Some thoughts, did the Devs shoot themselves in the foot?

wereotter

We had quite the run recently of new cards and content. The game has quickly gone from being several months behind the paper releases of the game to only a few weeks, which has caused people to purchase packs at an increased rate, and now that we're in a lull and still over 6 weeks from the next paper release, and thus at least two months from the next digital release, the devs are now stuck.

"How do we continue to make money on this game without new content for people to spend money on?"

I have a feeling that this is where the changes in this latest update come from, and it's not really a good solution. It seems that everything done in this update was a long-term "fix" to a short term problem of lacking content and funds from the game tapering off. Reduce the number of cards you get for crystals, charge an entry fee into the events, create a new currency to get powerful cards. Some of these things might have been needed for the health of the game long-term, others are shooting themselves in the foot.

Consider this: with how many crystals they've been throwing at us with the rapid-fire event schedule, people have had less incentive to need to buy crystals to buy packs and planeswalkers, meaning less real world currency for the game. Also realizing there are no ads in the game, and you piece together that the game would have to be supported by those transactions. Add to it that many people have most of the cards they want from the current blocks, and you can see how this problem will be compounded later as people hoard crystals in anticipation of the Amonkhet release. So the solution to the problem has to take into consideration how to both get crystals out of player inventories, and how to keep people buying packs longer.

Enter pay to play events, reduced rewards, and reduced big boxes. By making a fee to play events, they're effectively draining premium currency from our supplies so that we can't purchase as many Amonket big boxes when the set drops, and by reducing the number of packs to a third, it now will take more time and crystals to complete the set, meaning more real currency transactions, and profit for the company. As well as reducing the amount of crystals awarded from events, and you see how this all ties up nicely together.

Now understanding the game needs to make money in order to survive and thrive, I can forgive some of these things. Reducing the number of packs in a big box seems reasonable as a way to slow down the accumulation of cards and keep money flowing into the game. When you consider that, reducing rewards, even temporarily, seems to make sense. We'll have a long time to obtain crystals between now and when Amonkhet is pushed into the game, so many of us will still have a large number of crystals with which to purchase packs.

What I think they've done that hasn't gone over well is the chosen method of trying to get existing crystals out of player inventories. Here are a couple of solutions that might have worked out better as short term solutions between now and then:

1) Charge crystals to unlock deck save slots on a planeswalker by planeswalker basis. Who here would pay 30 crystals to permanently unlock an additional deck slot for their favorite planeswalker? Who would pay 50 to unlock a second slot? This is a quality of life improvement that won't break the game, will give the AI more decks to pull from even if from the same player, and wouldn't break the game.

2) Rotate paid mythics through the shop for crystals.Consider a paid mythic was worth about $30 and it's fair to ask the question, who among us who didn't have the opportunity to purchase paid mythics from previous sets wouldn't do so now for 400-600 crystals? Depending on the power level you might even get away with charging over 1,000 crystals for a guaranteed, specific mythic rare card. While this would have an impact on the game, it seems that it would more just level the playing field between new and long-time players.

3) As has been suggested on many other posts, allow for paid upgrades to the Origins planeswalkers. This would probably be the hardest to implement as you would then have to have two different sets of code for each planeswalker from that block, and could cause confusion when paired off against one thinking it's one version when in fact it's the other.

4) Add more cards from old blocks. The common rarity cards from Oath of the Gatewatch, Eldritch Moon, and Aether Revolt all were completely overlooked with the launch of these sets. Adding in some of those cards for a crystal cost reduced from the normal packs, would potentially give players something new to buy, breathe more life into the game with new cards, and still accomplish the goal. (I know that I personally would LOVE to have has Expedite be a card in a Baral-Saheeli deck.)

5) Reset the life-time cap on mythic card packs and add them back into the vault. Sure they had the potential to be disappointing (I pulled two of the same mythic that way) and not everyone liked it, but they certainly went over better than the current strategy.

Massive Dragon

Considering the back catalogue of card sets in magics history and the fact a lot of mechanics would translate, why don't they use the down time between new sets to pump out some of the older blocks?
The only ones I could see a problem with is a lot of the graveyard stuff like delve would difficult.

babar3355

Stop with the silly suggestions of using crystals for superior game function and improvements. We will just release some awful new currency and destroy the economy.

Astralwind

If OP can think of all these suggestions, I don't see why they couldn't do it.

madwren

Good post.

The sheer range of viable alternatives is astonishing. I'm not sure how they felt this route would make anyone happy.

gruntface

I remember a dev post from a while back where they explicitly stated they would rather work on the new sets than correct existing issues.

The player base overwhelmingly pushed back and said they would prefer the foundations be repaired first to make for a better game (improved ai, matchmaking, deck slots, card balancing) but to no avail.

The single-mindedness shown is impressive but regrettable. As has been consistently stated by myself and others, communication is effective only when it is two way. Ignore this simple fact and you get what has occurred in the past few days.

madwren

gruntface wrote:

I remember a dev post from a while back where they explicitly stated they would rather work on the new sets than correct existing issues.

The player base overwhelmingly pushed back and said they would prefer the foundations be repaired first to make for a better game (improved ai, matchmaking, deck slots, card balancing) but to no avail.

The single-mindedness shown is impressive but regrettable. As has been consistently stated by myself and others, communication is effective only when it is two way. Ignore this simple fact and you get what has occurred in the past few days.

If they spent as much time communicating in between sets as they do when they rollout exciting new features, a lot of problems might have been avoided. The large stretches of complete silence somewhat indicate that they only care to communicate when trying to sell us something new.

Rough Tonality

Astralwind wrote:

If OP can think of all these suggestions, I don't see why they couldn't do it.

That's a good point. To add to that, even when they may not have thought of such things, they've got thousands of us out here making great suggestions.

All the while l, I sit here reading not only said great suggestions, but also all the rants about nothing being done with them. It sucks watching all my fellow players shouting at the proverbial wall.