Long time player of MTG, semi newish to MTGPQ
I had been saving crystals up for quite some time for when Nicol Bolas came out, turns out I didn't need as many as I had accumulated. Since I had most of the planeswalkers I wanted, and determined that I didn't have the runes or time to commit to more planeswalkers, I should get some new cards with my excess crystals.
What a mistake that was, even with this new crafting **** (prices are insane vs accumulation) I received no Mythics and 1 new rare from purchasing 3 new packs and 1 origins. The rest went to crafting for a grand total of 1320ish orbs.
I see little reason to play anymore if this is the rate at which I will receive new cards...using cards IS THE **** POINT OF PLAYING MAGIC, I believe bottle necking the flow of cards to players is detrimental to this games health. We all want to configure our decks and play with them, and really the only thing to keep playing is getting new cards.
I think the boosters should cost slightly more than they do now and contain 0 duplicates. Now when I save up say 800crystals and purchase a new pack I can be assured I will have new fun things to play with...not a few lumps of coal I can turn into (likely) a card I didn't even want.
Also in the crafting the only way this is worth it, is if we get to pick exactly the card we want. Stop with all this random ****....never walk into a card store and just buy the one you friggin' want? How do you think us peasants play this game?
i am not sure how quickly you need to get new cards for it to seem like a good system for you. my calculations are basically double yours, based on platinum rewards (not sure if lower tiers get less boosters/rares in events, or just less crystals/runes) and completing maybe 75-80 % of events. it also correlates with the actual rewords ive received since crafting dropped, i am crafting a origins mythic a week so far.
That works out to 3-4 origins/legacy mythics a month, which seems pretty good to me. it will take a while to get everything, and sure i would love to be able to target specific cards, but i am pretty happy with crafting as a whole.
i just wish they would make the elite packs not have dupes, saving up all that time to get a dupe, even with crafting, is still a bad experience.
Bigred5442 said: i am not sure how quickly you need to get new cards for it to seem like a good system for you. my calculations are basically double yours, based on platinum rewards (not sure if lower tiers get less boosters/rares in events, or just less crystals/runes) and completing maybe 75-80 % of events. it also correlates with the actual rewords ive received since crafting dropped, i am crafting a origins mythic a week so far.That works out to 3-4 origins/legacy mythics a month, which seems pretty good to me. it will take a while to get everything, and sure i would love to be able to target specific cards, but i am pretty happy with crafting as a whole. i just wish they would make the elite packs not have dupes, saving up all that time to get a dupe, even with crafting, is still a bad experience.
Bigred5442 said: (not sure if lower tiers get less boosters/rares in events, or just less crystals/runes)
(not sure if lower tiers get less boosters/rares in events, or just less crystals/runes)
it was based on number of packs and rares rewarded from events (including ToTP), plus the daily rewards, plus the 2 hour rewards, basically all the packs/cards you could earn in a week, assuming you place high enough in events to get a pack and rare.
i cut the max number by about 80%, because i don't always play every event that isn't coalition, and don't always place high enough to get the pack and rare.
i also factored in the drop rates for rares and mythics that Voltar (think that is his name) posted to get a more accurate orb count. worked out to something like 4 rares and a mythic / month dropped from the packs calculated above, then dived by 4 weeks.
i used the 60 orb minimum for a pack, plus the stuff stated above, and i came up with between 2500 and 3000 orbs / week, which matches my experience so far.
if you don't play that much, you will obviously get less orbs, and if you are spending crystals on packs (i don't at the moment, saving for ixalian) you would get more once they are converted. if you don't have a lot of cards you would also get less as they wont have as many dupe conversions.
i don't have the exact calculations i did any more (was in a spreadsheet i deleted after doing it) but it shouldn't be hard for you to recreate it from what i wrote above, if you think I'm not correct. but as i said, so far my results have matched my calculations. i have crafted one origins mythic a week after spending all the mana orbs i received after conversion.
James13 said: I'm not sure collecting an entire set including all mythics and masterpieces for under 6k crystals (at your proposed 800 per 5booster+1) would be healthy for the viability of the game, sorry.Booster crafting is the most generous thing I've seen in a microtransaction supported f2p game thus far. I'm a little taken aback that a guaranteed non-dupe mythic a month is already being called insufficient.
Emanon2000 said: I could see this changing in a set or two... I think they had to draw the line due to so many players having a large duplicate pool since they had been waiting for crafting rather than converting to Runes. Too low/cheap then too many players would have ALL/Most of the cards. Many have returned with crafting but I'm sure there are many more that are waiting for another set before returning and getting that first BIG boost of Orbs. If they lower the bar too soon I think there could be a bigger issue (personally).
Hateborn said: While I have been quite happy with Booster Crafting (mainly because I had a giant pool of orbs to work with), I will admit that the OP is right - the prices are pretty high once you get past Origins and Legacy. As for F2P games supported by microtransactions and generous, look at Hearthstone's card crafting. In Hearthstone, a card breaks down for roughly 20-25% of the cost to craft a card of the same rarity, all sets cost the same to craft, and you pick exactly which cards to craft. Both games give out freebies at similar rates and both also have around the same number of cards overall, Hearthstone just has a larger number of players and thus more people making purchases (so they can afford to be that much more generous). All that being said - I think the higher orb costs are fine or random is fine, but the combination of both is understandably frustrating, especially for newer players who don't have huge collections with just a few missing pieces.
Mainloop25 said: I am almost 100% positive that they have mentioned implementing orbs as rewards in future events.