My experience.

ErikInVegas

I took some time off for family drama.

When I came back my experience with the new dev has been endless promises of bug fixes but what I actually experienced was:

New PW is still only pay $ to win after months.

When I played, the game crashed on the 3rd match.

Still a buggy game.

//Removed Profanity -Brigby

Krishna

Sorry to hear this is what you came back to. Yeah, bugs havent gone anywhere, which will completely wreck aspirations of acheiving higher tier rewards and can knock your coalition down too. Its a real problem that Oktagon has to fix, or they will find that people like yourself just go somewhere else. There are too many other things to invest your time in

FindingHeart8

I hear ya on the bugs, my sympathies friend.

To be fare though on the planeswalker.  It is the first 3 color planeswalker made in this game yet (and arguably significantly more power than any other walker to-date).  While I groan everytime I face him, knowing there's a significant chance that even my best planeswalker decks will fall short of the shenanigans an optimized Bolas deck is capable of; I can't blame from a marketing standpoint for trying to rake it a little extra cash from the changes they're making.

At the same time, if Bolas NEVER becomes available for crystal-purchase and stays a pay-to-win-walker...then we can revisit this topic with renewed vigor.

Sirchombli

Generally speaking I avoid paying cash for cards but I pay cash for planeswalkers. It's got nothing to do with any sort of morality or personal policy. I just suck at saving crystals. Like, I'm really really bad at it. If I had to make a guess, bolas will be cash until ixalan comes out. He really feels like a stop gap measure more than anything else. I got him the first day he was available, but I barely use him. He's definitely super strong, just not quite my style. The whole available for crystals 2 weeks later thing always bugged me a little. Saheeli took a long time to be available for crystals. I think that gives "early access" more value. Especially with crafting dropping the value of cards significantly, I hope that we see more of this in the future. Incentivizing people to spend money generally gets people to spend money. This game is part of a business. Crafting will signify a drop in revenue. Cash for walkers will help mitigate that so we can continue to have a game to complain about. I'd say that's smart. 

FindingHeart8

It's a tricky balance, bringing in sufficient revenue while not turning the game into a pay-to-play; which is what the game would become if walkers (beyond the original 5) were cash only.


I did enjoy that Saheeli could be won in a tournament for free for the top 5 winners but wasn't available for purchase until almost a year later.  But that might've been because I got super lucky and won her lol.

Kinesia

Bronze Blue Trial is interesting, early nodes with 50% Jace 50% Bolas with far better decks because they'd have the bought packs too, further on I've found 2 Kiora's as well, but it's _totally_ different than the White Trial in Bronze were there was _zero_ "pay to win" shenanigans.

FindingHeart8

Kinesia said:

Bronze Blue Trial is interesting, early nodes with 50% Jace 50% Bolas with far better decks because they'd have the bought packs too, further on I've found 2 Kiora's as well, but it's _totally_ different than the White Trial in Bronze were there was _zero_ "pay to win" shenanigans.

The Trials don't randomly assign you an opponent of that color?  I haven't played them much, found the grind for one shot at a decent purple pack to not really be fruitful. 

Matthew

FindingHeart8 said:

Kinesia said:

Bronze Blue Trial is interesting, early nodes with 50% Jace 50% Bolas with far better decks because they'd have the bought packs too, further on I've found 2 Kiora's as well, but it's _totally_ different than the White Trial in Bronze were there was _zero_ "pay to win" shenanigans.

The Trials don't randomly assign you an opponent of that color?  I haven't played them much, found the grind for one shot at a decent purple pack to not really be fruitful. 

Are you in anything but Platinum? For Platinum, they are literally the best "purchase" you can make in the game, when you look at the overall picture of what they give you vs what you get for free throughout each month.

span_argoman

Regardless of which tier you're in, play them for this period with the discounted entry and the boosted rewards.

At worst, they are a discounted booster for 1 win. You don't have to play to final progression if you don't want to for the lower tiers.

FindingHeart8

Are you in anything but Platinum? For Platinum, they are literally the best "purchase" you can make in the game, when you look at the overall picture of what they give you vs what you get for free throughout each month.

please do explain.  I'm platinum all but blue.  You spend 60 crystals (gaining 30 back if you get through all the trials) to gain at most 20 crystal.  So after 20 days of grinding this (plus additional time to acquire the crystals elsewhere if you're not willing to pay cash for the difference) you get 1 shot at a master pack with a ~10% chance at a really good card and a 50-70% of a low tier mythic.  That does not sound like a good investment in my book, especially with the dupe exchange just around the corner.

FindingHeart8

span_argoman said:

Regardless of which tier you're in, play them for this period with the discounted entry and the boosted rewards.

I didn't think about the discounted seasonal entry, that does make it more appealing.  Good point!

khurram

FindingHeart8 said:

Are you in anything but Platinum? For Platinum, they are literally the best "purchase" you can make in the game, when you look at the overall picture of what they give you vs what you get for free throughout each month.

please do explain.  I'm platinum all but blue.  You spend 60 crystals (gaining 30 back if you get through all the trials) to gain at most 20 crystal.  So after 20 days of grinding this (plus additional time to acquire the crystals elsewhere if you're not willing to pay cash for the difference) you get 1 shot at a master pack with a ~10% chance at a really good card and a 50-70% of a low tier mythic.  That does not sound like a good investment in my book, especially with the dupe exchange just around the corner.

If you play TotP in platinum :-

150 crystals = 5 booster packs + 100 jewels

If you don't play TotP :-

300 crystals = premium pack (5 booster packs)

Unless you only use crystals for buying PWs, this is the best investment.

FindingHeart8

If you play TotP in platinum :-

150 crystals = 5 booster packs + 100 jewels

If you don't play TotP :-

300 crystals = premium pack (5 booster packs)

Unless you only use crystals for buying PWs, this is the best investment.

Yeah, after reading the previous responses (plus yours) I decided to give it a try.  Won my first battle in 3 minutes and got my first booster! "Yay! Maybe there is something to this!" Second battle, reoccurring opponent fails to load glitch.  Just my luck -_-

Gilesclone

That bug makes it a bit risky to say the least 

Kinesia

Gilesclone said:

That bug makes it a bit risky to say the least 

Yes, I've been very scared about that the last few days since I've been prioritising the trials a bit. Haven't hit it yet but...

Matthew

FindingHeart8 said:

Are you in anything but Platinum? For Platinum, they are literally the best "purchase" you can make in the game, when you look at the overall picture of what they give you vs what you get for free throughout each month.

please do explain.  I'm platinum all but blue.  You spend 60 crystals (gaining 30 back if you get through all the trials) to gain at most 20 crystal.  So after 20 days of grinding this (plus additional time to acquire the crystals elsewhere if you're not willing to pay cash for the difference) you get 1 shot at a master pack with a ~10% chance at a really good card and a 50-70% of a low tier mythic.  That does not sound like a good investment in my book, especially with the dupe exchange just around the corner.

So I see some others have given input into this topic, but I'll give it the full treatment for you.

If you play all 5 Trial of the Planes (TotP) events during the week with the normal entry fee of 60 crystals, you will spend a total of 300 crystals. Given that you get 5 boosters for your 300 crystals, you are getting exactly the same value for your "money" as you would if you just went into the vault and spent it there by getting a Premium Pack (the only difference of course being that you aren't guaranteed a rare from the packs you get through TotP). However, because of the 30 crystals per event that you earn back if you play each one to full progression, you actually are only paying half the cost for those five boosters (@khurram already mentioned this).

There's a lot more that goes into the equation though; as khurram also pointed out, you also walk away with 100 purple jewels per week if you play all the way to progression. There's really no other way to consistently guarantee that you collect that many jewels in that span of time.

That's still not the whole picture though, because you also have to consider the crystals that you can earn from the daily Training Grounds (TG) event, and also from the free daily login rewards. For TG, you can earn 15 crystals per day over 30 days of the month. That works out to 450 completely free crystals per month. For the free daily login bonuses, if you are logging in every day, you will get 180 total crystals also completely free (5+15+25+35+45+55=180). That means that the completely free crystals you can earn in one month is 450+180, which comes out to 630, and now here's the best part: at the net cost of 150 crystals per week for four weeks (which is a total of 600 crystals), this means playing TotP is a completely free endeavor. And the 400 jewels you earn over the course of the month gives you the shot at getting a guaranteed mythic.

There are other factors to consider too, now that we're getting booster crafting. The 5 boosters you get from TotP each week means you're getting 100 free cards to use for crafting each month. Additionally, you can earn another 9 boosters for free from the free daily logins (1 pack every 5 days, plus the free Super Pack you get on the 21st day), which is another 45 cards. I haven't done the math yet on how that can be averaged into orb conversions, but I'm sure it's not an insignificant number.

I could go into other things as well, such as how regular participation in events can also get you more cards and orbs, but that's not really relevant to your question.

FindingHeart8 said:

Yeah, after reading the previous responses (plus yours) I decided to give it a try.  Won my first battle in 3 minutes and got my first booster! "Yay! Maybe there is something to this!" Second battle, reoccurring opponent fails to load glitch.  Just my luck -_-

There's a bit of a workaround for this, although I will admit that it means you've got an uphill battle. I believe that if you've got that bug on one node of TotP, you should still be able to play matches in another one. The progression ladder is structured such that you don't need to play all 12 matches to maximize your earnings, so if you lose a charge or two, it's still doable. The only problem you run into is when you have to play matches on the final node, because the AI is stupid strong on those battles.

**Edit** I should note that everything I've mentioned here regarding TotP assumes you're playing at the Platinum level. I have no idea what the lower tiers give out, but I'm sure it's not nearly as economical to participate at those levels.

Kinesia

With the lower levels (cause I'm playing in Bronze on my alt) it's all about the first booster. If you get anything else it doesn't matter. So it's only really worth it in these half price times. But it is so good since almost all cards are new at this level!

FindingHeart8

Matthew said:

So I see some others have given input into this topic, but I'll give it the full treatment for you.

Thanks for taking the time to explain all that Matthew!  Yes I'm Platinum in everything but blue (ironically my main color in the card game).
The overall small net gain in crystals plus additional crystals (like you pointed out) does make it overall worth pursuing if you have a nice stash of crystals with nothing else to spend them on (ex:good planeswalkers, health potions...just kidding).  Also only needing to win 8/12 matches for the bonuses makes it fairly easy to achieve.

I hadn't considered the crystal cost difference between the superpacks and 5 packs won through the trials, nor the lack of deck restrictions makes it very easy to use your most broken combos (me: HUF and Deploy or HUF/Season's Past/ Reason/Believe...why yes I am a bad person thank you for noticing lol) to get through the trials in ~15min or less.

Overall you've all convinced me it is indeed worth pursuing as a high priority, thank you very much

Matthew

I'm glad to hear it, man! Now you just gotta bump your blue up into Platinum so you can maximize your gains!