We are wrong...

naabaldan

First of all: Webcore does a great job. They are listening and providing.

One example:
we said: we are missing boosters of the newest set.
Voila, we have lots of events with foundation boosters as a reward now.

But why are we wrong?
I learned a lot about game economy, currencies and that stuff.
Everything because the daily rewards are limited to 21 days now and as the amount of resources given grow with every day the cut is dramatic.
And yes it hurts. It was communicated the worst way possible, too.

But does it realy drain our valueable rescources?
It is free stuff. A veteran player, like myself, mostly does coaltion events only.
So I rely on those daily resources (mostly gold and booster).

Now, lets talk Sneak peek:

This is the sneak peek for the first week in october 2023.
We have: TG, TotP, 2 PvP, 1 Coalition, 4 PvE Events including Fblthp

Tada, one week later:

Both where undergoing some changes, but since than we have:
TG, RP, TotP, 1 Coaltion, 3 PvP, 6 PvE Events including Fblthp

Here is where all the new resource are coming from. There are now for more than one year tons of resource available additionally because we got so many more events to play throughout the week. Especially rare events like BfA show up on a regular basis.
Webcore just shifted the gain of resources from daily rewards to events.
That's all. Play more. Earn more. No complains.
Under this perspective it is understandable that daily rewards were cut.

I still want my daily rewards for everyday of a month back. It is my daily morning routine to login, grab my daily reward, check the quests and the shop, than switch to my next account. So limiting this to 21 days stops people from playing.
It is that simple.

I started a new account 19 month ago to see how it feels like being a beginner again with the knowledge of a veteran. Beginners need much more support in any way possible.

They need any resources possible to earn from daily logins, events, maybe ads, special offers, etc. (so don't cut the daily rewards, beginners need them).
Even VIP is not at full value for beginners: openig a VIP legacy booster gives you commons and uncommons for YEARS and you need a lot of months to obtain all commons and uncommons from standard (including crafting) to make opening a non dupe standard booster somewhat worthy.

PS:
I can provide any single sneak peek since august 2022 with a mouse click.

PSS:
English is not my native language. I apologize.

Sarah

@naabaldan did your calculations include the entry fees required for some of those events? How do the rewards for lower levels like bronze and silver compare to the rewards earned by platinum players?

I don’t disagree with the premise, I just wonder if advising new players to “play more TOTP” is helpful?

I don’t doubt that more resources are available, I just question whether the entry fees are a good use of crystals for early-game players and I’m curious.

naabaldan

As I said, beginners need everything possible, including a full month of daily rewards.
And, yes bronce and silver are beaten by the lower amount of resource they get by some, not all, events.

And yes, it is true, beginners pay the same entry free as higher tiers for less resources, thats hurts and should be equalized.

Tremayne

@naabaldan - interesting analysis. On the surface, it definitely looks promising. As @Sarah points out how does it look beneath the surface? Is the water still as clear - who knows, but I’m not asking you @naabaldan to do more analysis (if you don’t want to )

Here is a free one liner to the PR department of WebCore “We want to change the reward structure from passive giveaways to prizes for actively playing events.” Such a simple statement would make the water a lot clearer. In some regards it actually makes sense to cut daily rewards!

The next question becomes “Will the increased number of events also mean bigger prizes”?
I have certainly seen a lot of complaints over the years, that the rewards for finishing event(s) have been measly. Play for 60-90 minutes and get a few booster packs that translate into a few hundred orbs. Granted this is mainly an old timers issue (for the main part), but that sure is a factor.

Is more events actually translated into more prizes or is it just events that are being skipped? This question is definitely a deep dive into a very deep ocean. I’m sure WebCore is doing this kind of analysis right now. I’ll look forward to their changes - hoping they’ll communicate it clearly in advance.

I haven’t touched on the whole new player issue, because this post will then become excessively large.

Janosik

One thought occurs about this analysis, and that is that an in game economy depends just as much on what's available to buy as much as how much currency you get.

Two things certainly have changed in recently which have an affect on how much our currency is worth:

1) Elite packs have gotten a lot bigger

Some of the most recent Elite packs have 15 cards in them, whereas Elite packs from, say, VOW or MID were practically half the size. If you're targetting one OP card in an Elite pack, the size of the pack matters, and will require you, on average, to spend more

2) PM2 cards are incredibly expensive (and, unlike PM1, was not rolled out gradually over a long period of time)

Sure, you don't have to buy PM2, but you are missing some of the best cards in Standard if you don't, like Deem Inferior or Ocelot Pride... generally I don't tend to agree with people who say the game is Pay to Win, but it is interesting that infinite 2 card Standard combos that form a loop always get a nerf (like, Mechanised Warfare+Rem Karolus, or Curse of Vitality, or Firebeast+Unholy indenture, or Danitha and Blade of Shared Souls...), but Ocelot Pride has been allowed to go un-nerfed... Presumably because not enough people can afford to buy the thing so people are rarely losing to it (This does not, however, mean the card is not problematic!)

PM2 was something of a turning point in the game for me in my gameplay... prior to that I was skipping most of the dailys (but still playing all of the other weekday events) but when PM2 came out I really had to start playing everything that gave a net positive in crystals (so, not TOTP) to earn enough crystals to afford PM2. So it already felt to me like my in-game currency wasn't buying me as much of the game as it used to, even before the cutbacks associated with the Holiversary.

Tremayne

I talked to my wife about the differences in her app (Called XX from now on) and MTGPQ. A very significant thing was transparency. In XX you could clearly see what you got if you chose to chase something. In MTGPQ I know that I get a specific thing, but often that thing’s content is randomised so in practice I do not know what I get.

Say I get 3 booster packs from a set - that is transparent. When I open those three booster packs I get chaff (others may get gold), 250-400 orbs is just not worth me trying to get first place.

Years back we got a non-duplicate booster packs from some events. That turned out to be too generous, so it was changed to a non-duplicate rare card. (M2019 as an example). I hope WebCore will revert to this solution again (or something similar). Transparent reward.

For those who thinks that is too generous, consider this: WebCore makes something like 750-1000 cards every year, divided it is something like 100 mythic+, 175 rares and 500-725 (un)commons. If they gave out one rare card every week, that would be equal to one third of the rares from a single year.

If WebCore chose which specific card was given each time, I could decide if my extra effort was worth it, I.e. a new card or 100 orbs

Sarah

@naabaldan you mentioned this post in another thread and I have to confess that I still don’t understand it. It seems that you are suggesting that there are now more events than there were available in the past but I’ve looked through the old sneak peeks and that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.

Showing a week with very few events and then presenting a normal week as an improvement is similar to businesses artificially inflating the price of things so they can later pretend to put them on sale. It’s disingenuous.

Webcore has done several very good things for the game and we can and should praise them for it—if you care to look, you can find me thanking them for giving us all charges upfront in events and targeted legacy crafting—it’s weird when people invent imaginary reasons to thank them. It’s as if you trying to meet some sort of arbitrary quota of ten compliments to one complaint?

naabaldan

Isn't the two different scedules drom Oktober 2023 prove enough?
The first and every one prior to that date has less events than the second one that is equal to every following week.

Maybe you didn't go back long enough?

Webcore was taken over in July 2023, or something like this and one of the first things they did, without any spectacular announcement, was to raise the number of events per week and make lots of events regular that were available on a random and rare base before.

@Tremayne challenged me to build a chart to represent the changes. I will do

Sarah

Webcore announced their takeover in September 2023. Source: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/89119/mtgpq-handover-announcement

Here is a sneak peak from October 2023 (Webcore): https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/89191/mtgpq-sneak-peek-october-2023-edition-updated-10-27-2023

Here is a sneak peek from August 2023 (Oktagon): https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/88911/mtgpq-sneak-peek-august-2023-edition-update-8-18-23

Here is a sneak peek from September 2022: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/87389/mtgpq-sneak-peek-september-2022-edition-update-9-23-22

Honestly, the more I look back through things, the more obvious it becomes that you have compared an unusually slow week with a normal one and are trying to convince us that it’s a big improvement. It’s just not.

Tremayne

@naabaldan - I’m sorry what are you referring to? I had no intention to challenge or otherwise coerce you into doing additional work. I didn’t (and don’t) have the time to dive into your material, so I didn’t want you to think that I demanded that of you.

Secondly, I have skipped a lot of events after the increased number of events, an increase the OP indicated, an increase that matched my perception. But, the increase in events, hasn’t meant I play significantly more events. However, I do think that it is better to have multiple events to choose from (as we have now) than having to few events (like we had a few years ago).

I found the OP to be a poignant and relevant opposing opinion to the widespread (seemingly) opinion on these forum. I meant to applaud that without demanding extra documentation from you @naabaldan.

Sarah

@Tremayne i commend you for the self-awareness necessary to admit that you are swayed more by how something makes you feel regardless of the facts present and the acknowledgment of your lack of interest researching things that align with your perception. I think a lot of people are like this and don’t realize it.

Here is a sneak peek from July 2021 demonstrating that the number of events has not meaningfully changed over the years aside from the one weird week that @naabaldan has chosen for this post: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/85287/mtgpq-sneak-peek-july-2021-edition-update-7-23-21

Tremayne

@Sarah - thank you, I guess. Though English isn’t my first language, I perceive a little tongue in cheek.
My feeling is supported by the fact that in the old days, I used to play every event, because there wasn’t enough events to play.
Today, there are more events than I can find time to play, though I play roughly the same amount of matches. I can’t find documentation for this because in the old days there wasn’t any sneak peek.

I think it is a good thing that there are more events to choose from. However, over the years I have seen users (perhaps with OCD) complain that they can’t manage to play everything, so they find it troublesome.

Sarah

@Tremayne I know that there are sneak peeks because I am the one who asked Brigby to make them in the first place and I look at them each week when I make my ambition polls for FTA.

Here is a sneak peak from 2020 showing a similar number of events: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/83835/mtgpq-sneak-peek-november-2020-edition-update-11-27-20

Here is a sneak peek from 2019: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/80553/mtgpq-sneak-peek-december-2019-edition-updated-12-24-19

Here is a sneak peek from 2018: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/76279/mtgpq-sneak-peek-december-2018-edition-updated-12-20-18

And it doesn’t actually matter because you’ve already admitted that you can’t be swayed by actual facts. It is very frustrating to try and have rational conversations with people who are like this but I do genuinely find your honesty about it refreshing.

Tremayne

@Sarah - so are you saying that there has never been any complaints about there being too few events to play? I’m positive that there has, but maybe I’m misremembering.

I’m puzzled that you claim I won’t be swayed by facts. If you see, I wrote in the past tense. Your examples seems to indicate @naabaldan is wrong, I find that interesting because I was positive that at some point there was a change in the number of events. That that change is imaginary (as your posts seems to indicate) or that the complaints was as far back as 2017 (or earlier) is just a testament to how fast times fly.

I would have put the complaints around 2019-2020, but I don’t have to patience to search for this (the search function and me don’t get along very well). I’m not saying you are wrong or I’m not considering your arguments.

Sarah

@Tremayne I’m sorry if I’m coming across as combative. Part of the issue is that, yes, the first week in October—immediately after Webcore took over—did have much fewer events than we typically see (either before or after) and people did complain… although most people were understanding that there would be a transition period. Webcore did resume the “normal” amount of events and they’ve worked hard to re-introduce events that were mothballed long ago which is commendable.

My complaint about this specific post is that the example used as a low point was a very unusual circumstance (immediately after the takeover) and I’m not sure it’s fair to point to that one particular week as representative of the average number of events in any given week.

There are plenty of real things that webcore has done that deserve compliments but this is very much not one of them.

naabaldan

OK. I entered some event data in an excel. Not finished so far. But this is what I got:
August 21th , 2022 - End of the year 2022 --> 592 Events / 31,16 Events per week / 6,16 individual events (not inluded TG, TotP, RP and coalition)
January 1st, 2023 - April 30th 2023 --> 522 Events / 30,45 Events per week / 5,45 individual events (not inluded TG, TotP, RP and coalition)
Doing quick check from now back far a few month the amount of individual events is at minimum 10.

I will collect all events until now and provide the numbers here including the excel I generated.

The Event scedule starting 2019 can be found here https://wiki.mtgpq.info/wiki/Event_calendar_historical

Sarah

Thank you for doing more research @naabaldan in particular, I’m curious how 2024 (webcore’s first full year) stacks up against 2022 (oktagon’s last full year)

naabaldan

I will tell you soon, and some other numbers, too
Like how often bfa was available in 2024 compared to 2023