Will booster crafting kill this game?

Gilesclone

At the moment I should probably be asking “Will matching bugs kill this game?” but I’m sure that will get fixed PROMPTLY!

This game has always had a problem with Mythics.  Every day you can read here complaints about Olivia or Omniscience etc.  Until now we have been spared the worst of this by the very rarity of these cards.  But next week that all changes.

With booster crafting people who were missing that nasty key card won’t be missing them anymore.  Deploy the Gatewatch with your worst nightmare creatures are only the beginning of the problem.   Now the top tier will have 50% or more of the mythics.  6 or 8 mythic decks will be the new standard.  It was ok as long as they were missing the key piece.  Now broken decks we never imagined will be popping up every day.  And worse yet, many of them will be looping decks where we just get to watch ourselves die for 3 to 5 minutes.

i hope to hell I’m wrong.  But my 1200 cards look like they won’t be worth much pretty soon. 

ElfNeedsFood

Certainly this could represent an escalation at the top...

Volrak

Oktagon said in the November Q&A "We do plan to retroactively balance problematic cards, that are affecting the meta-game in a negative way".  If they don't change their minds (and there's no reason to believe they will) then although I agree the shift caused by booster crafting could be significant, it won't kill the game.

Mainloop25

In terms of best case scenario, the influx of key cards to more people's libraries will mean that the urgency of finally rebalancing problematic cards will be front and center because the complaints will be more frequent. 

DaddyO

I’m hopeful that the impact will be positive. I enjoy playing with new cards. I do think our win percentages will be going down - and that is a good thing. I do agree with your concern about long ai turns. My favorite part of the Puzzlequest MTG version is that generally I’m playing cards every turn and the turns go quickly. This game will suck if we are caught in a pre-nerf BaraI loop game after game. Perhaps we will have to give feedback when loops and lockdowns become an issue but the digital cards are easily modified.  

I may be in the minority but I would like to lose more often to challenging decks. The ai doesn’t usually employ good strategy and is optimized to allow us to win almost every game. For example, I keep hearing complaints about Omniscience and as a daily platinum player I have never lost to that card. Granted it does a lot of stuff but it never seems to finish me off. The card is broken but the game doesn’t know how to play the deck.

I do understand your concern but worthless duplicates were the #1 most negative issue for me. I and most everyone else asked for exactly what they are giving us. I imagine we will all be losing in frustrating new ways and the meta game will change - that’s Magic. 

Sarahschmara

No. I don’t think so. I think a complete set is still out of reach for most players. 

khurram

I don't think it will change the meta that much. It won't be any more problematic than it currently is. 

People also thought the world would end if they released a tri-colored Planeswalker.

Thuran

I disagree.

People getting more ready access to cards will make the competition tougher, but that is really what the game needs to make events more interesting. Playing in Platinum should be hard, and not a fixed win percentage of 95%+

In addition, it could lead to the creation of an established metagame, which offers a greater challenge in deck building and deck selection. Suddenly building a deck to counter a strategy actually makes sense if you can reliably expect to encounter that strategy.

In addition, it makes deck building a lot more accessible and interesting when you can actively aim to build a cool deck you see shared in your coalition or faced in a match, whereas now you can just conclude you don't have the cards, tough luck.

A huge part of competitive paper magic is beating the meta, and getting part of that into competitive mtgpq would not be a bad thing, as current decks all seem to exist in a vacuum.

morgue427

conflicted about this honestly yes more of the nasty cards in the hands of dedicated players but also those same players will be running agaisnt those increased nasties so meta will change with it, i would think. have to wait and see i guess

__Adam

Standard is already broken for half the players, why not everyone? Some people find playing a broken game fun. Certainly more fun than just being on the losing side of broken.

Firinmahlazer

Anyone who has been converting to runes or is just starting out is going to be waaayyyy behind these people with 100k+ worth of Orbs. People with massive collections will stay around the same level but those others I feel may be really discouraged. 

Thuran

Well, comparing new players to players who put in years of works shouldn't yield similar results

They still earned those cards, let's assume droprates were similar to MTG, veteran players would still have most cards, the system is just artificially rigged to give dupes.

IM_CARLOS

Deckbuild and meta are very strong words for an ai like greg. He only could  pilot automatons like baral or gonti, but never a fragile deck that need to optimize the hand-cards. But we will see. I saw a lot of olivs before and even some omni now (thx god not craftable) and I can handle this or deserve to lose. If the meta change I get prepared for. With pr without crafted cards. 

Phillmoore

I mentioned this earlier.  And I suppose the answer is that yes we will face some mega decks but because we also are crafting our mega decks should be on par with them so balance is achieved.   Hopefully.  We will have to wait and see.   And hope no tears! 

morgue427

there will always be tears and whining because somebody feels they are robbed due to the fact that they dont have all the "good" cards. It doesnt matter that they dont play or havent played for more than a week

fiirst

Firstly, i think BC will ruin economy of this game. But another idea have just pop up into my head last week, this BC may make ppl buy more crystal/packs and turn those dupes into mana orbs.....so, let 's see if there are tears or not.

TheDragonHermit

I think you are looking too short term for this. In the short term, yes BC may tip balance between older and newer players, but in the long run it will act as an agent equalizing a certain amount of the randomness in card collecting. The game was in a major content rut, so an injection of excitement that a functional BC system holds could even give a massive boost to retention and may even get players who dropped the game to boot it up again. Overall this may unbalance the short term meta, though that is a worse case scenario that is already the case, some may argue, but in the long run this will likely be an equalizing feature, giving everyone a shot at the megabuilds.

Matthew

I really don't think it will be problematic. I've outlined my two cents on the matter in this post (though I probably should have done that in this thread, now that I think on it).

span_argoman

@TheDragonHermit Could you explain a little more on how in the long term Booster Crafting will be an equalising factor between older and newer players?

No matter how I've thought about it, older players will gain rewards faster than newer players. They will hence hit dupes more quickly and overall more times than newer players.

Hence they will be the ones to benefit from the bonus Orbs in the first month as well as the subsequent crafting as they will have filled out more of their collection and hence stand to benefit more from a guaranteed new card than say a newer player with half the Rares still missing.

andrewvanmarle

span_argoman said:

@TheDragonHermit Could you explain a little more on how in the long term noBooster Crafting will be an equalising factor between older and newer players?

No matter how I've thought about it, older players will gain rewards faster than newer players. They will hence hit dupes more quickly and overall more times than newer players.

Hence they will be the ones to benefit from the bonus Orbs in the first month as well as the subsequent crafting as they will have filled out more of their collection and hence stand to benefit more from a guaranteed new card than say a newer player with half the Rares still missing.

G
Untrue: yes there will be a disparity between players who just started and players who have played (and paid) for over a year in the sheer volume of cards, but once those dupes are used up a new player and a long standing one are at equal footing when it comes to earning and buying new cards. 

In other words: if a new player wants to play catch up with me, then spend the same amount of cash. 

morgue427

bring on the pay to win rants now