Cards requiring different amounts of experience to master depending on event. [Fix in 3.4]

ZW2007-

There is a lot of discussion about this in the general chat forum but I wanted to post it in the Bugs & Technical Issues sub as well.

It appears that cards have different experience bars depending on which event you are playing it in. Currently I can master a common card in Training Grounds by playing 17 games, earning 6 xp per game and 4 xp in the final game for a total of 100 xp to master a common in Training Grounds. I can master a common in Rising tensions by playing 2 games, earning 20 xp for a total of 40 xp to master a common in Rising Tensions.

Since card experience is tied directly to player experience and player levels, this should not be happening. By mastering cards in Rising Tension, I am losing out on possible player levels compared to mastering in Training Grounds. This is a very serious issue that almost completely undermines the 3.2 update.

//Edited Title -Brigby

wereotter

This makes sense, though. If you think about it as how much experience you gained as a player, you should gain more from harder content than you do from easier content. Given that things like story mode give you less than heroic encounters, which both (as I understand it) give you less than playing against actual player decks, this seems to be by design rather than an error.

ZW2007-

I think you misunderstand. The events give differing amounts of experience to the cards per event played, which makes sense. The cards require differing amounts of experience to master depending on where they are played, this makes no sense.

Generic Common A should require X experience to be mastered regardless of what event I play it in because my player level is determined by experience earned when mastering cards.

I currently have 489 unmastered commons, if I mastered all of those in Rising Tensions, I would earn 19,560 experience and go from my current player level of 38 up to player level 41. However, If I mastered all of those in Training Grounds, I would earn 48,900 experience and advance my player level well above level 41, probably to level 45.

Tremayne

@ZW2007- You are joking, right. Please tell me you are joking!!!

wereotter

I get that events give different amounts of experience and I think that's right. I would compare it to an RPG where you do and should get less experience from killing a level 1 rat than you do from killing a level 50 dragon. Harder events should reward more experience.

However I do see what you mean now that the cards still finish off mastering after the same number of encounters regardless of how much experience you gain, so you lose potential player experience by mastering cards in the wrong manner. I will agree that part should be addressed and it should just take you a lot more grinding to master a card in an easy event compared to a harder event.

ZW2007-

So are we going to ignore this one? RT is 100% mastering a card faster than any other event which means the player is receiving less total experience/levels by mastering cards in RT.

wereotter

Based off their explanation of the experience system, your observations are incorrect. It takes, for example, 100 experience to master a common. This is the same regardless of if you're getting 2 xp per encounter in story mode or if you're getting 50 xp from your first clear on a heroic encounter, it still takes 100 xp to master the card. That means the player is not losing any potential experience by mastering the cards in story mode verses in events.

Additionally, it doesn't matter anymore if you fully master the card or not since your player level is gaining that experience even if you don't complete the mastery of all your cards.

Tremayne

@wereotter - how can you state @ZW2007- observations are wrong? The OP clearly states that there some cards that are mastered after 40XP vs. Other cards that are mastered after 100 XP.

You may doubt the claim, but unless you show documentation for the procedure is working now, it is not possible to claim he is wrong. 

Now, I know this is a stretch, but perhaps there is a bug in the app. You know there is a first for everything. 

wereotter

@Tremayne

at the time of the initial posting, his concerns were all based on speculation regarding how mastering cards worked. For me, I've not observed the issues he citing to be accurate, but I will admit I also don't care enough about my player level to really try to master more cards, or care about how fast or slow they're leveling up. If the game isn't functioning properly, then that's something different, but for me, I haven't seen his claims regarding the different rates of mastery to be correct.

starfall said:

ZW2007- said:

This is a very serious issue that almost completely undermines the 3.2 update.

In addition to the existing problem of veteran players being denied experience for cards mastered before the update.

This is on purpose. They didn't want legacy players immediately at max level with nowhere to go, especially when they knew they'd have to reduce rewards for long-time players getting multiple levels so as not to flood the game with currencies.

ZW2007-

I'm not really sure what you're missing here. I have screenshots showing a common card with 0 experience earned, followed by a screenshot showing it earn 20 experience, followed by another showing it earn another 20 experience and then become mastered. 20 + 20 = 40. At that point it can no longer earn any experience. Therefore I can only earn 40 experience from that common instead of the 100 experience I am supposed to be able to earn. I have screenshots of an uncommon doing the exact same thing but instead of two games, it was mastered in four games. 4 x 20 = 80. Again, this is a far cry from the 200 experience it is supposed to be able to earn. In this case I earned 1.20 times the experience of a single common when in reality I mastered both a common and an uncommon.

Larz70

@wereotter , I suggest you take an unmastered common card and play it in Rising Tensions.  Make sure you win the match (you don't get XP for losses) and take note of how much the progress bar goes up on that common card.  Once you have won two matches, you will find that the common card is now fully mastered.  Anyone with this experience will conclude that Common cards give 40 XP.  Since the developers confirmed that Common cards should give 100 XP, then this must be a bug.  I haven't played all the events (I haven't played Heroic since I've completed it before 3.2) so I only know of Rising Tensions having this bug, but there could be others.

I also see that your experience of the game is different from players who play the game a lot and invested a lot of hours to master cards.  This game, became like other RPGs in that after 3.2 you have to "kill" cards instead of creatures to level up.  However, in most RPGs, the creatures can respawn and give you more experience, but here, once you have killed/mastered a card, it won't "respawn" to give you more experience.  How would you feel if you killed all the creatures in an RPG and a patch comes along to give you more levels but won't respawn creatures you already killed.  In addition, the developers only gave you 20%* experience from kills prior to the patch but new players who haven't killed these creatures yet can get 100% (except of course if they kill them in Rising Tensions in which case they only get 40% of the XP, which is still double than what veterans got).  You are right in that the developers did it on purpose, but if you were one of those players who invested a lot of their time playing a game they love, you would agree with them in saying that the developers did not love them back.

* 20% is an estimate based on crowd-sourced information.  Some players got 15% and some received a little more than 20%.

Laeuftbeidir

@Larz70 to be precise, the % are depending on the amount of xp already earned. The more cards mastered, the lower the %. In the 30's it's more a 25-35%thing, in the 40's a 10-25% thing. I assume the lower you go, the higher the transition.

Also, rising tensions can't be the only trigger. I've seen normal and not normal xp gains.. It's weird.

ZW2007-

https://youtu.be/Gng6OqVDSWo

Video evidence. Just recorded this to prove I'm not imagining things. It's obviously very easy to reproduce.

wereotter

Larz70 said:

@wereotter , I suggest you take an unmastered common card and play it in Rising Tensions.  Make sure you win the match (you don't get XP for losses) and take note of how much the progress bar goes up on that common card.  Once you have won two matches, you will find that the common card is now fully mastered.  Anyone with this experience will conclude that Common cards give 40 XP.  Since the developers confirmed that Common cards should give 100 XP, then this must be a bug.  I haven't played all the events (I haven't played Heroic since I've completed it before 3.2) so I only know of Rising Tensions having this bug, but there could be others.

I also see that your experience of the game is different from players who play the game a lot and invested a lot of hours to master cards.  This game, became like other RPGs in that after 3.2 you have to "kill" cards instead of creatures to level up.  However, in most RPGs, the creatures can respawn and give you more experience, but here, once you have killed/mastered a card, it won't "respawn" to give you more experience.  How would you feel if you killed all the creatures in an RPG and a patch comes along to give you more levels but won't respawn creatures you already killed.  In addition, the developers only gave you 20%* experience from kills prior to the patch but new players who haven't killed these creatures yet can get 100% (except of course if they kill them in Rising Tensions in which case they only get 40% of the XP, which is still double than what veterans got).  You are right in that the developers did it on purpose, but if you were one of those players who invested a lot of their time playing a game they love, you would agree with them in saying that the developers did not love them back.

* 20% is an estimate based on crowd-sourced information.  Some players got 15% and some received a little more than 20%.

I actually did to this already. I played with Circuitous Route for the first time to help meet one of the secondary objectives against Blood Sun in the recent Battle of the Four Tribes event. Played against the node at least twice, and the card correctly is not mastered in my collection. It’s not even half-way complete. 

As for your analogy, I do get the frustration. I admit I never went out of my way to master cards, so what you’re referring to might not have seemed to impact me, but by virtue of how I play, always wanting to play something new, I have mastered a large percentage of my cards over the years. I’m not upset because I know that no one got more than me for my same number of mastered cards when the system was put in place, and that every 3-ish months more cards are added to the game. There may not be many new cards to master right now, but give it a couple weeks, and there will be a whole new set to master, and you’ll still be at the top of what’s possible. 

Larz70

Rising Tensions @wereotter, BOFT part 1 did not have the mastery bug.

Brakkis

It's taking me 3 RT's to master Commons. They're about three quarters full after 2.

ZW2007-

Don't depend on the experience bar, it bugs out. Watch the video I posted. It shows 2/3 full after playing only one game with it.

Brakkis

I saw your video. I'm still taking 3 to master commons, 5 to master uncommons.

Tombstone

Thank you for the report. I'll pass this along for investigation. Looks like Brigby has already passed it along but I'll go ahead and do so as well. 

Machine

Any update on this @Brigby, @Tombstone? It would be really helpful to get this fixed in 3.3. Right now, I'm only using mastered cards in this event.