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

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  • Abracadavers
    Abracadavers Posts: 61 Match Maker
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    starfall said:

    Resetting each player's XP so that it equals the total XP currently stored in all their cards takes account of the time and effort that players put in mastery both before AND after the 3.2 update!
    That is true, and it would be a simple solution that addresses my concerns.  However I don't believe that this will be the solution that they opt for.  If that was an option for them, it (probably) would have been much easier to implement right from the start than the tiered level assignment that they implemented.  I say that as a multi-decade professional software developer myself, but I have no knowledge of their actual implementation. 

    They haven't made their entire plan clear yet when it comes to how the levels will be used in the future, so we don't have all the information.  All we can do is present our concerns and wait and see how it all shakes out.
  • Laeuftbeidir
    Laeuftbeidir Posts: 1,841 Chairperson of the Boards
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    "here you have another bad implementation where we used your feedback to give you what you asked for in the worst way possible. We think you'll like it so we'll ignore you for another six weeks."
  • GrizzoMtGPQ
    GrizzoMtGPQ Posts: 776 Critical Contributor
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    First, let me say that this topic has bothered me enough to have created a forum account just to add my 2 cents.

    I am in the situation where after the levels were introduced, I started putting a large effort into gaining XP.  Then I was bumped up to 80.  Unlike a lot of others who have commented here, I don't really care that much about any potentially "missed" rewards for the trip to 80.  What I do care about is putting a large effort into grinding XP since levels were introduced, only to have it not matter at all.  If I didn't even play at all during that time, I still would have been bumped up to level 80.  But not only has my effort been wasted, but now I also have far less "low-hanging fruit" (so to speak) for cards to master, and hence it will be much more difficult to level from here on.  Where if I had not played at all I would have been in a much better situation than I am now with many more easy to master cards.

    Now admitted, my "large effort" may not have been as much as some other people have put in, but it was a large effort for me.  The entire situation has me wondering if it is even worth playing at all any more since they can pull this kind of thing at any time and invalidate all of your effort.

    Despite my apparent bitterness towards this situation, I don't really hold any animosity towards the developers of this game.  I think they have received a lot of good feedback on this topic and have proven that they are capable of taking the feedback and acting upon it, even if the results are not what we expect or desire.  All I am asking for at this point is consideration of the time and effort that the players had put in between when player levels were introduced and when the level adjustment happened.
    Me too. I ground levels from 38 to 71. I could have waited. 
  • Froggy
    Froggy Posts: 511 Critical Contributor
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    And all the while, no rewards were granted. Questionable ethics...
  • Outersider
    Outersider Posts: 119 Tile Toppler
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    I'd say there is no questionable ethics about it.... They flat out don't give a (four letter word of your choice) about players. They have NO ethics.
  • Machine
    Machine Posts: 789 Critical Contributor
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    @Brigby : any news on this topic, the freezes, locks, etc? We just lost another player and frankly, I can't blame him for quitting the game.
  • Laeuftbeidir
    Laeuftbeidir Posts: 1,841 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Machine said:
    @Brigby : any news on this topic, the freezes, locks, etc? We just lost another player and frankly, I can't blame him for quitting the game.
    One more? Sorry to hear that. I lost more players in the last month than in more than a year before that. If I add them up, it's half a top five coalition, and half a top 50 coalition. And we're not the power 9-that really hurts, especially the mood. Everyone active starts to be tired by this rubbish, and the only word I can find for the current behavior of the devs that makes it through the tinikitty filter is embarrassing.
    I started missing @hi@Hibernum_JC and his crew a while ago - that should tell enough.
  • Boogeyman
    Boogeyman Posts: 223 Tile Toppler
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    Gabrosin said:
    Took a break from this forum for a few days, but I find I have to return to this topic to say one more thing: this is a perfect example of why communicating in advance of implementing changes is so important.  A flawed system was introduced to great fanfare that left some players unhappy when they realized the extent to which they were disadvantaged by it.  It led to a decent amount of pushback from the community, much of it punctuated by requests to have major new changes like this be brought forward for feedback before they're implemented in the future.

    And yet the exact same mistake was repeated: we got little communication on the issue for several weeks, so players continued to work with the flawed system, pouring hours of time into mastering cards and earning rewards, only to have a level adjustment that nullified all their progress dropped on them with about 24 hours' notice.  Now the originally upset people are still upset, and a whole host of new people are upset!

    This all could have been avoided.  If after two weeks Brigby or a developer had come to the initial thread and said "we recognize there's a problem here and we want to fix it, we've been talking about bumping up veteran levels, would this make things better?"... then we could have had a discussion about how that should work.  It would have been pretty clear that a "fix" which cost players the rewards they might have been able to earn, and didn't take into account progress currently being made, was not going to be well received.

    Hell, several people in the earlier thread laid out possible fix options, and central principles that should govern those choices.  But this change shows that was all just shouting into the wind.  I can't speak for everyone else, but it makes me feel like the time I spent engaging with the community on this issue was wasted, and has really put a damper on my desire to continue doing so in the future.

    I'll continue to hold out hope that you'll realize what's wrong here and that you won't just let this issue disappear while building on a flawed foundation as the year moves forward.


    Crickets. . . 
  • Tremayne
    Tremayne Posts: 1,613 Chairperson of the Boards
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    @starfall - personally I do not want to see you go!

    However, based upon what I have seen on the forum, you seem to have become more and more frustrated with MTGPQ in the first 4 months of 2019.

    Perhaps, it would be healthy for you, if you took a hiatus during the summer and come back (if you want to) in the fall and see how things looks then. 
  • ZW2007-
    ZW2007- Posts: 812 Critical Contributor
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    @Gabrosin well said. Your post reminded me that it is time to head back to the app store and update my rating and review of the game. If they don't take our comments here seriously, maybe they will in the app store. At the very least, other prospective players might take my comments seriously.
  • Laeuftbeidir
    Laeuftbeidir Posts: 1,841 Chairperson of the Boards
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    starfall said:
    @Brigby

    If this last update is your final word on the subject, can you let me know so I can get on with quitting the game?

    It's taken two months now to replace an unfair system
    ZW2007- said: [link from 26/2/2019]

    Player 1 - Level 41 - 893 cards mastered
    Player 2 - Level 42 - 2022 cards mastered
    with a system which is unfair in exactly the same way

    Player 1 - Level 80 - 765 cards mastered
    Player 2 - Level 80 - 1997 cards mastered

    People don't like me here, I get accused of whining all the time just because I want the games' systems to be fair and balanced for everyone, you probably don't like having to deal with me either.

    Hours of development time have been wasted achieving nothing except annoying more players than were annoyed by the first update, as a result of the second update. You must feel ready to cut your losses now. No need to be beholden to the sunk cost fallacy.

    You still don't have to say you've done anything wrong, just release a statement that says "We've listened to everybody's great feedback and I'm 100% confident now that this is the best system we could possibly come up with, so there will be no further adjustments to player's levels, XP, or the XP ladder"

    That way I'll know you consider the loss of me and the players who think like me an acceptable one, and I can go start playing through my Steam library instead.

    I'm in the same boat.
    This topic is indeed one of the few last straws that will very likely make me quit soon.
    I'm leading a group of six coalitions. Around 130 people at the highest peak two months ago - we're down to 90. Fluctuation is normal, on all levels, but I lost 40 players (!) within two months. That's more than usually within a year.
    This includes a dozen top ten players - old timers, coalition leaders who've been here for a while.
    Seeing @brigby interacting with this thread by unpinning it, but not answering tells enough about how little you care about us - and we're the people that enable newer players to really enjoy this game, because we explain all the stuff d3 fails to explain. So go ahead, tell us that you really don't care about us so we can move on and stop supporting this game.
  • Theros
    Theros Posts: 490 Mover and Shaker
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    Tremayne said:
    @starfall - personally I do not want to see you go!

    However, based upon what I have seen on the forum, you seem to have become more and more frustrated with MTGPQ in the first 4 months of 2019.

    Perhaps, it would be healthy for you, if you took a hiatus during the summer and come back (if you want to) in the fall and see how things looks then. 
    I'm taking month break already.  prior to that  I wasn't that active like I
    used to.
    Octagon is following the same footsteps as hybernum and that has me wondering if D3 was not the one holding both studios back?


  • Tremayne
    Tremayne Posts: 1,613 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2019
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    @Theros - sorry to see you go. Hope you will be back in a few months.

    About D3 holding back the developers, you might be right. However there is the possibility that the contract with WOTC is the problem.

     I have had a sneaking suspicion for some time, that the rigid release schedule is not healthy for MTGPQ. It seems to be draining the development resources to heavily.

    Why does MTGPQ not release sets independently of MTG? It seems likely that this must come from WOTC.