1.10.2 Release Notes *Updated (3/9/17)

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Comments

  • Robheaded
    Robheaded Posts: 3
    They successfully.. Added a update targeting the demographic of people willing to spend larger amounts of money.. With zero safe guards to prevent pissing that demographic off.. Congrats.
    After opening 2 legacy packs and receiving the exact same card.. Which happened to be one of the only mythics I already had. Then opening 5 of these 5 packs, from the gems I also recieved and not receiving a single mythic and multiple rare duplicates... I do believe that I will no longer be doing business with this company. Reviews will reflect this.
  • gruntface
    gruntface Posts: 161 Tile Toppler
    In the latest in a series of misguided updates, you have now directly targeted the lifeblood of your game, the coalition community. Read how many people are saying they would have quit a while ago if it wasn't for their coalition. Think about how many are assisted in getting settled and competitive (and spending money!) by joining a coalition and navigating a daunting new player experience. The changes made this week are bad, but this latest one has likely definitively turned the group that should be your biggest advocates into adversaries. The MTG community as a whole is loyal but you have traded on this loyalty for what feels like a final cash grab before flipping the off-switch on the game.

    You have underestimated the reaction to what was an ill-advised update (which, for the record, a Players Council would have been able to open your eyes to, as you seemed completely taken aback by the furor) and compounded it with astonishingly worse decisions as the week rolls on. Quite an achievement!
  • Astralwind
    Astralwind Posts: 98 Match Maker
    babar3355 wrote:
    I can't even express how disheartened I am with this new release. There was evidence that the developers were starting to listen to the community.
    1. Recent communication with the community has been better
    2. A new daily challenge was promised with exciting new rewards and no tedious objectives
    3. Ability to prioritize chances of certain mythics and masterpiece cards
    4. Superior drop rates
    5. Smaller player pools, improving odds of reaching top tiers in events
    6. Exciting new masterpiece cards were being released

    And yet, the rollout has taken all of this hope, optimism, and goodwill and dashed it against the jagged rocks of greed.

    GoblinPile has already lost 1 member, who was on the fence, and has now firmly quit the game. Several others seem to be right behind him unless their is an immediate change.

    What did we do wrong ask the developers? Let's see how they squandered the list above:
    1. If you communicate with us and get our hopes up, then dash them with horrible rewards rates, you will get a worse reaction than just not even communicating.
    2. The daily challenge (while I like the format) is a total rip off. Will I trade you 50 crystals for 15 jewels and a booster? No I will not. 15 jewels is 0.035 of a mythic. I won't make the trade with you then I certainly won't play a lopsided set of games to EARN the trade. No thanks!
    3. The card pool in epic packs is way too big. I might get a dupe of whale, basker, LR, Yaheeni... or I might actually get the masterpiece... Should change this to like 2 masterpeices and 2 mythics to give us a better idea of what we can get. Otherwise we will all almost certainly be subject to dupes galore. I promise it will feel bad for players to spend 27 days and between 1350 - 1620 crystals for a dupe. If these packs are that epic.. make it a guaranteed masterpiece.
    4. I have no idea if drop rates have improved. If you communicate the drop rates with us then we can at least take your word for it. Instead, we have to anecdotally try to figure it out. Guess what, that's pretty well impossible. So even if you drastically improved drop rates, the community has no way of knowing that. So you get no credit.
    5. You set up smaller player pools then you give us no event with the roll out. That's just blind sighted and stupid. Give us a **** or EmO or FIRF or something and show us that jewels can be obtained in other ways. Just shows that you don't understand the community, or that we might have a bad reaction to the devaluation of currency. Or maybe there will be no jewels for events... or maybe they will give 1 jewel for top 100, 2 for top 25, and 5 for top 5 (with mythic removed as a prize). Trust us, we are assuming the worst at this point.
    6. Great new cards and no way to earn them except blind luck or 27 days of grinding.. Sigh.

    Honestly guys, it really feels like you snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on this one. I hope you get exactly 0 people willing to purchase that ridiculous $100 pack that gets them 1.25 guaranteed mythics. What a steal! Greedy people.

    Exact sentiment here. Doing this just completely wiped off all the hopes and confidence we had. The developers/managment seriously doesn't understand us, the customers well at all. It feels like, they were just getting a few staffs to manage our expectations to appease us but were not doing enough to actually understand our needs and deliver the necessary.
  • Massive Dragon
    Massive Dragon Posts: 7
    First we have the Masterpiece cards for high level players, that are both devastating and a new fun thing to chase. /quote]

    And the next day the currency for getting them go's on sale for $100...
    The contempt you must feel for your customers is incredible, seriously I'm in awe.

    It's funny in a time when good companies are slowly moving away from the old hump back hunting method of ftp. You are going back to the most obnoxious of the old ways...

    But here's the dirty secret folks, they cant do anything else, there is no way near the content. It's a shame that people who profess to play the card game can't see their way to getting some of the old sets into their game...

    But!

    Here's an idea why don't you do the "power 9"?

    Eg

    Black lotus
    0 mana support
    2 shield
    Every turn all your cards are fully charged

    Time walk
    2 mana spell
    Take 3 extra turns after this one (like a good run with pre patch gonti just less effort!)

    Sod the currency just sell um for $150 each straight up. If your gonna go full ptw go all in!

    Oh and as your never going to bring the old origins walkers up to the level of the new stuff I suggest you nerf them further, get people to get them hands in their wallets faster!
  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    wereotter wrote:
    Brigby wrote:
    octal9 wrote:
    Also, Sarahschmara asked this above and I think it's an important question:
    Sarahschmara wrote:
    It will cost a "low amount" of crystals to enter the daily event. How low? 5? 50?
    The cost of entry is the same as one Booster Pack, however you can earn Booster Packs by winning fights, so it evens out after winning just one fight!

    It's possible I've missed something here, so correct me if I'm wrong but an entry fee for daily events seems a terrible idea. It costs mana crystals (see also premium, paid currency) to enter, but rewards are packs and mana jewels. So where now will mana crystals come from in game, and what if you don't win? It feels like you've taken it from free to play with micro transactions to pay to play with micro transactions. This feels like a great way to alienate players.

    Is it too early for an "I told you so"?
  • Houdin
    Houdin Posts: 182 Tile Toppler
    Devs,
    I really can't believe you haven't given us a response yet.
    This isn't going to just "go away"
    There's no point in playing ostrich and hoping if you hide your heads in the sand we will leave you alone on this.
    You broke the game!
    You need to fix it before we will play anymore or pay anymore.
    I'm sure there was a meeting where looking at how much money these changes will cost the players seemed like an awesome idea. Maybe you all thought you'd get some big bonuses from such a revenue increase.
    Perhaps that would have worked in a game matching piggies and duckies.
    You would need a player base that has no concept of value to pull that off.
    Instead you tried to pull this in a game focusing on magic the gathering.
    A game whose players are traditionally the mental elite.
    We can all do the probability calculations.
    We can all understand business modeling.
    We all can see the wool you tried to pull over our eyes.

    You need to take a step back. What do you think will happen when this game shuts down?

    Traditional business models shows that someone will have to take the fall for such a huge revenue loss.

    I doubt it will be brigby. He at least has tried to talk to us.

    Will it be you Cthulhu? Or maybe you hibernum_will? Or JC or KR?
    Did one of you advocate a little more in that meeting that we wouldn't over this?
    Whomever it is you might want Ronstadt putting out some resumes if you aren't going to fix this.
    Every minute you delay pushes us one step closer to dropping this game entirely and the inevitable pull from the app store if this occurs.

    Just saying...
  • losdamianos
    losdamianos Posts: 429 Mover and Shaker
    Houdin wrote:
    This isn't going to just "go away"
    .
    this isnt
    but players on the other hand....
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    bken1234 wrote:
    @brigby @hibernum_jc @whoever_else

    There is no mention of objectives on the new weekend PVP event -- usually this is listed in the Release Notes.

    I don't see it -- does this mean there are no objectives? (The awful weekday event states this outright -- the weekend event does not).
    Hmm good question. I'll reach out to the developers to see if there are objectives or not for the Planeswalker Arena. I'll update this post when I get a response.
  • voodoo_gremlin
    voodoo_gremlin Posts: 61 Match Maker
    Houdin wrote:
    Devs,
    I really can't believe you haven't given us a response yet.
    This isn't going to just "go away"
    There's no point in playing ostrich and hoping if you hide your heads in the sand we will leave you alone on this.
    You broke the game!
    You need to fix it before we will play anymore or pay anymore.
    I'm sure there was a meeting where looking at how much money these changes will cost the players seemed like an awesome idea. Maybe you all thought you'd get some big bonuses from such a revenue increase.
    Perhaps that would have worked in a game matching piggies and duckies.
    You would need a player base that has no concept of value to pull that off.
    Instead you tried to pull this in a game focusing on magic the gathering.
    A game whose players are traditionally the mental elite.
    We can all do the probability calculations.
    We can all understand business modeling.
    We all can see the wool you tried to pull over our eyes.

    I completely agree with you. I'm very VERY upset but I don't think we're going to get anything official from the devs until at least Monday. They'll want to analyse our comments, look at the numbers at the events go and they'll to know precisely how much damage has been done, or not.

    This is an important business decision for them they're going to make it soon, not quickly.
  • Gotcha617
    Gotcha617 Posts: 88 Match Maker
    I would like to congratulate the dev team on developing some great events...

    Daily color trials...great idea

    Extra weekend event being pw restrictive, love the idea. Great way to change it up

    These new gems unobtainiums:I don't mind the slow rate...makes it feel the masterpiece cards are more epic than epics.

    Where you have your backlash is the following...

    60 crystals to get in daily events. This is followed by a reduction of crystals in other events. My question now, is this something we can even sustain throughout the week? Will I have to choose on getting a pw or play an event?

    Taking mythics out of the rewards for top 10 coalitions on the weekend. I get the weekday events. But come on, there are about 50 mythics in the newer sets and about 8 weekend events per cycle.

    Less packs to open from event rewards... Dumb. That's the fun of the game peeling a brand new mythic or some card you've been chasing.

    My hopes were set high with this update and I have seriously been let down as of now...your so so close to a major improvement to the game and go and throw it all away with devaluing the currency.

    Lower entry fees to daly events would be a huge start.

    Thanks for the time
    Gotcha617
    Defiantempyr
  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
    I've singled out two points for which I have something to add.
    babar3355 wrote:
    1. Recent communication with the community has been better
    I agree completely that the volume of communication has been better. But a key component was missing, which was a narrative and an explanation for all of the significant changes. This is crucial for explaining the scale of the player backlash... more on that below.
    babar3355 wrote:
    4. Superior drop rates
    I don't believe this was ever promised, but I can see how the misunderstanding could arise. What was said was this: "The card packs we have done some balance tweaking to help reduce the amount of duplicates and give the player a higher chance at obtaining rare cards"
    I think the two key elements here break down as follows:
    • reduce the amount of duplicates - Fewer duplicates in an absolute sense is a simple consequence of getting fewer cards per manacrystal.png spent (with value-added big boxes being made unavailable). There's no evidence that any other changes were made relating to this statement. This has really jerked people around; many players have a long-standing complaint of RNG giving them duplicate rares/mythics, and players were given hope by this statement that this complaint would be addressed. Instead, we're left to wonder why fewer duplicates in an absolute sense is so great a problem that to solve it requires reducing the purchasing power of crystals? That's a massive narrative gap.
    • higher chance at obtaining rare cards - This is a consequence of getting a bonus rare per 300 manacrystal.png premium packs, compared to the old 600 manacrystal.png big boxes. Yet at the same time, with big boxes unavailable, we now get fewer mythics, uncommons, and commons per manacrystal.png spent (see viewtopic.php?f=31&t=60451&start=40#p646496). Why reduce the purchasing power of crystals to get mythics in packs? That's the main reason to buy packs for top players. Why reduce the purchasing power of crystals to get commons and uncommons in packs? That is a big impediment for new players who are just starting out in the game. This still hasn't been explained; it's another big narrative gap.
    The third key narrative gap is around event rewards. We were told "Nodes of Power, Emergency Ordinances and Fate is Rarely Fair now have smaller leaderboards of 1000 players (reduced from 3000 players). With the smaller leaderboards, we’ve also rebalanced the rewards from the Events". This narrative explains reduced rewards from individual ranking in events with smaller leaderboards. But it looks like events rewards were reduced across all event types, and not just individual rankings, but also progression and coalition rankings - a massive difference in scope to what was explained. Why was this done? Another big narrative gap.

    Like I said, I really appreciate the volume of communication from the devs for this update, but explanations for some of the most important changes were missing in action. The direct consequences of a narrative gap for a negative change are:
    • Players are shocked when the changes don't match their expectations (see pretty much any current forum post), and
    • Given no explanation, players assume the worst explanation. One of many examples:
    babar3355 wrote:
    Greedy people.
  • AlanA1
    AlanA1 Posts: 6 Just Dropped In
    I wonder about quitting the game after the changes.
    Less crystals from events, in return I can get mana jewels - It'll take a month or two of earning them to get the mythic... I'd rather get more crystals than those jewels, I could get enough boosters for crystals to get a mythic and some rares \ uncommons...
    No solutions to the problems of tied places, deck slots, matchmaking, AI or the game quitting when telephone rings... and once again you change graphics. What for?... It's the least important thing now
  • Mainloop25
    Mainloop25 Posts: 1,959 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think you summed it up pretty well in your assessment, Volrak. And you didn't even have to insult anyone in the process. Well done.

    I think Brigby should include your post in his report.
  • theruiner
    theruiner Posts: 6 Just Dropped In
    Cthulhu wrote:
    It's an attempt to fix duplicates, for Masterpieces you should not see duplicates because of how the system works for those, you have the opportunity to get a card when you want to spend the new currency.

    For the boosters, you have less cards at less cost, I haven't seen 3 of the same card opening a pack like I did previously.

    Unfortunately, I'm not sure how true this statement is. My husband and I spent $100 EACH to buy "premium packs". Every SINGLE card was a dupe to my collection and I DID receive three of the same card in one pack. icon_e_confused.gif

    I'm not complaining, I'm actually very happy to see these changes!! What gets me is when there is always someone posting "well you fixed this but what about this and this and this". I swear people can't ever be appreciative of what they have or the good changes to the game.

    Unfortunately, I also know a lot of really good, nice top ten coalition players that have completely bailed from the game. It's sad to see and I'm hoping some will come back one of these days. However, with all of the glitches and errors and crummy draw rates I can understand.

    Thank you developers and forum mods for your hard work. I does not go unnoticed!! iso8.pngiso8.png
  • __Adam
    __Adam Posts: 111 Tile Toppler
    Volrak wrote:
    I've singled out two points for which I have something to add.
    babar3355 wrote:
    1. Recent communication with the community has been better
    I agree completely that the volume of communication has been better. But a key component was missing, which was a narrative and an explanation for all of the significant changes. This is crucial for explaining the scale of the player backlash... more on that below.
    babar3355 wrote:
    4. Superior drop rates
    I don't believe this was ever promised, but I can see how the misunderstanding could arise. What was said was this: "The card packs we have done some balance tweaking to help reduce the amount of duplicates and give the player a higher chance at obtaining rare cards"
    I think the two key elements here break down as follows:
    • reduce the amount of duplicates - Fewer duplicates in an absolute sense is a simple consequence of getting fewer cards per manacrystal.png spent (with value-added big boxes being made unavailable). There's no evidence that any other changes were made relating to this statement. This has really jerked people around; many players have a long-standing complaint of RNG giving them duplicate rares/mythics, and players were given hope by this statement that this complaint would be addressed. Instead, we're left to wonder why fewer duplicates in an absolute sense is so great a problem that to solve it requires reducing the purchasing power of crystals? That's a massive narrative gap.
    • higher chance at obtaining rare cards - This is a consequence of getting a bonus rare per 300 manacrystal.png premium packs, compared to the old 600 manacrystal.png big boxes. Yet at the same time, with big boxes unavailable, we now get fewer mythics, uncommons, and commons per manacrystal.png spent (see viewtopic.php?f=31&t=60451&start=40#p646496). Why reduce the purchasing power of crystals to get mythics in packs? That's the main reason to buy packs for top players. Why reduce the purchasing power of crystals to get commons and uncommons in packs? That is a big impediment for new players who are just starting out in the game. This still hasn't been explained; it's another big narrative gap.
    The third key narrative gap is around event rewards. We were told "Nodes of Power, Emergency Ordinances and Fate is Rarely Fair now have smaller leaderboards of 1000 players (reduced from 3000 players). With the smaller leaderboards, we’ve also rebalanced the rewards from the Events". This narrative explains reduced rewards from individual ranking in events with smaller leaderboards. But it looks like events rewards were reduced across all event types, and not just individual rankings, but also progression and coalition rankings - a massive difference in scope to what was explained. Why was this done? Another big narrative gap.

    Like I said, I really appreciate the volume of communication from the devs for this update, but explanations for some of the most important changes were missing in action. The direct consequences of a narrative gap for a negative change are:
    • Players are shocked when the changes don't match their expectations (see pretty much any current forum post), and
    • Given no explanation, players assume the worst explanation. One of many examples:
    babar3355 wrote:
    Greedy people.

    If by "narrative gap" you mean "change that only benefits the publisher at the expense of the customer" then I think we agree.
  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
    --Adam wrote:
    If by "narrative gap" you mean "change that only benefits the publisher at the expense of the customer" then I think we agree.
    No. I mean "change that wasn't explained". But like I said, I'm not at all surprised at yourself or anyone else assuming the worst, exactly because an explanation wasn't given for many of these changes.
  • __Adam
    __Adam Posts: 111 Tile Toppler
    Volrak wrote:
    --Adam wrote:
    If by "narrative gap" you mean "change that only benefits the publisher at the expense of the customer" then I think we agree.
    No. I mean "change that wasn't explained". But like I said, I'm not at all surprised at yourself or anyone else assuming the worst, exactly because an explanation wasn't given for many of these changes.

    No amount of spin is going to change the facts presented in the dozens of posts from D3's customers. These changes all benefit D3 at the expense of their customers; no amount of 'context' will change that.

    Perhaps some changes that benefit the customer are indeed coming. If so they should have waited and released them at the same time, or even first (yeah, right).
  • Ohboy
    Ohboy Posts: 1,766 Chairperson of the Boards
    --Adam wrote:
    Volrak wrote:
    --Adam wrote:
    If by "narrative gap" you mean "change that only benefits the publisher at the expense of the customer" then I think we agree.
    No. I mean "change that wasn't explained". But like I said, I'm not at all surprised at yourself or anyone else assuming the worst, exactly because an explanation wasn't given for many of these changes.

    No amount of spin is going to change the facts presented in the dozens of posts from D3's customers. These changes all benefit D3 at the expense of their customers; no amount of 'context' will change that.

    Perhaps some changes that benefit the customer are indeed coming. If so they should have waited and released them at the same time, or even first (yeah, right).

    What facts?

    All I've seen are arguments from emotion.

    The only fact raised so far that anyone has verified is that boosters are now worth more(because they were made more expensive).

    A few actual facts no one mentioned or get immediately shot down when mentioned:

    D3 just pumped approximately 2 million crystals and 2 million jewels into the wild.

    Daily entry fee event doesn't affect anyone. Don't play it if you don't want to. You will have lost nothing.

    Elite packs theoretically allow chances to guarantee a non dupe mythic. The problem is one of rotation period, not price. Everyone's **** on the closest we've come to dupe free packs. We're so close, but no one's interested in petitioning for the right change. Mathematically, it's a pack that benefits the lower tier players a lot more than the top tier ones sure, but it raises all boats.

    That last one really hurts the most because it's such a good deal but everyone is on angry mob mode and won't sit down to think about what they're protesting. Do you want dupe free packs or not?

    The community's relationship with facts in the last few days is not a strong one.
  • losdamianos
    losdamianos Posts: 429 Mover and Shaker
    Ohboy wrote:
    The only fact raised so far that anyone has verified is that boosters are now worth more(because they were made more expensive).
    premium packs offer objectively worse value, yeah bit better chance for rare, but if you happen to be chasing mythics, big box was your best bet so unfortunately this time Ohboy facts are against You. ( I think Volrak put all of the calculations premium pack vs big box per 1000 crystals )

    And while you remind us how D3 out of its own pocket ( icon_lol.gif ) pumped 2 milion crystals and unobtaniums its also worth to mention that on average weekly it will also save few times MORE as you cant earn as many crystals as you use to have so yeah yet again you pointed all convenient to D3 "facts" and forgot about what actually matters (worse event rewards or lack of BB)
    Volrak wrote:
    Based on current drop rates from octal's spreadsheet, for every 1,000 manacrystal.png you currently spend on 70-card big boxes with 1 guaranteed rare, you can expect on average:
    • 1.1 mythics
    • 6.5 rares
    • 41.9 uncommons
    • 68.9 commons
    With the same drop rates, for every 1,000 manacrystal.png you spent on 25-card premium packs with 1 guaranteed rare, you could expect on average:
    • 0.8 mythics
    • 8.1 rares
    • 29.9 uncommons
    • 49.2 commons
    So we'd be better off with rares, but worse-off with mythics (and uncommons and commons.. which is irrelevant for high-tier players, but might not be great for new players).
  • Ohboy
    Ohboy Posts: 1,766 Chairperson of the Boards
    losdamianos wrote:
    Ohboy wrote:
    The only fact raised so far that anyone has verified is that boosters are now worth more(because they were made more expensive).
    premium packs offer objectively worse value, yeah bit better chance for rare, but if you happen to be chasing mythics, big box was your best bet so unfortunately this time Ohboy facts are against You. ( I think Volrak put all of the calculations premium pack vs big box per 1000 crystals )

    And while you remind us how D3 out of its own pocket ( icon_lol.gif ) pumped 2 milion crystals and unobtaniums its also worth to mention that on average weekly it will also save few times MORE as you cant earn as many crystals as you use to have so yeah yet again you pointed all convenient to D3 "facts" and forgot about what actually matters (worse event rewards or lack of BB)
    Volrak wrote:
    Based on current drop rates from octal's spreadsheet, for every 1,000 manacrystal.png you currently spend on 70-card big boxes with 1 guaranteed rare, you can expect on average:
    • 1.1 mythics
    • 6.5 rares
    • 41.9 uncommons
    • 68.9 commons
    With the same drop rates, for every 1,000 manacrystal.png you spent on 25-card premium packs with 1 guaranteed rare, you could expect on average:
    • 0.8 mythics
    • 8.1 rares
    • 29.9 uncommons
    • 49.2 commons
    So we'd be better off with rares, but worse-off with mythics (and uncommons and commons.. which is irrelevant for high-tier players, but might not be great for new players).

    I'm sorry you had to type that long post, but if you read it again carefully, you'll see that my post actually does agree and state big boxes have lost value in transitioning to the premium packs.

    Boosters worth more means price of boosters have increased. Which means buying power of crystals decreased. There's no conflict here.

    The event rewards are only objectively worse for the top 5 for individual and top 10 for coalitions. Everyone else got a booster less in exchange for piece of a guaranteed(potential non dupe) mythic. Whether that's better is still subjective at this juncture.

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