Toxic Elite vs n00bs... going forward, how should they relate to each other?

babar3355

All out war

span_argoman said:

It's not really all that illogical.

The developers create this game to make money yes? That we should be able to agree on. So however they design the game, they will need to be able to make enough of a profit from it. I believe that we can agree on.
(In comparison, my AKH collection is at 84% and AER is around 70%.)

My question to you is what would they spend money on if they have essentially all the cards and planeswalkers? Top players could afford to hoard hundreds of packs to open only on the addition of the paid-exclusive Mythics as a sign of how much excess there was in that era. At the same time they hoard thousands of Crystals to awaiting the release of each new set.

I will say again, yes I think it is pretty illogical to conclude that the only possible direction of a profitable game is to limit prizes and prevent players from attaining collections.  It forces you to take the stance that everything else in the game has to stay relatively static.

First, I reject the premise that they could hoard sufficient crystals and packs to get all of the mythics. There are plenty of things that D3 could do to prevent this. Perhaps cut back on the amount of rewarded booster and crystals for top players/coalitions. Also, you could make hoarded packs not have newly released cards. They could even tie a specific currency to a specific set so that you could only use KLD block crystals to buy KLD block cards/walkers.  

It is only within the isolated view from the current paradigm that this argument holds even a little credibility. 

And only a little, because we know that many players are willing to buy PWs whom they KNOW will be available for crystals in just a few weeks.  I was one of these players pre-austerity.  Also, if rewards are truly worthwhile there is a big incentive to purchase packs and cards early to try and get a good start and build your collection. I think this would be a huge incentive for players to buy exclusives early in each set. 

I used to spend several hundred dollars a month during SOI and KLD blocks before austerity.   It was fun to support a game I loved and play with the newest and greatest cards.  I literally can't bring myself to spend any money now that prizes aren't worth winning.

But the most damning evidence is other games that are legitimately free to play and let you have all of the tools for free.  DotA from Valve is one of the most successful games in history and is 100% free to play.  They still make masses of profits on sales of skins, couriers, and other totally arbitrary in game content that has no impact on winning.  Others include the Magic Duels series that is soon being released as Magic Arena.  My bet is that you can eventually collect all of the content for free, but you will also be incentivized to spend money to get it more quickly.  All of these games have servers, employees, etc.

 

Inflation is a devaluation of the currency in terms of its purchasing power. The applicable comparison in MtGPQ is that the money people put into the game was being devalued by the high amount of rewards dished out in the game. Why pay $80(?) for 1,850 Crystals when you can earn it in-game in two weeks?

But do I understand that giving a group of players guaranteed Mythics and the rest little in the means of obtaining guaranteed Mythics will lead to a widening disparity in the player base and the problems that come along with it? Yes. In most games if people feel like the leader is running away with their lead and they aren't the one leading, they will eventually stop playing when they feel like the gap is too wide.
Do I believe that giving players enough free currency and rewards in-game to the extent that they can start hoarding massive hoards worth hundreds of dollars (based on the in-game Crystal prices) every set would have an impact on the developer's revenue flows? Yes. Because what would players be willing to spend money on?

Your point that each player is an individual economy is an interesting one.  However, I knew a lot of whales, and could be considered one myself, pre-austerity.  Post-austerity I can only name a handful who have stuck around and continued to spend.  Maybe more have joined them and the game is super profitable now.  But the fact that Hibernum shuttered their doors and went out of business is a pretty strong piece of evidence that austerity didn't drive a huge increase in revenues.

On your second bullet, I do not think that a select group should be given mythics and everyone else should get little. I think the implementation of jewels was a good idea and with a few tweaks could be even better.  However, it went from top 5 finish getting 1 mythics and 125 crystals and 1 booster to a rare, 60 crystals and a booster.  This did nothing to lift the little man.  Quite the opposite. In fact their prizes went down as well.

I advocate for good prizes across the spectrum. Of course you scale it up so that their is an incentive to win, or you ruin the incentive that fueled me and others to spend lots of money during the earlier sets.

 

The whole point of austerity is that one has already overspent by overborrowing from the future self. When you go into debt, you can afford more than you normally can. To correct this balance, you would need to spend less than you can afford to start reducing your debt. Obviously when you're spending less than you can afford, your general level of welfare is worse than when you were spending more than you could afford.

If you can find me one credible economist who thought Greek austerity was a good idea ex or post-ante I would love to see the article.  Typically if you are trying to get out of debt it is a bad idea to lose 1/3 of your income (huge unemployment).  It seems more logical to try and increase your income and grow your way out of the debt burden.

 

I'm with the idea of having an ELO system for fairer matchmaking but it won't address the issue of top players running away with an outsized collection of good cards. The whole issue about the reward system is that rewards must go up every time someone progresses in a tier. Otherwise, people would rather sandbag in a lower tier to get better rewards for less effort which we have witnessed before in the history of this game.

But on the other hand, if the rewards slope is too steep then it becomes near impossible for newer players to catch up. Think of the amount of free rewards as the speed at which you're driving your car. A car going on average at 20mph is highly unlikely to be able to catch a car going on average at 40mph.

And it's not exactly easy to design a rewards system that has rewards going up every tier while still keeping rewards somewhat flat enough that the top players don't run away in terms of card collection and amassed resources.

On the ELO system, you can set the incentive structure to try and minimize abuse.  First off, are you are saying that players would win top 5 in bronze, then tank the next event to drop out of silver into bronze, rinse and repeat?  Because if you are always going for top 5 you couldn't really stay in a lower tier.  One way to solve for this would be to have a limited pool of mythic prizes in lower tiers.  Say only 3-5 of the available mythics. You could tier this up to all available at the top tier.  You could also simply have a decay factor for each player in lower tiers where after the first win or two you would get a depreciated amount of mana jewels with each subsequent event finish.  Again there are an infinite number of ways you could seek to resolve this type of abuse.

Listen @span_argoman, I respect your opinion and appreciate you being a positive and insightful influence on the community.  Hell, we would love to have a talented player like you in GoblinPile.  I also appreciate you actually attempting to substantiate the claim that austerity was the only plausible path for a game with a future.  I am utterly sick of that "austerity was necessary" comment being bandied about and then all other ideas are just dismissed as if the conclusion has been finalized.  I am fine to have an honest and open debate about it, but I just can't stomach the unsubstantiated conclusion that there is literally no other way for the game to succeed.  We just have to have less fun, play for worthless prizes, and rely on nothing but blind luck or lots of money to get powerful cards.  In my opinion, the current state of affairs is not a game with a bright future.

Regardless, thanks for your honest rebuttal.  But yes, I stand by my point that the massive prize nerfing was a net negative for the game, the community, and the developers that was ill conceived and poorly executed.

bk1234

luckyvulpi said:

@khurram
If you seriously don't consider someone in the top coalition getting the top rewards for placing in the top ranks to not be elite, then I don't know what to tell you.  I'd consider that type of person to be elite and I'm sure others would agree.

If we were talking about 'elites' as long time veteran players who stuck around and care about the game and are generally nice friendly people then I'm sure that group of 'elites' are as nice as they like to claim but historically elites have always been those at the top.

As the leader of a top 10 coalition, this isn't always the case -- this summer my team purposefully fell off of the leaderboard to bring in some new to game players and give them the opportunities to get better cards. They didn't perform as well as the rest of us, but they don't have "elite" collections and it took hard work for them to become "elite" players. 

Sidenote-- we kept them and now they are near perfect in all events --even with their collections of mostly commons and uncommons and the free rares they got my competing with us. 

I, on the other hand have a HUGE collection, have been on a top 10 team since day 1 and struggle every time we get a new set and I need to learn new mechanics. 

Another example that is contrary to this definition is @OhBoy -- who I would consider to be an elite player -- he is perfect or near perfect in pretty much everything in Standard, Legacy and Pauper -- yet he does not play for a top 10 coalition -- in fact I think his coalition finishes top 50-100 usually. 

Or take a look at the TP9 top 20 every week. Nearly half of our highest scoring players come from our T50 and casual coalitions. 

My point is -- there's no such thing as an elite player, except in the mind of that own player and we need to stop using the term all together. 

Ohboy

At the heart of the matter is the misunderstanding that austerity is the recovery plan.

It's not.

It's the result of horrible planning that came before.


If for example you maxed out all your credit cards and are 200k in debt, the best thing for YOU obviously is someone to come along and give you a well paying job and big bonus.

But in the meantime you don't live in fairyland, so you have to eat instant noodles and take the bus to work every day for the long forseeable future.

Now imagine the reason you were in debt is because you lent money to a friend. He's never going to pay you back. And now he's telling you it's such a bad idea to live such a pathetic life. Just get more credit cards! We can party like we used to do!

You are that friend.

luckyvulpi

All out war

@bken1234
While 

luckyvulpi

All out war

Okay seriously forum?  I spent my bus ride typing out a comment editing it and reading it over and it just says 'while'... ugh.  That wasn't even the first word on my final post, it was what I had before I edited it.  I couldn't even see the 'post comment' button for the first day after I joined.  If you want players to post you should tell them to wait for a day to get approved instead of having them wonder if they did something wrong when they joined since the leave comment button is gone.

Ugh...  This is what I was going to say:

Being an elite player doesn't always mean being in a top coalition and only being in a top coalition.  The player you described who placed highly in single player events (and pauper whatever that is) fits my definition of elite as well.  The phrase elite player has meaning and will continue to have meaning as long as people use it and others accept it.  This thread, the voters of the poll and you yourself for calling someone elite shows that it has not lost its meaning.  A few outliers who don't fit the exact image of elite doesn't automatically destroy that.


I do however think toxic elite is a bit outdated since too coalitions have gotten less exclusive and toxic since so many players have left.  If I remember correctly back then there were coalitions that had smaller feeder coalitions that new joined would have to join in order to see if they were good enough for the main coalition.  Yesterday I read a thread where coalitions were thinking of merging because they had lost so many players.  I havnt been in an active coalition in a while but even I can see that there is a very clear difference in the attitudes of coalitions then and now

babar3355

All out war

Ohboy said:

At the heart of the matter is the misunderstanding that austerity is the recovery plan.

It's not.

It's the result of horrible planning that came before.


If for example you maxed out all your credit cards and are 200k in debt, the best thing for YOU obviously is someone to come along and give you a well paying job and big bonus.

But in the meantime you don't live in fairyland, so you have to eat instant noodles and take the bus to work every day for the long forseeable future.

Now imagine the reason you were in debt is because you lent money to a friend. He's never going to pay you back. And now he's telling you it's such a bad idea to live such a pathetic life. Just get more credit cards! We can party like we used to do!

You are that friend.

Except that D3 isn't in debt...  and there is no reasonable argument for why many players shouldn't be able to collect the whole set.

The only possible argument for austerity was that the mythic bonanza was harming revenues.  This was either because the barrier to get to a competitive level was too high or top players simply had no reason to spend money.

If it was the first it could have been resolved by increasing drop rates and/or fixing matchmaking issue via an ELO or similar system. If it was the second one then they could have reworked the prize system (which they did). However, they did it in such a hamfisted manner that they ended up making things way worse for their revenue line.  Again, I can only speculate this because they are a private company.  I am prevented from naming players on these forums, but I can easily name 10 whales that quit the game or quit spending money post patch.  I can also name 30-40 players who quit the game or quit spending anything who weren't free to play in the past but weren't whales. Also, ya know.. Hibernum went bankrupt.

Can we stop with the ridiculous analogy that someone was in debt?  They thought they were losing revenue by being too generous with prizes to top players (probably true).  Their solution was a brain dead mass austerity package which led to huge player attrition, no change on the leaderboards, and by all signs (players + Hibernum closing) it caused them to lose even more revenue.

Ohboy

Net revenue = x/month
Current promotion causes x to decrease in future for current gains. 

You described this yourself. 

This is how debt works.

In case you're confused, I'm talking about the game economy not actual cash. 

babar3355

All out war

Ah, so D3 intentionally tanked their current revenue and put Hibernum out of business because they have clairvoyant foresight and know that this change will eventually lead to even more outsized profits. 

Give me a break. There is no way they knew the repercussions of their austerity would be as severe as they were.  And even if they did there were dozens of other solutions that would have had a superior long term impact and way less of a short term impact. 

Ohboy

You seem to be unwilling to accept the fact that sometimes the options are bad and worse, not good and bad. There were no good options.

Your idea of borrowing even more is... Well... I already told you what role you're playing.

You know that guy who solves his maxed out credit cards by applying for more credit? 

His only realistic options are scrimp and save or drown in debt. Increasing his debt and doubling down with more partying is not an option.

As for gentler options... I think there's a good chance you're actually complaining about the gentler option right now. 

babar3355

All out war

I spent 2 full posts explaining other options that D3 had. 

I am done having a conversation with someone who is intent on calling D3 in debt when they have an unlimited printing press.

Ohboy

Germany had an unlimited printing press they used to get out of debt. Do you know what happened? 

babar3355

All out war

We have been over this... no trade.. no inflation.  We done here?

Sarahschmara

Attempting to understand and be respectful of each other's position

Ohboy said:

Germany had an unlimited printing press they used to get out of debt. Do you know what happened? 

I tried to stay out of it but... sheesh. I don’t understand why you’re so insistent that digital goods are equivalent to physical money. @Ohboy

//Removed Insult -Brigby

TheDragonHermit

Ohboy said:

You seem to be unwilling to accept the fact that sometimes the options are bad and worse, not good and bad. There were no good options.

Your idea of borrowing even more is... Well... I already told you what role you're playing.

You know that guy who solves his maxed out credit cards by applying for more credit? 

His only realistic options are scrimp and save or drown in debt. Increasing his debt and doubling down with more partying is not an option.

As for gentler options... I think there's a good chance you're actually complaining about the gentler option right now. 

There is a major difference though between the austerity of countries and MtGPQ's that you are ignoring. By drastically reducing prizes and the overall output of cards in an effort to increase revenue, they damaged the value of their product, making it less desirable, as can be seen with the Not.Another.Dime movement. A better option may have been to remove guarantied Mythics as prizes while not touching the size of bulk packs and slightly improving drop rates, thereby improving the quality of the product and driving demand. While there might be grumbles from the community, it would not be quite as bad.

Ohboy

Sarahschmara said:

Ohboy said:

Germany had an unlimited printing press they used to get out of debt. Do you know what happened? 

I tried to stay out of it but... sheesh. I don’t understand why you’re so insistent that digital goods are equivalent to physical money. @Ohboy

//Removed Insult -Brigby

Really? You can't tell that their revenue depends on selling digital goods? You can't tell that this involves actual physical money when that transaction place?

You can't connect the dots that the average player will buy less if they get more for free? Is this not human nature? You don't recognise that the goods here are non-perishable and do not expire? When you get a free deploy, you never need to buy one again. This isn't about handing out free samples. Every card they hand out is a card you never need to buy again. It's money out of their pocket.

A better option may have been to remove guarantied Mythics as prizes while not touching the size of bulk packs and slightly improving drop rates, thereby improving the quality of the product and driving demand. While there might be grumbles from the community, it would not be quite as bad.

I literally suggested this a year ago. I said no guaranteed mythics. Give more packs. It wasn't a popular idea. 

We have been over this... no trade.. no inflation. We done here?

Of course not. What do you think you're doing when you buy stuff from the game? It's called trade. What are they selling you? Cards. What is this thing you think doesn't matter? Card supply. Of course it matters. Of course there's trade. Just because you can't trade between yourselves does not mean there isn't a risk of inflation.

babar3355

All out war

Ohboy said:

Really? You can't tell that their revenue depends on selling digital goods? You can't tell that this involves actual physical money when that transaction place?

You can't connect the dots that the average player will buy less if they get more for free? Is this not human nature? You don't recognise that the goods here are non-perishable and do not expire? When you get a free deploy, you never need to buy one again. This isn't about handing out free samples. Every card they hand out is a card you never need to buy again. It's money out of their pocket.

We have been over this... no trade.. no inflation. We done here?

Of course not. What do you think you're doing when you buy stuff from the game? It's called trade. What are they selling you? Cards. What is this thing you think doesn't matter? Card supply. Of course it matters. Of course there's trade. Just because you can't trade between yourselves does not mean there isn't a risk of inflation.

Not sure why you have to belittle Sarah because she thinks your analogy is terrible.  I think it is extremely easy to make the case that if you can't earn good rewards from competing, there is little reason to pay for cards.  If you can't use your deploy to win more good cards then you don't actually care if you get deploy or not.  We don't actually know whether they would have made more or less money if they never had mythic prizes, but it is not a simple connect the dots as you rudely imply.

And I know you understand this, but since you insist on pretending that the relationship between a game publisher and the customers is equivalent to an actual economy, I must refute once again.  D3 has no debt... they don't go into debt by "giving" away cards.  They didn't take out a huge loan to "pay" us all a Thopter Pie Network.  They didn't go into debt to supply mythic prizes for all top 10 coalitions.  It's a terrible analogy as Sarah and many others have pointed out but you decided to die on this sword.

Your card supply analogy makes a critical and erroneous assumption that limiting supply will increase demand.  Well then why don't they just increase the cost of mythic bundles to $100,000,000 and decrease drop rates of mythics to 0.000000000001%? Certainly there is a profit maximization point, but it seems clear they didn't find it with recent nerfs to prizes, card costs, etc. If you insist on calling quantity demanded "inflation" then I think we can end this economic debate here.