Please sir, may I have some more? (runes!)

Mburn7

Gabrosin said:

mrixl2520 said:

Kinesia said:

Money is the wrong thing to focus on, they want people to spend money yes, but they also want people motivated to _play_ more and that's the bit there's little driving for.

I've suggested in the past that everytime you Master a card with a PW you get a "burst" of experience on that specific PW and a small amount of runes. (Numbers to be experimented with). This would be a driver to just _play_ the PWs you want to level and I think that that would be good for the game overall. You'd get people playing with their low level folk and doing crazy silly things with them to master odd unused cards and it'd engage people with their new PW.

I love this card leveling idea!

An idea I have is that every time you win with a PW, that PW gets an amount of xp. Maybe like 100, just a bit to keep leveling them up. That way you could slowly level all your PWs and have extra runes to allocate however you like

Please let's not do this.  Some of us prefer to hit a certain level with our PWs and then stay there.  Not every PW is best at level 60.

The thing is, thats not a good thing.  Technically speaking you should always want all your walkers at level 60.
Back in the day planeswalker leveling curves were modified to encourage people to level them up, after it was noticed that some were getting held at lower levels (OG Gideon was the main culprit, btw).

It there is a walker who functions better at a lower level, that is a design issue, but not something that should be encouraged.  

I totally support letting walkers slowly level as you use them.  I think that would be fantastic.  If you need a compromise, though, maybe make it only in TG.  That way if you don't want a walker leveled, just don't do TG runs with them

Theros

@octal9 PWs should be sold with enough runes to level them to 45 at least. Lack of runes is also the reason why I don't buy PWs. 
Do you think they hold on runes so that players won't acquire content easily with high level PWs? 

If I recall, their solution to getting more runes was getting them from booster crafting. This is obviously not enough.
With QB you could play 10 QB a day for a steady inflow of runes and that was more than what this game could offer with all them events and crafting in 1 month.

@wereotter The community did not request a nerf in runes acquisition which was what D3 has did. People requested ways to spend their runes on. No one said they were worthless. In reality, runes were not easier to get when QB was around unless you put in the effort. It was challenging to compete in QB if you did not have decent cards. QB was way harder than TG

Kinesia

MADAFAKA said:

@octal9 PWs should be sold with enough runes to level them to 45 at least. Lack of runes is also the reason why I don't buy PWs. 
Do you think they hold on runes so that players won't acquire content easily with high level PWs? 

If I recall, their solution to getting more runes was getting them from booster crafting. This is obviously not enough.
With QB you could play 10 QB a day for a steady inflow of runes and that was more than what this game could offer with all them events and crafting in 1 month.

@wereotter The community did not request a nerf in runes acquisition which was what D3 has did. People requested ways to spend their runes on. No one said they were worthless. In reality, runes were not easier to get when QB was around unless you put in the effort. It was challenging to compete in QB if you did not have decent cards. QB was way harder than TG

While I would like enough runes to level them to 45 straight away... You actually miss out if you just level them all the way up straight away. It's a better experience in learning about how they work to level them up slowly and experiment with different things when they have bad mana and small abilities.

Just like in an RPG levelling things up slowly is actually a more fun experience than jumping straight to the end.

DumasAG

Kinesia said:

MADAFAKA said:

@octal9 PWs should be sold with enough runes to level them to 45 at least. Lack of runes is also the reason why I don't buy PWs. 
Do you think they hold on runes so that players won't acquire content easily with high level PWs? 

If I recall, their solution to getting more runes was getting them from booster crafting. This is obviously not enough.
With QB you could play 10 QB a day for a steady inflow of runes and that was more than what this game could offer with all them events and crafting in 1 month.

@wereotter The community did not request a nerf in runes acquisition which was what D3 has did. People requested ways to spend their runes on. No one said they were worthless. In reality, runes were not easier to get when QB was around unless you put in the effort. It was challenging to compete in QB if you did not have decent cards. QB was way harder than TG

While I would like enough runes to level them to 45 straight away... You actually miss out if you just level them all the way up straight away. It's a better experience in learning about how they work to level them up slowly and experiment with different things when they have bad mana and small abilities.

Just like in an RPG levelling things up slowly is actually a more fun experience than jumping straight to the end.

That’s 100% your opinion though. I, on the other hand, find it tiring to play at sub-optimal PW levels. I would rather have my walkers maxed ASAP so that I can fully make use of all interesting interactions.

I did not realize that Karn cost over 300K runes. Buying him gives you 5K... that barely qualifies as a pittance.

Runes and orbs need to be easier to come by for two reasons, it gives established players something to continue doing (maximizing and collecting) and it allows new players to be competitive. That being said, I’m not at all convinced they actively care about people playing regularly. I think they’re comfortable with people playing an hour here and here, as long as they spend money so that level of play can be competitive. That seems to be who the current game is catered to anyhow.

octal9

MADAFAKA said:

@octal9 PWs should be sold with enough runes to level them to 45 at least. Lack of runes is also the reason why I don't buy PWs. 
Do you think they hold on runes so that players won't acquire content easily with high level PWs? 

I am authentically confused why I was tagged here; I’m not sure why the rune flow was reduced to a trickle. Speculation: reduced rune flow could theoretically correlate with higher screen time per player. 

Kinesia

Levelling planeswalkers is part of the design too though, so it's not just my opinion, it's _meant_ to be part of the game.

Not wanting to play them _ever_ at low is just as broken from a design point as trying to avoid getting them to max.

People doing either of those things should be weird exceptions, not majority viewpoints.

morgue427

i liked karn being sold so cheap a decent step back on pricing to introduce him early and knowing how hard it would be to level him, that being said though dang it is hard getting runes plus with all the new ones out that looked good i fell for the bait and stuck with nothing because i was leveling the others. ehh nose to the grindstone and work it tg each day and what ever else i can to get him up there. having at least one pve challenge a week would help though one based more on runes than crystals

Sirchombli

Right now I'm feeling a little tight on runes because we just had a ton of new content dumped on us. We have 36 pws available to us. 3 I have no interest in (h1, arlinn and sarkhan) of the remaining 33, I have 32. No j3 because I'm not in a rush to have a 4th mono u pw. 29 of those 32 are at level 60. One's at 45 and 2 I haven't even touched yet. The runes are available, and before this recent mass set dump (still salty ) I was able to comfortably get enough runes to level a dual color pw in a month. I know this because of the period when we were required to get the new pw for the event where we had to use them in a manner contrary to their intended use. I started around ogw, so I didn't have millions of qb runes stacked up. I just wish there was some sort of regularity to releases . We go over 6 months without a release and then we get 6 months worth of releases in a month , complete with infinitely cycling ways to spend money. It would be nice if they at least tried to give us some time to reaccumulate resources. 

Tilwin90

The whole argument regarding "users requesting less runes" is bogus. From my experience as a software developer, users have needs, doesn't mean they actually know how they want them implemented Or in very common words, we often joke (though I admit it's not very nice, so please, nobody take this personal) that "users are stupid and don't know what they want". 

A good software developer understands the user's needs and attempts to come with the best implementation to serve those needs. Developers should not be blind actuators that take the requirements and implement them without challenging inconsistencies or things that would be blatantly wrong for the players.

The reason people are running out of runes comes out of multiple sources:
Diminished source of runes
1) The removal of a good mana sink (Training Grounds replacing Quick Battle led to a decrease in runes source). > This benefited EVERYONE
2) If I am not mistaken, booster crafting also reduced the amount of runes now players get out of duplicates (with the remark that since now orbs are granted, we ought to reduce the number of runes received) > this mostly benefits people with rich collections
3) Some people will not like I mention this, but offers now no longer include that many runes. Payers will find it more difficult to acquire runes via purchases (though I am sure no payer chased runes when it came to purchases). >This benefits only payers
 
Plenty of expenses in terms of runes
1) Planeswalkers being released like mushrooms show up after a sunny rain (wow, I can't believe I actually took a Romanian expression and pseudo-translated it)
2) Planeswalkers that are highly expensive (I am talking here about Bolas & Karn that take gazillions of runes...)
3) Deck slots that also cost runes. Sure, the cost has been adjusted but with so many planeswalkers being released and people wanting space, it's become a rune sink too.

Recommentations
The most natural recommendation would be the one that suits both newer players as well as experienced ones, namely upping the rewards in terms of runes all around. This includes regular event battles, rewards in events and training ground.  This way you are encouraging everyone to play, and rewarding this play-style with runes.

I also noticed that some people recommended also leveling up planeswalkers based on simply playing. This is a wonderful supplementary source of leveling up. You can invest runes to speed things up, or you can just naturally play and level them up. This would more appeal newer players who still go through this process naturally! As an elite player I admit I have an issue with this approach, as it seems super tedious to play with a level 1 planeswalker, and maybe have to play 100-200 matches (the way things are scaled in this game) before I can get them to level 60.

Finally, I still advise offering deck slots without cost, maybe as part of naturally playing the planeswalker. For instance, you could grant a slot at 10/30/50/75/100/150/200/300 played matches with a specific planeswalker, giving an additional of 8 slots besides the original one. To make it a round number, taking into account legacy & standard, it would still be very important (especially for newer players) to grant 2 slots per planeswalker. 
Note that I don't really use slots and I only spent runes on one slot in the whole game (Kiora). I just don't find the cost appealing. But I understand other people invest in them, and I see them as a natural feature the game should provide. (There's 0 reason to be scrooge on deck slots)

Theros

another fix is to upgrade TD to grant like 500  runes each game after completing the 4 progression.
This will motivate people to play beyond 4 games

babar3355

I updated my OP to reflect the correct number of "no additional rewards" Training Grounds games from 1080 to 3240.  I was stuck in the past and thought we still got 300 runes for winning these fights.

Some people are claiming "the runes are available".  But is this actually true?  Assuming you can win every fight and start the next one in 2 minutes it would take you 108 hours of constant grinding with no losses.  And BTW, winning every fight in less than 2 minutes would not be realistic.  How is this reasonable?

I agree that they don't intend for us to immediately take all of our PWs to 60.  But that is a different thing than disincintivizing us from buying them at all or leveling them to 60 if we can.

Nearly 2 years ago I posted about how I thought PWs should work.  Each PW should have their very own Story mode that introduces the player to both their lore and their abilities.  After completing the story mode the PW has gained enough experience to be around level 20.  The PW is restricted to their own story mode before they reach this point, but subsequently can be played anywhere.  Once they are finished with their story mode they gain experience similar to how @Kinesia expressed.

However, if they neither have the time, resources, or desire to implement something like this, then at least give us some manner of grinding runes that isn't oppressively time consuming and infinitely boring.  And yes, killing Heroic Gideon nearly 1300 times to fully level Karn is both oppressively time consuming and infinitely boring.

Kinesia

@babar3355 Yes, I really really like the idea of every planeswalker having their own "intro" battles like Intro to the game where we get Nissa. The basic 5 should definitely _All_ be introduced the same way and not have to be bought, just played for.
Having every new one have an introduction to their new powers to get them to about 20 would be great.

Dodecapod

Tl;dr - For PvP, all PWs should have a fixed level, independent of progress, and for PvE, PWs released more than 6-12 months ago should have their leveling costs significantly decreased, while the optimal outlet for grinding runes should be more engaging than thousands of story mode/TG battles

At this point in the game's life cycle, I'd honestly like to see runes and the corresponding PW leveling abolished entirely for PvP purposes and made far more accessible for PvE.  Runes might have made sense as a widespread limiting factor in late 2015 and early 2016 when PWs could have served to pace early content out long enough for the devs to introduce more before a critical mass of players had exhausted what was available then, but by now the primary endgame bottleneck has long since shifted towards card collection instead of PWs, which leaves runes almost generating the impression of an antiquated currency from a different game altogether.

Unlike crystals, jewels, and orbs, runes are the only currency that still either encourages or rewards unbounded grinding (a far cry from much of the QB era when every game mode tended towards that incentive structure), they have the greatest relevance in story mode, which no longer receives ongoing support (events generally offer much less linear incentives in terms of whether "always aim for more PWs with higher levels" is an optimal progression path, and when it isn't, runes and leveling become highly counterintuitive), and they constitute a redundant form of differentiation between players of various experience and investment levels (collection accomplishes this far more prominently and effectively).

Perhaps I'm overlooking something in this assessment, but given the current overall in-game environment and economy, these are the primary tradeoffs I can see for keeping runes as a central currency:

Advantages

• For players with all cards, leveling PWs can provide an alternative form of progress-based content between major releases
  -Counterpoint:  For the few (if any) players with all cards, leveling PWs seems like an alienating rather than engaging method of providing another axis of content (story mode and TG will likely have worn out their novelty for players who reach this point, especially since mastery already serves as a similar incentive to grind story mode; allowing these players to unlock an "extreme" story mode with double mana, hp, etc., or triple and so on if they play through that, among other possibilities, seems as though it would increase replayability between sets far more than earning gratuitous quantities of runes currently does)
• For old QB grinders who have remained in the game since, having rune-based purchases allows for differentiation from both newer players and older players who weren't QB grinders
  -Counterpoint:  Even if one concedes that QB grinders should have had a head start when TG was introduced (which itself seemed like a polarizing topic at the time), their advantages have already been grandfathered in through crafting, and those who have continued to play this long most likely no longer need a redundant form of increased access in the form of rune-based differentiation from other players to avoid demoralization based on a competitive format that hasn't existed for about a year now
• Very new players have a form of progress accessible to them that collection doesn't provide (as most avenues for cards entail a gambling element, whereas most avenues for runes are deterministic), and seeing immediate measurable progress can foster early engagement
• Runes offer an additional low-value item to finely differentiate premium bundles from one another in terms of in-game value represented for the same price point, whereas jewels, crystals, packs, and individual cards or PWs might be better suited for coarser differentiation
  -Counterpoint:  Orbs offer a similar but more relevant low-value differentiating item for premium bundles that currently employ runes for that purpose

Disadvantages

• For players who weren't old QB grinders, rune limitations can deter PW purchases
• In any PvP setting, level-based matchmaking almost inevitably either leads to negative play experiences among players matched against opponents above their level or induces counterintuitive incentives to sandbag that undermine the integrity of competition (in some cases, both of these can occur simultaneously for different players, or even for a single player with multiple PWs)
• Emphasizing rune accumulation encourages beginning and intermediate players to gain the most experience in game modes (story and TG) that won't inherently prepare them for the environment they'll encounter when they reach the endgame (where Standard, not Legacy, deckbuilding and card collection are usually the most significant factors for competitive events)
• Having a double progression wall (PWs and collection) for new players is redundant and increases the already-steep barrier to entry
• Introducing new players to runes as the first currency they encounter through the tutorial and the first one they have an opportunity to use extensively without paying can induce irreversible PvP progression traps, as players can't unlevel PWs if matchmaking idiosyncrasies lead them to face opponents whose difficulty scales faster than the rate of improvement offered by PW level-based bonuses; this effect may be exacerbated if these players have hit a wall in story mode and lack any other engaging avenue for improvement
  

Overall, I'd argue (as illustrated by the counterpoints) that all but the 3rd advantage can be better served through other means, while the disadvantages are far more noticeable and detrimental to the incentive structure offered by the event system.

The one major advantage that remains for preserving runes is the early progression experience for newer players; as story mode was originally designed around this balance, it makes sense to retain some kind of PvE scaling and story mode relevance based on PW level, but to avoid alienating players too early (or ideally at all), reducing the rune costs by 50-75% for PWs who were first released for crystals more than 6-12 months ago might also make sense as the available pool of PWs continues to grow.

Unfortunately, this same leveling system collapses entirely in PvP, where tiers only loosely provide insulation based on collection, and where PW leveling is a one-way path with effects partially dependent on other players' behavior.  There have been myriad instances over the months of both justifiable complaints about being matched against overwhelming opponents (e.g. a level 1 facing a level 60 when runes are a limiting factor) and of legal exploits in which players with ample resources could gain a competitive advantage by playing low-level PWs; neither of these situations seem desirable for the vast majority of players as far as fair competition is concerned.

One potential solution I've seen in another game would be to segregate the leveling system between PvP and PvE; for PvP, everyone in that game was automatically locked into stats at a fixed level (here that could be 30, 45, 60, or whatever seemed suitable), so that matchmaking could be limited to accounting for performance, collection, etc. without either rewarding players for intentionally deflating their own levels or allowing the possibility of a one-way progression path that would risk trapping players into consistently facing invincible opponents (e.g. in MtGPQ, a weak collection with a level 60 PW is often worse than the same collection with a level 30 PW in PvP).  Meanwhile, the RPG element was preserved in PvE, where the devs could control the progression experience and competitive incentives far more precisely.

If applied to this game, that would give newer players a more reasonable road to pursue when they hit a wall in story mode (especially if TG matchmaking takes into account daily W/L record or otherwise scales opponents down should the first few prove unbeatable), endgame players wouldn't be deterred as strongly from purchasing new PWs that couldn't be leveled up quickly, and a significant source of sandbagging would be removed from competition.  It wouldn't fully address the issue of leading new players down a road early on that prepares them for a different environment than they'll face when they reach the endgame, but even on that front it would at least be a step in the right direction by highlighting collection over PW levels as a more important differentiating factor in any PvP setting (which is likely harder for an uninitiated player to identify when the AI has twice the hp or mana gains they do with a 5-10 level difference, and when story mode tends to reward leveling PWs indiscriminately).

Even if this solution might ultimately prove too drastic (especially if there are other crucial factors I haven't accounted for), hopefully at the least there are other ways of increasing access to runes that would offer a more engaging and rewarding experience than story mode, as several others have suggested.  When there are more comments along the lines of "that PW seems good, but I can only get them to level 10, so I probably won't use them for 3-6 months" than there are ideas and experiences shared using a new PW shortly after release, that would seem to reflect untapped revenue from players who would otherwise be willing to support the game were it not for the complementary need to spend dozens of hours grinding what for them is alienating content in order to explore their areas of interest in any reasonable time frame.  At least on the surface, it seems like there has to be a better alternative for almost everyone, and hopefully the devs will eventually discover and implement one.

madwren

Dodecapod said:

Tl;dr - For PvP, all PWs should have a fixed level, independent of progress, and for PvE, PWs released more than 6-12 months ago should have their leveling costs significantly decreased, while the optimal outlet for grinding runes should be more engaging than thousands of story mode/TG battles

Excellent post, sir.

DumasAG

madwren said:

Dodecapod said:

Tl;dr - For PvP, all PWs should have a fixed level, independent of progress, and for PvE, PWs released more than 6-12 months ago should have their leveling costs significantly decreased, while the optimal outlet for grinding runes should be more engaging than thousands of story mode/TG battles

Excellent post, sir.

really, top notch. #agreement

Coilbox

I would even say that each PW should progress and level up based on the victorys achieved with it.
In my opinion it doesn't make sense that you can play with one PW, and win resources to level up a different one not even playing with it and learning how it works as you progress, so i would just get rid of the runes AT ALL, and make PW's level up based on how much you play with it. And of course don't make it like a neverending chore (thinking of the 300K runes Karn costs to max him up). 

First 20 levels: 1 victory -> 1 level
From lvl20 to lvl40: 2 victorys -> 1 level
From lvl40 to lvl60: 3 Victorys -> 1 level

I guess something like this would work just fine... enough to experience the PW at it's lower tiers and also level it up at a consistent pace...

@babar3355 suggested a closed story mode for each one of them, which i think is a brilliant idea, however, implementing something like that would take... ages.. we haven't even seen a tiny improvement in normal story mode for so long...

Anyway, my 2 cents!

Mburn7

Coilbox said:

First 20 levels: 1 victory -> 1 level
From lvl20 to lvl40: 2 victorys -> 1 level
From lvl40 to lvl60: 3 Victorys -> 1 level

This would be pretty cool, and quite fun (for me).  I think theyd make it a little harder, though, and scaled based on the walker (like they do now).  So 2 color take more wins (say 1.5 times as many), and 3 color/Karn take twice as many.  

Aeroplane

Training Grounds should at least match the 250 runes of Heroic Encounters
More runes or extra reward runes after the final reward in events should be added.
Daily objectives in story mode for more runes.
More runes scattered across each event or platform only adds interest and balances out the need for some players to play more. What's the point of buying a new PW if you can't level the ones you have.
I don't understand why they would push us to grind Heroic Encounters when Training Grounds has more variety and interesting game play. They could spice things up in TGs with achievements- 10 wins in a row 1000 runes, win with summoning no creatures 2000 runes..etc
Story Mode has so much untapped potential for interesting events. x2 or even x3 rune events, daily objectives,...
Personally ,I'm fine with the financial part of the game because  the game is really free if your disciplined with no ads.

Matthew

Dodecapod said:

Tl;dr - For PvP, all PWs should have a fixed level, independent of progress, and for PvE, PWs released more than 6-12 months ago should have their leveling costs significantly decreased, while the optimal outlet for grinding runes should be more engaging than thousands of story mode/TG battles

Nobody's done it, so I'll just go ahead and tag @Brigby and @Oktagon_Daiane

I hope you guys can at least pass this on to the dev team, even if you don't read it yourselves. This is some fantastic analysis, and it really does a great job of defining the problem as well as offering excellent suggestions for improvement.

AzraelCB

As a new player, I can definitely say that the lack of runes is a significant disadvantage. You can buy cards, but not progression... but the progression on PWs is a significant time suck.

In my opinion, the card mastery system makes sense. Use the card, learn it, gain mastery... why not build on that? Earn color points for mastering cards and use those points to level PWs of the appropriate color