New event! RaW

ElfNeedsFood

I wish that we would get a rare vanguard pack over the silly rare exclusive card.  I suppose if we at least get a different card for each color, it'll be something...  The Green guy will see very little play...

Bil

Klep said:

The rewards would probably be fine if we hadn't been promised new events would focus more on jewel rewards. 

  Not even remotely close to ... 40 crystals for progression in a weekend coalition event is the worst we've ever had ... No crystals at all for personal ranking too ...

  In fact they manage to do what we thought would be impossible ... RoTGP almost looks generous now ... Even rising tensions rewards are better if we consider the 500 orbs from the mythic.

  If i wasn't in a coalition i wouldn't waste my time on this one ... Not to mention the stupid "kill 4 creatures" objective that has always been a pain to deal with due to troll creatureless decks .. or the fact that the green node has a "partner" objective while green partner cards are probably the worst in the set ...

Boogeyman

I second the bad rewards.  Our group is 100+ and we don't even get a pack lol!  I lost one of my charges and in single rewards, I am now 300+  which doesn't get anything. 

What are they thinking?

tfg76

+1 on the bad rewards.

That said, I think the event itself is fresh and different. "Block constructed" is fun and new, and poses interesting restrictions on deck building. I do think that "Kill 4 creatures" should include killing your own creatures (in the same way that "deal damage to creatures" includes your own), which would make the objective perfectly fine. Also not in love with the Partner objective, but that's mostly because the cards are boring and bad. In the end, though, more of this kind of thing! Great that we four variations coming as well, already looking forward to thinking about what's really good in this format.

Firinmahlazer

I'm a fan of a 3 node event. I have much less free time than I used to and 3 nodes is great. I feel like I can stay on top of my charges instead of 5 node PvP and 5 node PvE

ElfNeedsFood

They did originally call this a "Weekday coalition event" and the 5 colors makes me wonder if it was originally meant to be the new weekday event (replace Rising Tensions?) that the later made a coalition event when the backlash over removing RT hit...  That said, this too is nothing like RT rewards either...

fiirst

bken1234 said:

The first NOP had bugs. 

the last HoD also had bugs....

ElfNeedsFood

fiirst said:

bken1234 said:

The first NOP had bugs. 

the last HoD also had bugs....

The last set of bugs had their own bugs.

wereotter

Dropspot said:

Rewards in this event are the worst I ever saw in any event they made.

Lost one fight. My ranking reward will now be a handful of runes.... -___-

Theros

145 points for progression is too steep and rewards are peanuts.
Dare I say that War is worse than HOD in both progression and rewards ?

Volrak

There's been near-universal scorn for the RaW rewards, which puzzles me, because they're nowhere close to universally bad across the different player scenarios.  

Below is an analysis using rewards per game played as the metric, for three rankings (2nd, 20th, and 200th, both individually and coalition), across all tiers, assuming progression is reached in all cases.  Below are the RaW numbers (pun intended), relative to the average reward across the 10 current coalition events.  100% indicates on par with the average.

Runes

The simplest analysis is Runes.  RaW gives more runes than any other coalition event, for all tiers and placings, by a huge margin.  The fact that nobody at all seems to be reacting to that positively suggests people still have no trouble getting enough runes by other means.

Crystals + Packs

The analysis counts each non-basic pack as 64 crystals (1/5 of the cost of a PP).  It would actually be fair to value WAR packs as worth more crystals than other pack types, since WAR packs are far more likely to still be bought with crystals.  But even without that boost, RaW crystals + packs rewards are superior or comparable to typical event rewards for top players in all tiers.  These rewards do drop off fairly steeply at lower placings, however.

Jewels

RaW jewel rewards are lower than average, excepting the top players in Silver and Bronze.  For top plat and gold players, they're only lower by up to 1/3.  These again drop off further at lower placings.

So, from the numbers, the people expecting to finish outside top 100 may have a case.  Jewels, crystals, and packs are more important than runes, and these players get half the reward for those resources than they would at the same rank in other events.

But although rewards for top ranked players are in no way terrible relative to average coalition event, it's not just lower ranked players who have been vocally negative.

I think a big reason why people are reacting badly is poor expectation management.  D3 set an expectation for higher jewel rewards, however the event gives lower jewel rewards (for most of the people who care).  That alone is sufficient for the rewards as a whole to "suck" for many players.  This also seems to reinforce the notion that D3 could vastly improve player satisfaction just by making player communication more central to how they operate.

Bil

Volrak said:

There's been near-universal scorn for the RaW rewards, which puzzles me, because they're nowhere close to universally bad across the different player scenarios.  

Below is an analysis using rewards per game played as the metric, for three rankings (2nd, 20th, and 200th, both individually and coalition), across all tiers, assuming progression is reached in all cases.  Below are the RaW numbers (pun intended), relative to the average reward across the 10 current coalition events.  100% indicates on par with the average.

Runes

The simplest analysis is Runes.  RaW gives more runes than any other coalition event, for all tiers and placings, by a huge margin.  The fact that nobody at all seems to be reacting to that positively suggests people still have no trouble getting enough runes by other means.

Crystals + Packs

The analysis counts each non-basic pack as 64 crystals (1/5 of the cost of a PP).  It would actually be fair to value WAR packs as worth more crystals than other pack types, since WAR packs are far more likely to still be bought with crystals.  But even without that boost, RaW crystals + packs rewards are superior or comparable to typical event rewards for top players in all tiers.  These rewards do drop off fairly steeply at lower placings, however.

Jewels

RaW jewel rewards are lower than average, excepting the top players in Silver and Bronze.  For top plat and gold players, they're only lower by up to 1/3.  These again drop off further at lower placings.

So, from the numbers, the people expecting to finish outside top 100 may have a case.  Jewels, crystals, and packs are more important than runes, and these players get half the reward for those resources than they would at the same rank in other events.

But although rewards for top ranked players are in no way terrible relative to average coalition event, it's not just lower ranked players who have been vocally negative.

I think a big reason why people are reacting badly is poor expectation management.  D3 set an expectation for higher jewel rewards, however the event gives lower jewel rewards (for most of the people who care).  That alone is sufficient for the rewards as a whole to "suck" for many players.  This also seems to reinforce the notion that D3 could vastly improve player satisfaction just by making player communication more central to how they operate.

While it is always good to put numbers on things,i have no doubt about the numbers but i doubt the percentages are representative of the situation, at least as far as platinum is concerned.

I think the "problem" comes from the fact that you included both pvp and pve events in your stats ... Pve events have no individual rewards and individual rewards are the main pink/crystals income as far as placement is concerned. 

PVP has always been more generous,  and if stats we do stats on the "value" of an event ... Pve and pvp pvp should be taken in account separately.

 Also ... In RAW's particular situation, with vanguards being locked behind a pink wall and booster containing fewer valuable cards than usual ... The value of pinks grows while the value of boosters falls ... In particular with the VIP suscription around (which is a high boost in terms of cards, but not in terms of jewels).

  Besides, i don't think we can consider that a pack is actually worth 64 crystals ...
 While you can buy any booster for 64 crystals .... you can't get crystal value out of a booster that is locked to a particular set, and doesnt allow to buy a walker or a ZvsE card ... 

Suming it up :
   In  the terms of boosters, those are the worst rewards ever seen in a coalition pvp event and they even hardly reach the level of generous pve events like AM or AWR.
 In terms of boosters, it looks pretty decent ... But unfortunately, due to the particular context, WAR boosters have much less value than in any other set.
  Overall, the rewards can clearly feel like a backstab in the actual context (no vanguards in boosters, dupes in vanguard packs and that "focus more on jewels" annoucement) ...

Volrak

Bil said:

I think the "problem" comes from the fact that you included both pvp and pve events in your stats ... Pve events have no individual rewards and individual rewards are the main pink/crystals income as far as placement is concerned. 

Besides, i don't think we can consider that a pack is actually worth 64 crystals ...
While you can buy any booster for 64 crystals .... you can't get crystal value out of a booster that is locked to a particular set, and doesnt allow to buy a walker or a ZvsE card ... 

Fair comments.  And I do agree that jewels have become more valuable with the treatment of vanguards.
So I ran the numbers again comparing RaW rewards against average PvP coalition rewards only, and valuing WAR packs at 32 crystals each instead of 64 (which to my mind is a significant undervaluation).  Other pack types are still valued equally with WAR; which is probably an overvaluation for many of those.
The results (below) are intriguing, and make me even more convinced that RaW rewards overall are nowhere near terrible.  The rewards overall may even be better than the average PvP event.  They're above average everywhere apart from the jewels earned by high-ranking high-tier players, and crystals+packs for low ranked players.


(If anyone wants a copy of my spreadsheet to try the analysis with other parameters, or check my numbers, feel free to get in touch.  I am careful but obviously can't guarantee zero errors.)

Bil

Hmm there's something weird in the boosters/crystals stat ... If the value of boosters goes down (64-32) ... It is impossible that the value for plat 2 is increased beetween first and second spreadsheet. (

Once again, with the low amount of crystals rewarded for progression and individual rewards in this event, if booster looses value, the stat of  RAW should go down too. (Or i missed something?)

I also assume that you count HoR as a coalition event, but it was never meant to be a weekend coalition event ... The fact that it has been scheduled on weekends recently is nothing more than a mistake ... And the poor rewards it offers also brings down the stats.

HOD, TDW, RTO being the 3 pvp events that were designed for weekend coalition, i think RAW should be compared to them exclusively ... The rest being pure fillers or pve.

Anyway ... 50% loss for top scorers in top coalitions is already huge ... But i feel like we're still under the count.

Volrak

Bil said:

Hmm there's something weird in the boosters/crystals stat ... If the value of boosters goes down (64-32) ... It is impossible that the value for plat 2 is increased beetween first and second spreadsheet. (

Lowering booster value does reduce the 2nd-place crystals+packs plat percentages, but they're raised by more than that amount due to only comparing with PvP events.  PvE events are relatively rewarding for crystals+packs: AWR gives a lot of crystals, B4T a pile of packs, and AM a nice amount of both; only RGP is a little low.

I also assume that you count HoR as a coalition event, but it was never meant to be a weekend coalition event ... The fact that it has been scheduled on weekends recently is nothing more than a mistake ... And the poor rewards it offers also brings down the stats.

Yes, I included HoR in the comparison.  I prefer not to judge what "should" be a weekend coalition event but what is (i.e. RaW, RtO, TDW, HoD, and HoR).

Bil

Volrak said : 

Lowering booster value does reduce the 2nd-place crystals+packs plat percentages, but they're raised by more than that amount due to only comparing with PvP events.  PvE events are relatively rewarding for crystals+packs: AWR gives a lot of crystals, B4T a pile of packs, and AM a nice amount of both; only RGP is a little low.


I was obviously missing something here ...my mistake.

I also get your point about HOR, but my point was that it was first designed and schedule as a mid-week event and was later recycled for weekends without adapting its structure (who knows why ...?).

Firinmahlazer

There is no reason in my mind why this event should have 3k brackets given the rewards. 

madwren

I appreciate, as always, your hard work, Volrak. However, I think it'd be very odd if jewels being reduced for high placement in 3 of 4 tiers was met with anything but negativity. Top players aren't always just intrinsically motivated for the sake of winning; there's a lot of extrinsic motivation as well, which is the ability to accrue top rewards and gain a competitive advantage through excellence.   The reduction coupled with the promised increase only compounds it.

The combination of "Vanguards being locked behind jewels" and "Jewels being reduced despite promises otherwise" is a hard one to ignore.  We'll have to wait and see what rewards are like in other events, of course, but I see no reason they'd change the reward template for each iteration of RAW, which suggests we'll have a lot of grindy events with minimal jewel payouts.

ertaii

The only thing I see with this event : it end ups at 4AM on a Monday morning in Common European time. Last charge is around 1AM. First time we Europeans have to deal with this situation I think. I wonder if this is intended.

Dropspot

I don't it's fair to convert packs in gold using a converting of 1 pack = 64 gold. Nobody buys single packs and I can't buy pws using packs. Also having the option to spend on other sets different than the event set makes gold a lot more valuable.