@Cthulhu - Please Explain!

MightyKrakyn

So...everything except deck slots is being "highly evaluated." I....I wish you would've evaluated it before the update.

When on the survey you asked about currency to buy what we we want, we thought you meant the 350 crystal mythic packs that rotated. Those were awesome, and I always spent money when they popped up. You implemented the new currency before any of the fixes necessary to make the currency balanced, like duplicate conversions and drop-rate algorithms. You did it backwards, and it feels specifically like an attack on our wallets. "You just have to keep buying to keep trying!"

On that note, offering 550 purple currency in the store makes it so bronze tier can still be overrun by ultra powerful cards...if we're able to draw anything other than Yahenni from the elite packs, that is. Ridiculous. Such an attack on the consumer under the guise of balance.

Brigby

Dologan wrote:

Indeed. As I described in another thread, only a Platinum player in a top 2 coalition scoring in the top 5 of their event brackets and getting full rewards for seven Trials events would be able to afford one of each Elite Pack as they cycle in content every two weeks, without tapping into special offer purchases, which, so far, cost at least $30 and are single purchase only.

That's a minuscule percentage of players, assuming anyone even exists who could sustain that.

Based on my personal understanding of Masterpieces, they are supposed to be very powerful, but very rare cards. I believe the intention is not for players to be able to obtain a bunch of them each rotation period, as this slow acquisition rate is an attempt to slow down power creep.

Ampmp11

Brigby wrote:

Dologan wrote:

Indeed. As I described in another thread, only a Platinum player in a top 2 coalition scoring in the top 5 of their event brackets and getting full rewards for seven Trials events would be able to afford one of each Elite Pack as they cycle in content every two weeks, without tapping into special offer purchases, which, so far, cost at least $30 and are single purchase only.

That's a minuscule percentage of players, assuming anyone even exists who could sustain that.

Based on my personal understanding of Masterpieces, they are supposed to be very powerful, but very rare cards. I believe the intention is not for players to be able to obtain a bunch of them each rotation period, as this slow acquisition rate is an attempt to slow down power creep.

I get the slow acquisition rate but this is beyond slow. This is glacially slow. Being able to get a singular shot (if you're the elite) at a possibility of mythic/masterpiece every 2 weeks just isn't worth the time invested in playing the game regularly. The packs are already diluted with troll mythics and troll masterpieces. It'll take even longer for mid-tier or beginners, which defeats the whole purpose of the supposed balancing. The elite in this game will always be the elite, whether it's because they spend more, have more time to play, or are better skilled. There will always be a disparity. But that's where you get the chasers/or the people that want to maintain their status to spend more money.

Infested

Brigby wrote:

Dologan wrote:

Indeed. As I described in another thread, only a Platinum player in a top 2 coalition scoring in the top 5 of their event brackets and getting full rewards for seven Trials events would be able to afford one of each Elite Pack as they cycle in content every two weeks, without tapping into special offer purchases, which, so far, cost at least $30 and are single purchase only.

That's a minuscule percentage of players, assuming anyone even exists who could sustain that.

Based on my personal understanding of Masterpieces, they are supposed to be very powerful, but very rare cards. I believe the intention is not for players to be able to obtain a bunch of them each rotation period, as this slow acquisition rate is an attempt to slow down power creep.

Perfect, this is why there is a large problem. You have removed our chance to compete to get mythics daily and given us a system that has moved people to getting something monthly.

The only people that can gain at as reasonable rate are the top 2 teams. Not only are masterpieces difficult to get, mythics are difficult to get now too.

MightyKrakyn

Brigby wrote:

Dologan wrote:

Indeed. As I described in another thread, only a Platinum player in a top 2 coalition scoring in the top 5 of their event brackets and getting full rewards for seven Trials events would be able to afford one of each Elite Pack as they cycle in content every two weeks, without tapping into special offer purchases, which, so far, cost at least $30 and are single purchase only.

That's a minuscule percentage of players, assuming anyone even exists who could sustain that.

Based on my personal understanding of Masterpieces, they are supposed to be very powerful, but very rare cards. I believe the intention is not for players to be able to obtain a bunch of them each rotation period, as this slow acquisition rate is an attempt to slow down power creep.

A couple are kind of powerful, but they're mostly just good mythics. At the current cycle rate of two weeks, most people can't even have 1 attempt to land one of them in a cycle, and you're not even guaranteed a GOOD MYTHIC, let alone a masterpiece. And a cycle lasts what, like 3 months for the current cycle rate? You guys purposely threw like 4 **** mythics in there so we wouldn't get what we're aiming for. Think about how that feels if you spent $100 on it. It doesn't just feel like disappointment man, it feels like a con.

wink

MightyKrakyn wrote:

Brigby wrote:

Dologan wrote:

Indeed. As I described in another thread, only a Platinum player in a top 2 coalition scoring in the top 5 of their event brackets and getting full rewards for seven Trials events would be able to afford one of each Elite Pack as they cycle in content every two weeks, without tapping into special offer purchases, which, so far, cost at least $30 and are single purchase only.

That's a minuscule percentage of players, assuming anyone even exists who could sustain that.

Based on my personal understanding of Masterpieces, they are supposed to be very powerful, but very rare cards. I believe the intention is not for players to be able to obtain a bunch of them each rotation period, as this slow acquisition rate is an attempt to slow down power creep.

A couple are kind of powerful, but they're mostly just good mythics. At the current cycle rate of two weeks, most people can't even have 1 attempt to land one of them in a cycle, and you're not even guaranteed a GOOD MYTHIC, let alone a masterpiece. And a cycle lasts what, like 3 months for the current cycle rate? You guys purposely threw like 4 tinykitty mythics in there so we wouldn't get what we're aiming for. Think about how that feels if you spent $100 on it. It doesn't just feel like disappointment man, it feels like a con.

I think at the current cycle rate it'll take 38 weeks to get through all of the current mythics/masterpieces. When the next set drops, it'll take over a year.

Dologan

Brigby wrote:

Dologan wrote:

Indeed. As I described in another thread, only a Platinum player in a top 2 coalition scoring in the top 5 of their event brackets and getting full rewards for seven Trials events would be able to afford one of each Elite Pack as they cycle in content every two weeks, without tapping into special offer purchases, which, so far, cost at least $30 and are single purchase only.

That's a minuscule percentage of players, assuming anyone even exists who could sustain that.

Based on my personal understanding of Masterpieces, they are supposed to be very powerful, but very rare cards. I believe the intention is not for players to be able to obtain a bunch of them each rotation period, as this slow acquisition rate is an attempt to slow down power creep.

I get that. But we're not even talking about Masterpieces themselves here, but rather just the Elite packs, which are more likely to give a Mythic that could very well a dupe, since the players at this level will already have collected several, if not most of them. It is extremely demotivating to think that one could work gathering jewels for over a month only to get a dupe of an underwhelming Mythic, of which there are several.

Moreover, three of those Masterpieces are meant to be played as a set and only then are they really arguably more powerful than many Rares or Mythics. Surely someone ought to be able to collect them before three or four more set releases? And, seriously, some of those Masterpieces are barely better than a Rare (e.g. Ornithopter)

Brigby

Ah! My mistake. I must have missed a line from prior.

I definitely agree that it is certainly demotivating when working so hard to gather all those jewels only to get a duplicate. That's why we're working on a new system that will directly address the issue of duplicates, which should be completed within the next several months.

klobberer

To be fair to the devs, they did listen to my feedback from my survey a few months back and implemented something new into the game (sorta). My suggestion was to offer cards for purchase directly using crystals. They did it for 2 days then stopped doing it.

majincob

gruntface wrote:

Rather than move in small increments, the band aid was ripped off in one go and we should be prepared for the new norm being different.

This reminds me of when they got rid of the packs and lowered the mythic/rare drop rate. I'm still sore about that. Never did get a confirm/deny that drop rates changed and it's still one of the major complaints about the game.

toastie

Brigby wrote:

Ah! My mistake. I must have missed a line from prior.

I definitely agree that it is certainly demotivating when working so hard to gather all those jewels only to get a duplicate. That's why we're working on a new system that will directly address the issue of duplicates, which should be completed within the next several months.

This still doesn't help the people who save up for a specific elite pack and then fail to get what they want out of it and instead get some duplicates. Unless the new system lets you get cards you want, it really doesn't address all of the issues with duplicates.

MightyKrakyn

Brigby wrote:

Ah! My mistake. I must have missed a line from prior.

I definitely agree that it is certainly demotivating when working so hard to gather all those jewels only to get a duplicate. That's why we're working on a new system that will directly address the issue of duplicates, which should be completed within the next several months.

Our point is that this should've been done first. It's something that's been talked about for months on end. This currency system does not work with the duplicate and drop rate problems that currently exist. This system was rushed for monetary purposes, that's clear, instead of taking the time to add necessary consumer protection beforehand. You'll be hard pressed to find purchasers in this climate unless they're brand new, and then they'll learn pretty quickly that problems exist. I quoted a new player in a different thread who only had 8 Kaladesh rares, and he was getting dupes. Who would pay for that?

Also, several months is a long time. I don't know if anybody has pointed that out yet...you've said it a few times in regards to this specific issue. So like...we shouldn't look forward to this enoconmy being sustainable until the seasons have changed a few times?

babar3355

@Cthulhu, Hey man, I appreciate you stepping up to a very harshly worded post and doing your best to answer the contents. I appreciate it much more than you probably realize.

I am yet again encouraged that the team is aware of our gripes and is actively working on most of them. I would encourage D3 to seek the community of players for feedback on how to correct certain problems.

For instance, a great suggestion from earlier this week was to award event progression points in addition to color mastery. If you place high in contests you rank up in status and that's how you reach platinum. This immediately fixes the issue of people hovering in lower mastery tiers and abusing newer players. You could also do this with coalitions so newer coalitions are not pitted against elite coalitions.

You could then make color mastery a separate reward system where you can earn prizes by hitting certain thresholds. This would incentivize people to be creative in deck building and give them something to do between events/recharges, which I presume was the original point of color mastery. I can't take credit for it, but what a wonderful idea that hits multiple birds with one stone and really adds a lot of fun, fairness and content to the game.

I totally get that you guys have a pretty small team and I appreciate that everyone's time gets spread thin. But that's exactly why you should tap into your very cerebral, very addicted to MTGPQ, player base and rely on us for idea generation and fixes.

We really are a great group of people who honestly felt deceived, deflated, and apparently even deflowered with the recent patch. It goes a long way to spend the time to address our concerns and recognize these feelings even if you don't have a instant solution available to appease us.

I will happily work to get a list of cards together that the community agrees probably need some adjustments. We are also happy to help with how to fix these cards. Quite a few of them might be nerfs while others might need a bit of a buff. Thanks for reaching out for help on this!

Lagartha

Brigby wrote:

That's why we're working on a new system that will directly address the issue of duplicates, which should be completed within the next several months.

It think this is part of the biggest issue here. A lot of our complaints have been constantly brought up on the forums for over half a year and they don't get addressed until it reaches a breaking point.

Remember when we had that glitch with fetching creatures from the graveyard that would freeze the game and count as a loss? I don't know how much more vocal we could possibly have been about it, and the devs spent the next several months... making everything blue.

After everything was the proper, blinding amount of blue, someone FINALLY stepped up to ask about how to recreate it so they could work on it.

(I'm not picking on you, Brigby. I appreciate all you're doing for us.. but after hearing this from you and Cthulhu in response to everything we post, it's a bit frustrating.)

DumasAG

babar3355 wrote:

@Cthulhu, Hey man, I appreciate you stepping up to a very harshly worded post and doing your best to answer the contents. I appreciate it much more than you probably realize.

I am yet again encouraged that the team is aware of our gripes and is actively working on most of them. I would encourage D3 to seek the community of players for feedback on how to correct certain problems.

For instance, a great suggestion from earlier this week was to award event progression points in addition to color mastery. If you place high in contests you rank up in status and that's how you reach platinum. This immediately fixes the issue of people hovering in lower mastery tiers and abusing newer players. You could also do this with coalitions so newer coalitions are not pitted against elite coalitions.

You could then make color mastery a separate reward system where you can earn prizes by hitting certain thresholds. This would incentivize people to be creative in deck building and give them something to do between events/recharges, which I presume was the original point of color mastery. I can't take credit for it, but what a wonderful idea that hits multiple birds with one stone and really adds a lot of fun, fairness and content to the game.

And then you could reset color mastery at different intervals, forcing people to use cards they wouldn't normally to rank back up their color mastery to reach rewards for that color season. Babar's (and I'm sure others') idea does actually open up a couple new dimensions in playability of the game.

deletedgone

Cthulhu wrote:

toastie wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:

If you are getting duplicates after purchasing a few masterpiece card packs please open a ticket with Customer support. If we see that you have the duplicates in your inventory we will help compensate for that as I stated in the other post.

Does this mean that masterpiece packs are not supposed to give any duplicates, or just no duplicate masterpieces?

This means that we are doing what we can to address it for players that got this as we are evaluating the new system, cause we recognize that it's a bad user experience!!!

I created an account just to post this.

I opened an elite pack the same day this was posted by Cthulhu. Duplicate Kari Zev (I only own two of the mythics offered FWIW).

Upon reading these comments, I optimistically filed a ticket. The response came today.

Same. Old. Boilerplate. Stuff.

"We are truly sorry to hear that you were unable to receive the cards you were looking for, and we hope that you have better luck in the future. However, there is little we can do regarding this issue."

This will have been the third time that support has failed me. The other two were cheaters costing me top spots in events.

@Brigby You want to know why we feel like there is a communication problem?

More empty promises.

MightyKrakyn

spesler wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:

toastie wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:

If you are getting duplicates after purchasing a few masterpiece card packs please open a ticket with Customer support. If we see that you have the duplicates in your inventory we will help compensate for that as I stated in the other post.

Does this mean that masterpiece packs are not supposed to give any duplicates, or just no duplicate masterpieces?

This means that we are doing what we can to address it for players that got this as we are evaluating the new system, cause we recognize that it's a bad user experience!!!

I created an account just to post this.

I opened an elite pack the same day this was posted by Cthulhu. Duplicate Kari Zev (I only own two of the mythics offered FWIW).

Upon reading these comments, I optimistically filed a ticket. The response came today.

Same. Old. Boilerplate. Bulls***.

"We are truly sorry to hear that you were unable to receive the cards you were looking for, and we hope that you have better luck in the future. However, there is little we can do regarding this issue."

This will have been the third time that support has failed me. The other two were cheaters costing me top spots in events.

@Brigby You want to know why we feel like there is a communication problem?

More empty promises.

This is not a defense of Cthulhu, but he and Brigby have used very specific language throughout this update process. Like when they said we would get more rare cards with premium packs, they literally meant Rare rarity, without including a caveat that mythic rates would most likely go down by design.

Cthulhu in his post said that Masterpiece dupes from elite packs would be reimbursed...without specifically saying that mythics from elite packs would not be reimbursed. Their default is to push the good and gloss over the bad because that's their job. No blame, it's just how it is.

deletedgone

So.. reimburse the things that no one ever gets, even though the packs still cost the same.

Got it.

And then rather than educate the CSR team, just continue replying with the same form letters that they use every other time they decide to ignore a customer problem.

Sounds about right.

All because they "recognize it's a bad user experience."

Cthulhu

babar3355 wrote:

@Cthulhu, Hey man, I appreciate you stepping up to a very harshly worded post and doing your best to answer the contents. I appreciate it much more than you probably realize.

I am yet again encouraged that the team is aware of our gripes and is actively working on most of them. I would encourage D3 to seek the community of players for feedback on how to correct certain problems.

For instance, a great suggestion from earlier this week was to award event progression points in addition to color mastery. If you place high in contests you rank up in status and that's how you reach platinum. This immediately fixes the issue of people hovering in lower mastery tiers and abusing newer players. You could also do this with coalitions so newer coalitions are not pitted against elite coalitions.

You could then make color mastery a separate reward system where you can earn prizes by hitting certain thresholds. This would incentivize people to be creative in deck building and give them something to do between events/recharges, which I presume was the original point of color mastery. I can't take credit for it, but what a wonderful idea that hits multiple birds with one stone and really adds a lot of fun, fairness and content to the game.

I totally get that you guys have a pretty small team and I appreciate that everyone's time gets spread thin. But that's exactly why you should tap into your very cerebral, very addicted to MTGPQ, player base and rely on us for idea generation and fixes.

We really are a great group of people who honestly felt deceived, deflated, and apparently even deflowered with the recent patch. It goes a long way to spend the time to address our concerns and recognize these feelings even if you don't have a instant solution available to appease us.

I will happily work to get a list of cards together that the community agrees probably need some adjustments. We are also happy to help with how to fix these cards. Quite a few of them might be nerfs while others might need a bit of a buff. Thanks for reaching out for help on this!

Thank you!

We hope to update soon!

Cthulhu

spesler wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:

toastie wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:

If you are getting duplicates after purchasing a few masterpiece card packs please open a ticket with Customer support. If we see that you have the duplicates in your inventory we will help compensate for that as I stated in the other post.

Does this mean that masterpiece packs are not supposed to give any duplicates, or just no duplicate masterpieces?

This means that we are doing what we can to address it for players that got this as we are evaluating the new system, cause we recognize that it's a bad user experience!!!

I created an account just to post this.

I opened an elite pack the same day this was posted by Cthulhu. Duplicate Kari Zev (I only own two of the mythics offered FWIW).

Upon reading these comments, I optimistically filed a ticket. The response came today.

Same. Old. Boilerplate. Bulls***.

"We are truly sorry to hear that you were unable to receive the cards you were looking for, and we hope that you have better luck in the future. However, there is little we can do regarding this issue."

This will have been the third time that support has failed me. The other two were cheaters costing me top spots in events.

@Brigby You want to know why we feel like there is a communication problem?

More empty promises.

Not an empty promise, we will discuss this