Bait and switch? I definitly feel like i've been had (colorless pma)

They did said that they were changing the pictures in the card gallery before doing it:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/86783/release-notes-5-6-0#latest

But it still feels like a scam. To me it was false advertising because they post the pictures themselves of their official site just to then say that it was a balancing issue.

I couldn't agree more with @KrizzB, this makes most of the cards unplayable. Or at least unplayable if you are trying to win the matches And like I mentioned in another post, this "balancing act" is just a waste of everyone's time. It is wasting the designers and developers time making them create a product (design and code a card) that no one will play. And it is a real shame because most of the cards would be playable if they were way cheaper. The effects those cards are interesting and definitely have room in the meta. If they weren't so unnecessarily expensive to cast.

Arcbound Wanderer is now a 14 mana 1/1 defender that can get bigger by matching activate gems and when it dies it gives +X/+X to another creature where X is its power. That was an interesting card when it cost 2 mana to cast because most of the time you are just dropping a 1/1 that is designed to die. You could drop it in the early game  and maybe match one or 2 activate gems before Greg cast any creature that would destroy it. Now it costs 14 mana. That is a real joke. Most of the time you will be investing 2 or 3 turns to drop a 1/1 that will die on Greg's next turn because it is a 1/1 with defender. Even a Saproling token will destroy it and by the time you cast it Greg definitely already has something in play. That means that you won't be able to pop any activate gems and you will only be transferring a +1/+1 buff to any other creature (if you have any). Why on earth would anyone want to play that? Specially when they also designed a Planeswalker that makes you start the match with 2 1/1 cat tokens in play for free. That's 2 times what you will get from Arcbound Wanderer. How is that "balancing" a card? A complete waste of time.

We can give you a whole Planeswalker that creates tons of tokens for free or heals you every turn and that is completely ok. But a 1/1 for 2 mana that can grow if you match specific gems is completely unbalanced and will break the meta.

In general, I try not to assume malicious intent when the same action can be explained by incompetence.  I think that was the case here.

When I first saw the cards, I was excited, and shocked at how cheap they were.  The four cheap creatures particularly excited me—on the heals of stuff like Healer of the Pride, Jareth, and Pride Guardian, they were absolutely believable as first-sight cards.

Same for the supports. Mox Lotus was the only one that stood out as “wow, this will power creep the other Moxen” There was no reason to think that Mox Opal wasn’t going to be 5. There was no reason to think that enabler cards like Darksteel Citadel and Basalt Monolith weren’t going to be 5.  Black Lotus and Lotus Blossom self-destruct, so again, no reason to assume they weren’t in the “Mirrorpool” class of cheap supports.

I looked at them over lunch, got excited, and then waited for release in a few days.  Maybe if I’d taken more time I would have thought it was peculiar that they were ALL 5, 1, or 2.  After all, most of the other PMA sets contain a lot of overpriced/non-competitive cards that are just filler for the good stuff, so this set would have been an exception.  

Still, I was excited, and when I updated the app, I happily purchased Karn2 and spent some crystals, and after the second pack thought “wait a second” and then sighed, and posted on the update thread for everyone to beware.

I regret purchasing the cards (though I do enjoy Karn2). I think the vast majority of them won’t get played with, and based on some of the design decisions, it’s hard to envision that they understand why. 

Anyway, it may not have been intentional, but I don't expect them to make it right. It'd sure be nice if they did.

 

BongoTheGrey said:

They did said that they were changing the pictures in the card gallery before doing it:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/86783/release-notes-5-6-0#latest

But it still feels like a scam. To me it was false advertising because they post the pictures themselves of their official site just to then say that it was a balancing issue.

Yes, they said they are going to change the Facebook gallery pictures. 
But they only said that, after the set was already released and madwren had already pointed at the drastically different casting costs. 

That's some shady business practice right there. 

We can't let this happen without consequences. 
What's the next move they have in reserve? 

I am all about supporting the developers and their families with my money, but what I thought that I would get for my money and what I actually got is not even close to one another. 
Refund the money, or change the cards to at least playable in the long term. 
There is no other way out of this. 

Hopefully no one buys them and they realize how big of a blunder this is and re-re-do them. I definitely  feel cheated buying a pack after seeing the initial gallery then got my card and was super bummed.. then I got my bota pack and was bummed as it was missing content... definitely  a swing and a miss this week.