Ohboy said: babar3355 said: That's actually quite beautiful. Original? I wish. It's the first part of the poem . The whole thing is beautiful. I heard it once recited on TV as a kid and it's stuck with me. http://www.potw.org/archive/potw52.html
babar3355 said: That's actually quite beautiful. Original?
That's actually quite beautiful. Original?
The author's sister, Christina Rosetti,wrote a famous poem about goblins :-)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market
Ultimately, I think we disagree mostly around the economics of the game. I think we both think drop rates could be better. We disagree a bit on whether it would be a positive or negative to have the possibility of collecting an entire set. We disagree a little on the structuring of prizes and the necessity to have worthwhile prizes (I say a little because I don't think the prizes should be mythics for a few and garbage for the masses. I think everyone should get better prizes.. "pull the masses up rather than dragging the elites down"). Other than that we tend to agree on most things around ELO systems, card balance, and most other issues.
But the "vehement" disagreement centers around our starkly different perceptions of the economy.
I believe your view is that they were creating tons of content and giving it away for free which led to a greatly hampered or even negative revenue stream. They were forced to cut back on rewards and prizes in order to right the ship and stay in business. In that view, they are the hapless party who wants to give us stuff but is forced to stop doing so because they are in jeopardy of going bankrupt.
My view is that they were making lots of money but thought if they turned off the flow of quality prizes, players would be willing to spend far more money to keep getting new cards. They were willing to lose lots of players in order to get more outsized profits from the whales in the community. In this view, they are the greedy corporate executives who put a quarterly profit line ahead of the health of the game.
We don't really know for sure which is the correct view. We do know that their gross revenue has plummeted in recent months, but perhaps that is due to the Hibernum closure and no Ixalan release. Anecdotally, I know that every player I have talked to has spent less money on the game post prize nerfs.
Anyway, you see disbursements of prizes as a reduction in capital. I totally and completely reject that narrative. There are tons of hugely successful games that are completely F2P and give away all of the playable content. Take DotA 2 for instance which earns $18,000,000 in profits per month and is 100% F2P. They haven't had to start charging to use new heroes because they "blew through their capital".
The only relevant question is "How do we maximize the long term profitability of the game?" The solution to this question will ensure a happy and engaged community and clearly a profitable game. But I just contend that being generous with prizes, creating additional non-card content, increasing drop rates and allowing players to more quickly build powerful collections will lead to this outcome.
Whether they print 1000 Olivia's or 100,000 is only important in that 100,000 suggests a larger player base. If the poor drop rates are causing newer players to quit the game and their only focus is on whales that will spend $10,000/mo then the game will never last. It is a very short-sighted business model.
So, no... it is not obvious to me that they "have very little capital left to give out". They could send every player in the game a random mythic and I do not think that would decrease their profits at all. Ironically, a little generosity might encourage some reciprocity.
I also find it a bit offensive that you think the player base deserves to get punished. I am the customer. If they made mistakes that skewed my view of the economy then that is on them. Not me.
It is equally glaringly obvious to me that everything above is true and I am equally frustrated that you don't see it that way. Although, I think we can both be more civil to each other and recognize that we just have different perceptions and aren't bad people.
And finally, I have occasionally lashed out on the forums about the poor management of D3. I do not want them to lose customer, but simply want to encourage them to effect change. If players agree with me and decide to quit, that is a shame.
Ohboy said: Mainloop25 said: How could you run out of cards to chase when new sets come out regularly? As long as the carrot isn't dangled too low, I don't see that being a big problem. Deja vu I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet, keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
Mainloop25 said: How could you run out of cards to chase when new sets come out regularly? As long as the carrot isn't dangled too low, I don't see that being a big problem.
Thésée said: Ohboy said: babar3355 said: That's actually quite beautiful. Original? I wish. It's the first part of the poem . The whole thing is beautiful. I heard it once recited on TV as a kid and it's stuck with me. http://www.potw.org/archive/potw52.html The author's sister, Christina Rosetti,wrote a famous poem about goblins :-)“We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market
babar3355 said: Ultimately, I think we disagree mostly around the economics of the game. I think we both think drop rates could be better. We disagree a bit on whether it would be a positive or negative to have the possibility of collecting an entire set. We disagree a little on the structuring of prizes and the necessity to have worthwhile prizes (I say a little because I don't think the prizes should be mythics for a few and garbage for the masses. I think everyone should get better prizes.. "pull the masses up rather than dragging the elites down"). Other than that we tend to agree on most things around ELO systems, card balance, and most other issues.But the "vehement" disagreement centers around our starkly different perceptions of the economy. I believe your view is that they were creating tons of content and giving it away for free which led to a greatly hampered or even negative revenue stream. They were forced to cut back on rewards and prizes in order to right the ship and stay in business. In that view, they are the hapless party who wants to give us stuff but is forced to stop doing so because they are in jeopardy of going bankrupt.My view is that they were making lots of money but thought if they turned off the flow of quality prizes, players would be willing to spend far more money to keep getting new cards. They were willing to lose lots of players in order to get more outsized profits from the whales in the community. In this view, they are the greedy corporate executives who put a quarterly profit line ahead of the health of the game.We don't really know for sure which is the correct view. We do know that their gross revenue has plummeted in recent months, but perhaps that is due to the Hibernum closure and no Ixalan release. Anecdotally, I know that every player I have talked to has spent less money on the game post prize nerfs. Anyway, you see disbursements of prizes as a reduction in capital. I totally and completely reject that narrative. There are tons of hugely successful games that are completely F2P and give away all of the playable content. Take DotA 2 for instance which earns $18,000,000 in profits per month and is 100% F2P. They haven't had to start charging to use new heroes because they "blew through their capital". The only relevant question is "How do we maximize the long term profitability of the game?" The solution to this question will ensure a happy and engaged community and clearly a profitable game. But I just contend that being generous with prizes, creating additional non-card content, increasing drop rates and allowing players to more quickly build powerful collections will lead to this outcome. Whether they print 1000 Olivia's or 100,000 is only important in that 100,000 suggests a larger player base. If the poor drop rates are causing newer players to quit the game and their only focus is on whales that will spend $10,000/mo then the game will never last. It is a very short-sighted business model.So, no... it is not obvious to me that they "have very little capital left to give out". They could send every player in the game a random mythic and I do not think that would decrease their profits at all. Ironically, a little generosity might encourage some reciprocity. I also find it a bit offensive that you think the player base deserves to get punished. I am the customer. If they made mistakes that skewed my view of the economy then that is on them. Not me.It is equally glaringly obvious to me that everything above is true and I am equally frustrated that you don't see it that way. Although, I think we can both be more civil to each other and recognize that we just have different perceptions and aren't bad people.And finally, I have occasionally lashed out on the forums about the poor management of D3. I do not want them to lose customer, but simply want to encourage them to effect change. If players agree with me and decide to quit, that is a shame.
luckyvulpi said: Though if Oktagon drops the ball on communication in only the 2nd month, I'll be much less optimistic that things will change.
It's been already stated why they haven't been communicating much as of right now... When they have something concrete to communicate... then they will. Otherwise anything they attempt to communicate based on something that may or may not be relevant would only serve to further annoy the player base. Especially so if continued changes to what they spoke about happens and thusly would only serve to confuse players as to where Oktagon is at in production and development.
In short, if they've got nothing nice to say about anything regarding the game because it's not working... then they don't talk about it until they do.
IMHO they did read the past threads and are VERY aware of the constant theme of backlash from the gaming community when Hibernium said one thing and ended up changing it later on without any notice.
Smart of Oktagon if you ask me.
With perfect collections there's no real goals left. Rankings and booster collections become meaningless. The heart and soul of the game and similar collectible games is in the chase. Further, imperfect collections breed creativity in using what you have.
span_argoman said: Some quick comments on this topic since I haven't found the time to give a proper reply.https://searchman.com/android/app/us/com.d3p.olympic/en/d3-go/magic-puzzle-quest/?d=androidIf you look at the graph from 01 Nov 2016 till the point that it was announced that Hibernum closed down (17 Aug 2017), while there is a slightly decreasing trend, the app rankings are still fairly stable. The app's rankings pretty much started crashing after the announcement that Hibernum's studio had closed down.The sharpest drop in the graph started 26 Nov 2016 and ended on 10 Dec 2016. What was happening in the game during this period? This was the tail-end of EM. This was months before austerity measures kicked in. The revenues picked back up once KLD released on 08 Dec 2016.What explanation might fit for why app revenues dropped drastically while the game was still in the era of abundance? Would it make sense for the developers to do something to avoid this from happening again in the future? I don't think the greedy developers narrative works very well with this timeline but correct me if I'm wrong.I'll try to comment in greater detail on the comparisons with other games (hopefully relatively) soon. But basically cherrypicking the top few games that can succeed by selling frivolous stuff (versus the many others, successful or not, which don't or can't) without factoring in why they are able to imo does not provide a practical example for MtGPQ to follow.
This is just as much cherrypicking as what you claim I was pointing out. For all you know the graph could have steeply shot up for the prior 6-8 months with the release of the SOI block and the era of abundance. Perhaps spending went way up after that release and subsequently fell in late 2017.
But to your question, what was happening during Nov.-Dec of 2016? The community was sick of the long delay in new content, masses of server crashes, rampant cheating, frustration over drop rates / duplicates, and still terrible progression potential for new players from late in 2016 and early in 2017. Oh, and casting 5 Eldrazi in every game was pretty awful too.
Perhaps D3 perceived a drop off in revenue as related to being too generous as they ignored our many pleas to fix other important aspects of the game. In fact, here is one of the most read posts in the history of the forums that I posted in mid January 2017.
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/57380/d3-prioritization-thread/p1
It's easy to look back and forget that the community was largely upset with D3 well before the "austerity" package of mid March.
Also, I should probably be more careful in linking graphs like the one that shows D3 revenue rankings. I have to admit that I have no idea what they are actually showing. Is it trailing 12 month revenue? Trailing 1 month? It can't possibly be just today or it would be way more lumpy when patches hit or Baral went on sale. Also, interesting that the patch doesn't even show as an App update on March 3rd, although it definitely was...
Anyway, we are kind of missing the point of the discussion. I don't think we should go back to the late 2017 gameplay or reward structures. They have made quite a few improvements to the game. However, I still think they have a big time issue with long term revenue if they don't fix two major problem.
1. Newer player progression is extremely slow & grindy. If you don't believe me start an alt. Even as an expert player the game is very hard to get your feet under you and be competitive. Once you do progress beyond story mode competition is fierce and progression is still very slow.
2. The rewards for top players don't warrant spending money to gain an advantage. Sorry, players aren't going to play for nothing forever (even a trophy would be nice.. think 10 top 5 finishes in Platinum trophy).
The entire point of my post is to try and solve for these two problem. If it takes you 3 months to get your first mythic (like it did me) most people probably won't keep playing. If you open 65 packs of Kaladesh cards (like I did last week) and don't get a single mythic (not even a dupe) players of all levels are going to get frustrated and quit.
Again, I am happy to defend my posts and my points. But I would just love some dissenters to honestly think about the in-game experience of players and consider how D3 could drive them to spend more money over the intermediate to long term.