Thoughts on change from Rising Tensions to Zendicar expeditions

HigureTheWindStill

Rising Tensions became the most popular farming event thanks to the high reward:effort ratio. Even a F2P player short on time could manage to get enough rewards to enjoy a satisfactory game experience without having to spend hours playing everyday. However, this is now over with the set rotation. The new weekly event, Zendicar expeditions, is a clear downgrade compared to Rising Tensions. This can be easily seen if we compare the rewards and the perfect victories (completing both secondary goals) needed for completing them (I will use platinum rank rewards):

-ZE 12,000 runes / 8 perfect victories    - RT's 2500 runes / 1 single secondary goal victory.
-ZE 20 crystals / 10 perfect victories      - RT's 20 crystals / 3 perfect victories.
-ZE 15 jewels / 7 perfect victories          - RT's 20 jewels / 2 perfect victories
-ZE 1 booster pack / 2 perfect victories - RT's 1 booster pack / 1 simple victory
-ZE 1 rare card / 9 perfect victories       - RT's 1 mythic card / 4 perfect victory.

There is the only reward that has improved. However, if we calculate the reward/time ratio, we will see that in ZE we get 1500 per perfect victory, while in RT we don't even need the second objective to get 2500. So, if you play through all the event you will get much more runes, but at a way worse payoff for the time invested. Furthermore, runes may be important for new players, but they become less valuable for veteran players.

In terms of crystals and booster pack, both events give the same rewards, but ZE asks for a much higher time investment than RT. And in terms of jewels and cards, ZE is a clear downgrade due to having to expend much more time to get 5 less jewels and a rare card instead of a mythic one.

All in all, and if we regard runes as the less valuable reward from all of them, Zendicar expeditions is a clear and drastic downgrade of the standard weekly event, requiring a higher time commitment but also giving less rewards! Personally I feel angry and disappointed with such a blatant lack of regard for the player s.

This decision may be a way to encourage players short in time to spend money on the game, removing their main resources.
However, I believe that encouraging people to spend more should be done via incentives and benefits, not by downgrading the services you offer for free. This is because such a decision is making the game worse for everyone, including paying members.

I believe that this kind of decisions tell players that money is the main driving force behind the game developers, with player satisfaction having no value compared to it. And I believe it would be dangerous to think that this won't have an effect on paying players... At least I would think it twice to spend money on a game that downgrades its services instead of improving them.

HigureTheWindStill

Sorry, I made a mistake. Where it is written:

 "There is the only reward that has improved" 

It should be:

"There is only one reward that has improved, runes".

HigureTheWindStill

critman said:

Some players have noted that the extra runes for the event is something new players might want.

If that's really the case, then why don't the make the last 5 rungs on the progression ladder into runes, so that those new players can play 10 games and get those runes, and the rest of us can just play 5 games and get all the rewards we card about?

I believe that would be an excellent change, since it would make the event much more attractive for everyone. Right now it seems that the developers are not caring about player satisfaction, using that demand from new players for more runes to try to get away with downgrading the event ("we give you 5 times more runes, so don't complain"), increasing the pressure on F2P players to either start paying or leaving the game. However, they can still regain part of our trust if they heed our complains and suggestions, and change the event so that it regains at least part of what made Rising Tensions so popular. Everyone makes mistakes, but what really tells us about the game developers intentions and goals is their readiness to accept and correct them.