Nodes Of Power Rewards

Scrounger

@TomB I've got several thoughts about your comment.

First, what you propose is not what @Endbringer proposed, and this is what I was responding to. Endbringer proposd doing away with runes entirely and having all purchased PW start at Lvl 60. I don't like this proposal for the reason I already stated. It dumbs down the game and eliminates the strategic decisions about what level to keep your PW at.

Second, when I click on PW in the app in the vault, they are not displayed at Lvl 60 stats. They are displayed at Lvl 1 stats. I suspect that you just got confused between how they display in the app in the vault, and how the game shows them for spoilers in their release notes. In the spoiled version of PW in the release notes, they are displayed at Lvl 60. But that's not what you said. You wrote, "since they show you what their abilities are at 60 in the app when they're trying to sell them to you." That's just not true. As I said, they are shown in the app in the vault at their Lvl 1 stats.

Third, I think the full solution outlined by you is unworkable. You propose two things: (1) if you buy a new PW with gold, you get all the runes necessary to Lvl that PW up to 60, and (2) if you buy a new PW for cash, then you don't get the runes. I think these two things coupled together are a very bad idea. What this means is that f2p players who buy PW with gold rather than real life money will get all the runes that they need. But the whales who purchase PW for real cash won't get the runes necessary to Lvl that PW up to 60. So runes will still need to be a reward offered by the game, but the difference is that to a large part of the player base, they will never ever be a reward because the f2p players will get all the runes they can ever use from buying PW with gold. Meanwhile, the people who spend cash -- a way to purchase PW that is obviously more valuable to 8gon -- will have to get runes as a reward. I can hear the complaints now. I don't think that system makes any sense. Even less sense, frankly, than the current system. (And if you're tempted to respond, well a large part of the player base thinks runes aren't a reward now, so it's the same, that's not quite accurate. Even established players who have millions of runes saved up and thus no longer view runes as rewards -- a view I think is inaccurate for the reasons articulated by @bk1234 and @BongoTheGrey -- it was still the case that for these players, runes were an important reward when they were starting out. In your solution, f2p players will never ever have runes function as real rewards for playing the game. So it's strictly worse than what is done now.)

Fourth, if we just take part (1) of your solution, it is at least workable. I'm not in favor of it because I think there is value in feeling like you are working towards something when you play the game, and runes for early players are important to level up your PW. I also think it's a useful experience to play with PW at lower levels because it's not the case that all PW need to be at Lvl 60. If your PW are at lower levels, you also get lower level opponents in PvP events. That is a valid strategic factor to at least consider, and by having new players play with PW at levels other than 60, at least some of those players will factor that data into their future leveling considerations. I know that I did. I wish the game explained how the matchmaking system works better, but the info is out there if you care to investigate.

Fifth, I do think the game should offer some way to redeem runes for something else (crafting at a steep price would be very nice, but really anything would be a positive development). But that's fundamentally different than either doing away with runes entirely as @Endbringer proposed, or with giving players all the runes they need for any PW purchased with the in-game gold currency, as you proposed.

Scrounger

TomB said:

but since they show you what their abilities are at 60 in the app when they're trying to sell them to you I've always figured it would only be fair to give you the option of having your new purchase at level 60 right away.

It just occurred to me that when you wrote this that perhaps you were referring to when a PW is first offered for purchase for cash in the specials section of the vault. I never bother looking at PW in this section of the vault, because I don't buy PW for real cash. I just checked out the new Sorin they are selling and he is indeed displayed at Lvl 60 in the specials section of the vault. So I retract much of what I said in my second point. What you said is not wrong, it's just incomplete. What I said is also not wrong, it's just incomplete too. PW are shown at Lvl 60 when you can buy them for cash and at lvl 1 when you can buy them with gold.

(Incidentally, that the game displays them like this makes coupling (1) and (2) of your solution together even more nonsensical. If anything, the difference in how the game displays PW for purchase argues in favor of giving people who buy the PW for actual cash all the runes necessary to level up the PW to Lvl 60, while people who buy PW for the in-game gold would need to earn runes to level them up. I'm still not in favor of this solution for the reasons outlined in my previous post. But I think this difference in how PW are displayed strengthens my third point: your full solution is not only unworkable, it's not fair based on how the PW are displayed in different vault sections.)

Scrounger

@TomB

So I reread your response and realized I got something completely backward and wrong about what you said. Rereading what you wrote more carefully, I see now that you clearly stated that if you buy PW for real life money, you should get all the runes you need to level them up to 60. If you buy the PW with in-game currency, then you still need to win the runes necessary as a reward to level them up to 60. So, on this score, I was a complete moron that got your point entirely wrong. Sorry about that.

Rather than edit all the wrong stuff i wrote on this point, I'll leave it up as a testament to just how wrong I was. Again, I apologize for the error. What you wrote was clear. I just messed it up.

Bubbles_CS

I think leveling up a planeswalker should be fun. Early on there is a build-up while runes are a limited resource with decision making (which pw do I level?) and discovery as your pw gains new and upgraded abilities. I think it’s fun, but once runes effectively become an unlimited resource, that fun just goes away and runes become an effectively valueless currency.

 I would add my voice to the “runes are not a reward” call because it gets the point across that they don’t have value for me and everyone else who has played for 6+ months, even if it isn’t technically a statement of fact.

I recommended this years ago, but I would love to see each planeswalker come with its own story to progress through. Without diving into dev effort and all that, I think it would be an engaging, fun way to revamp story mode. I could enjoy discovering each planeswalker, learn to play with it, and maybe win some synergistic cards along the way that would build out those Beginner / Expert decks that I don’t touch except when an event calls for me to play it. Planeswalker level could either be tied to story progression (foregoing runes altogether) or the runes could be locked to a planeswalker as a reward for using that pw. We would also want some additional enhancements, including deck slots or other ways to show off all those “extra” runes. Alt art pws, maybe?

In my opinion, runes are broken as a currency and they could be fixed in a variety of ways that could really turn around my flagging interest in this game.

TomB

@Scrounger , np...perhaps I could have written it more clearly. I was kind of hoping for a few more comments, especially from certain people who usually have an opinion about these things, but maybe that's why.

Tezzeret

Runes to:
-foil cards
-buy a mulligan (board swap/opening hand)
-crafting 
-resource  conversion
-new backdrops
-pvp Antes
-buy in for events
-buying "new" items
      -xp boosters
      -pack drop rate booster
      -Reward pack set swaper
-gifting to other players
-l buying low percentagr packs packs (every set)
-litterally.... anything
      

There are million things to do with them. This has been a dead horse for years. If they haven't implemented  something be now I don't think they ever will.

Machine

I like the suggestions made by Tezz.

But it seems that we all forget why we have a lot of runes. A (very) long time ago, the common consensus was that the game did not reward enough runes. People were saying stuff like "why buy a new PW if I don't have the runes to level them up?" Oktagon responded by giving double runes for each win (200 now, used to be 100) and a very big increase in single rune rewards (events with 1000 up to 3500 runes as a reward) where the old rewards were somewhere in the 250 to 750 range. So... be "fixing" our first problem, they have created a new problem and we are complaining again. Looking at where we came from, I think Oktagon already did a great job by making sure there are enough runes to be earned. Still, I think a lot of harmless, cool stuff can be done with excess runes (again, see post Tezzeret).