Long-Time Veterans - Player Level Adjustment (4/22/19)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Back in January with the release of the 3.2 update, we implemented a feature called Player Levels. This was meant to track the level of progression a player had accomplished in-game, but in a way that would be separate from Color Mastery. (Right now it's only card mastery, but there will be other ways in the near future) With its arrival, we saw a lot of players providing their feedback. The most vocal feedback we heard specifically pertained to long-time veteran players that had mastered a large number of cards prior to the 3.2 update, and their subsequent rate of Player Level progression compared to players that did not.

Since then, we've been compiling all the comments players have provided, reviewing all of the suggestions, and analyzing them for viability.  Since the arrival of new, but not-yet-announced content would introduce additional ways to earn Player Experience in the near future, it was a challenge determining what suggestions could or couldn't work with the system in the future.

What we eventually settled on was the following plan:

Player Level Adjustments for Long-Time, High Color Mastery Veterans
Any player that had a total Color Mastery higher than 5,000 at the time of the 3.2 release will fall under this Long Time, High Color Mastery Veteran category. We then created sub-categories within this grouping, based on the the range of Color Mastery values these veterans had.

Finally, starting on 4/23/19 at 11:30 UTC, these players will have their Player Levels adjusted according to the Color Mastery values below: 

• 5,000 - 7,500: Up to Level 80
• 7,500 - 10,000: Up to Level 85
• 10,000 - 15,000: Up to Level 90
• 15,000 - 20,000: Up to Level 100
• 20,000+: Up to Level 110

We did this to accomplish a few things:

• Push Veterans To Higher Player Level
• At the implementation of Player Level, players who had mastered less cards than veterans Pre-3.2, but more than them Post-3.2, were able to catch up and even surpass veteran players.
• With Ravnica Allegiance adding a whole new card set to master, and setting veterans to a minimum of the highest current Player Level, veterans should no longer have to worry about being surpassed by those that mastered less cards than them.
• Maintain Future Matchmaking Structure
• Player Level is intended to be one of the more important factors in determining the future of Matchmaking, and because of that, the way its currently designed influences a whole variety of other interwoven elements.
• By raising veterans to a minimum of level 80, we are able to still remain within the range of the design's flexibility, subsequently avoiding a complete re-design of the Matchmaking system and any other variables it interacts with. (A re-design would've meant delaying a whole lot of other content along the development pipeline)

We understand that this decision may not be exactly what any given player's suggestions posited, but please know that one of our goals was and always will be to highlight the accomplishments of our veterans. This just also has to be balanced with allowing for foundations to be laid to benefit all players in the long-run; both new and old.

As always, we thank you all for your patience and understanding, and a big thank you for being a part of our passionate, Magic: the Gathering - Puzzle Quest community.

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Julie71

Sounds good to me.  

Mburn7

Two things:

1)  You guys still don't seem to get why we were so upset.  While this will definitely help restore people to their "proper" level, you're still setting people's levels to an arbitrary amount instead of the level they actually earned through their hard work.

2)  What about the level up rewards?  You already screwed me (and everyone else) out of a large number of runes, crystals, jewels, and legacy packs.  I assume there will be no rewards given when I am fast-forwarded to my new arbitrary level to replace my old arbitrary level.  I know that the rewards aren't the most important thing here, but it definitely contributes to the negative feelings just a bit, and this won't help in that regard.

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Brigby

@starfall Thank you for your personal calculations, however I'm confident that our team has made sure that a player reaching Player Level 140 within the span of a year (in your example) wouldn't cause the entire Matchmaking code to break.

Outersider

Sounds just like I predicted a nod and a wink..... let me just as vague in my response.....

//Removed Insult -Brigby

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Brigby

starfall said:

So.. if the code won't break in a year when players are level 140, presumably it won't break now when players are level 140?

So.. no problem with making players level 140, right?

Ah it seems I may have interpreted your definition of "break" differently, as a more literal reference of the game malfunctioning; for example, a crash.

If you're talking more in the sense of creating complications in Matchmaking, one example being the number of available opponents, then yes, I would assume that there would be complications if players were placed at higher levels than the proposed adjustments.

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Aeroplane

Being level 41 , do we get all the in between rewards for the level ups up to our new level. If so, Ill take it. I find mastering cards a passive achievement.I see it as a bonus to the game , not a necessary application.

Gilesclone

starfall said:

These assumptions you're making, are they based on your coding experience, or just on your experience of talking down to forum members?

I’m sorry, I get that you’re upset, but the personal attack is uncalled for.

Brakkis

starfall said:

60 commons @ 100 XP each = 6000 XP
55 Uncommons @ 200 XP each = 11000 XP
40 Rares @ 400 XP each = 16000 XP
35 Mythic @ 800 XP each = 28000 XP
10 Masterpiece @ 1600 XP each = 8000 XP

Just a correction here - Mythics and Masterpieces require the same amount of XP at 800 each.

Gilesclone said:

I’m sorry, I get that you’re upset, but the personal attack is uncalled for.

Neither is possibly getting offended for, or defending, someone else on their behalf. They are a grown adult and perfectly capable of doing so themselves should they choose.

Brigby said:

(Right now it's only card mastery, but there will be other ways in the near future)

Since the arrival of new, but not-yet-announced content would introduce additional ways to earn Player Experience in the near future.

Irrelevant.

That is the most succinct way of putting it. To elaborate; both of those statements are completely pointless. Unless the new systems do one of two things, they will not matter in this situation.

What two things? Either give more experience to lower level players for the same content and effort as a higher level player -or- the new content and methods are level gated and lower level players have access to more content to gain more experience and catch up. Both of those options will open up whole new cans of worms that would likely make this look like a good time in retrospect.

Since neither of those two things is likely (nigh impossible chance), then your continued statements above that have been thrown out for 7 weeks now are, I say once more - Irrelevant.

Brigby said:

• Maintain Future Matchmaking Structure
• Player Level is intended to be one of the more important factors in determining the future of Matchmaking, and because of that, the way its currently designed influences a whole variety of other interwoven elements.
• By raising veterans to a minimum of level 80, we are able to still remain within the range of the design's flexibility, subsequently avoiding a complete re-design of the Matchmaking system and any other variables it interacts with. (A re-design would've meant delaying a whole lot of other content along the development pipeline)

Brigby said:

If you're talking more in the sense of creating complications in Matchmaking, one example being the number of available opponents, then yes, I would assume that there would be complications if players were placed at higher levels than the proposed adjustments.

To this I posit the following question - Has anyone at Oktagon, or those at D3 responsible for working with Oktagon, ever played any game with a leveling system?

In any of those games, did the required experience to progress to the next level plateau out and remain static for every level thereafter? If so, what game was it?

The majority of the matchmaking issues would be resolved if the amount of experience required to level continued to increase for every level. Leveling in any game is supposed to get progressively more time-consuming, requiring more experience and thus, more effort. Going from level 90 to 91 should take significantly more experience than going from 40 to 41. The decision to not scale up the experience after 41 is what results in even the possibility of a player reaching such absurdly high levels right now in the first place. Eventually it should reach a point where two players with possibly 100 cards difference in mastery should be of equivalent level rather than nearly two levels apart with them only being commons and three apart if they were all uncommons.

Laeuftbeidir

Wow.

So much noise about..that. The devs really don't understand it, do they? Everything must be as complex as possible, and the background Infos hidden. 

Well then, go on and do your thing. I'm out trying to be productive.

Froggy

I appreciate the effort. And I can see that @Brigby is not the target here.

So please then tell the devs to revoke the level system. Have players keep whatever rewards they got - that’s compensation for the poor implementation.

Redesign the system so it is fair for all.

Implement it properly.

Woah!! What an idea!!!

Tremayne

Thank you for the update.

it seems to me that so far D3/Oktagon have shown the players one side of a house that is in the process of being built without describing the overall vision of the house. The players don’t even know which side of the house they are looking at and nothing about the interior is visible.

So when the players give feedback it is on a very poor foundation. Though, apparently something in the facade is rubbing the players the wrong way and that is what you are a getting a reaction on, a very strong reaction that is, which you are now using to adjust the building plans with.

I’m still unsure how the fix is fixing something in your vision, but some of the fix flies in the face of the arguments used to defend what was first implemented. Which I guess is to be expected now D3/Oktagon has decided to alter something, it is just so confusing and as you admit is not matching any of the proposed solutions by the players. So it is easy to see, if someone thinks that D3/Oktagon is not listening.

However, the change is still only to the facade of the building and therefore I do still not have the necessary insight into the house being built.

So in conclusion you have decided to implement something that seems unfair to a subset of the player base and continued with the defence “the players don’t understand what we are doing, just wait and see what is coming and all will be good”. As far as I see it, this approach has not gone down well with the players on the forum so far! I think it is a huge mistake that you continue with this communication strategy.

I hope the additional changes are coming soon, so we can get a better understanding of which house it is D3/Oktagon is building.

James13

Huh... am I getting the level rewards I jumped past? Just curious.  I was sorta enjoying leveling in the background.

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Machine

I don't know, but this somehow doesn't feels right to me. I've been playing the RT events with mastered cards only to prevent losing any more XP than I already have by these poor implementations. Now, when I was about to level up (and missed those level up rewards by a few hundred XP), you changed my profile level again (and not getting all those rewards in between), it also feels that it didn't matter if I HAD used unmastered cards, since you're setting players levels AGAIN to an arbitrary number.

I'm sorry to say so @Brigby: but to me this is another insult. Give us all the XP were are due.

Have you fixed the XP issues in the RT events yet?