Why I hate Mana Jewels

wink

If I grind Trial of the Planes every day, at best it’ll take me over 5 weeks in platinum to collect enough mana jewels to get 1 elite pack. That’s assuming that I’ll have enough crystals to spend 60 every weekday, and max out on the jewels each time. But at best, I’ll only have enough crystals to play half the daily events, and am likely to win no more than 2/3s of the jewels each day.

That means 3 months of grinding and spending all of my crystals to get 1 elite pack.

Then I have to wait for a good pool in the rotation. If the mythic that I most want showed up during those 3 months I was grinding, then I’m out of luck—it’ll be 9 months before it rotates back into the pool if no more mythics are released during that time. If a new set does come out (and it will), it’ll be over a year before it my card rotates back in.

(This is a mobile game—time scales of 3-months-to-a-year(!!) should not be a mobile game-player’s planning!)

OK. So a mythic I really want finally rotates into the pool. But it’s also in the pool with cards I do not want (Yaheeni), cards that I already have, or cards that I both do not want and already have (I’m looking at you Aetherwind Basker).

Just the very idea of gambling everything I’ve earned over the course of 3 months to get a chance at pulling Lightning Runner only to get a Yaheeni instead makes me feel sick to my stomach. All of that time and effort for nothing. Worse than nothing really because of the disappointment, resentment, and bitterness that it would generate.

As a result, I almost want to avoid mana jewels—they just fill me with anxiety. They don’t feel like a reward or something exciting. Instead it feels like a steady build up to inevitable disappointment.

Infested

I would think that a week to two weeks of grinding (i should be able to earn enough to get that 2 week timer and so should everyone else) would get me a chance at a good card. Any longer and the timer should be adjusted.

The largest disconnect is thinking that everyone will play the daily. I have made 60 purple crystals in a week. I wanted to purchase Gideon this week and am now out of crystals. If I keep at 60 crystals then I need just under two months for a chance at a mythic or better. I think that opening packs are better than this.

PastrySpider

Rather than working it out as X number of days, work it out as number of hours. That's the killer. Those new daily events take a long time to finish.

wereotter

So as a point to this, yes, it takes just over 5 weeks of full progression in the new event to get 400 jewels assuming you do absolutely no other events. However, Breaking points is offering 60 jewels to the top 2 coalitions, and even if you don't rank that high, you get jewels all the way down to being in the top 1,000 coalitions. Many of the other events have been offering jewels as well.

I still think the grind to getting enough jewels is quite the lengthy process, but you also have to consider that jewels are not exclusively available through this new event.

gruntface

As a recently converted cynic, isn't that the whole point though? That it takes so long to earn them that players throw their hands up in the air, reach for their wallets (umm, assume their hands are thrust back down and into pockets at this point) and press the easy button to shortcut to the packs.

And if players have gotten to this point with dozens of mythics (and used to them coming by fairly easily) quit, well then that's also generally good news for D3H as this reduces the pool of players with collections that will likely never be matched and make spending $$$ a 'wiser' move as it would be easier to get into the top rewards.

The more we hear back from the tower, the more obvious it becomes that our voices mean absolutely nothing. One player spends $700 and the post with 70+ likes is instantly rendered impotent. The players not spending any more have already spent plenty, for D3H, they are laser focused on the next round of whales, or chasers as I label them.

Heck, (goodness, I hope that isn't a profanity by the forum's standards) maybe they have a 3 year roadmap already laid out and we are simply at the transition point of cutting dead wood and starting relatively fresh with players who have no idea what it was like before. I'm sure this game has a finite duration, it just may be more finite than we expected.