Will booster crafting kill this game?

andrewvanmarle

Sure, but be honest, i've played this game for about 2 years, and spent more than i care to admit. Isnt it logical that id have more cards, and dupes than someone who hasn't?

The playing field is level here: you want to play f2p then you invest time, and if you want to pay to play then you have to compare the amount spent. 

TheDragonHermit

@span_argoman sure thing. First, most of us are likely going to be spending everything hoarded within a month. As sets come, out each one will reduce the amount of any further stored orbs by quite a bit.  Eventually it will even out. Yeah this means the Meta will be fairly chaotic for a while, but, let's face it, that is better than the stagnant Meta we had for the past half year or so. Might take a few sets but this will; make card gains more based on coalition and personal activity, let coalitions workshop decks a little easier, influence tier movement greatly (which means incoming players are not as likely to be smacked with decks more suited to gold) as the megabuild cards get mastered. Maybe players who are interested in how to best use their new shiny cards will look things up and find resources like this forum, or discord groups, or Reddit, or whatever and become even more competitive. Without BC I managed to get from Noob to competent with the resources on the forum, BC will just make it easier for them to target the cards they keep hearing about.

DaddyO

The juiced holiday rewards and the fancy new mythics from booster crafting will certainly cause player engagement to go up substantially. Hopefully, the reward structure for the events generates some extra buzz. When Rishkar’s Expertise was the reward that was a very cool event. I would expect most former players that enjoyed the game to at least sign on for crafting and see what they pull. 

Krishna

ElfNeedsFood said:

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

Could we see a new tier above platinum? Diamond?

span_argoman

andrewvanmarle said:
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. 

I think the equal footing statement is the one I disagree with. A Platinum player earns about 350 Crystals a week from event Progression and TG. Individual plus coalition ranking rewards can increase the Crystals gained by up to 50%.

A player's performance in an event is pretty much a function of player piloting skill, player deckbuilding skill, planeswalker collection,  card collection, and RNGesus' favour.

I think it is reasonable to say that the veterans are all skilled players, and that newer players who are looking to break into the top should also be skilled so the skill factors should cancel out. RNGesus treats all equally (over the long term) so that's not a factor to look at either. Planeswalker collection is fairly easy and cheap to amass compared to the last remaining factor.

And this last factor will see the gap widen from Booster Crafting. So we should expect that players with better card collections will perform better in events and reap more rewards. This also applies to coalition rewards since the best-performing players cluster together.

So to say that newer players will eventually have equal footing is to me kind of like saying both a 25 year old with no savings and a 40 year old who has like $500k in savings & a better paying job can equally afford eating at fancy restaurants every day.

But yes I agree that any newer player will have to spend cash to catch up since rewards from playing alone aren't enough to catch up. Rotation will help a little when it kicks in though.

@TheDragonHermit
I get your point about the stored Orbs likely to be spent within the first month only. But if we're talking about the long term impact I think the rate of gaining Orbs is more important. And looking primarily at Crystals, the top players will be earning Crystals (and consequently Orbs) up to 50% more quickly than newer Platinum players from ranking rewards as I mentioned above.

Another thing is that Booster Crafting is most useful for players with near-complete collections of the set. You wouldn't try to craft a random Rare from a set if you still lack more than half the Rares.

So not only do players who have been earning more Crystals and opening more packs earn Orbs more quickly, they benefit more from the Booster Crafting system too.

As an example, I'm only missing 2 Rares from AKH, Drake Haven and Approach of the Second Sun. If I want Drake Haven I have a 1 in 2 of crafting it from Booster Crafting. But a newer player with say 12 missing AKH Rares will only have a 1 in 12 chance of getting Drake Haven. Mythics will be even more random.

Another way to look at it is that the newer player also still has a 30% (12/40) of a new card from each rare he/she opens whereas I only have a 5% chance (2/40). This makes spending the Orbs on crafting that AKH Rare much more valuable to me than the newer player since I'm unlikely to want to open another AKH Premium Pack whereas the newer player might since the odds are much higher that he/she would get a new card still.

It isn't difficult to hit the cap on rewards from personal activity. I find that it's more card collection which gets in the way of doing better for my newer coalition members. But it just seems that Booster Crafting will help more advanced players fill out their collection better than newer players. Which will create a bigger gap more than it will equalize things.

Bear in mind that Drake Haven, New Perspectives and Cast Out should be considered anomalies and we don't know whether subsequent sets will have equally powerful cards at lower rarities like in HOU and AKH.

The point about a lot of older players going up in tier after Booster Crafting is a good one though. Hopefully that makes the experience more pleasant for newer players. It could also go the other way with some players focusing on Origins and hence a greater occurrence of Gaea's Revenge and Starfield of Nyx in the lower tiers. But we'll see what actually happens.

To extend my earlier analogy to andrewvanmarle, I think MtGPQ's 'social mobility' will take a hit from Booster Crafting since it makes the size of the gap bigger between older and newer players, plus older players will amass more Orbs and it will also be more useful for them. It is still a welcome addition to the game. But I think it being an equaliser for players is highly dubious.

andrewvanmarle

First off, social mobility is not a good term to use here, its not a social studies experiment, it's a collectible card game. Though possible to play for free, there is a big pay to win/get  content factor.

Now to compare my own situation: any new player can catch up if they fork out about 3000€ and we'll  be on the same footing collection wise. 

Being platinum and getting 350 gold each week is trivial in that sense. 

Crafting wont be an equaliser, but it sure as hell wont be a factor widening the divide. 

Volrak

span_argoman said:

A player's performance in an event is pretty much a function of player piloting skill, player deckbuilding skill, planeswalker collection,  card collection, and RNGesus' favour.

Great analysis, and I agree card collection is probably the biggest factor making a difference in this scenario.  However, I think one point in favour of the equalisation argument was missed, which is that this relationship (between collection size and performance) isn't a linear function.

A complete newbie who picks up 5 extra random non-dupe mythics (or 25 rares) over a period of months due to booster crafting gets a vastly greater boost to their performance, in terms of rewards gained per event from collection size, than an established player who over the same period picks up the 8 mythics they were missing to round out their origins collection.  The established player was probably already hitting max rewards or close to it every event, whereas the newbie has moved ahead in leaps and bounds.

andrewvanmarle said:

any new player can catch up if they fork out about 3000€ and we'll  be on the same footing collection wise.

Being platinum and getting 350 gold each week is trivial in that sense.

Completely true, but it kind of bypasses the hard questions altogether to just say that enough money spent can bring a new player to equal footing with established players (some of whom have 80% of the rares and half the mythics without having spent a cent).

andrewvanmarle

I truly wonder about the pure f2p player's collection, are there really players that have that many cards?

Thuran

Jump, I am f2p, with Bolas being my only ever purchase, and my collection can rival that of my teammates, largely due to event rewards and targeting boosters based on probability to get useful cards.

being f2p has never been a hindrance at all, and the important thing was never having a specific collection, but working with what you have to make do and improve.

Even Buying bolas was not a big boost over f2p, but more about having a tri walker, and figuring they had earned a payment after using that many months on the game.

as a f2p player, I have never seen much of a gap in power compared to the others. Didn't have baral, ok, but didn't need him to win.

blacklotus

mtgpq is quite tame in terms of pay2win.

I consider myself a f2p player. all the mythic cards i bought with cash, i pulled dupes of them soon after. and most embarassing of all, i hardly use them after a week when the novelty of owning and playing them is over. None of the cards i bought really suit my play style. 

The one thing f2p players need is lots of time to invest in playing this game. Ohboy is among the top players, and from what i know, he hasn't paid any cash for any content for this game. What he has used is lots of time to play through all events, including lots of grinding the old quick batle events. 

In summary, if a player wants to become a top-tier player in mtgpq, which is a freemium game, they can either invest lots of time or lots of cash. mtgpq is rather tame compared to other freemium games like fire emblem heroes, which i found out is similar to pokemon go.

There are stats variants of even the same collectible heroes, which there are a huge number. if one wants to play the max-min game, investing cash is a must in that game to get the resources (orbs) to play the limited time heroes jackpot events. 

Tilwin90

Booster crafting itself will destabilize the game, that's definitely certain. We will start seeing a one-time increase in power and seeing degenerate decks at all corners. Loses will be frequent and the initial shock will definitely demotivate a lot of people.
This being said, my opinion is that there are two additional steps to be taken after booster crafting goes life:
- Keep an eye on card power-level and perform power-down adjustments as necessary. A closer eye will be needed to be kept on Standard - if people have more powerful cards, I also think rotations become an unavoidable necessity.
- Diversify the events to encourage more challenging decks. Objectives obviously are not always working, so in this direction I would encourage both limitation of number of mythics/rares per event deck (specifically targeted and planned ahead for each event, not just some random limit). This will also become a necessity once card pools' quality increases, or else there's little incentive to have most of the commons/uncommons in the game around anyway.

If these actions are not taken, I expect a *bigkitty* situation where the side who fires the combo first wins - and since Greg never has to hold back in events to assemble objectives, the player is actually at a huge disadvantage.

Volrak

andrewvanmarle said:

I truly wonder about the pure f2p player's collection, are there really players that have that many cards?

Yes, there are.  My figures weren't speculation!

hawkyh1

if a newer player collects 2 free boosters per day worth
2x10 orbs that's 600 orbs on average each month. which
is able to buy them a non dupe origins card. this will help
most those with weaker collections(you can't get that
many dud non dupe rares). having 2-3 playable/good
rares in their best decks will make these players more
able to compete for ranked rewards. I'm guessing booster
crafting will narrow the gap between paying players scores
in platinum and ftp scores. my reasoning is the difference
between 30 vs 80 mythics is a lot bigger than 50 vs 100
mythics in a game that maxes out at 10 mythics per deck.
how many non dupe dud mythics can you get before you
start opening playable/good mythics?

HH

khurram

Volrak said: no

andrewvanmarle said:

I truly wonder about the pure f2p player's collection, are there really players that have that many cards?

Yes, there are.  My figures weren't speculation!

If hadn't spent a dime I would have 128 mythics.

theyrejustelves

As a F2P player, I have a little over 1200 cards in my collection.  The platinum bracket isn't too tough, but I have been lucky & gotten a pretty good sampling of cards.

I like the booster crafting idea because I am looking forward to achieving the cards that I have not yet drawn.

I also understand that others will get there much quicker than I and that it will likely make Greg harder to play against.  This also causes me to spend a little more time & thought into my deck ideas which is another aspect of the game that I like (I wouldn't mind some additional deck slots to save time in the long run).

I would much rather this be the case than having to deal with dupes that I just get runes for and nothing to use them on (Except Bolas when I get a hold of him!).

span_argoman

Volrak said:

Great analysis, and I agree card collection is probably the biggest factor making a difference in this scenario.  However, I think one point in favour of the equalisation argument was missed, which is that this relationship (between collection size and performance) isn't a linear function.

A complete newbie who picks up 5 extra random non-dupe mythics (or 25 rares) over a period of months due to booster crafting gets a vastly greater boost to their performance, in terms of rewards gained per event from collection size, than an established player who over the same period picks up the 8 mythics they were missing to round out their origins collection.  The established player was probably already hitting max rewards or close to it every event, whereas the newbie has moved ahead in leaps and bounds.

That is a very significant point which I had overlooked. Thanks for bringing that up!

Yes it does make sense that for the veteran players, we are more polishing up our collection than anything else. Whereas newer players may be able to open cards which could be crucial to making them competitive. That could help even things out somewhat.

Though Rankings are still a relative affair so I haven't really thought deeper on how much harder/easier it might become for newer players to hit top rankings. Was more thinking in terms of overall card collection. Nonetheless thanks for pointing it out, Volrak.

*edit* My previous numbers which I have now deleted were off due to omission of Orbs from free boosters. Recalculating.

Zfighteromega

The booster crafting will not kill this game. I left this game shortly after it started because of **** draw rates. I brought a gold crystal pack and then brought what was called a fat pack back then. I got one new uncommon card. One new uncommon card for about $30 nzd. Not cool. I quit the game and came back about 6 months ago. With the greater amount of cards to draw from I’ve been pretty happy. If they had crafting I would have stayed then. It’s going to be amazing for me and I am a new player. It’ll be better for others but I’ll be glad and happier to spend more money as I know I’ll get at least a small amount of “orbs”

FindingHeart8

I have a bad feeling that the "rebalancing" will be a detriment to your average player but a boost to the whales.

For example: nerfing cards like Deploy the Gatewatch, while overpowered I agree, however given how the AI prioritizes their hand, it's put to the bottom and rarely actually sees play (at least in my experience, with the thousands of matches I've played, I've faced Deploy the Gatewatch maybe a handful of times tops (almost every time was not unreasonable to handle either), and I've heard similar stories from most of the people in my crew.

Now DtG is a mere mythic, and something that is reasonably reachable (with a bit of luck) by your average player.  I've duped it 2 extra times since I started this game.

Masterpieces have a ~10% pull from the purple packs, and I don't even know if they're obtainable from normal packs (I've never heard of a player drawing one, but if it was possible I'd bet the chances of drawing one are minimal).  So the players that most likely have more than one are either hardcore obsessive grinders or the whales who sink thousands of dollars into this game (aka not your average gamer). 

Now what are the chances of a masterpiece like Omniscience (which I've seen AI's use in 20 minute combos before annihilating me) being rebalanced vs. Deploy (which is a mean and nasty card but at least stops after 15 seconds tops)?

If rebalancing happens, I fear it's going to be on the obtainable cards that help the players, as opposed to the almost unobtainable cards that are just for the whales

 

SiakNiBatman

"we need booster crafting now to save the game!!"
Also
"Booster crafting will kill this game!!"

...it must feel impossible being a developer...

That aside, I feel booster crafting will help at all levels as new players can focus on what they feel they need and old players can fill out thier collections. And the leagues do an okay job of sorting players by newness to the game.

FindingHeart8

@SiakNiBatman

It's a tricky scenario for Octagon for sure.  They're salvaging a game that was otherwise doomed.  While Booster Crafting could indeed be the key to revitalizing this game, if they make it too difficult to obtain (or possible for whales to abuse and make this game an indisputable pay-to-play) it could indeed create more problems in the long term.