is getting yourself in a position where you need to invest more time and likely money to stay in that position.

And yeah, the game is a nice time waster while commuting, especially when not having played it in a while. Then after some time playing against cards and decks you are sure you'll not be able to get, it's time to spend your time differently. Till you forget these misgivings and try again (thinking about this, i wonder if opponents you face aren't based on "this player could really use these cards, let's put him against a deck that has these cards so he'll try to get those cards" cause there really have to be a load of decks with the same **** setup i have, yet more than half the time, i face nicely synergistic decks, which i sort-of-but-not-even-close manage for 1 or 2 of my colors, leaving 3 ill functioning ones)