Not. Another. Dime. Again.

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Not. Another. Dime..

Thuran

Should this happen again? 

We have seen a lot of bad decisions lately;

- almost no reward packs of RIX in what seems an attempt to force players to spend crystals

- at the same time, price of PPs were increased and droprates for IXL fell dramatically

- rare rewards? GONE to the detriment of everybody

- events have become scarcer

- arguably worse elite packs with less ability to target desired cards.

-rapid fire exclusives for IXL due to tight schedule

It seems to begin pointing to a pattern of austerity to force players to spend more.

Your opinion? Is the current direction pointing to a dime revival? Will you spend?

DumasAG

I'd want more proof of maliciousness. I think there's still a chance that everyone's attention is focused on catching up to paper magic to the detriment of everything else (a mistake in my opinion, take your time. If Dominaria releases in June, that's fine with me as long as everything else is getting sorted and improving). Could be that they just weren't being cognizant with some of the decisions like points 2, 4, 5, and 6 you made. Rares do need to be brought back, though. 

FindingHeart8

Yeah, I think the patterns we've been observing warrant some suspicion, but there's still a solid possibility that Octagon is so focused on delivering us new content that they're either oblivious to our grievances or believe Dominaria should take first priority before other gameplay fixes

Mburn7

FindingHeart8 said:

Yeah, I think the patterns we've been observing warrant some suspicion, but there's still a solid possibility that Octagon is so focused on delivering us new content that they're either oblivious to our grievances or believe Dominaria should take first priority before other gameplay fixes

But with WoTC's release schedule, when will they have the time to get to the minor stuff like this?  Dominaria comes out end of the month, then the new core comes out late summer (I believe), and then there is usually a fall release.  Unless Oktagon is still learning the code and expects to be able to get new sets in more quickly in the future, they will always be "rushing" it out

DumasAG

Are we sure they're going to put the core set out? They didn't do Masters or any of the non-block content, right? Maybe they'll just turn some choice core set cards into elite cards?

ZW2007-

Well the new core set is not a supplemental product like the Masters or Conspiracy or Un sets. The new core set will be a standard legal set so I don't see why it would be skipped in PQ. Origins was technically the "final" core set back when they decided to put an end to them.

James13

I don't get the conspiracy ideas.

This has some variant of Hanlon's razor written all over it.  But I don't think it's that harsh even.  Just (potentially justifiably) over rushed.

I don't think "catching up with paper" should be the main goal as it seems to be.  You can be fairly far behind as long as a content rotation remains generally fresh.

Tilwin90

I agree the following Oktagon decisions having either lacked transparency or been a mess:
- The very abrupt release of RIvals - I get they wanted it in, but they could've announced it in time to allow players to  make preparations.
- Squeezing in all those exclusives, out of which we had a bugged one (Tishana) - which they didn't even bother fixing for a long long time. If I had sold something to people for such an absurd amount of $$$, I would full focus on implementing a fix, testing it thoroughly and pushing it pronto to production. In the future expect a lot of angry complaints if this does not happen - for very good reason. Bugs happen, but there is a decency line here when it comes to time to market.
- The new packs felt to me like a complete scam for three reasons:
   -- Prices going up for ZERO reason - oh wait, just because you can is a reason?
   -- Shady drop rates on current ixalan packs - seriously, 52.12% rare, 13.23% mythic, when for ORIGINS it's 73.58% and 26.28%? Those drop rates can be felt on my card collection might I add!
   -- No masterpieces in the packs - don't give me that whole "hey they are not in the paper set either" ****. Those masterpieces were a huge reason for me to care about older packs, in spite of having gotten ZERO from countless HOU or AMK packs.
- Where's that valuetown? Are we referring to all the purples being reduced now like crazy on all offers? That reduction was shady in its own way.
- Is it just me or are there more runes and less crystals on legacy events?
- Not updating rewards and offering more relevant transformed past events (Trials of the Gods, Return of the God Pharaoh etc.) with IXN and RIX packs and rares...
- Bugs, bugs and  more bugs... I am starting to want to get my hands on a beta version of the game so we can properly test things.

Quantius

There's a lot I wish I had known since I started recently, and I feel like I rewarded bad behavior. I've spent a ton of real money, but the only acceptable drop rates are on RIX packs. It's not worth opening any other type of pack, even Origins. Even if you have the full set of RIX, it's STILL worth opening those packs over others because you'll get more orbs at a faster rate for crafting. You can actually craft cards faster than you can acquire new rares and mythics from opening packs!

Sad thing is, I'd totally dump more money to buy legacy packs if they had drop rates like RIX. But things being what they are, there's nearly zero return on cash buys outside of RIX and that's a problem if they want to incentivize purchases. You can't ask people to spend money just to pull commons and uncommons out of 40-60 packs in a row with only their handful of guaranteed rares to show for it.

I don't know what kind of data they have, or if some insane whales just drop tens of thousands of dollars per month on this game making their decisions work in their favor, but it ain't working for me.

wereotter

DumasAG said:

I'd want more proof of maliciousness. I think there's still a chance that everyone's attention is focused on catching up to paper magic to the detriment of everything else (a mistake in my opinion, take your time. If Dominaria releases in June, that's fine with me as long as everything else is getting sorted and improving). Could be that they just weren't being cognizant with some of the decisions like points 2, 4, 5, and 6 you made. Rares do need to be brought back, though. 

The paper release for Dominaria is in about three and a half weeks, so playing catch up is fine, and after so long of no real purchasable content, it is likely they wanted to get a lot in the game so it can start to be profitable. However, I will agree that the breathing room between Ixalan and Rivals felt rushed, especially with the new exclusives every week and at a higher premium than I remember old exclusives being sold for.

But back on point.... with the Core 2019 set following Dominaria in the summer, I feel like they could have more easily taken a slower approach to implementing Rivals, released Dominaria later, and then skipped the core set, which is likely going to be a lot of reprints anyway, and moved straight into the next story set to follow Dominaria.

FindingHeart8

wereotter said:

But back on point.... with the Core 2019 set following Dominaria in the summer, I feel like they could have more easily taken a slower approach to implementing Rivals, released Dominaria later, and then skipped the core set, which is likely going to be a lot of reprints anyway, and moved straight into the next story set to follow Dominaria.

I mean, they probably could have...but would you honestly have wanted to be stuck with just Ixalan for another several months?

With as great as Rivals turned out, I'm glad they released it as quickly as they did.  That's not to say I don't also wish they released more ways to obtain in-game currency to purchase said new-content; but overall I'm just glad we can move on to better things.

NinjaE

FindingHeart8 said:

wereotter said:

But back on point.... with the Core 2019 set following Dominaria in the summer, I feel like they could have more easily taken a slower approach to implementing Rivals, released Dominaria later, and then skipped the core set, which is likely going to be a lot of reprints anyway, and moved straight into the next story set to follow Dominaria.

I mean, they probably could have...but would you honestly have wanted to be stuck with just Ixalan for another several months?

With as great as Rivals turned out, I'm glad they released it as quickly as they did.  That's not to say I don't also wish they released more ways to obtain in-game currency to purchase said new-content; but overall I'm just glad we can move on to better things.

Well said.

ZW2007-

wereotter said:

But back on point.... with the Core 2019 set following Dominaria in the summer, I feel like they could have more easily taken a slower approach to implementing Rivals, released Dominaria later, and then skipped the core set, which is likely going to be a lot of reprints anyway, and moved straight into the next story set to follow Dominaria.

Yes, core sets generally consist of mostly reprints. However, I doubt we will see a ton of cards that are reprints of the cards available to us in PQ. By the time Core 2019 is released, there will still only be 5 sets in PQ that are currently not in standard in paper (KLD and AER will be in paper standard until the set after M19 releases). Given the flavor of four of BFZ, OGW, SOI, and EMN, and the fact that those cards only left paper standard when HOU was released, I can't imagine there would be any reprints from those sets. Also, since ORI was the last core set, I wouldn't think they would duplicate a lot of the cards that were in that set either. I hope to see Shivan Dragon and Nightmare and the other staple rares of core sets though.

On the topic at hand, I will reserve judgment until DOM arrives. I feel like part of the issue with XLN and RIX is that each set only had one new event associated with them and due to bugs and player complaints about those events, we've hardly played them at all (3 times combined...). Compared to playing HoR and RotGP twice a week which both gave HOU boosters and the same for each set prior. Yes, Across Ixalan (AX) does provide lots of XLN boosters but that is where the bad XLN drop rates come into play; those boosters are nearly worthless. The event still holds value since it is a net positive of Orbs, Crystals, and Jewels. I have a feeling this net positive may be part of the reason for the terrible XLN drop rates. RIX, on the other hand, has excellent drop rates but we literally got one free pack of that so far (and I think that was at max progression which wasn't easy to hit.) If Dominaria comes with two new events that both offer DOM boosters as rewards and we get to play those events frequently, I think things will be alright. (I still miss Rare card rewards.)