New Feature: VIP Membership *Updated (6/17/19)

FindingHeart8

Laeuftbeidir said:

Interestingly I'm not opposed to the idea in general. But the timing after two other bad implementations of stuff nobody asked for and the sheer arrogance of the announcement - phew.

What if we told you that there's no point in early access if there's no-one else left to play with?

I thought, based on past announcements, the developers were going as fast as they could to get things out, even when it's months after the paper release?

So it appears that what this is really saying is "the developers plan on restraining players from access to new sets unless they pay steep monthly fees."

Machine

Theros said:

Removing RT is highly disturbing to me at least. This the one event  that kept me playing.
Why not remove TotPs and leave RT intact?  this is a slightly  better compromise.

Why can't Vip and RT both coexist?
Will the new expansion add a new daily event similar in scope and reward to RT (runes, pinks, mythic)?

I think the reason RT doesn't run this week, is because it will be fixed by the 3.4 update.

On topic: as an F2P player, this update even disconnects me more from this game. I can't believe the guts to introduce this feature with the current horrible state of the game. Pay for an unstable game? Who is going to do that?? Sure, add some fixes, but what will be broken in the mean time? And then, another two months of silence. I stated earlier that the most interesting event, the weekend coalition event, is where players and coalitions fight to show their strengths. All these leaderboards and standings don't mean jack at the moment as people are losing out a lot of points due to bugs. Who cares I can craft masterpieces? That won't give me my missed points and rewards back.

ManekiNeko

I can get behind why they'd do it. I am just assuming here though keep that in mind. 

I am assuming that they need money in order to keep supporting the game. Now, if you're short on financial assets, you have two options, either put the money you have into advertising to acquire new players who will then sooner or later put moeny into it or try to make a buck out of active players. Guess they chose the latter, which is not a dumb move (because I feel like there arent any new players). But this move makes me deinstall the game actually. Let me explain.

This game is nowhere near perfection. I would wish for more improvements in the game. That would keep me playing. I'm sure, they plan on improving the game with the money they will get from this VIP thing so yeah, the VIP justifies itself kinda. 
But the game is at a state where I simply have to say its too late. They first have to improve the game a lot, and I mean A LOT, before I even think about spending a dime. 


The following aspects show me, that this game needs improvement.

Balancing
I am in plat now and getting crushed. I try to get my hands on BSZ since its release. The grind for the purple jewels was real, so real in fact that I hadnt much fun doing so but felt like I had to do it to ba able to have fun again as soon as I get BSZ to be able to play hightier decks and to keep up with the meta. Never got BSZ though. 
This really showed me that something is really wrong here. You shouldnt need one tinykitty card to be able to keep up with the meta. BSZ is just one example of many others. 

Turntimer-Crisis
Luckily this got resolved in our favor, but that showed me how little the devs know about the game. They almost implemented a system which wouldve kept cards from working as they were intended in some situations. Another aspect of me slowly losing faith. 

The User Interface and performance/UX and new Players experience
No other mobile game I recently saw looks so outdated. No other mobile game I recently saw has such long loading times for so little content (I got an iPhone 8 plus, no bottleneck on the client side) and so poor performance (crashes, low fps on certain animations..). This all makes the user experience worse.

Repeating Challanges
Now RT was quite alright for the amount of rewards. But the way the events were designed made them repetitive, no matter if it was PvP or PvE. It got boring to me. Now they killed RT and whats left to do now? Not much. Nothing which is fun to me atleast. 
They announced with 3.4 the reworked Zendikar vs. Eldrazi event, so we got something "new" there but this is not enough! How about an event where you can build a 20-card deck? How about an event where you could get a PW as a reward? Something fresh would be cool, something new we could do with the cards we gathered which we havent seen before.

Okay so we need Improvements?
If this game could get it together and rise from the grave which is halfway dug already, its possible with money. So I, in theory, would support something like a VIP plan in order for the devs to be able to improve everything. But I'm afraid its too late for me. With all the things listed above considered, I cant justify a buck anymore. 

Pricing
The pricing is just way too high. like Azereck said, I dont know any game with charges 30$ a month. This is kinda ridiculous. But the offers in the vault always were really really expensive, 30$ sounds fitting. 
Usually in other games, with a VIP, you have two choices: No money plan, or just VIP for 10 bucks or something. There has to be a reason for that right? I wonder why they implement a system with 3 different pricing stages, and all (subjectively) dont seem to be worth the money. I mean, when they got a few people to pay actually, it'll be probably already worth it. But I wouldnt be shocked if this is just the last nail in the coffin. I mean, I wouldnt even spend 10$ for a full VIP now like I stated, but I'm sure some other guys would do which arent ready to spend 30. But I'm sure they did the math, I just find it weird for that plan to look promising for them. 

Conclusion
Damn son, this is such an unstructured ramble. Sorry for that.
I'm writing this novel because I loved this game and I find it fair for all the people involved to get some feedback to it. This game filled a lot of boring time at work for more than a year, it motivated me to make a youtube channel with gameplay (I'm "doublestrike", maybe some of you might know me actually) and I really really had fun playing. But that obviously decreased over the last months. 
It was fun while it lasted. Maybe I'll check back in a few months and maybe it'll catch me right again. 

I truly wish the devs and the playerbase a lot of luck in the future. My faith is maybe lost but maybe yours is not, I would be so happy if I check back in half a year and the game would be thriving. 
lastly, I just wanna say a huge thanks to @Brigby, you did an awesome job communicating to us. Much love man! 

Furks

Goodbye, I'm out

Kimotep

Insanely bad community handling in all ways. You have a good game (albeit with some stability flaws) - but this is a desperate money grab action that will kill the forward momentum you have created during the last months. It is clear where priorities lie - what you are suggesting is a huge complex update and should have been prioritised after the hygiene level stuff like bugs, etc. 

So so sad to hear this development. 

Magnumson

I’m a new player started a month ago. So far I’ve put around 30$ into the game because I thought I’m playing this a lot so I wanted to support the game.

what I see now:

1.) the company is apparently ignoring the rising tension of the community, ignoring protest, ignoring people threatening to quit. The worst thing a company can do is to ignore its community. Have you followed the recent UX change Memrise did and read the unheard complaints of the community? Well it’s the beginning of the end. People leaving in masses. Same thing might happen here.

2.) if you need money then simple decrease the already ridiculous prices in the vault no one is willing to pay. 23$ for one mythic, some crystals, a few pinkies and runes? Sorry but no one wants to pay that. At least not me.

3.) your VIP plan is both ways unattractive for new players and unattractive for veterans. Furthermore 30$ is ridicilous. I’d never spent 30$ for a subscription plan.

4.) people feel betrayed when you take RT away and implement a VIP plan in the same time. It feels like “we don’t give you free orbs any longer, now you need to pay if you want to advance”. Do it this way and the People will leave. 

5.) I’ll occasional log on to support my coalition but training ground and TotP which I’m not doing doesn’t motivate me enough to play. Reactivate RT or similar again and you’ll have me back.

Lady_River

I got this game end of last year around November. Really enjoyed it so far till RT got removed. And now I learned about this VIP thing. I kinda wanted to put some $ towards packs but bills and things came up instead so I was like okay later on then. 

I can't afford a VIP thing just to keep up with things and to get into more events. I feel like this is going too much a bit like EA, money money money.. 

I'm disappointed. 

TReed

I keep waiting around for the “gotcha” “April Fools” Joke part of this post?? I’m glad to see what they’ve been wasting their time with behind the scenes. Just completely ignorant and money hungry. What a slap in the face to our community. 

You dont need VIPs. You need current deals at 1/2 the price. The content now is ridiculously overpriced. Bring back Karn bundles. Make some want to spend money. Don’t tell me to spend money for a chance at a discount to spend more money. 

Do VIPs get early access to all the new bugs as well?? Seems only fair. 

Think I hear the “death rattle” of what use to be a wonderful game. Thanks for the continued effort of pushing loyal players away. Our top teams our losing top (PAYING) players week by week. Maybe you do sense this and are trying to find a way to make up the money. 

And yes.....if RT is really gone......so am I. 

KageTora

What's the point in paying for a VIP membership if your guys don't introduce enough new content - meaning coalition events? Don't get me wrong, in principle, I should enjoy this game. But the utter lack of new content, the mind boggling repetition of the same five events, and the ridiculous amount of gamebreaking bugs just makes investing ANY kind of money into this game a waste. 

No thanks. If I want to waste money, I can just go to my bedroom window and throw it in the street. I'd likely get more satisfaction from that. Maybe I should waste my time somewhere else as well. 

TomB

I think it's telling just how many people seem to be making forum accounts just to weigh in on this issue. Put me down in the camp of those that expected a VIP sort of thing to be implemented in order to pay for better dev involvement but not for $15-$30 a month! And to announce this BEFORE fixing anything - even with promises of fixes to come - is just insane.

How come you people keep making the same mistakes?

Do you really think we're this stupidly in love with your game? Or are you just so desperate for cash flow you have no choice but to make such a boldfaced cash grab? I think we may be watching D3/Oktagon's death throes here...

majincob

Wow, good timing for me to stop playing again.

Parasith

Ridiculous. I will deinstall the game and invest my time in Magic Arena. Hopefully Arena will be available on Android some day too (i am pretty confident) 

fiirst

Did i enter MPQ's forum?

Klep

@Brigby I am seriously considering one of these plans, but there are some questions I'd really like to have answers to first.

1) Are the "immediate burst" rewards only on starting a plan, or also on renewing one?

2) Are the Tier rewards granted on a recurring basis or only the month we achieve that tier?

3) What happens if and when a player of a particular VIP tier runs out of non-dupe rares to acquire?  Is their weekly rare just converted to orbs?

4) What are the nature of these vault promotions and one-time offers VIP status grants us access to?  Are there any examples you can provide of what we could expect?

5) How many orbs will it cost to craft a Masterpiece?

I think there's room for good value here, but if in the long run I'm just paying, say, $15/mo for 100 yellows, 20 pinks, 400 orbs, 10,000 runes, and the occasional handful of additional pinks from buying stuff it begins to feel significantly less attractive.  It's very difficult to gauge the value of these plans when it seems like much of the value is tied to unspecified opportunities to give you more money, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that this is coming at the same time that Rising Tensions - one of the most popular things this game has ever done - is being removed from daily rotation.

BigSwifty

I don't mind the Free to pay, Pay to Win mentality. It is what it is. Only real problem I have here is the price point. This is in line with what you would pay for most MMORPGs, tv streaming services and more. I think this is more than I pay for HBO.

I think 5-10 dollars a month would be better. As it is, I can't see myself dropping the money on this on an annual basis. Maybe one month at the most. If the cost came down I would reconsider.

Just my 2 cents.

Magic123

The most popular and money making games in the world on mobile are games that have the cheap deals every day. They are usually around $2, or $3, or maybe even $5. Think about it, would you spend $3 every once in awhile for a good deal, or $20-$30 on a medium, ok, deal. 

Aeroplane

Why do they have to make it so messy and complicated?

Loop Prevent - start fixing cards that cause instant loops. Naru , I'm looking at you. 

Card Mastery- they still haven't explained clearly where this is heading. They're weaving and dodging what that was all about.

VIP - If you don't understand what you're getting through the first read it shows poor marketing. x2 mana runes, 1.5x crystals...etc is much better.

Lack of new content... Story mode is just sitting there ready to have some difficult daily or weekly objectives thrown at it.

Everything feels choppy and muddled. Just keep it simple.

Gilesclone

So they are reducing content (something nobody was asking for) and they expect us to pay extra for it.

if RT doesn’t come back I’m done with this game.

bobby_2613

TReed said:

You dont need VIPs. You need current deals at 1/2 the price. The content now is ridiculously overpriced. 

<snip>

And yes.....if RT is really gone......so am I. 

This is pretty much that for me. 

Even if I find VIP announcement a bit early and disturbing (you should have fixed the bugs BEFORE trying to push that upon us), I can understand why you'd need VIP.  Problem is the pricing... (And this is USD!)

Do you think I'll pay over 45$ CDN every month for this game?  2 months of yours and it's already over what I pay for a yearly subscription on another platform. No tinykitty way.

You should feel sorry for insulting our intelligence.

EnochRoot

The devs couldn't have picked a more demoralizing time to push this. If I still had content to enjoy, I could just ignore it and not take issue. However, today I log on and all there is to do is: NoP, training grounds, TotP. None of this is exciting, or interesting. After months of playing 4-10 matches everyday on a slow day, I barely played yesterday and will again not play as much as usual today because of lack of content.... But, you're announcing a subscription service for this content? 

It's a nice idea to think about getting all the stuff this service would provide, but what am I gonna do with it???