Thank you for a fantastic decade! (UPDATED DEC-12)

madwren

• Finally, from Dec 24 to Jan 04, you’ll find traditional discounts for new friends in our Planeswalker Sale! Most planeswalkers will be included in this sale, except for
  • Aminatou the Fateshifter, Nicol Bolas Planeswalker, Dakkon Shadow Slayer, Grist the Plague Swarm, and Dack Fayden (they’ll be present in Bundles)

This is ridiculous. At least stop being so blatant in your cash grabs.

TheDude1

@Sarah said:

There absolutely must be paid players in order to keep the lights on and pay salaries but, as players, we have no control over whether Webcore pays the devs and game testers good salaries or simply outsources the coding to AI and lines the pockets of investors and the C-suite. Based on the state of the game (and the lack of a community manager) I would guess that webcore probably doesn't value paying/training/retaining their employees. If they did, my new mythic lands from shadowmoor would work as written instead of the way they currently give full mana to non-listed PWs (I still haven't figured out the exact way that they are broken but that's because I haven't bothered play testing yet).
...
I did change my decks a bit after the update but not in any meaningful way--the cards I rely on for explosive damage weren't affected. While I am sad/frustrated/disappointed/salty about Aminatou being left out of the PW sale, it's ultimately a small thing since I already have the others. She was a want, not a need.

TL;DR while the VIP players may think if themselves as whales, they are very much not.

I'm definitely familiar with the asymmetry idea here, whether called whales vs minnows, Pareto, 80/20 rule or whatever. And I'm not discounting any of the tiers, I understand the need for minnows/plankton/etc in the game ecosystem.

What I'm missing is where the idea comes in that the whales (whoever/however many they are) were the ones calling for the nerf, let alone calling for it because they were losing more. I've made many posts in the past about trying to determine the difference between "I don't like how I'm winning" vs "I'm losing more" and there hasn't been a sustained argument for the latter, and certainly not from identified whales. Even if you disagree on whether the nerfs went too far, the rationales given were thorough and thoughtful toward the game as a whole, so really not understanding why the sudden accusation that whales are behind the whole thing.

As for this sale, it's definitely disappointing in context of past years, there's not much arguing otherwise. You can call me pollyannish, but this "cash grab" smells more to me of a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding rather than greed/"making line go up". None of us know their metrics/finances, but if Webcore is pushing out cards to keep up with WOTC's insane release schedule without properly playtesting, that points to being materially understaffed, meaning they're not awash in extra cash. And only offering the PWs for cash instead of gold (even without a holiday discount) sounds like people fumbling for a solution of "we're not seeing great results from the packages we release for sale, what will people buy instead?" and settling on a known in-demand commodity. You can chicken-and-egg whether their own past mistakes are the cause of people not buying/the game not growing, but after the power creep of MKM/OTJ and cumulative results of prior years, I can easily see the thinking "well we tried this same holiday structure for many years and this is the state we're in, what can we do better?"

TheDude1

@TIMEWARP said:
--"Which subset of players should lose more than others?--

This answer for me is simple: players that spend less resources.

I guess my counter is for the most part, that's not what's happening. Win rates are still remarkably high across the board, whether due to dumb Greg, matchmaking trying to align similar deck/collection strength, whatever. F2P players are still getting enough cards to win regularly, almost regardless of time investment. Perhaps that's fine, but it runs counter to what a lot of people would consider the point of F2P in an head-to-head game ecosystem.

TimeLion724

I was looking forward for these years sale but looks like I still can get grist…

Drag0nWhelp

@Sarah said:
Circling back to the double planar chaos; they did refund my 20 crystals from the first event that ended early and provided the following non-excuse:

"We had to make some adjustments to our schedule to accommodate all events and offers related to the Holiversary.
This is why the Planar Chaos event had a different start and time times."

Why were you caught off guard by the event start times and the sale @Magic:PQ Support Team ? These things should have been expected and/or anticipated. Does the lack of communication exist not just on the forum but in the office as well? This would be ridiculously silly if it weren't a sign of such obvious disfunction at your offices.

I've said it before but it's worth repeating; this behaviour does not inspire the sort of confidence needed for regular folks to spend money on the game. I know you don't care about the regular folks, only the whales (which is why you have nerfed the good cards and paywalled the stand-out PWs) but consider this; the whales don't actually like playing against other whales--that's why they whine so much about facing other players with OP cards.

Lastly, I am curious; when did you realise that those cards (and PWs) were overpowered? When you slammed them into all of those Planar Chaos decks you tried to convince us were other players? When the whales started complaining that too many of the F2Peasants had them?

@Sarah i'm considered a whale and with what I've spent there was absolutely a) no need to nerf anything.....well they butchered it all, and b) whales aren't likely to complain its more like the F2P players who get whooped by them, and trust me they don't care what us whales think because i unloaded on them about the butchering and all I got back was sweet f.a when I told them I'd stop spending if they went ahead with it, and they didnt care.

CMatador137

@LarsDFranzen said:
Regarding the Dack/Grist/Dakkon pack in the shop: Players that already have some of these Walkers still need to pay the full price to get the rest. And they have no other way to get them.

I understand you need to make money, but you need to change that, at the very least. You cant expect anyone to pay you 80 for Dakkon und some pinks. You are even discouraging players who usually dont mind paying for walkers with this.

Absolutely! I was just coming here to say this. $80 for 1 PW (I already have the other 2) is just insane. Completely insane. I'm probably cancelling my VIP after the sale because I use it mostly to help save up for the best PWs. If I can't get them without spending more money than I'm already spending (which is a lot over the years) then they can take a financial hit. I hope the sale is a total disaster for them because it is garbage. Maybe they'll wake up then and not be so incredibly greedy moving forward. But I'm not holding my breath.

Tezzeret

Guys.... it has a banner in the corner that says "GREAT VALUE"

Why is everyone upset lol ^_^

ArielSira

Though I agree it is odd the 3 walkers are packed together and not each in a separate offer, them not being part of the discount isn't a big deal at all. The difference in gold/crystals you'll get within a week by playing.

Machine

@ArielSira said:
Though I agree it is odd the 3 walkers are packed together and not each in a separate offer, them not being part of the discount isn't a big deal at all. The difference in gold/crystals you'll get within a week by playing.

So what? You can also think the other way. That gold you get by a week of playing could have been spent on something else if the walkers you wanted were included in the offer.

fenelope

@ArielSira said:
Though I agree it is odd the 3 walkers are packed together and not each in a separate offer, them not being part of the discount isn't a big deal at all. The difference in gold/crystals you'll get within a week by playing.

I think you’ve missed the point, it’s not just that they’re excluded from the discount, it’s that they aren’t available for crystals at all.

The discount is important, yes, but actually appearing in the shop is a big part of the equation too.

That they’ve bundled all three together for cash is just icing on the cake.

Janosik

@Magic:PQ Support Team said:
* Fateful Showdown (Dec 19 to Jan 01)

Fateful Showdown didn't run on Dec 19th, did it? It ran on Dec 12th. And it certainly isn't running all the way to Jan 1st!

Is that supposed to be a new instance of Fateful Showdown starting on Jan 1st?