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

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

In the recent 3.2 update, we introduced several new features: two of which were Player Level and Card Experience. The 3 Year Anniversary and Player Profile and Player Level blog posts shed some light on new and future features that are all interwoven together with these systems, and we highly recommend taking some time to look those over first.

Even with the two blog posts though, we understand that players may have some unanswered questions, so we wanted to take the time to address some of the main concerns you all might have.

Player Level and Color Mastery

Player Level is intended to be completely separate from Color Mastery moving forward. It is a new progression system in the game, and neither Color Mastery nor Card Experience are planned to be the main source of Player Experience. Color Mastery had a slight influence on initial Player Level, however, it was not a direct 1:1 conversion for a major reason:

• Matchmaking
• Matchmaking in the future will be largely influenced by Player Level, not Color Mastery.
• Were the Player Level to have been a 1:1 conversion from Color Mastery, there would’ve been a small demographic of players that would have had levels much higher than everyone else. This is harmful for two reasons:
• Since Matchmaking will be primarily based on Player Level, placing those players at such a drastic height would’ve meant they only had access to an incredibly small pool of competitors.
• If that pool of competitors were to be widened, then the side effect would be high-level players being matched against players significantly lower than them.
• This wide gap in levels also creates an intimidation factor for newer players, which can be discouraging for those that are just starting out in the game.

We also understand that some players are concerned about having mastered the majority of their cards Pre-3.2, and how their Player Levels compare to a player that mastered them Post-3.2. We have plans to implement new features in the future that will be additional sources of Player Experience, which means at that point the number of available cards to master would no longer be the limiting factor.

Since Player Level is separate from Color Mastery, a Platinum player that may be at a lower level than say...a Gold player, will inevitably surpass them once the new features are added into the game. This is due to the difference in their rates of play. A Platinum player will likely be more engaged and active than a Gold player, therefore yielding a faster rate of Player Experience that results in quicker Player Level progression.

Rewards

With the initial implementation of Player Levels, we credited players with a sum of resources in accordance to their level of progress at that time. Following this, some players were quick to point out that the sum of progression rewards from prior levels is greater than the initial sum of resources given to players at various levels.

This was done on purpose, because we are actually able to give out more rewards if distributed over time, as opposed to all at once. This brings us back again to the topic of future features.

With our plans of implementing several new features in the future, it gives us the opportunity to gradually reward players with more resources, as these features are introduced. In addition, higher tier players will inherently benefit more from them as they’re added into the game; Competitive Seasons is a great example of this.

We know that implementing new major features has the potential to confuse players, to no fault of their own, so we hope that this provided some further insight and clarity. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and of course, thank you for being a part of our Magic: the Gathering - Puzzle Quest community!