An airing of grievances: Vanguard Supports

jimpark said:

This is a great, well written post - its beautiful.

Thank you.

bken1234 said:

For the price they should be non-dupe. The rares should be only Rares and non-dupe and the mythics the same. If they’re going to be dupes they should cut the price by like 75%. 

I agree and I think non-dupe is the best solution. I planned to mention this in my original post and forgot but I believe the packs being non-dupes would not be problematic for the economy of the game and here is why:

Supposing we do get Ugin for free at some point, there would be 12 mythics and 15 rares still in the packs. That means it would cost 5,400 jewels to collect all of the exclusive Vanguards. Our imaginary super player would only have 855 jewels left over after collecting all of those.

Let's imagine a more realistic player. If a platinum player played all dailies (TotP, RT, and the odd AX) to full progression and all the random PvEs (Journey Through History, Routes of Ravnica, and Tour de Ravnica) to full progression, plus ZvE on the losing side, they would have earned 3,045 jewels over the period referenced in my original post. These are basically guaranteed as long as you put in the time. However, the average player probably isn't in platinum. TotP is a huge chunk of those jewels and it's barely worth playing as a gold tier player, and definitely not worth it for silver and bronze. Rising Tensions was another large chunk but was removed for three entire weeks although it seems to be back at 3x a week instead of 5x.

Excluding coalition rewards, if this platinum player earned full progression in all the coalition PvE events and earned 50% of the PvP rank jewels; that would add another 960 jewels, bringing their total to 4,005 jewels. That is still 1,395 jewels short of the 5,400 jewels target. Using the crystal conversion to make up that difference would cost 5,700 crystals. This would maybe be achievable for a top platinum player without spending any cash on the game if they spent crystals and jewels only on vanguard packs. There are also the individual PvPs that are relatively easy to place in top 5 for a top platinum player but it is a massive time investment for very small rewards. Supposing they did spend the time and did go perfect in all 5 NoP at 15 jewels a piece and all 4 TS/EC at 20 jewels each, they'd have another 155 jewels. This still doesn't get them much closer to the goal.

Maybe I'm crazy but I'd imagine that around 1% of the player base does this well, this consistently. Everyone else falls short of that which means they have an even greater obstacle to overcome. The carrot and stick only works if the stick is short enough to keep the carrot in sight. These packs need to be non-dupes.

rafalele said:

I agree, but also think that all cards should be in regular boosters.

I do too, but they clearly already decided that they can't do that for some reason. I'm trying to push for the most realistic alternative, no matter how fruitless this likely will be.

ElfNeedsFood said:

ZW2007- said:

"Reward of the Spark"

Best MtGPQ phrase since the "Revolt Against the Update"...

Overall, it's pretty unbelievable how expensive these somewhat underwhelming cards are...

I can't take credit. I believe @starfall coined the term.

I do have another grievance to add to the growing pile. The rewards from the Ravnica at War event. What a joke. Can't wait to play that event approximately 60 more times so that I can buy a single mythic vanguard pack. Better yet, I think it might be time to uninstall and move on.