This game encourages the players to not play it

DuskPaladin

Many players are intentionally not levelling their planeswalkers anymore to dodge nasty level 60 planeswalkers (especially from recurring players because of the flawed matchmaking). They are also not levelling their planeswalkers to have a much easier time since chances are that they’ll be paired against newer players’ decks with a weaker collection who, at the same time, don’t have enough runes to level their planeswalkers. You’ve only exacerbated the problem by removing Quick Battle as a means of getting runes. (players don’t see the passage of time if they are chasing after something concrete, something worthwhile, nobody wants to grind the story mode for the sake of it)

I guess that it’s hard to blame them for finding any means to have an edge in this game. The fact remains that it’s a clear exploit.

For a similar reason, a lot of players have been intentionally controlling their mastery to stay in lower tiers and dodge harder opponents. Their collection is much better than what their mastery would suggest.

Both times, the newer players are paying the price, the protective barriers provided by these two features are becoming their prisons. Wolves are roaming among them. The system needs to be changed.

Worst of all, the same players trying to abuse the system are ruining their own fun. Why collect new Mythics if they can never going to play with them because of the fear of going up in mastery? Why get new planeswalkers? (when they will never see their full potentials since they will be staying at low levels)

Do you remember a similar problem at the beginning of this game, when players used low level planeswalkers in Quick Battle? You told us that there was no reason to play with a lower level planeswalker, you made it clear that it was just better to level our planeswalkers as much as possible. Something similar needs to be done.

Added to those are the huge reductions in rewards, players are not playing the Trial of the Planes events because the payoff is not worth the investment, same with Fate is really Fair and its vehicle objectives. 

Players are starting to ask this really valid question: why do I even play anymore? 

losdamianos

Agree with all of your points, given the fact we have 5 Trial of the Planes Events every week thats 300 crystals.
System is designed so You eventually run out of them as you cant really win enough to cover your spendings and start paying $$$$ for crystals which then you will have chance/privilege of 2 hour grind to convert them to pink fluffy gems or whatever you call them these days.

Allow me to quote US president
"So sad"
Trump 2016

babar3355

The arrogance of the developers is what really gets me.    They have this attitude that the 30ish of them know better than the entirety of the community. 

They refuse to engage in a constructive dialogue, they ignore our requests for changes while focusing on their own pet projects and they genuinely think that these recent changes will lead to a more profitable game. 

 You created a competitive oriented game.  You can't remove the incentive to win and expect people to remain engaged and spending money. 

EDHdad

Many players avoid Quick Battle for as long as possible, because the prizes are the same if you're in the first batch of 3000 players or the last batch of players.  There's almost always a rush of players in the last few hours of a battle.

There are many potential fixes for this which don't involve getting rid of Quick Battle.

I'm hopeful, however, that whatever replaces Quick Battle might be reasonably enjoyable.  It sounds like they'll have the ability to ban certain cards from certain events, or require that a deck only contain creatures of a certain creature type.  Maybe they'll have events where you only play with commons and uncommons. 

Also, people will be able to save decks which are good in a particular event, without losing their favorite decks.

When paper Magic tried to deal with power creep in the early years, their first impulse was to print cards which suck.  This is how we got Fallen Empires and Homelands.  Then they decided they could push the power level of cards, but ban or restrict them from tournaments if they got to be a problem.  This is how we got Urza's Saga and the dreaded "Combo Winter".

Now, in Magic, there are different formats and most of them are reasonably fun, because the power level is generally balanced within a certain format.  So, in Vintage you can play all kinds of broken powerful cards, but your opponent can also play the same broken powerful cards.  Legacy and Modern have less powerful cards, but are still quite powerful.  Standard only plays recent cards, and usually doesn't have to ban too much.  Pauper and EDH can be fun, competitive formats, but the power levels are checked by the fact that Pauper only uses commons and EDH only uses one copy of a particular card in a 100 card deck.

My sense is that they are doing something similar, or at least intending to do something similar, with the new type of event.  I think their intention is generally to design events which are fun and challenging and worth playing.  Hopefully they'll mostly succeed.

babar3355

I remember when I was hopeful like you @EDHdad .  I can't keep it up any longer.  They just keep twisting the knife into the heart of the game I love.

shteev

There are a lot of systems in place at the moment that incentivise stagnation.

I'm not opening my prize boosters at the moment because there are Exclusive cards which are not currently available to open, but will be later.

I'm not spending my jewels on Elite packs at the moment because I'll be far more likely to get a new card if I wait for the AKH release.

I'm not levelling up Tezz2 at the moment because I don't need to; I can cover the events that already exist with the PWs I already have, and it's quite possible that an event will be introduced which I can be a big advantage in by having Tezz2 at level 1. Also, not levelling him to 60 saves me runes, and not levelling him at all saves me even more.

Gideon

IMO this game will be dead by next year. I don't know how they sustain a player base in MPQ or ATPQ if these are the practices they are using. MTG players are smart consumers maybe they aren't used to that. That's why we call **** on them so often.

Justyce

They actually should make exclusives available to purchase only and in elite packs so you can never open them up in normal packs to stop people hoarding. 

A way to make people level to 60 maybe to make it a 1 points objective to have a 60 walker so lower levels can enter but will not be able to get full points. 

With mastery they are doing ok with the rewards. But maybe only five rewards that is useful to that tier like bronze only gets runes and packs, silver gets runes and crystals , gold gets packs and crystals and play gets crystals packs and jewels.

Theros

I'd like to level up all my pws for full potential but won't. Im tired of facing the same players due to a broken matchmaker. It feels like only 10 people are playing this game at Plat level.
Runes will be harder to get, that does not encourage maxing a pw to 60

losdamianos

Justyce said:

They actually should make exclusives available to purchase only and in elite packs so you can never open them up in normal packs to stop people hoarding. 

A way to make people level to 60 maybe to make it a 1 points objective to have a 60 walker so lower levels can enter but will not be able to get full points. 

With mastery they are doing ok with the rewards. But maybe only five rewards that is useful to that tier like bronze only gets runes and packs, silver gets runes and crystals , gold gets packs and crystals and play gets crystals packs and jewels.

I didnt expect anything less from the so called "issue" on exclusives but regarding point 2 and 3 I would 1$ per day per each Planeswalker which is NOT lvl 60, ofc you would be able to purchase runes to speed it up.

point 3: prizes again You've missed the trick, not only cut all prizes for all mastery lvl but as with Planeswalkers charge anyone who is not in Platinium (soon to be Mastery) 10$ per day per colour

Steeme

I have most of my PW's to 60, and I only use those in events.

I suffer for it though.  Certain events are worse, like Fate is Rarely Fair, matchmaking is just punishing.  After suffering a loss on the Green node after the AI cascaded and flooded the board, I'm guaranteed to be out of the race (not racing anyways).  So why, on the next charge for that node, does it pit me up against a Baral cycle deck?  It proceeds to drop Baral on turn 2 and once I realized the match could take 20+ minutes I just swiped the application off.

Of course that's not enough, because it has to do the same thing on my last match where I'm just trying to make basic progression.  Why does the matchmaker put me up against a Kiora Baral + Ulvenwald + SP neverending cycle deck that no doubt countless others have just given up on?  I can understand if I have a perfect score and it wants to shake up my streak a bit, but I didn't even make progression.

With the sad state this game is in for honest players, it's painfully obvious why so many choose the exploit and game the system.

We'll see what the new update brings.  It better be an improvement because I'm starting to lose enjoyment in these events.  Even work is more enjoyable!

DuskPaladin

Steeme said:

We'll see what the new update brings.  It better be an improvement because I'm starting to lose enjoyment in these events.  Even work is more enjoyable!

Work is more rewarding, because at least after all the hardship, you get something worthwhile: money, even just 1$ is has its use and you can buy stuff with it. 20 Mana jewels? Absolutely worthless. A dupe rare after 2 hours in playing an event like Firf? Worthless.