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

Machine

Gabrosin said:

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?

Are you serious? Players should get all the XP they are due for their mastered cards, no matter what level that would give them.

Froggy

Tremayne said:

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.

This. ^^   (Raises pitchfork)

Laeuftbeidir

I'm neither patient nor understanding anymore. How could I? The answer @Brigby gave would've been a good point a month ago. Even then a delayed one. I don't care about the background anymore - I just don't have any tools at my disposal that I could use. I've already stopped investing money in this game because I don't feel like a customer, but a beggar. I stopped playing most events because.. Why should I ?

Now, if you'd have any road plan you could tell us about - any visions to share - that would be something. Even with a disclaimer "subject to change"... That'd be something.

Mburn7

Brigby said:

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."

Thank you for the response @Brigby (finally)!

But I still don't understand why you (the team, not you specifically) can't just give everyone the actual amount of xp they earned up until now.

If you are worried that some players will have "too high" levels, then JUST CHANGE THE LEVELING CURVE

The amount of xp needed to level up stops increasing at level 41 (it remains at a flat 6500 xp per level).  If that number continued increasing (as it should) than the difference between players at the high end would be much lower.  If you are worried about players being unable to level up past a certain point and then missing out on stuff (which is a valid concern), make it flatten out at a higher value at a higher level (maybe 10000 xp at level 60 or something).

Artificially setting player levels will by definition screw some people over, no matter how you do it.  If you would just give out the xp that everyone deserves and tune the leveling curve (which still has not been officially released yet, btw), this whole issue would immediately go away.  Seriously, its that easy.

Khyb

Artificially setting player levels will by definition screw some people over, no matter how you do it.  If you would just give out the xp that everyone deserves and tune the leveling curve (which still has not been officially released yet, btw), this whole issue would immediately go away.  Seriously, its that easy.

Agreed.  Maybe it's hindsight but it seems to me the original implementation that would have addressed all of the concerns on both sides should have been to:

 1) Give the correct amount of earned experience
 2) Set an initial level cap
 3) Slowly pull back the level cap every month or two letting previously gained experience give players who had already mastered a lot of cards small jumps ahead until whatever it is Oktagon has planned to add to the system is ready to go.  

OR they should have just waited to release the full system all at one time.

Outersider

To me the simplest solution would be a complete reset of the leveling for all players. Cards are then given their mastery points and Levels are made. THEN and only THEN players gain xp for events. I don't understand the idea that its complex. It's not you are making it complex. I'm sure this would piss off those that have leveled high since the update that screwed veterans, however since they have already received the rewards for their current levels they would actually be able to earn them again where as the veteran players would be earning them only once. To me this is a fair solution. Veteran players like myself would feel we got what we deserved and those newer players would have gained all those rewards we never did.

Gabrosin

Machine said:

Gabrosin said:

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?

Are you serious? Players should get all the XP they are due for their mastered cards, no matter what level that would give them.

This would be my preferred solution as well: just give full XP for every mastered card, readjust everyone's levels accordingly, and be done with it.  If that was going to be their solution, it should have happened already.  It seems to be the most straightforward, obvious, and technically achievable solution out there.

Since we're still talking about this issue, I'm trying to figure out a way to still let every player have access to the same amount of XP.  It would be lame to have to re-use mastered cards for XP, but that also seems to be what they're trying to promote.  Perhaps they've realized that they made a game with 2500 cards in it but only a small percentage see any play once collections get strong enough, and they're trying to figure out the least revolutionary path to break that up, since secondary objectives don't seem to help all that much and they're reluctant to nerf or ban cards.

I would rather have them present a system where I needed to grind a little more playtime than a system where I couldn't get the same amount of XP as anyone else.

OmegaLolrus

Outersider said:

To me the simplest solution would be a complete reset of the leveling for all players. Cards are then given their mastery points and Levels are made. THEN and only THEN players gain xp for events. I don't understand the idea that its complex. It's not you are making it complex. I'm sure this would piss off those that have leveled high since the update that screwed veterans, however since they have already received the rewards for their current levels they would actually be able to earn them again where as the veteran players would be earning them only once. To me this is a fair solution. Veteran players like myself would feel we got what we deserved and those newer players would have gained all those rewards we never did.

How would it affect the people that have leveled up since the update? If we all got the XP we would get from color mastery... that's the only XP source in the game. The people that have leveled up since (like me) would be exactly where we are now.

Brakkis

Perfect Solution

- Increase the required experience to level instead of plateauing at 6500 for every level after 41.
- Remove the experience curve
- Recalculate the level of every player

None of this picking and choosing players or groups of players. Stop with the **** line of "Well there will be other methods of leveling". That won't change the fact that this method had a permanently negative impact on every player in your game and the other methods aren't going to correct it.

Gabrosin

starfall said:

Many different workable suggestions have been put forward in this thread. If I can be bothered I'll collate them for the next Monday repost.

And yet on page 12, page TWELVE, if you can believe it, Brigby still seems to be putting forward ideas which (he claims) will mitigate the effect of the somehow unfixable XP removal issue on an ongoing basis.

Brigby's not the one making the decisions though, he's just relaying our suggestions and concerns to the dev team and relaying their choices back to us.

There are a lot of good suggestions here but the foundation of all of them is the same: every player should have the opportunity to earn exactly the same amount of XP from their card collections, with no caps or adjustments.  If you own 100 commons, you can get 100 commons' worth of XP.  If you own 300 mythics, you can earn 300 mythics' worth of XP.  There's a bunch of ways to get from where we are now to there, some easier and some harder and some probably self-defeating... but I would suggest that the main point of emphasis to be communicated to the devs is right there.  Any system that doesn't conform to that very simple maxim is not likely to satisfy the playerbase.

Mburn7

starfall said:

Many different workable suggestions have been put forward in this thread. If I can be bothered I'll collate them for the next Monday repost.

And yet on page 12, page TWELVE, if you can believe it, Brigby still seems to be putting forward ideas which (he claims) will mitigate the effect of the somehow unfixable XP removal issue on an ongoing basis.

Not sure its Brigby's fault here.  As far as we know he is relaying our concerns and ideas to the dev team and is being ignored (and just reporting on what they are saying).

Of course its also possible (probable even) that he isn't able/allowed to give them specific ideas we propose here and can only pass along the general sentiment, which would explain why they would think they could just bump everyone up 30 levels or so and we'll all shut up.

Either way, don't shoot the messenger

Laeuftbeidir

The perfect solution would take the card xp completely out of the equation IMO. It doesn't say a thing wasn't the capabilities of players

Outersider

How would it affect the people that have leveled up since the update? If we all got the XP we would get from color mastery... that's the only XP source in the game. The people that have leveled up since (like me) would be exactly where we are now.

It's reset back to the original card point values, cards are then given the card values originally given and then everyone levels up according to card mastery. After the reset then xp can be gained by future master. Playing in events/ placement in events.... etc. We go back to the beginning.  For those that levelled after 3.2 that may mean you don't reach as high a level (you'll of course have kept the rewards earned and you'll get the rewards as you advance after the reset). Those veterans screwed originally will get the levels they fightfully deserved,  To me this should at least satisfy most. The vet's get what they deserve, the newcomers who advanced get extra rewards in effect. 

Gabrosin

Laeuftbeidir said:

The perfect solution would take the card xp completely out of the equation IMO. It doesn't say a thing wasn't the capabilities of players

I'm far more concerned about awarding XP for events than for card mastery.

Those are really the only two options, right?  Unless they're going to be completely cynical and just let us purchase XP with resources directly.  So for cards, there's a natural balancing point.  Sure, when you start out the game you don't have nearly as many cards as the veterans, but every pack you open you're getting something new.  It's way easier to find new cards along the way and then go out and master them.  Meanwhile, outside of new set releases, top players rarely find new cards, having to spend large numbers of orbs to craft them slowly.  Most packs just turn into orbs right away.  So the amount of time it takes to collect 50% of the cards in the game is faster than to go from 50% to 75% or from 75% to 85% or from 85% to 90%.  Even factoring for the XP differences between rarities, it's going to be easy for a new player to feel like they're approaching the levels of the longtime players, right from the start.

But when you start awarding XP for events, there's no way to catch up.  We all get the same number of events.  If I play for three months and then some new player comes in, he'll never get those three missed months of XP back relative to me, unless I were to stop playing.

The only solution is for event XP to be seasonal rather than lifetime, or perhaps to do both, to have a lifetime counter where the vets can take pride in their accomplishment but maintain a seasonal meter that lets new players have a prayer of competing.  But it sure sounds like XP is being described as shared between card earnings and event earnings, which... how is that gonna work?  Are we going to remaster cards every season for additional XP to go along with the event XP?  Will that also add to our lifetime XP?  Could Euky get to level 400 by the end of the year?

It would be nice if we could get a proposal for the seasonal system from the devs, even if it winds up needing to change during implementation.  Seasonal play is something we could all get very excited about, but it could also lead to a wave of quitting if it's yet another hasty botched feature with glaring flaws.  Let us help design it!  Or at least save the team from avoidable pitfalls before the coding is done.

Brigby

Mburn7 said:

Thank you for the response Brigby (finally)!

But I still don't understand why you (the team, not you specifically) can't just give everyone the actual amount of xp they earned up until now.

If you are worried that some players will have "too high" levels, then JUST CHANGE THE LEVELING CURVE

The amount of xp needed to level up stops increasing at level 41 (it remains at a flat 6500 xp per level).  If that number continued increasing (as it should) than the difference between players at the high end would be much lower.  If you are worried about players being unable to level up past a certain point and then missing out on stuff (which is a valid concern), make it flatten out at a higher value at a higher level (maybe 10000 xp at level 60 or something).

Artificially setting player levels will by definition screw some people over, no matter how you do it.  If you would just give out the xp that everyone deserves and tune the leveling curve (which still has not been officially released yet, btw), this whole issue would immediately go away.  Seriously, its that easy.

I do recall hearing that one of the reasons changing the leveling curve wouldn't be ideal is because of what you stated: level progression slowing down dramatically, and players being unable to earn rewards at a decent pace

Now, I'm no developer, but wouldn't flattening it out at a higher value just simply delay this issue until X amount of months/years down the road?