To increase accessibility for new players, there need to be rune sinks for Vets.

Quantius

This game has an absolutely brutal entry curve and one of the biggest pain points is leveling a PW. 250 per heroic encounter win is an unreal slog with you need 5k for a single level. It seems that veteran players just have stashes of runes and then when a new PW is released, they just pop them right up to 60 and keep stashing whereas getting a handful of PW's leveled for a new player requires playing 30-40 hours a weeks.

Now, this might not be a huge issue if you got matched with equal levels, but having only a few levels 60's in recent events means I'm matched against PW's 10-20 levels higher, and in one case, my lvl 1 Angrath was matched with a lvl 60 Bolas, which you can imagine how that went right?

The new player experience stinks. I'm hanging in there because I love MTG and this game ticks a number of boxes for me, but I can imagine someone who isn't as fervent a fan as myself would just bail early on.

While you could fix matching to help out, that's really just a bandaid fix, because the true issue remains, which is that vet players hoard wealth until a new drop and at no point are they left wanting. This is because there are no currency sinks outside of actual product acquisition. This means product needs to remain difficult to acquire and as everything compounds as the sets pile in, the mountain that newbies have to climb keeps getting higher while those at the top just wait.

Solution? Cosmetic currency sinks. It works in lots of games, it would work here.

Mana Gems skins - much like in paper magic, people like to pick their favorite looking lands for their decks. So the gems on the board could be skinned in different ways so people can customize.

Alternate art/animated PW avatars. Easy. People like cool art.

"Playmat" skins - what is the playmat in this game? The player's card drawer and borders.

Gem board skins - Even more customization, the ability to change the background of the gem board.


So that's five options for cosmetic currency sinks. How much should they cost? How about as much as leveling a dual color PW to 60?

How does this help new players? Well, it should give some breathing room to increase currency rewards from story mode grinding (just put it at 500 runes per heroic encounter win). Or a timer which which expires after a player has been playing for 60 days in which they earn double rewards. Just some way for new players to get some PW's under their belt without having to play nonstop for hundreds of hours.

The game is just too skewed in favor of people who have been here a long time. It's very daunting to see 40 PW's to choose from and then finding out it takes about an hour to earn 1500 runes and that you need 5000+ of them for a single level. 3+ hours of grinding per level. It's seriously 40 hours, give or take, of straight grinding to go from 50-60 on a dual color PW.

khurram

I'd just like you to note that the runes did not just fall out of nowhere in the laps of veterans. If someone has millions of runes, rest assured that they did play an appropriate number of matches and spent as many obsessive hours in order to get to that point. There are even veterans who have to gather the runes for each PW as they get them.

That being said, I do get that it is a very daunting prospect for new players to look at all those PWs and then realise how much time it will take to get all of them to good levels. Something must be done so that newbies aren't discouraged to the point of just giving up on the game.

bk1234

khurram said:

I'd just like you to note that the runes did not just fall out of nowhere in the laps of veterans. If someone has millions of runes, rest assured that they did play an appropriate number of matches and spent as many obsessive hours in order to get to that point. There are even veterans who have to gather the runes for each PW as they get them.

That being said, I do get that it is a very daunting prospect for new players to look at all those PWs and then realise how much time it will take to get all of them to good levels. Something must be done so that newbies aren't discouraged to the point of just giving up on the game.

We had Quickbattle. We could play as much as we wanted for 300 runes a pop. They took it away, never introduced anything comparable for getting runes and didn't adjust the cost to level a PW. 

While I don't completely agree with the idea -- vets had a huge advantage and many still have missions of runes and are buying and maxing every single new PW. New players have nothing either close -- and it isn't ok.

I don't think a new player should be able to come in and play at the same level as someone who has been here for 2 years -- however, I think they should have the same opportunities that we did to move forward in the game. 

The new player experience is absolutely terrible. Nothing in it inspires engagement. 

Quantius

khurram said:

I'd just like you to note that the runes did not just fall out of nowhere in the laps of veterans. If someone has millions of runes, rest assured that they did play an appropriate number of matches and spent as many obsessive hours in order to get to that point. There are even veterans who have to gather the runes for each PW as they get them.

That being said, I do get that it is a very daunting prospect for new players to look at all those PWs and then realise how much time it will take to get all of them to good levels. Something must be done so that newbies aren't discouraged to the point of just giving up on the game.

I didn't mean to insinuate that vets hadn't earned their runes. Just that once you reach a critical point in the game — 5 PW's of varying colors so you can participate in any event without being disadvantaged — it's a lot easier to sit back and take things as they come and accrue currencies like runes because you want to, rather than because you feel you have to.

And the only way I can see them being more generous to new players is by providing other outlets for people to spend currency that doesn't affect functional aspects of the game.

I'm getting close to having 5, but I'm also grinding myself to death and if I'm feeling it (since I'm a little insane and compulsive), I can only imagine other newbies just giving up and walking away from the game. 60 Jace1, 60 Tezz1, 58 Huatli2, 55 Sorin, 42 Bolas. I'm playing like 10 hours a day. Not asking for a pity party, just pointing out that this is quite a lot to ask of people for the very fundamental aspect of leveling a PW.

Furks

I'd like to throw out a radical idea here but ~ get rid of runes altogether. When the game came out, all you had were runes. You could either level or buy packs with them. Then came crystals. Then came purple crystals. Then orbs. The game is bloated with currencies that do different things. 

It's the way of the f2p game to introduce new currencies devaluing the old ones. 

Mana runes are now in a weird spot where they only have one purpose. You either have too many or too few and there is no way to grind for them.

The experience of lvling planes walkers seems pointless to me. It was fun the first two times, then it became a chore. Getting a new planeswalker but not being able to use them in any events because you can't get the runes to level them up is so annoying.

The fun of the game is all about the cards and deck building.

/rant

arNero

Ummm, back during the first days, I would have supported the notion that the game needs rune sink.

These days however, given how expensive it can be to level up planeswalkers (of which there is a great lot; Even as a veteran of the game I have about half of my planeswalkers not maxed out), a rune sink, while of course a good idea, needs to be accompanied with faster rune acquisition. I reckon some people have gone broke from leveling up Nicol Bolas, for example...

Furks said:

I'd like to throw out a radical idea here but ~ get rid of runes altogether. When the game came out, all you had were runes. You could either level or buy packs with them. Then came crystals. Then came purple crystals. Then orbs. The game is bloated with currencies that do different things. 

It's the way of the f2p game to introduce new currencies devaluing the old ones. 

Mana runes are now in a weird spot where they only have one purpose. You either have too many or too few and there is no way to grind for them.

The experience of lvling planes walkers seems pointless to me. It was fun the first two times, then it became a chore. Getting a new planeswalker but not being able to use them in any events because you can't get the runes to level them up is so annoying.

The fun of the game is all about the cards and deck building.

/rant

Interesting. It's a bit of a back-idea for me, but some time ago I thought that perhaps we could do away with planeswalker levels, then make all planeswalker have only level 1 but with their abilities maxed out/tweaked as though maxed out.

wereotter

I would say I’ve been in the game long enough to be considered a veteran at this point? (I started back in just before the launch of Eldritch Moon)

I will say for myself that I’ve never had the excess runes described here. I pick up all the planeswalkers and even before Karn was released, I still had 6 of them below max level.

I’ll never say no to more content, but I’m willing to bet the player you describe makes up the slim minority.