Nodes Of Power Rewards

@TomB I've got several thoughts about your comment.

First, what you propose is not what @Endbringer proposed, and this is what I was responding to. Endbringer proposd doing away with runes entirely and having all purchased PW start at Lvl 60. I don't like this proposal for the reason I already stated. It dumbs down the game and eliminates the strategic decisions about what level to keep your PW at.

Second, when I click on PW in the app in the vault, they are not displayed at Lvl 60 stats. They are displayed at Lvl 1 stats. I suspect that you just got confused between how they display in the app in the vault, and how the game shows them for spoilers in their release notes. In the spoiled version of PW in the release notes, they are displayed at Lvl 60. But that's not what you said. You wrote, "since they show you what their abilities are at 60 in the app when they're trying to sell them to you." That's just not true. As I said, they are shown in the app in the vault at their Lvl 1 stats.

Third, I think the full solution outlined by you is unworkable. You propose two things: (1) if you buy a new PW with gold, you get all the runes necessary to Lvl that PW up to 60, and (2) if you buy a new PW for cash, then you don't get the runes. I think these two things coupled together are a very bad idea. What this means is that f2p players who buy PW with gold rather than real life money will get all the runes that they need. But the whales who purchase PW for real cash won't get the runes necessary to Lvl that PW up to 60. So runes will still need to be a reward offered by the game, but the difference is that to a large part of the player base, they will never ever be a reward because the f2p players will get all the runes they can ever use from buying PW with gold. Meanwhile, the people who spend cash -- a way to purchase PW that is obviously more valuable to 8gon -- will have to get runes as a reward. I can hear the complaints now. I don't think that system makes any sense. Even less sense, frankly, than the current system. (And if you're tempted to respond, well a large part of the player base thinks runes aren't a reward now, so it's the same, that's not quite accurate. Even established players who have millions of runes saved up and thus no longer view runes as rewards -- a view I think is inaccurate for the reasons articulated by @bk1234 and @BongoTheGrey -- it was still the case that for these players, runes were an important reward when they were starting out. In your solution, f2p players will never ever have runes function as real rewards for playing the game. So it's strictly worse than what is done now.)

Fourth, if we just take part (1) of your solution, it is at least workable. I'm not in favor of it because I think there is value in feeling like you are working towards something when you play the game, and runes for early players are important to level up your PW. I also think it's a useful experience to play with PW at lower levels because it's not the case that all PW need to be at Lvl 60. If your PW are at lower levels, you also get lower level opponents in PvP events. That is a valid strategic factor to at least consider, and by having new players play with PW at levels other than 60, at least some of those players will factor that data into their future leveling considerations. I know that I did. I wish the game explained how the matchmaking system works better, but the info is out there if you care to investigate.

Fifth, I do think the game should offer some way to redeem runes for something else (crafting at a steep price would be very nice, but really anything would be a positive development). But that's fundamentally different than either doing away with runes entirely as @Endbringer proposed, or with giving players all the runes they need for any PW purchased with the in-game gold currency, as you proposed.

@TomB

So I reread your response and realized I got something completely backward and wrong about what you said. Rereading what you wrote more carefully, I see now that you clearly stated that if you buy PW for real life money, you should get all the runes you need to level them up to 60. If you buy the PW with in-game currency, then you still need to win the runes necessary as a reward to level them up to 60. So, on this score, I was a complete moron that got your point entirely wrong. Sorry about that.

Rather than edit all the wrong stuff i wrote on this point, I'll leave it up as a testament to just how wrong I was. Again, I apologize for the error. What you wrote was clear. I just messed it up.

@Scrounger , np...perhaps I could have written it more clearly. I was kind of hoping for a few more comments, especially from certain people who usually have an opinion about these things, but maybe that's why.

I like the suggestions made by Tezz.

But it seems that we all forget why we have a lot of runes. A (very) long time ago, the common consensus was that the game did not reward enough runes. People were saying stuff like "why buy a new PW if I don't have the runes to level them up?" Oktagon responded by giving double runes for each win (200 now, used to be 100) and a very big increase in single rune rewards (events with 1000 up to 3500 runes as a reward) where the old rewards were somewhere in the 250 to 750 range. So... be "fixing" our first problem, they have created a new problem and we are complaining again. Looking at where we came from, I think Oktagon already did a great job by making sure there are enough runes to be earned. Still, I think a lot of harmless, cool stuff can be done with excess runes (again, see post Tezzeret).