Gilded Lotus: Bait and switch

FindingHeart8

khurram said:

Karn has been the cheapest pw that has been put up for sale. Including gilded lotus in the package was indeed honestly just icing on the cake. Were we expecting such a card to come with him when they announced Karn? No. Even if he had all commons in his deck he is such a unique and fun PW that it would have been a hard to miss purchase, as far as the cash offers go for this game.

And I, my good sir, have a stupendous understanding of this game!  **except for the new parts I haven't read yet...but we're not counting those

Ah, yes yes, you are the "master" of this game and you spare no opportunity making such claims but honestly, you skim through the notes? and did not know how Karn worked? I am very very disappointed in you.

Please see my polished resume below:

babar3355

jtwood said:

Gunmix25 said:

I also agree with everything @babar3355 is saying too. I don't know a soul in here that is willing to shell out that much cash for a single rare … unless … it was for a PW  

All I know is that this discussion is being watched by D3 and Oktagon and all of those players who said that they bought the pack just for Gilded Lotus... a rare of all things. and not Karn is only going to be giving them ideas that they can jack up the price thinking that "hey, these guys were willing to pay $20 for just Gilded lotus, a single rare and here we are selling three rares at $3.99?!?!?"

Seriously, what do you think will happen?

Well, now you know one (sort of). Hi!

I paid $20 for Gilded Lotus + Karn (not the other way around).

• I evaluated Gilded Lotus as being very powerful.
• There is no guarantee I will open any card. Only probabilities.
• Crafting every rare in a new set would take a long time. That means the guaranteed minimum cost of a rare is pretty high in free-to-play terms
• Karn is a PW with a fixed, known cost. It's not even an oppressive cost in FtP terms. And to some extent, I can buy him at my convenience.

Since the Lotus bundle came with Karn, I paid for it knowing that it would probably be 2 months before I could even use Karn - but Lotus was a powerful card that I could use now and in a lot of places right away. There was no risk that I would never open it or not craft it. The value seemed to be there in my mind.

What I didn't realize was that the Lotus always came with Karn even if I got him later for crystals. With that knowledge now, I can say that I would have just waited and not spent the cash. So that was my mistake for not understanding how they sell stuff in this game. I'll openly admit that.

But I stand by my original logic: Paying cash to remove chance from an outcome is really the best way to spend money in this game (assuming you want to pay money at all). PWs can always be had for a known price. There is no chance in acquiring them. Other cards - even lower rarity cards* - are not guaranteed without spending a lot of crystals to be able to craft every card. So if you have a chance to straight up buy a card, it makes sense to consider the offer. The only question is: Is it good enough for the price?

*I've been playing for around 7 months now and I only now opened Demolish over the weekend :-/

I sympathize most with this view.  As a relatively new player, why should you know that you will get these cards when you buy him for crystals?  I mean look at the in game advertisement for Karn even still!  It clearly shows Gilded Lotus as a perk for buying the bundle (although thankfully they are showing the nerfed version). It definitely doesn't imply that he will be for sale soon with the same cards for crystals.

I also empathize with new players.  Karn might not be great buy for them because he is so costly to level and fairly squishy at low levels.  However, Gilded Lotus in it's original form should and would go into virtually any deck they are playing.  In other words, they would not buy Karn even for crystals with the nerfed version of Gilded Lotus.  For these players, D3/Oktagon sold them something and then nerfed it a month later.

As for the intent... I honestly don't think there was malicious intent. I don't think they knew they were going to nerf the card a month after selling Karn. However, the fact that they didn't realize it was "too powerful" at the time of release shows incompetence.  I certainly don't want my game developer to be malicious, but I don't want them to be incompetent either.

And finally... 80 crystals?  You really must be joking... I could care less about 80 crystals.  Not even worth looking up my receipt.

Gunmix25

FindingHeart8 said:

khurram said:

Karn has been the cheapest pw that has been put up for sale. Including gilded lotus in the package was indeed honestly just icing on the cake. Were we expecting such a card to come with him when they announced Karn? No. Even if he had all commons in his deck he is such a unique and fun PW that it would have been a hard to miss purchase, as far as the cash offers go for this game.

And I, my good sir, have a stupendous understanding of this game!  **except for the new parts I haven't read yet...but we're not counting those

Ah, yes yes, you are the "master" of this game and you spare no opportunity making such claims but honestly, you skim through the notes? and did not know how Karn worked? I am very very disappointed in you.

Please see my polished resume below:

Good lord... I should know better to be drinking coffee when I am reading your posts. Lol!

What I see whenever compensation comes up is it is never enough apparently. Dunno what consitutes a fair compensation because one player's fair compensation is another's feeling that it's  not enough and vice versa. 

span_argoman

If we're talking about new players, shouldn't the nerfed Gilded Lotus still be a viable card for them? For them the effect of +1 to all mana bonuses is equivalent to leveling their planeswalker by like 30 or 40 levels.

babar3355

span_argoman said:

If we're talking about new players, shouldn't the nerfed Gilded Lotus still be a viable card for them? For them the effect of +1 to all mana bonuses is equivalent to leveling their planeswalker by like 30 or 40 levels.

But would they be willing to shell out $20 for that effect?  

span_argoman

babar3355 said:

span_argoman said:

If we're talking about new players, shouldn't the nerfed Gilded Lotus still be a viable card for them? For them the effect of +1 to all mana bonuses is equivalent to leveling their planeswalker by like 30 or 40 levels.

But would they be willing to shell out $20 for that effect?  

Well as the discussion has stated, the bundle is for Karn together with the cards in his starting deck no?

Assuming Karn will cost the same as Bolas in Crystals (850), the Karn bundle is already cheaper than buying the Crystals for Karn, with advance access of roughly one and a half months on top of that.

So if someone was already thinking of spending cash on this game, compared to the other options it still doesn't seem that bad.

If they weren't, then it's up to the evaluation of the individual buyers I guess. But those pleading buyer's ignorance to how the game works doesn't seem like a good way of getting one's case across either.

Aeroplane

span_argoman said:

If we're talking about new players, shouldn't the nerfed Gilded Lotus still be a viable card for them? For them the effect of +1 to all mana bonuses is equivalent to leveling their planeswalker by like 30 or 40 levels.

This excuse was just made up. Gilded Lotus was made for Karn. It's a non-color mana boost , right up karn's alley. There are way too many holes in their reasons why they nerfed Gilded Lotus.
 For new players? Too many complaints? Why nerf the other cards? Compare Gilded Lotus to River's Rebuke for being op for a rare. Omni was just added to the masterpiece selection.... To many contradictions.

babar3355

span_argoman said:

babar3355 said:

span_argoman said:

If we're talking about new players, shouldn't the nerfed Gilded Lotus still be a viable card for them? For them the effect of +1 to all mana bonuses is equivalent to leveling their planeswalker by like 30 or 40 levels.

But would they be willing to shell out $20 for that effect?  

Well as the discussion has stated, the bundle is for Karn together with the cards in his starting deck no?

Assuming Karn will cost the same as Bolas in Crystals (850), the Karn bundle is already cheaper than buying the Crystals for Karn, with advance access of roughly one and a half months on top of that.

So if someone was already thinking of spending cash on this game, compared to the other options it still doesn't seem that bad.

If they weren't, then it's up to the evaluation of the individual buyers I guess. But those pleading buyer's ignorance to how the game works doesn't seem like a good way of getting one's case across either.

Can we just agree to agree? 

I am just saying astute new players might have been willing to buy the Karn bundle to get gilded lotus in its pre-nerf form, but rationally wouldn't even buy him for crystals in its current form.  Those players got screwed.  

And I emphasize with players who didn't understand the nuances of the game.. I didn't say they were correct.

FindingHeart8

Gunmix25 said:

FindingHeart8 said:

khurram said:

Karn has been the cheapest pw that has been put up for sale. Including gilded lotus in the package was indeed honestly just icing on the cake. Were we expecting such a card to come with him when they announced Karn? No. Even if he had all commons in his deck he is such a unique and fun PW that it would have been a hard to miss purchase, as far as the cash offers go for this game.

And I, my good sir, have a stupendous understanding of this game!  **except for the new parts I haven't read yet...but we're not counting those

Ah, yes yes, you are the "master" of this game and you spare no opportunity making such claims but honestly, you skim through the notes? and did not know how Karn worked? I am very very disappointed in you.

Please see my polished resume below:

Good lord... I should know better to be drinking coffee when I am reading your posts. Lol!

What I see whenever compensation comes up is it is never enough apparently. Dunno what consitutes a fair compensation because one player's fair compensation is another's feeling that it's  not enough and vice versa. 

well good morning to you too lol

Yeah, it can get tricky there.  The easiest solution is to just keep the cards the same or (as suggested by other players) increase the mana cost of gilded lotus but keep the abilities the same.

span_argoman

babar3355 said:

span_argoman said:

babar3355 said:

span_argoman said:

If we're talking about new players, shouldn't the nerfed Gilded Lotus still be a viable card for them? For them the effect of +1 to all mana bonuses is equivalent to leveling their planeswalker by like 30 or 40 levels.

But would they be willing to shell out $20 for that effect?  

Well as the discussion has stated, the bundle is for Karn together with the cards in his starting deck no?

Assuming Karn will cost the same as Bolas in Crystals (850), the Karn bundle is already cheaper than buying the Crystals for Karn, with advance access of roughly one and a half months on top of that.

So if someone was already thinking of spending cash on this game, compared to the other options it still doesn't seem that bad.

If they weren't, then it's up to the evaluation of the individual buyers I guess. But those pleading buyer's ignorance to how the game works doesn't seem like a good way of getting one's case across either.

Can we just agree to agree? 

I am just saying astute new players might have been willing to buy the Karn bundle to get gilded lotus in its pre-nerf form, but rationally wouldn't even buy him for crystals in its current form.  Those players got screwed.  

And I emphasize with players who didn't understand the nuances of the game.. I didn't say they were correct.

I have no idea how playable Karn is at lower levels so I can't comment on whether he would be worth getting for his Crystal cost when he is available in the Vault for Crystals.

But I agree on the other points. A very common complaint I hear from new players is how little this game has in the way of information on how the game works, especially in-game.

Aeroplane said:

span_argoman said:

If we're talking about new players, shouldn't the nerfed Gilded Lotus still be a viable card for them? For them the effect of +1 to all mana bonuses is equivalent to leveling their planeswalker by like 30 or 40 levels.

This excuse was just made up. Gilded Lotus was made for Karn. It's a non-color mana boost , right up karn's alley. There are way too many holes in their reasons why they nerfed Gilded Lotus.
 For new players? Too many complaints? Why nerf the other cards? Compare Gilded Lotus to River's Rebuke for being op for a rare. Omni was just added to the masterpiece selection.... To many contradictions.

Sorry, but I don't think I fully understood your post. I assume the excuse you are mentioning is the reason given by the developers for nerfing Gilded Lotus. The card boosts all colours which to me helps most planeswalkers and not just a Colourless one.

I think I also got that you are challenging the developers as to why this card along with the other cards in the Karn bundle were nerfed as opposed to the other OP cards we have in the game.

I would also like to hear their rationale on that. If the cards in the bundle were released before proper testing could be done, that is imdeed very unfortunate. It is very plausible considering the timeline they have, but they can see the consequences of it.

If there was anything else you were trying to say, do clarify.