Booster Crafting is here - now what?

Tilwin90

Hey all,
I want to start by thanking the team for finally implementing booster crafting. It is definitely a great step ahead for the game and in spite of the future problems that crafting will cause, it was a necessary step forward for the game.
My current view upon how my attitude towards the game will evolve is probably an initial hype, followed by a short period of now what, and then play the game for the joy of deckbuilding, diversifying, experimenting and having fun! This goes in contrast with the tough competitive view I had in an endless attempt to complete an impossibly attainable full set, getting "those mythics I really wanted" and this was turning things into a chore. So kudos!

Now, I already see people are starting to see the gap between players who are "getting all the mythics", and those who still have a long way towards that feat. This gap will lead to players with poorer card pools end up frustrated and constantly lose... simply because it's going to be a very competitive environment with perfect decks. And I think it's our mindset once we have "everything we want" to also want the same thing for other players. Less salt, more collaboration and cooperation.

Therefore here are some proposals I have and I encourage you guys to share your opinions:

1. Card balance - because card pools will be more uniform, reducing the power level of certain cards will no longer be such a huge issue. If in the past Deploy the Gatewatch was your sole "power mythic" in legacy, watching it get balanced might have hurt you more. But now that I have access to many other mythics, it wouldn't hurt me as much. 
I see this as an opportunity to increase diversity in the formats.

2. Ranks - right now ranks are highly imbalanced. With the card pools exploding and the number of cards increasing so much, ranks need to evolve as well to offer a fairer fighting grounds, especially inside Platinum. Maybe multiple ranks need to be added to allow for more diversity here, or maybe the boundaries of ranks need to be reconsidered.

3. Standard vs. legacy - legacy is still very real and here to stay. We have training grounds that is legacy, trial of the planes that is also legacy. They are kind-of daily events that offer great rewards and help newer players to grow.
It is my opinion that balance should keep legacy in mind, as well as ranks themselves. It doesn't seem fair that a larger card pool should feature the same ranks as a slimmer one... not to mention when we take rotations into mind.

4. Rotations - with people expanding their card pools, I am starting to see more and more the opportunities of deck diversity and balance rotations bring. Looking forward to the next rotation actually

5. Specific block events - limited formats are a thing in magic the gathering. With expanded card pools I think limited events would actually be a lot of fun. Maybe have a PVE Avacyn event where you have access only to SOI and Origins cards... and offer rewards only inside the SOI block. In fact, I think we need more PVE events to help players with slimmer card pools expand their card pools.

These are my thoughts. Hope I don't end up stoned for my opinions, I understand most are subjective, and reflect my post-crafting experience.
Merry Craftsmas (syntagm stolen from @bken1234 ) everyone!

THEMAGICkMAN

This. Absolutely, entirely, 100% This.

Volrak

Tilwin90 said:

Now, I already see people are starting to see the gap between players who are "getting all the mythics", and those who still have a long way towards that feat.

Something interesting - now that most of the established players have a complete Origins collection, D3/Oktagon can, if they wish, start giving away Origins boosters quite freely as a targeted mechanism to help newer players.

Coilbox

What about... stablishing some sort of rank (appart from or... even inside the already stablished color mastery tiers) based on how many orbs a player has spent into crafting...? that came to my head as i was reading your post...
I think that would help players that have not crafted many cards not to match in a battle with a whale that has spent thousands and thousands of orbs and most likely would have nearly the entire collection of cards...

Edit: This could actually be a feature that the developers could implement without even the need of showing it to the players, just a feature to help balance when pairing players for a fight... Just match players that have spent more or less the same amount of orbs into crafting, or close...

Tilwin90

Coilbox said:

What about... stablishing some sort of rank (appart from or... even inside the already stablished color mastery tiers) based on how many orbs a player has spent into crafting...? that came to my head as i was reading your post...
I think that would help players that have not crafted many cards not to match in a battle with a whale that has spent thousands and thousands of orbs and most likely would have nearly the entire collection of cards...

Edit: This could actually be a feature that the developers could implement without even the need of showing it to the players, just a feature to help balance when pairing players for a fight... Just match players that have spent more or less the same amount of orbs into crafting, or close...

Because this does not reflect a player's CURRENT card pool, which in the end reflects the power level of that player's decks. Just because someone was more unfortunate and ended up with more dupes, hence he or she had to craft more, doesn't mean that that player has a better card base than another one who was simply luckier, crafted less, yet has better cards

Mainloop25

It's no worse than someone who got bunped up in tier because they mastered too many commons/uncommons. 

Coilbox

Tilwin90 said:

Coilbox said:

What about... stablishing some sort of rank (appart from or... even inside the already stablished color mastery tiers) based on how many orbs a player has spent into crafting...? that came to my head as i was reading your post...
I think that would help players that have not crafted many cards not to match in a battle with a whale that has spent thousands and thousands of orbs and most likely would have nearly the entire collection of cards...

Edit: This could actually be a feature that the developers could implement without even the need of showing it to the players, just a feature to help balance when pairing players for a fight... Just match players that have spent more or less the same amount of orbs into crafting, or close...

Because this does not reflect a player's CURRENT card pool, which in the end reflects the power level of that player's decks. Just because someone was more unfortunate and ended up with more dupes, hence he or she had to craft more, doesn't mean that that player has a better card base than another one who was simply luckier, crafted less, yet has better cards

The CURRENT card pool a player has is the result of investment (time/cash) and also now, the result of crafting.
The algorythm used for pulling duplicated cards from boosters is the same for everyone, so we all have been the same lucky, with no difference. Maybe different cards, but the same dupes rate.

If you have more duplicates it's because you have more cards, result of investment (again, cash or time). Therefore, you will be able to spend more into crafting, which makes your card pool even bigger. Therefore, more powerful decks.

So in my opinion, the amount of orbs spent into crafting says A LOT of how big and how powerful the card pool of a player is. And i think that's a good way to pair players so the guys who started not long ago and don't have a very big collection of cards don't end up in a match with someone who owns most of them...

Tilwin90

Coilbox said:

Tilwin90 said:

Coilbox said:

What about... stablishing some sort of rank (appart from or... even inside the already stablished color mastery tiers) based on how many orbs a player has spent into crafting...? that came to my head as i was reading your post...
I think that would help players that have not crafted many cards not to match in a battle with a whale that has spent thousands and thousands of orbs and most likely would have nearly the entire collection of cards...

Edit: This could actually be a feature that the developers could implement without even the need of showing it to the players, just a feature to help balance when pairing players for a fight... Just match players that have spent more or less the same amount of orbs into crafting, or close...

Because this does not reflect a player's CURRENT card pool, which in the end reflects the power level of that player's decks. Just because someone was more unfortunate and ended up with more dupes, hence he or she had to craft more, doesn't mean that that player has a better card base than another one who was simply luckier, crafted less, yet has better cards

The CURRENT card pool a player has is the result of investment (time/cash) and also now, the result of crafting.
The algorythm used for pulling duplicated cards from boosters is the same for everyone, so we all have been the same lucky, with no difference. Maybe different cards, but the same dupes rate.

If you have more duplicates it's because you have more cards, result of investment (again, cash or time). Therefore, you will be able to spend more into crafting, which makes your card pool even bigger. Therefore, more powerful decks.

So in my opinion, the amount of orbs spent into crafting says A LOT of how big and how powerful the card pool of a player is. And i think that's a good way to pair players so the guys who started not long ago and don't have a very big collection of cards don't end up in a match with someone who owns most of them...

Unfortunately this is not how statistics work The chance to pull a random card is the same, but assuming drop rate is equal for all cards of the same rarity, you have the same chance at moment X to drop any of those rares (dupes or not).
On a large scale you might start seeing the dupe pattern, but if you took a large pool of players with identical number of boosters opened you shouldn't be surprised to find they have different number of dupes. Of course for very very many opened boosters a certain level of uniformity starts to kick in, but unfortunately the random factor still exists. Eventually, I expect that say for 200 boosters opened for a specific set (with guaranteed rare), we can expect to see certain uniformity - but by no means perfect equality.

On the other hand, it's funny you mentioned card pool, because that's probably what you are suggesting crafting also heads towards. It's not the total number of cards or the number of cards mastered actually that give a player's potential/strength from a card pool perspective, but actual cards he or she has. And I agree from this perspective! It's been known in the past that you could retain a lower rank by mastering only relevant cards which offered you an advantage in front of other players that enjoy experimenting with many different commons/uncommons, hence would achieve an "artificial" increase in rank.

Finally, philosophically cards of same rarity are not necessarily equal in power level. We could also argue that when comparing say Yahenni with Herald of Anguish, both mythics, both from the same set, one is much less powerful than the other one. On the other hand, Whir of Invention's efficiency is dependent on whether a player's pool contains relevant supports or else it might also be a waste.

Emanon2000

If the AI were better at playing decks it would only make sense that matches were against opponents in a range from the 5 above you to the 5 below you... (Or even better... based on win/loss percentage in the event) The better players would be forced to play against better decks/competition and those at lower levels, as the event progresses, would be matched against those that are equal to them in strength.  

The current problem with this scenario is that some 'winning' decks like cycling may be near the top ... thus making it easier for those at the top to beat one another...

AI improvements are needed to accomplish this though...

Coilbox

Tilwin90 said:

Coilbox said:

Tilwin90 said:

Coilbox said:

What about... stablishing some sort of rank (appart from or... even inside the already stablished color mastery tiers) based on how many orbs a player has spent into crafting...? that came to my head as i was reading your post...
I think that would help players that have not crafted many cards not to match in a battle with a whale that has spent thousands and thousands of orbs and most likely would have nearly the entire collection of cards...

Edit: This could actually be a feature that the developers could implement without even the need of showing it to the players, just a feature to help balance when pairing players for a fight... Just match players that have spent more or less the same amount of orbs into crafting, or close...

Because this does not reflect a player's CURRENT card pool, which in the end reflects the power level of that player's decks. Just because someone was more unfortunate and ended up with more dupes, hence he or she had to craft more, doesn't mean that that player has a better card base than another one who was simply luckier, crafted less, yet has better cards

The CURRENT card pool a player has is the result of investment (time/cash) and also now, the result of crafting.
The algorythm used for pulling duplicated cards from boosters is the same for everyone, so we all have been the same lucky, with no difference. Maybe different cards, but the same dupes rate.

If you have more duplicates it's because you have more cards, result of investment (again, cash or time). Therefore, you will be able to spend more into crafting, which makes your card pool even bigger. Therefore, more powerful decks.

So in my opinion, the amount of orbs spent into crafting says A LOT of how big and how powerful the card pool of a player is. And i think that's a good way to pair players so the guys who started not long ago and don't have a very big collection of cards don't end up in a match with someone who owns most of them...

Unfortunately this is not how statistics work The chance to pull a random card is the same, but assuming drop rate is equal for all cards of the same rarity, you have the same chance at moment X to drop any of those rares (dupes or not).
On a large scale you might start seeing the dupe pattern, but if you took a large pool of players with identical number of boosters opened you shouldn't be surprised to find they have different number of dupes. Of course for very very many opened boosters a certain level of uniformity starts to kick in, but unfortunately the random factor still exists. Eventually, I expect that say for 200 boosters opened for a specific set (with guaranteed rare), we can expect to see certain uniformity - but by no means perfect equality.

On the other hand, it's funny you mentioned card pool, because that's probably what you are suggesting crafting also heads towards. It's not the total number of cards or the number of cards mastered actually that give a player's potential/strength from a card pool perspective, but actual cards he or she has. And I agree from this perspective! It's been known in the past that you could retain a lower rank by mastering only relevant cards which offered you an advantage in front of other players that enjoy experimenting with many different commons/uncommons, hence would achieve an "artificial" increase in rank.

Finally, philosophically cards of same rarity are not necessarily equal in power level. We could also argue that when comparing say Yahenni with Herald of Anguish, both mythics, both from the same set, one is much less powerful than the other one. On the other hand, Whir of Invention's efficiency is dependent on whether a player's pool contains relevant supports or else it might also be a waste.

I didn't mean that the drop rate is equal for all cards, but equal for every player.
We have lots of events every week, many of them give you boosters from different sets as rewards... Maybe im wrong, but I think the 'opening booster' action is repeated enough every day/week to assume that the uniformity you mentioned is indeed notable.

When i said "card pool" i mean exactly the cards that he or she has... just exactly the same that you said... 
I know it's not the total amount of cards what makes you powerful, but the more cards you have, the more options you have to build, and the more sinergy (this is the core of magic: the gathering imo) you will be able to provide to your decks... and in the end, the more powerful you will be able to build.

The more you craft, the more cards you will have available to use... given the fact that you wont get duplicates from crafting, eventually you will get what you want... yes or yes.

Don't know, maybe with all this theory of mine im wrong xD 

babar3355

Tilwin90 said:

Hey all,
I want to start by thanking the team for finally implementing booster crafting. It is definitely a great step ahead for the game and in spite of the future problems that crafting will cause, it was a necessary step forward for the game.
My current view upon how my attitude towards the game will evolve is probably an initial hype, followed by a short period of now what, and then play the game for the joy of deckbuilding, diversifying, experimenting and having fun! This goes in contrast with the tough competitive view I had in an endless attempt to complete an impossibly attainable full set, getting "those mythics I really wanted" and this was turning things into a chore. So kudos!

Now, I already see people are starting to see the gap between players who are "getting all the mythics", and those who still have a long way towards that feat. This gap will lead to players with poorer card pools end up frustrated and constantly lose... simply because it's going to be a very competitive environment with perfect decks. And I think it's our mindset once we have "everything we want" to also want the same thing for other players. Less salt, more collaboration and cooperation.

Therefore here are some proposals I have and I encourage you guys to share your opinions:

1. Card balance - because card pools will be more uniform, reducing the power level of certain cards will no longer be such a huge issue. If in the past Deploy the Gatewatch was your sole "power mythic" in legacy, watching it get balanced might have hurt you more. But now that I have access to many other mythics, it wouldn't hurt me as much. 
I see this as an opportunity to increase diversity in the formats.

2. Ranks - right now ranks are highly imbalanced. With the card pools exploding and the number of cards increasing so much, ranks need to evolve as well to offer a fairer fighting grounds, especially inside Platinum. Maybe multiple ranks need to be added to allow for more diversity here, or maybe the boundaries of ranks need to be reconsidered.

3. Standard vs. legacy - legacy is still very real and here to stay. We have training grounds that is legacy, trial of the planes that is also legacy. They are kind-of daily events that offer great rewards and help newer players to grow.
It is my opinion that balance should keep legacy in mind, as well as ranks themselves. It doesn't seem fair that a larger card pool should feature the same ranks as a slimmer one... not to mention when we take rotations into mind.

4. Rotations - with people expanding their card pools, I am starting to see more and more the opportunities of deck diversity and balance rotations bring. Looking forward to the next rotation actually

5. Specific block events - limited formats are a thing in magic the gathering. With expanded card pools I think limited events would actually be a lot of fun. Maybe have a PVE Avacyn event where you have access only to SOI and Origins cards... and offer rewards only inside the SOI block. In fact, I think we need more PVE events to help players with slimmer card pools expand their card pools.

These are my thoughts. Hope I don't end up stoned for my opinions, I understand most are subjective, and reflect my post-crafting experience.
Merry Craftsmas (syntagm stolen from @bken1234 ) everyone!

These are some great ideas @Tilwin90!  I strongly agree with 1 and some version of 2.  The others are nice.  Here is what I think Oktagon needs to do.

1) Balance the cards... across the board.
2) Change from a color mastery based system to a ranking system.  However,I recommend using an ELO scoring system where you are ranked based on your performance and matched against other players of similar performance. This should be both in the ranking pool and the opponent pool.
3) Create incentives for players to be competitive.  These probably shouldn't be card based.  Instead offer trophies, foils, skins, etc.  Most evidence suggests playership went down dramatically with the reduction of mythic prizes.  This should be obvious that competitive players want to win something more valuable than 60 crystals and a dupe rare.  However, these prizes can be totally arbitrary and yet people will want to attain them!
4) Create new and varied content. We need to break out of the mold of beat your opponent and meet these objectives.  There are tons of ideas from different overlays (e.g. enraged), to team battles, bigger gem boards (say 8 x 8 rather than 7 x 7), true PvP, etc.  There have been tons of ideas thrown around on the forums.

Anyway, there are a few others but this is the core.  I was planning on making a more broad based post to highlight these ideas, but figured I will stick it here for now.

Also, big shout out to Oktagon and D3 for getting booster crafting right.  It has great UI, functions beautifully, and generally makes me happy!