75 crystal quest refresh

QuiksilverHg
QuiksilverHg Posts: 128 Tile Toppler
in MtGPQ General Discussion
The price to refresh a quest is 75 mana crystals.  Considering that the rewards tend to be in the 10-25 crystals per week, why was this considered to be a reasonable cost?

A more reasonable price would be 5-15 crystals, or even better yet have a use for the runes that we are all piling up way too many of.  Or even better yet, get rid of the quests that aren’t practical to do every week like purchase a planeswalker, or level up planeswalkers (thankfully I have a bunch of the originals that I never levelled up, but this is definitely going to be a problem for many people).

Full disclosure the reason this is even occurring to me to bring up is because I hit refresh this morning and my finger moved faster than my eyes.  I thought I would have my free daily refresh and hit the button before I registered that I was going to be paying for it… asked support if they’d give me the crystals back… who knows if they will or not.

Comments

  • QuiksilverHg
    QuiksilverHg Posts: 128 Tile Toppler
    If anyone cares, the support team’s response was in accordance with ferengi rule of acquisition number 1, “Once you have their money... you never give it back.”

    I freely admit I clicked too fast bypassing the cost warning, but someone would have to have a hole in their head to think 75 crystals for a quest refresh is worthwhile. It was obviously done in error…but I guess Oktagon follows the Ferengi system.  One more straw on the camel’s back making me wonder why I keep playing this game.
  • madwren
    madwren Posts: 2,259 Chairperson of the Boards
    The good news is that if you're lucky, you'll make back 5 of those crystals with the quest journal rewards!
  • Asylamb
    Asylamb Posts: 170 Tile Toppler
    "Considering that the rewards tend to be in the 10-25 crystals per week" - that's simply not true. TG alone will give 20 crystals daily = 140 crystals weekly, not counting occasional double TG. TG are no fun and are a chore, but discarding them as a source of crystals is a misinformation.
    And if you play the events well, you can get a couple more hundreds on a good week.

    Do I agree that 75 crystals is a steep price for a Quest Refresh? I do and I never used crystals for that.
    Do I think that Quest Refresh is a must-do? No. 
    You have a free refresh daily, use them wisely.

    "It was obviously done in error" - I'm sure there are people who would still use crystals for a refresh, because they don't earn 10-25 crystals a week, so nothing obvious there.
  • ambrosio191
    ambrosio191 Posts: 315 Mover and Shaker
    Asylamb said:
    "Considering that the rewards tend to be in the 10-25 crystals per week" - that's simply not true. TG alone will give 20 crystals daily = 140 crystals weekly, not counting occasional double TG. TG are no fun and are a chore, but discarding them as a source of crystals is a misinformation.
    And if you play the events well, you can get a couple more hundreds on a good week.

    Do I agree that 75 crystals is a steep price for a Quest Refresh? I do and I never used crystals for that.
    Do I think that Quest Refresh is a must-do? No. 
    You have a free refresh daily, use them wisely.

    "It was obviously done in error" - I'm sure there are people who would still use crystals for a refresh, because they don't earn 10-25 crystals a week, so nothing obvious there.

    I believe what QuicksilverHg was getting at is the rewards from the quest system tend to be 10-25 crystals per week, not what you get from playing other events.  75 crystals for a refresh can wipe out an entire months worth of crystal rewards from the quest system. 
  • Asylamb
    Asylamb Posts: 170 Tile Toppler
    Makes sense. But crystals were never the target reward of Quests anyway.
  • QuiksilverHg
    QuiksilverHg Posts: 128 Tile Toppler
    Throw in that it was within 15 minutes of the chance for the daily free refresh being available (I thought I was there already) and I think we can get to the obviously done in error.
  • Persil
    Persil Posts: 137 Tile Toppler
    edited May 2021
    I suggest changing the reroll price from 75 to 750 Crystals, or even 7500. Nobody's gonna buy it anyway, so at least let's make the accountants illusory happy.
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    critman said:
    Volrak said:

    Better still would be to keep subsequent rerolls and rebalance the cost, e.g. 75 crystals -> 7,500 runes.
    If you make rerolls cost runes, it feels like many of us experienced players, with millions of runes in the bank, would get functionally infinite rerolls? Certainly enough to ensure we'd always be able to reroll a 200/250xp quest into one that gives 400xp or more.

    This would further widen the gap between new players and experienced players in levels.

    Now, I realise levels and xp don't actually MEAN anything in the game (beyond simply being a currency we accrue in order to obtain non-duplicate boosters and other rewards on the levelling ladder), but I'm pretty sure that Oktagon always intended for xp and levels to mean something beyond that [citation needed]. I'm sure many of us remember when they introduced the xp system, and artificially reduced the amount of xp that high level players got specifically to bring them closer in level to low level players. That was a very unpopular move, so they probably had reasons for doing it.

    Why not split the difference?  Make re-rolls cost runes, but you can only do 1 per day (or some other arbitrary length of time, maybe 6 hours like a node refresh?).
    If a top player is willing to hold a quest for several days just for a chance of getting slightly more xp for one single quest then they deserve to have it lol.
  • ambrosio191
    ambrosio191 Posts: 315 Mover and Shaker
    critman said:
    Volrak said:

    Better still would be to keep subsequent rerolls and rebalance the cost, e.g. 75 crystals -> 7,500 runes.
    If you make rerolls cost runes, it feels like many of us experienced players, with millions of runes in the bank, would get functionally infinite rerolls? Certainly enough to ensure we'd always be able to reroll a 200/250xp quest into one that gives 400xp or more.

    This would further widen the gap between new players and experienced players in levels.

    Now, I realise levels and xp don't actually MEAN anything in the game (beyond simply being a currency we accrue in order to obtain non-duplicate boosters and other rewards on the levelling ladder), but I'm pretty sure that Oktagon always intended for xp and levels to mean something beyond that [citation needed]. I'm sure many of us remember when they introduced the xp system, and artificially reduced the amount of xp that high level players got specifically to bring them closer in level to low level players. That was a very unpopular move, so they probably had reasons for doing it.

    You are correct, but I think it's time we stopped using the excuse of "the devs never gave us a use for our runes, therefore we cannot introduce a new means of using runes because some people have accumulated too many". 
    At some point they have to acknowledge there is a problem, implement a fix, and accept that some people will benefit more from the fix.  As long as the fix improves the game overall, we have to be okay with someone people being even better off.  If functionally infinite rerolls for a select number of people (who you have already stated dont benefit from those rerolls nearly as much as someone starting out in terms of rewards) is what's needed to introduce a meaningful rune sink and a "fair" reroll system, then we/the devs have to be okay with that.  The only other solution is to wipe out everyone's accumulated runes, and start fresh.  I'm sure that would go over well....
  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
    critman said:
    Volrak said:

    Better still would be to keep subsequent rerolls and rebalance the cost, e.g. 75 crystals -> 7,500 runes.
    If you make rerolls cost runes, it feels like many of us experienced players, with millions of runes in the bank, would get functionally infinite rerolls?
    Clearly true for some amount of runes, clearly untrue for others.  That suggests there exists an amount of runes which would be a good balance.  Runes at 100 times the current crystal costs was my initial attempt at placing that balance, what would yours be?
  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2021
    ambrosio191 said:
    critman said:
    Volrak said:

    Better still would be to keep subsequent rerolls and rebalance the cost, e.g. 75 crystals -> 7,500 runes.
    If you make rerolls cost runes, it feels like many of us experienced players, with millions of runes in the bank, would get functionally infinite rerolls? Certainly enough to ensure we'd always be able to reroll a 200/250xp quest into one that gives 400xp or more.

    This would further widen the gap between new players and experienced players in levels.

    Now, I realise levels and xp don't actually MEAN anything in the game (beyond simply being a currency we accrue in order to obtain non-duplicate boosters and other rewards on the levelling ladder), but I'm pretty sure that Oktagon always intended for xp and levels to mean something beyond that [citation needed]. I'm sure many of us remember when they introduced the xp system, and artificially reduced the amount of xp that high level players got specifically to bring them closer in level to low level players. That was a very unpopular move, so they probably had reasons for doing it.

    You are correct, but I think it's time we stopped using the excuse of "the devs never gave us a use for our runes, therefore we cannot introduce a new means of using runes because some people have accumulated too many". 
    At some point they have to acknowledge there is a problem, implement a fix, and accept that some people will benefit more from the fix.  As long as the fix improves the game overall, we have to be okay with someone people being even better off.  If functionally infinite rerolls for a select number of people (who you have already stated dont benefit from those rerolls nearly as much as someone starting out in terms of rewards) is what's needed to introduce a meaningful rune sink and a "fair" reroll system, then we/the devs have to be okay with that.  The only other solution is to wipe out everyone's accumulated runes, and start fresh.  I'm sure that would go over well....
    That was the case when they introduced the crafting system. Some people were set to utilize that system more effectively than others (because they had been hoarding dupes), but in the long term, it's been a great addition to the game.

  • QuiksilverHg
    QuiksilverHg Posts: 128 Tile Toppler
    critman said:
    Volrak said:

    Better still would be to keep subsequent rerolls and rebalance the cost, e.g. 75 crystals -> 7,500 runes.
    If you make rerolls cost runes, it feels like many of us experienced players, with millions of runes in the bank, would get functionally infinite rerolls? Certainly enough to ensure we'd always be able to reroll a 200/250xp quest into one that gives 400xp or more.

    This would further widen the gap between new players and experienced players in levels.
    If we use this logic then they can never make any practical use for runes ever.
  • ambrosio191
    ambrosio191 Posts: 315 Mover and Shaker
    jtwood said:
    ambrosio191 said:
    critman said:
    Volrak said:

    Better still would be to keep subsequent rerolls and rebalance the cost, e.g. 75 crystals -> 7,500 runes.
    If you make rerolls cost runes, it feels like many of us experienced players, with millions of runes in the bank, would get functionally infinite rerolls? Certainly enough to ensure we'd always be able to reroll a 200/250xp quest into one that gives 400xp or more.

    This would further widen the gap between new players and experienced players in levels.

    Now, I realise levels and xp don't actually MEAN anything in the game (beyond simply being a currency we accrue in order to obtain non-duplicate boosters and other rewards on the levelling ladder), but I'm pretty sure that Oktagon always intended for xp and levels to mean something beyond that [citation needed]. I'm sure many of us remember when they introduced the xp system, and artificially reduced the amount of xp that high level players got specifically to bring them closer in level to low level players. That was a very unpopular move, so they probably had reasons for doing it.

    You are correct, but I think it's time we stopped using the excuse of "the devs never gave us a use for our runes, therefore we cannot introduce a new means of using runes because some people have accumulated too many". 
    At some point they have to acknowledge there is a problem, implement a fix, and accept that some people will benefit more from the fix.  As long as the fix improves the game overall, we have to be okay with someone people being even better off.  If functionally infinite rerolls for a select number of people (who you have already stated dont benefit from those rerolls nearly as much as someone starting out in terms of rewards) is what's needed to introduce a meaningful rune sink and a "fair" reroll system, then we/the devs have to be okay with that.  The only other solution is to wipe out everyone's accumulated runes, and start fresh.  I'm sure that would go over well....
    That was the case when they introduced the crafting system. Some people were set to utilize that system more effectively than others (because they had been hoarding dupes), but in the long term, it's been a great addition to the game.


    I was going to use booster crafting as an example, but I ended up rambling too much and deleted it.  I'm glad you brought it up.  Booster crafting could have been so much worse had they gone with auto-converting everyone's dupes to runes before implementing to make things "fair" to new players instead of what we got. 
  • TomB
    TomB Posts: 269 Mover and Shaker
    Meh...Quest rewards are so lame anyways who cares? lol
  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
    TomB said:
    Meh...Quest rewards are so lame anyways who cares? lol
    It's a nice plus on top of just playing the game. The XP helps progress faster, you get some crystals and packs (which is great for newer players), and it speeds up your attainment of that 10-level VIP pack. Overall, I think the quest system is a great success.
  • BongoTheGrey
    BongoTheGrey Posts: 348 Mover and Shaker
    I agree, the quest system is a great success. Being able to use runes for rerolls would be the cherry on top
  • Smokincookz
    Smokincookz Posts: 251 Mover and Shaker

    I got caught in the booby trap- I accidentally wasted 75 crystals (stressful day, I tap too fast in general to bypass the app’s bloat, & my thumb blocked the part where it shows “free” or for crystals. Small screen on my 2016 iPhone SE, but still runs the game fine).

    I said I’d be happy to forfeit the xp + quest reward, but support wouldn’t budge.

    They replied with,
    “We apologize for any frustration or inconvenience, but unfortunately, we are unable to provide any refunds for accidental purchases using in-game currency.”

    “As there is a confirmation screen when purchasing items with in-game resources, you are given a warning about what items you are attempting to purchase and how much they will cost.”

    “As you had received the items for the purchase and had confirmed the purchase before receiving the items, we are unable to provide the service requested.”

    This surprised me- as I recall, perhaps 1.5-2 yrs ago, they refunded an accidental purchase w/ virtual currency. I took the same position: offered to give back the meager amount of orbs- they just refunded it no prob, and let me keep the orbs too.

    Perhaps I’ve not remembered correctly. No matter, as there would be no need to submit a ticket if this exorbitant reroll “feature” didn’t exist to begin with.

    I used to spend too much money on this game- I took a long break, and came back recently. Having achieved ironclad impulse control, I found I no longer crave to spend. I could finally enjoy the game, free from a dopamine manipulation cycle.

    I still had an open mind towards the occasional small purchase, to support the devs a bit when I can. Well, no longer. They will never see another penny from me!

    Now I remind myself to stay away unless calm and collected.

    This also applies to crystals as event entry fees, albeit on a lesser scale- I’ve absentmindedly entered late, then rushed to finish, or lost rewards. They’re preying upon frazzled people.

    I hope this post at least prevents others from stepping on this poo-coated spike trap.

    You will not be supported or compensated! So do be careful, whatever you do: NEVER tap around any “purchase” with haste.

    I even have to reconsider playing when my cat is laying on my chest- his paw has randomly touched the screen before, and it will respond to his skin.

    No game should have such harsh consequences for mis-clicking!

    Ugh, rant over. Hopefully my next post can be about something positive. I didn’t want to return to forum on this note- the game had otherwise been running very well for me lately. No crashes at all for months. Ah well.

  • QuiksilverHg
    QuiksilverHg Posts: 128 Tile Toppler

    I don't know if you feel like going another round with support. But what they told me was that they are unable to provide refunds for purchases for which there is a confirmation.

    In this case, when you see that there is a crystal charge and not free, it does not confirm after you click on the crystals. All other charges requiring currency require you to confirm after you see what it costs; this one doesn't. Making it seem a lot more like an actual trap rather than an attempt to back out after the fact (which seems to be their take).

    I was so frustrated, I didn't try with them again, but I think if you give it a go and say there was no confirmation that you might get somewhere... there definitely should be a confirmation after you see what the real cost is.

  • Smokincookz
    Smokincookz Posts: 251 Mover and Shaker

    "Full disclosure the reason this is even occurring to me to bring up is because I hit refresh this morning and my finger moved faster than my eyes.  I thought I would have my free daily refresh and hit the button before I registered that I was going to be paying for it…"

    ^This is exactly what happened to me, my thumb was over the same spot & tapped twice before my mind registered what it was.

    I'm not happy about it, but I decided to let it go. Just three days after, I got an astounding number of amazing pulls, all from event reward packs- I couldn't believe my luck was so good.

    I agree with you @QuiksilverHg, anyone who feels slighted may want to try that approach.

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