Player Level and Card Experience (2/25/19)

Outersider

soultwist said:

starfall said:

After the 3.2 update, I'd mastered about 2000 cards, and was level 41

Today I just hit level 50, after mastering an additional 150 or so cards.

You want to go on tilt? I just saw a profile level 41 less then 280 cards mastered.

That's a perfect example of how badly they screwed up... I leveled over 2000 cards prior to the update and was only 42.   I'm not expecting them to actually fix it... they will come up with what they call a solution, which it won't it will only be nod and a wink towards those of us who got screwed. My faith is almost nil that it will actually correct the problem.

Stalker

If leveling becomes that important than there should be a redo of peoples mastered cards. And since this is a pachinko type game then I would like a purchase option to save myself the grind of leveling up all my cards

Mburn7

Stalker said:

If leveling becomes that important than there should be a redo of peoples mastered cards. And since this is a pachinko type game then I would like a purchase option to save myself the grind of leveling up all my cards

Why would you want to purchase levels?  Its not like there is a penalty for being at a lower level.  In fact, there's a good chance that there will be an advantage to being a low level depending on how they implement the system.

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Laeuftbeidir

Still, not letting that topic go to waste.

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone,


Now you might say, "Sure it'll probably be small, but how small could it possibly be that it'll be an issue?" Good question! I crunched some numbers real quick. Let's say a player hits the minimum points to reach Platinum in all colors. That's a pretty impressive feat, and in doing so means they've reached the top 1.87% of players! That already limits the pool of opponents significantly.

What about for the high color mastery veteran players we're talking about with color mastery levels of 2500+ Platinum Color Mastery in each color? If we were to give them all of their experience, and put those players at its respective player level, the percentage of players they'd be able to match against would be... literally .038%

Oh, I love data! I mean, it's worthless without context: data + context = information. Data - context = random numbers.

How are players defined? It appears like it's defined as "all individuals who downloaded the game and have a unique user ID."

Why? We don't know how many active players there are (let's just define active as in 'opening the game on a weekly base'). We also don't know how many downloads this game has - all we have is the +1mio downloads emblem in the Google play store.. Even that number indicates at least 19k platinum players, and around 4k players with +2500 mastery points. Players reaching that number have likely been active for a long, long time.

The last 3k player per bracket event flipped twice in platinum, so we can assume max. 9000  platinum players active enough to at least join the event. 

We don't know how many players dropped the game in the meantime - but the ballpark guesses indicate "a lot". Very likely before even reaching platinum (fewer brackets flips observed) Thus, 1,87% of the playerbase is a way bigger share of the active part of the community than it appears to be. Assuming that players who played long enough to reach platinum are more likely to get hooked, and the majority of players who left the game didn't reach plat, the 0.37% could even be a major share of all active players.

Tldr - numbers are nice, but without context we all can crunch them however we like.

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Khyb

@ Brigby

It's been a good 2.5 year run.  I am thankful to the dev teams for providing an often fun ride during that time period!  Today, however, I deleted the app.

I don't put a lot of stock in the "I'm leaving" internet post in general but I'm going to leave one here in the off chance that it might make a difference for a future or current player.  Internet game forums tend towards posts by players on tilt oversaying things in anger.  It's important to understand that this isn't that.  

For better or for worse, card mastery was the progression system in implementation when I joined.  I don't think it's a reach to say further that is was the devs prescription for healthy, long term enjoyment of the game.  Match fixing wasn't its only goal.  It was meant to encourage diversification in enjoyment by having players find joy not just in winning but in using different cards and different card mechanics.  I used the system as intended.  I did not try to game it for match fixing purposes.  Even though it became clear that part of the progression system was not working as intended, there was never indication that effort put into card mastery would not be fully honored in any revised system.

This new system erased dozens upon dozens of play time hours put into the progression system as it was.  I actually don't care that much about my level compared to others or the rewards for the levels - that's not why I play - but it was alarming to have those hours upon hours unceremoniously erased.  It feels like I've been stolen from and it broke my trust.  

The virtual silence since is even more alarming.  I've worked in customer service for much of my life.  6 days for something like this would be bad in nearly any industry.  6 weeks?  Yikes.  It's hard to stomach someone saying the dev teams are too busy to address this when I play this game every day on a device that can instantaneously talk with just about anyone in the world at any moment.  Just be honest: it's not a priority.  That doesn't mean that some people in the company don't care, they just don't care enough to be quick to address it.  Further, resolving an issue with a customer base requires quite a lot of communication with that customer base in order to understand what is needed to resolve the problem.  How do you even know what needs to be compensated?  No good customer service model works like this.  

I can live with card rebalancing.  I can live with freezes up to a point.  I can live with new mechanics I don't like.  I can live with rule clarifications.  It's hard to live in an online game, however, with the team in charge feeling ok to erase mountains of accumulated progress.  That's a trust breaker.  It's even worse that that actually hamstrings those players in the current progression system.  It's impossible for me to live in that situation without a lot of communication.

Hope this makes a dent somewhere to all involved.  So long and thanks for all the fish mtg puzzle quest peeps!  

Mburn7

Thank you @Khyb for accurately summarizing the cruz of our complaints on this.  Hours of time and effort were intentionally erased with an extremely weak excuse given and then radio silence.

It always saddens me to see long time players quitting, but I think we can all understand your reasoning.

Hope you find happiness in your next game.

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Brigby

Hi Everyone. We apologize for the delay. It seems that adjusting player levels on a granular level is proving to be more complex of a procedure than we anticipated, so we've been discussing how to address this in the most efficient, yet appropriate way possible. We certainly have not forgotten about this topic. 

Part of the issue is the automation process of adjusting player levels. When done manually it's a simple process; practically plug and chug. Once you factor in differing color mastery values and the number of players affected though, that process quickly grows outside of the realm of manual adjustment.

Add on the development schedule of the next card set, other planned features, and the continued bug fixes too, and you can see why the team certainly has their hands full.

We understand this can be a frustrating situation to be anticipating a resolution of, however we thank you for your patience and understanding.

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Matthew

I want to echo Starfall's sentiments here. This sounds like nothing more than an attempt to stall the masses while they figure out how to word the eventual response which they know we will inevitably rail against.

It should not be this difficult. If it's difficult because they're looking at specific players, or a specific category or subset of players, or anything other than literally every player, then they're not really doing anything. In fact, this just means they're trying to figure out just how many people they think they can get away with screwing.

That's **** disrespectful, disingenuous, and duplicitous.

Roll it back entirely and give everyone everything they've earned, or just reset everyone's progress back to zero. NO OTHER OPTION IS ACCEPTABLE.

Gabrosin

@Brigby, I am glad to hear that you haven't forgotten about the issue, and that you plan to remedy it.  I can also understand that there may be technical difficulties with implementing such an adjustment, and that it might not be the top priority for the dev team.

But here's the part that exemplifies the disconnect between the players and the team.  It sure sounds like you're investigating the technical feasibility of applying a fix to the leveling system you've instituted... which, hopefully, means that you've decided how you want to fix the problem, assuming you can figure out the technical side of making it work.

So... how do you want to fix the problem?

Can you just lay out, in simple terms, the adjustment that the dev team is investigating performing?  Is it giving out full XP to players based on all cards mastered?  Is it giving out a portion of XP to cards mastered before the system was instituted, allowing players to earn full XP without giving it out right away?  Is there something else involved?

Perhaps if you could share the remedy you've chosen, the community could provide feedback, before any technical implementation occurs.  What if the remedy is poorly received by the community?  What if that poor reception leaves you looking for a second round of fixes, or makes you want to roll back what you've done?  Wouldn't it be better to come up with a solution that the community can agree on, and THEN go through the work of actually doing it?

With the Loop Prevention System, it looks like a sizable chunk of effort went into something that was by and large hated by the community, such that we had to beg you for an emergency change in the implementation.  Don't put yourself in the same bind here (or anywhere, really).  Just tell us what you're thinking of doing, let us weigh in, and then actually do it.  If you tell us "we want to do this" and we say "that sounds great" and then technical problems force a change... we'll understand!  We're not jerks!  The problems happen when the order is the other way around: change is made, technical problems are discovered, community finds out after it's too late to do anything about it.

Volrak

Matthew said:

I want to echo Starfall's sentiments here. This sounds like nothing more than an attempt to stall the masses while they figure out how to word the eventual response which they know we will inevitably rail against.

It should not be this difficult. If it's difficult because they're looking at specific players, or a specific category or subset of players, or anything other than literally every player, then they're not really doing anything. In fact, this just means they're trying to figure out just how many people they think they can get away with screwing.

That's tinykitty disrespectful, disingenuous, and duplicitous.

Roll it back entirely and give everyone everything they've earned, or just reset everyone's progress back to zero. NO OTHER OPTION IS ACCEPTABLE.

Oktagon are small and resource-stretched, and I don't doubt that revisiting what was designed as a one-off change could easily have ended up being more complicated than it appears.  So I find it quite credible that Oktagon are acting in good faith.  Of course, that in no way means I think the speed of action or depth of community involvement in the solution process meet most players' standards, and I also have no idea how reasonable the eventual fix is going to be.

I'm also struck by the irony of on the one hand saying it shouldn't be this difficult, and on the other making narrow demands that come across as somewhat strident.  While I personally agree that a full crediting of xp is the right solution, it seems that if every stakeholder made their suggestions in the form of a demand, it would be pretty much the definition of a difficult situation for D3/Oktagon.

Brigby

starfall said:

-snip-
Permanently losing the ability to gain as much XP as our peers is the specific problem here.

Yes. We absolutely recognize that this is the core issue here. Veteran players are the ones specifically affected by this issue, because they were dedicated enough to master so many cards prior to the Player Level feature being implemented.

To preface the following explanation, I want to remind everyone that mastering cards will not be the only way to earn Player Experience in upcoming updates, so please keep that in mind. There will be additional sources that add onto the determining factors of a player's level and Matchmaking.

We want to try and raise the affected veteran players' levels high enough so that they won't continue to fall behind in levels, even though they have the same or even more mastered cards, while making sure that future Matchmaking design doesn't inadvertently become hindered.

Here is one idea we have considered: Let's say for example the current highest Player Level is level 50. We'd find all the affected veteran players and simply raise their level up to 50. New card set releases would be timed to provide additional content before this issue ever arose again. Not to mention by then some of the new features that would be introducing additional avenues of Player Experience would likely have begun being implemented, which would increase the options players have to level up their account.

Now I will admit that this next statement is a bit speculative, since this traverses past the high level design that I'm aware of towards the granular details I've yet to be familiar with, but I speculate that these new avenues of Player Experience would also give players a way to earn differentiating amounts of Player Experience to separate themselves from players within their own Color Mastery. In other words, I speculate it wouldn't just be "All Platinum get X. All Gold get Y."

Khyb

@ Brigby

I sincerely appreciate the response.  It’s too late for me but I really would like to see all reach an amiable solution.

Communication is going to bring sharp response at times but can I encourage you to discourse?  Give and take communication would be good for the future of this game.  You have a knowledgeable, passionate, and engaged fan base. The surveys and message boards are a good step but discourse would make a difference if you can stomach it.  As it is, just the limited communication you gave previously kept me in the game three more weeks than I would have been otherwise.

EDIT: Also appreciate you players having my back.  Thank you.

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Gabrosin

Thank you Brigby, this is the sort of communication I was hoping for.

Have you determined what the highest level a player would be at if you just gave out full XP for already mastered cards?

If your intent is to only allow players to jump as high as the highest-level player currently in the game (probably Euky at 80-ish), would you consider an option to allow players who WOULD be higher than that level to remove some of their card mastery in order to let them have a fair shot at getting all their XP?  Even if it meant a little additional work?

Tremayne

I decided to sleep on what Brigby wrote earlier. Simply put I didn’t understand what he wrote. I can see I’m not the only one.

@Brigby - thank you for providing an update on this. Basically, I do not understand what it is you are trying to communicate! It seems that there are some conditions that is missing to get a clear picture of why you are adjusting on a granularly level for individual players.

I do not understand why your XP-system seems to be unfair to some players.
I do not understand why you are trying to fix the unfairness for a limited number of players.
I do not understand what the missing features are, which will fix the unfairness for everyone, regardless of which unfairness they are hit by!

To sum up, I have been puzzled since you introduced the XP-system and I continue to be puzzled about it. I really hope that you will get to the next level soon, but it seems that you are introducing so much slack in the timeframe that we are looking at fall before we can expect a clearer picture.