Myth(ic)Busters

DuskPaladin

Today, we’ll be debunking some myths regarding Mythics!

Myth #1: Free Mythics

For some reason, some players are happy with the new reward system: the removal of Mythics from Top 10 coalitions and Top 5 in individual events, stating that those top players will finally stop getting those “free Mythics”.

First off, there’s nothing free about those Mythics. Did you think that you only need to enter one of those top 10 coalitions and collect your 1–2 Mythics each week doing nothing? It’s a team effort, if you’re slacking off, you’ll be penalizing your team, and you might fall off the top 10. It’s a constant effort at doing your best at this game.

Also, how does one become part of a top? With a lot of dedication, time, effort and skills. Yes, many players put a lot of efforts but aren’t in a top coalition. Did they put as much time and effort as said players, though? They might get there eventually, but maybe the time invested in the game is still lacking. (And, if you really are putting as much effort as the top players, then be reassured that someone will notice you soon enough.) For instance, do you always pursue every secondary objective, do you play past progression reward, do you play in every event to get as many prizes as possible, even Quick Battles, do you discuss about decks all day long with your friends in the coalition? In every domain, there will be those who excel at their art, and they should be rewarded.

Let’s take the example of two well-known players and posters: Shteev and Ohboy.
I don’t always agree with them, but one thing for sure, they are among the best players in this game. Shteev doesn’t have the biggest collection on the team, but he sure knows how to make the best use of out of it. His patience and tactical play are top-notch, he’s also really passionate about the game.

Ohboy, while I don’t know him personally, is always at the top of Quick Battle events, he’s a QB grinder, putting countless hours playing the game. He’s no doubt experienced, and having faced numerous decks, you bet that he must have seen many card interactions. He doesn’t seem to be in a top coalition, but that’s his choice, and he’s still getting the Mythic reward from the Quick Battle events.

They got there because of their dedication, and were rewarded Mythics as a result, not because they started with Mythics. They could start playing from scratch and I’m sure in time they would still get there.
You may not wish or be able to be as committed, and it’s totally fine, be please don’t expect to get the same rewards, or be happy that their rewards got cut off.

Do we say that doctors get “free money”, or athletes “free medals”? Of course not! If I decide to start playing tennis today, it would be really unreasonable of me to think that I could defeat Raphael Nadal, or ask that his equipment be removed and his prize money lowered since it gives him too much of an advantage for me to catch up with him.


Myth #2: The Mythic reward removal helps non-top players to catch up

That’s also false and in fact, it actually penalizes those same non-top players. People mentioned it before, there’s a diminishing return regarding your Mythic's count especially considering the abysmal drop rates.

The drop rate system was already keeping those with a larger collection in check. More cards = more chances of dupes. Fewer cards = more chances of a new card. Every new Mythic for a player with a larger collection (like a top player) is not worth the same as for a normal player.

The top player might get more Mythics, but it won’t be as useful for him as for the newer player.

Let’s say that you want to be competitive with Koth: you only need big, preferably hasty, creatures. Basically any Eldrazi will do. From there, you can slowly update your creatures as you get cooler ones. The creatures are interchangeable: Ulrich, Geier Reach Bandit, Angel Castigator, Decimator of Provinces, etc. It’s only a matter of preference about killing your opponent with Emrakul or with Desolation Twins. I may be pursuing a Skysovereign rather than a Hellkite Tyrant, but they are basically the same. While for you, any or those Mythics would represent a significant improvement.

There’s also the matter of Archetypes. Let’s take Kiora for instance: you can go Ramp, Drowner, Baral, Prized Amalgam, etc. For instance, my Drowner Kiora is already really solid, but I’d like to get a Ulvenward Hydra to try a Ramp strategy for a change of pace. That Hydra might be not compatible with my Drowner deck and vice versa. I’m also limited by the 10 maximum card slots.

You, as a newer player, only need the cards from one of those archetypes, or another completely different one, to compete on an equal footing. Later, you can set yourself other goals like me, but your deck will already be functional.

By removing the Mythic rewards, it either didn’t affect you in the slightest (if you were always playing casually), or it fact it will prevent you from ever catch up.

The change you should be happy about is if D3H decides to give everyone more chances at getting Mythics not less chances.

Also, why did you want to catch up exactly? Surely, to be among the best, and get the most chances at pulling Mythics and building your collection? With their changes, there’s really less incentive for you (or the top players) to try to compete for the top spot as you get a really underwhelming reward.
No one wins with getting less Mythics.

It’s less fun for you and it’s less fun for the top players. (I just want to collect cards and build and try new decks. I would actually be happy with getting a new Depala even though chances are that I’ll never play with her).

The saddest part is that as of now, if I decided to take a sabbatical from this game, when I’ll come back, chances are that you still won’t have caught up with me because of their drop rates and Mythic removal.

We have nukes, the Power that be decided that no one is allowed to get any new nukes. You don’t have nukes. And ways to get new nukes are much harder. Guess who’ll be making the rules? Good luck competing against us.

TLDR: Myth #1: Free Mythics. They aren't, you have to work hard to get them, and deserve them.
Myth #2: The Mythics removal helps newer players. False, more Mythics would in fact be more beneficial to the newer players than to the established ones. It actually hurts the newer players more while insulting the experienced ones for their dedication.

majincob

I was really excited to hear that they were introducing jewels and masterpieces because this was the golden opportunity to devalue mythics and make them much more accessible to everyone.

Masterpieces provide a new chase card for whales so they can start allowing people to complete mythic sets.

Jewels allow for a more granular reward so that more people can earn partial mythics and build up to them.

All the pieces are there, but they decided to take the opposite approach and increase the difficulty of getting mythics. So much disappointment.

Infested

They really need to up the rate for the new crystals to around 5x more than they already are.

TibbyGenn

well said, exactly this! but who in their right minds, think less rewards for everyone is beneficial to anyone.

Dupes are the natural equaliser not less rewards.

Ampmp11

I really do think it's lost on some people how much time and effort is devoted to this game as a top player

THEMAGICkMAN

OK I disagree with a bunch of whats said here, so lets get started!

DISCLAIMER This is my own personal opinion as a semi-casual player. I am not trying to attack anyone.

Response to myth 1:

First of all, I understand you work for your "free mythics", trust me I do. And I agree that they shouldn't be labelled as "free", however, no matter how hard you work, you shouldn't get such a bit boost over players who aren't at that level of play. The mythics for top-10 coalition rewards only made the rich get richer, the rewards were iffy for everyone, there's a pretty big difference between 2 guaranteed mythics per week, and 2 guaranteed rares per week. You can try and argue that all you want - saying that most mythics aren't good or that you usually get dupes or that you can compete without mythics really doesn't change a thing. The fact is that getting guaranteed mythics is way better than guaranteed rares. However I don't think that your coalitions rewards should have been slashed as brutally as they were. Reigning them in just a bit would've been fine - I'll talk later on in this post about how I would like to see the coalition reward structure

Also if you can top 5 an event you really deserve a lot more than we're getting right now. like 200-300 jewels or a LOT of crystals in addition to a rare and some packs. Again I'll talk later in this post about reward structure.

Response to Myth 2:

I kind of agree with this. But only kind of. The amount of mythics I'm getting as a semi-casual/semi-competitive player really didn't change much - in fact it got better. Now with jewels I get part of a mythic every now and then. However the point you made about why people move up is a brilliant one. Definitely agree with that point. Without joining a top-10 coalition I never really had any chance at moving up to a really high level of play, which isn't happening. (since I lead my own coalition, but to be honest even if I wasn't it would still be the same. Even though I have several great mythics, play quite a bit everyday, play every event - except TotP of course - and chase after every point I can)

TLDR; Yes your top-10 coalition mythics aren't free, and you do deserve them, however the gap between people getting 2 mythics a week and people getting 2 rares a week is too large.

Yes, no top-10 mythics is bad for you top-10 players, but the IDEA of jewels would've made it all way better. The excecution was horrible, and made it worse overall for everyone, considering the progression reward nerfs as well as all the other reward nerfs.


Here's how I thought the update would go, specifically for reward structures and jewel payouts, and how I'd really hoped it'd be.

Elite Packs - Choose 1 of 6 mythics for 600 jewels, with a 25% chance to be upgraded to any Masterpiece.
Other booster pack details were all listed in the update, and I thought those changes were overall pretty OK. having guaranteed rare packs at 300 crystals made them more accessible for newer/casual players. In reality I'm not super pleased with the outcome, as the drop rates are still HORRIBLE.

Jewels. The packs for them are 600 jewels, and I'd hoped that you'd be able to get somewhere between 50 and 75 for progression in RatC for platinum, and no less than 40 for silver. bronze does not have jewel rewards for RatC.

All other progression rewards would remain untouched.

The coalition prize structure for RatC would look something like this:

top 2: 200 jewels, X crystals, Premium Pack, rare from current set
top 3-10: 150 jewels, X crystals, Super Pack, rare from current set
top 11-25: 125 jewels, X crystals, Booster pack, rare from current set
top 26-50: 100 jewels, X crystals, Booster pack, rare from current set
top 51-100: 100 jewels, less crystals than top 50, rare from current set
etc. etc.

Perhaps the jewel amounts are a bit to large, but you get the idea - instead of 200 people getting 2 mythics a week, its now thousands of people all getting a bit of a mythic, with the top 200 getting a rather sizeable amount of one. The change isn't even that drastic, and honestly, there are already a ton of mythics going around at higher level, and this change would bring them to lower level players, but at a slower rate. Also, this would make people tier up - because (for a casual/semi-competitive player) who doesn't want to try out your new mythics right?

Overall, in response to the update and specifically the changes to rewards, the idea was great, the execution was horrible. really horrible.

(Yes I know the last part was a bit off-topic, but I felt like I should share my thoughts on the matter, and its somewhat relevant to the topic)

Ohboy

Trying to post less but since I saw my name here...

Myth #1 : when I introduced the game to a friend of mine, he made a point to attempt every event and spend his morning commute on qbs. Within 2 months, he was a frequent top 5 name in gold tier. It's not a herculean effort to play and do well in 2 events a week.

Myth #2 : Of course it doesn't. The time to pop that bubble was when it was starting to form, not now. Because they waited this long, everyone gets to feel the hurt now, and for a longer time. But pop it later(which is what everyone is campaigning for), and there wouldn't be anything left to salvage. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced they're not already too late. As pointed out, power levels will take forever to normalize.

There were those who defended the practice of awarding the top 1% of the players 99% of the freely awarded mythics all these months. I wish I were more surprised that they're also leading the mob who complain about these austerity measures.

babar3355

Ohboy wrote:

Trying to post less but since I saw my name here...

Myth #1 : when I introduced the game to a friend of mine, he made a point to attempt every event and spend his morning commute on qbs. Within 2 months, he was a frequent top 5 name in gold tier. It's not a herculean effort to play and do well in 2 events a week.

Myth #2 : Of course it doesn't. The time to pop that bubble was when it was starting to form, not now. Because they waited this long, everyone gets to feel the hurt now, and for a longer time. But pop it later(which is what everyone is campaigning for), and there wouldn't be anything left to salvage. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced they're not already too late. As pointed out, power levels will take forever to normalize.

There were those who defended the practice of awarding the top 1% of the players 99% of the freely awarded mythics all these months. I wish I were more surprised that they're also leading the mob who complain about these austerity measures.

So, a skilled player became an elite player in 2 months? Why then did we have to nerf all of the rewards? I bet plenty of top 10 coalitions would have loved to have him on their team. Clearly the hypothesized "mythic gap" was not so daunting to your friend even with a lot of top players hanging out in the gold tier.

But honestly, I don't necessarily disagree that 2 mythics a week for top coalitions and none for other coalitions was a good method. I agree with Magickman on the point that the crystal system could have fixed that. Even if top coalitions got 400 crystals per win, giving say 100-200 crystals for 10-25 would have helped level the playing field. Ok, nerf all of them down further, but not to the obnoxious levels they are now.

@OhBoy, you are astute to call the current system austerity. And its working out in MTGPQ about as well as it did in Europe. And I agree that making the game more accessible to newer players is a good idea, but this is the most backwards way of doing so conceivable. Why not split the brackets into additional tiers? Why not balance the card pool so that mythics are still better than rares, but not unbelievably better in most cases? Why not add more PvE content like story mode? How about doing set rotations for certain events so that we don't have to keep up the power creep and newer players aren't disadvantaged as much?

There have been literally dozens of ideas bantered around BEFORE and after this repressive update, but the solution was to totally screw everyone and take the fun out of the game in order to level the playing field?

That's as close to a communist sickle and hammer as I could get...

Nezumi

So forget free mythics for top ten. How about 500 crystals like 1st place in QB over the weekend? Those crystals won't buy much anything, save a few garbage dupes in packs. It will still barely increase the mythic count but have top 10 coalitions actually try. Where is the incentive now? An extra 10 jewels? It's ridiculous. There's no carrot. I'm not sure the issue is that people are mad only because they don't get free mythics. It's because there's no benefit to even being in the top 10 now. Payouts are horrendous. There's no incentives. There needs to be a bigger incentive. If not mythics, just pick something else. Notice I didn't say jewels, since jewels will translate to mythics and masterpieces. But give out hundreds of crystals and people might want to participate in that.

Matthew

losdamianos wrote:

Nezumi wrote:

So forget free mythics for top ten. How about 500 crystals like 1st place in QB over the weekend? Those crystals won't buy much anything, save a few garbage dupes in packs. It will still barely increase the mythic count but have top 10 coalitions actually try. Where is the incentive now? An extra 10 jewels? It's ridiculous. There's no carrot. I'm not sure the issue is that people are mad only because they don't get free mythics. It's because there's no benefit to even being in the top 10 now. Payouts are horrendous. There's no incentives. There needs to be a bigger incentive. If not mythics, just pick something else. Notice I didn't say jewels, since jewels will translate to mythics and masterpieces. But give out hundreds of crystals and people might want to participate in that.

-Removed Insults-

Name-calling aside, I agree with this. I spent several months looking at top 10 coalitions and wishing I could have that guaranteed flow of goodies. Then I decided to do something about it when I saw Mainloop advertising an open spot in Necropotence on the subreddit. I was very surprised at how accessible this group was, and how welcoming.

It really does take hard work and dedication to stay competitive at these upper levels, and I think the rewards should be commensurate with that amount of participation. It's a shame that they've decided to go the way of the Occupy movements. It greatly devalues what I've been working for, and thus is very demotivating.