A Plea to Oktagon and D3

babar3355

Although I am a bit trepidatious about having a psychologist trying to manipulate my mind behind the veil, I honestly couldn't agree more with your sentiment and your ideas.  It really ties into my initial summary about how D3 didn't pursue the optimal path because they don't really understand the MTG player base. (Or maybe any player base).

But yes, your ideas are some pretty basic solutions that would make for a more enjoyable experience for all players.  Well done @kinesia !

 

span_argoman

I'm not sure we're missing the point of discussion. I guess it seemed like it since I only took one point which I had issue with to highlight in my short reply. But I felt it was a case of trying to force facts to fit the narrative than the other way round which I very much disagree with. In any case, I'll leave my reply to that aspect to the bottom of the reply and focus on the other points as requested.

Anyway, we are kind of missing the point of the discussion.  I don't think we should go back to the late 2017 gameplay or reward structures.  They have made quite a few improvements to the game.  However, I still think they have a big time issue with long term revenue if they don't fix two major problem.

1. Newer player progression is extremely slow & grindy.  If you don't believe me start an alt. Even as an expert player the game is very hard to get your feet under you and be competitive.  Once you do progress beyond story mode competition is fierce and progression is still very slow.

I agree on this. It really does take ages for a newer player to be competitive. The nerfing of rewards across the board didn't help. Standard did, though only to a limited extent. This is an issue for any growing card game. As the card pool grows bigger, it becomes more and more difficult to get the necessary cards to compete with the other players.

Hearthstone as the top electronic card game is still figuring out ways to make the game more welcoming to new players after their switch to card expansions without Adventures (basically what MtGPQ does). They have a pity timer which sets a hard limit on bad RNG for card drops and a card crafting system. They recently implemented measures like guaranteeing a Legendary (Mythic equivalent) in the first 10 packs of each expansion, no duplicates for Legendaries, and you get a maximum of 2 copies of a card in a pack (Hearthstone allows up to 2 copies of a card in a deck).

Before people start clamouring for the same in MtGPQ, I would like to add that Hearthstone gives a lot less free packs than MtGPQ. You expect to earn 5.2 packs a week in Hearthstone as a diligent player. You get 8 packs a week (plus 1-2 Basic Booster depending on your tier) as an MtGPQ player from Progression alone, Crystals on top of that to buy more packs (200 to 295 per week excluding Ranking or Coalition Rewards), and the 2-hourly free cards. Drop rates are approximately the same in both games.

Being a top ranking Platinum player in a top ranking coalition almost doubles your Crystal earnings, and the above calculations are before factoring in TotP which is a net positive for Platinum players. Hearthstone gives out Ranking rewards once a month, and the reward for the highest rank (Legend) is... 3 shiny Commons, 1 shiny Epic (Rare) and a cosmetic card back.

In any case, it's a work-in-progress for the developers to figure out what is the best way to keep newer players interested in the game. I believe the pity timer would be a good idea to implement since it gives a set expectation to players on the number of packs they need to open to get a card of a certain rarity. Mitigates the negative feels which @Kinesia was talking about.

2. The rewards for top players don't warrant spending money to gain an advantage. Sorry, players aren't going to play for nothing forever (even a trophy would be nice.. think 10 top 5 finishes in Platinum trophy). 

The entire point of my post is to try and solve for these two problem.  If it takes you 3 months to get your first mythic (like it did me) most people probably won't keep playing.  If you open 65 packs of Kaladesh cards (like I did last week) and don't get a single mythic (not even a dupe) players of all levels are going to get frustrated and quit.

Again, I am happy to defend my posts and my points.  But I would just love some dissenters to honestly think about the in-game experience of players and consider how D3 could drive them to spend more money over the intermediate to long term.

So right now, it seems like a top player earns approximately 1.5 times the amount of card packs and Crystals (after including ranking, coalition and TotP rewards) which a non-competitive player completing TG and event Progressions earns. My question would be what multiple would be deemed adequate rewards to you. How should this be allocated between individual and coalition ranking rewards? Bear in mind that the greater the multiple, the harder it is for newer players to catch up to the existing elites.

And if we are adjusting the baseline rewards upwards so that the game is more accessible to newer players, the multiple will shrink.

(Your pack opening example is why I think the pity timer is an amazingly effective idea.)

babar3355 said:

This is just as much cherrypicking as what you claim I was pointing out.  For all you know the graph could have steeply shot up for the prior 6-8 months with the release of the SOI block and the era of abundance.  Perhaps spending went way up after that release and subsequently fell in late 2017. 

But to your question, what was happening during Nov.-Dec of 2016? The community was sick of the long delay in new content, masses of server crashes, rampant cheating, frustration over drop rates / duplicates, and still terrible progression potential for new players from late in 2016 and early in 2017. Oh, and casting 5 Eldrazi in every game was pretty awful too. 

Perhaps D3 perceived a drop off in revenue as related to being too generous as they ignored our many pleas to fix other important aspects of the game.  In fact, here is one of the most read posts in the history of the forums that I posted in mid January 2017. 

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/57380/d3-prioritization-thread/p1

It's easy to look back and forget that the community was largely upset with D3 well before the "austerity" package of mid March. 

Also, I should probably be more careful in linking graphs like the one that shows D3 revenue rankings. I have to admit that I have no idea what they are actually showing.  Is it trailing 12 month revenue?  Trailing 1 month?  It can't possibly be just today or it would be way more lumpy when patches hit or Baral went on sale.  Also, interesting that the patch doesn't even show as an App update on March 3rd, although it definitely was...

It's unfortunately that the website doesn't show rankings further back than 1 year. As I recall the last time someone posted the link to Searchman early this year, the revenue rankings were indeed higher than 2017. There was an increasing trend from the release of BFZ all the way till SOI, then this sharp drop in the middle of EM.

Long delay in new content

SOI was released 11 Aug 2016. EM was released on 19 Oct 2016. Kaladesh was released on 8 Dec 2016. What long delay?

Masses of server crashes

We're picking on server crashes which were already happening in the sets prior to EM as the reason that the app's ranking dropped by 200 places over 2 weeks? This was nothing new and while it could be a contributing factor is unlikely to have triggered such a steep drop alone.

Rampant cheating

If the topic "Cheat or bug?" commented on by Grizzo, Ohboy and Majincob is any indication, it hasn't happened yet as of Oct 2016. "Public admissions of cheating" seems to point it to around end Dec 2016 to early Jan 2017.

Frustration over drop rates / duplicates

Once again, nothing new that would precipitate such a steep decline. But let's KIV this along with server crashes.

And still terrible progression potential for new players from late in 2016 and early in 2017.

I'm just gonna leave a link to this thread. It was less than ideal before because even though all players could get up to 2 card packs per event, that was assuming you could win a great majority of your matches in the event and hit most of the secondary objectives too. And the Crystal reward scale between tiers was ridiculous with Platinum earning almost 4 times the number of Crystals of Bronze from Progression rewards.

I don't disagree with this being a major sticking issue.

Oh, and casting 5 Eldrazi in every game was pretty awful too. 

This was actually a pretty big deal. See "Mass Exodus" which had a lively discussion on why people were thinking of quitting MtGPQ. Repetitive Events. Facing Deploy / Olivia Piggy decks all the time aka Power SPRINT. Bugs. Unclear developer's direction. Small EM set (ie. nothing left to loot). Emrakul's Corruption aka 6 to 8 Eldrazi / Vampire / Werewolves cast per match.

My point is that this list of reasons is managed to torpedo the game's earnings faster than the austerity measures, the introduction of Mana Jewels, Standard and the other reasons listed in the opening post. So you can't just talk about the slow decline, ignore the steeper ones and then attribute it to the causes you like. 

Austerity measures began around February or so. The decline started from December. And revenues recovered somewhat even though the austerity measures are still ongoing. FYI rewards were the **** in 1.10.2 and went up in 2.1.0 and have more or less maintained there per event but with variations in the number of events per week. Plus TG was introduced.

Also, I should probably be more careful in linking graphs like the one that shows D3 revenue rankings. I have to admit that I have no idea what they are actually showing.  Is it trailing 12 month revenue?  Trailing 1 month?  It can't possibly be just today or it would be way more lumpy when patches hit or Baral went on sale.  Also, interesting that the patch doesn't even show as an App update on March 3rd, although it definitely was...

The numbers are based on the rankings shown in Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The algorithms behind those rankings aren't public information (and would be valuable information to developers and SEO firms) but yes it isn't just one day although Apple's App Store apparently factors in a shorter period than Google's Play Store.

babar3355

Thanks for the thoughtful response as always @span_argoman.  I don't have a lot of time to respond right now but I was just throwing a bit of spaghetti at the wall to remind people that the community wasn't extremely happy with the developers before the austerity package.  The February austerity you are discussing was the change to mythics only for to top 2 coalitions in midweek events I believe.  The major austerity package was around March 3rd. 

As for cheating, my suspicion is that it was occurring in the 4th quarter of 2017 but I have no hard evidence.

For content I did think the release was slower than you listed but was also talking about other stuff to do.  (Story modes, new events, etc.) We basically had the same events cycling every week for what seemed an eternity.... reminds me of... now. 

I also distinctly remember in Nov 2016 the servers getting to a point where I would get a load in or load out error every game I played for several events in a row....  You can say this was always a problem but we actually saw members quit our coalition over this.

Probably should have just done a TLDR:  The community was frustrated over a lot of issues.  They were begging for and hoping for some changes. Largely we got radio silence, no improvements, and finally a big nerf to the ability to collect the sets.

My point is I think D3 probably thought the revenue drop was due to being too generous, but I think it was many other problems.

As for the top players vs others, I don't really know the ratio of prizes, nor do I even think that's what the dispersion has to be.  Again, if you ultimately make each set collectible it doesn't really matter in the long run. However, if you offered ranking profiles, achievement trophies for top players, foil card packages, etc you would still encourage players to want to win without providing them a competitive advantage.  I am 100% honest when I say that I don't care one iota whether I get top 5 or top 50 in EMO.  Half the time I don't even bother playing these events.  You absolutely have to make the game reward competitive behavior or you simply won't drive revenue. (Again, maybe it was just me and all of my network, but there was a much larger incentive to spend when you were fighting for a mythic prize.)

I have never played Hearthstone but would be intrigued to know what reward structure they use for competition. 

span_argoman

@babar3355, short reply here for the same reason.

The February austerity you are discussing was the change to mythics only for to top 2 coalitions in midweek events I believe.  The major austerity package was around March 3rd. 

Austerity started in February already. Like this topic created 13 Feb 2017 mentioned, they cut out an entire card pack out of each event Progression. Weekend PvE Progression Crystals dropped once (from 150 to 95 Crystals in Platinum). It's just that 3 March 2017 was the release of patch 1.10.2 where they reduced rewards even further. They have since revised the rewards up from that lowest point.

My point is that the austerity measures weren't some greedy grab by developers who were sitting on a hugely profitable game. The revenues were already dipping so one could read it as a desperate measure to try to salvage the situation or the way to right things out long-term.

I'm not defending it as a Holy Grail solution which omniscient developers saw as the best step forward for the game. We all know Hibernum weren't exactly exemplary developers by the way MtGPQ was managed. But it isn't 100% stupid as many people on these forums like to claim. It's just the easiest to target since it's a measure that takes something away from us players directly.

You absolutely have to make the game reward competitive behavior or you simply won't drive revenue. (Again, maybe it was just me and all of my network, but there was a much larger incentive to spend when you were fighting for a mythic prize.)

I'm gonna generalise this further and say that the objective should be to make the game fun. Competitive players derive fun from beating others and being acknowledged for their accomplishments one way or another. There are also players who play MtGPQ because they enjoy opening new cards and exploring the interactions between the cards they have. There are players who play MtGPQ because they enjoy a match-3 game with an additional layer of depth and replayability. And there are most definitely overlaps between the different groups and other reasons for which people play MtGPQ.

But not everyone plays to be numero uno. So certain suggestions people have brought up actually overlook the impact on players who enjoy MtGPQ for other reasons. It would be no surprise that your network, being formed from being part of a mega coalition whose aim is to be the best in the game, would be much more interested in changes rewarding competitive behaviour.

As a random example, if someone were a bottle cap collector, would they rather travel the world to collect the different bottle caps or buy a premade set of all the bottle caps off Amazon? People who choose one option clearly have different priorities from the people who choose the other option.

Like you mentioned in the other thread, people were willing to spend money on the game even on things which ultimately don't contribute much competitively (like buying Planeswalker bundles for cash) back when they still found the game fun. So stuff like selling skins, backgrounds and whatnot aren't going to help much if the players don't find the game fun enough to want to spend money on.

I thought the thread "What would D3 need to provide you in order to start saying nice things about the game again?" started by @Sarahschmara was a good way to get a sensing of what players care about. I would have liked to see more discussion on certain points which people think hold more promise. But I guess without any developers on board then and with the history of MtGPQ and its inability to overcome simpler problems, people didn't hold much hope.

There's a lot more to discuss like the claim of MtGPQ having an endless source of revenue from new sets, game and card balancing based on players having complete or partial collections, and the comparisons to other games and whether their systems are a good point of reference but time is limited. I'm happy to discuss these matters with you @babar3355 and anyone else who wishes to join in the discussion (as far as time permits).

luckyvulpi

There's a lot more to discuss like the claim of MtGPQ having an endless source of revenue from new sets, game and card balancing based on players having complete or partial collections, and the comparisons to other games and whether their systems are a good point of reference but time is limited. I'm happy to discuss these matters with you @babar3355 and anyone else who wishes to join in the discussion (as far as time permits).

@span_argoman
Popping into this discussion since I have a question with this last part.  Everything else I don't really have an issue with.

Why do you think time is limited?  Do you mean the time left for the game is limited, or the time you have on the forum is limited?

Unless I havnt been paying attention, I havnt really noticed any sort of urgency behind the new studio's actions that would suggest that the time left is limited.  I would assume that if the time left was short, they would start giving out thank you packs to restore player's trust or make cash bundles with much better deals to incentivise spending, but that's just my point of view, and I would like to know what you think.

James13

Since Span is likely sleeping (he's in an Asian timezone like some others here) I can try to guess on his behalf.  Lol.

I think he's referring to his time for discussion there and willingness to cram more like the comparisons he's referring to into an already long post.

bk1234

James13 said:

Since Span is likely sleeping (he's in an Asian timezone like some others here) I can try to guess on his behalf.  Lol.

I think he's referring to his time for discussion there and willingness to cram more like the comparisons he's referring to into an already long post.

I would agree with this -- it was posted at around 1 AM his time.