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A few thoughts on the new updates.


RX8Toxic

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 Hey all.

 

I was playing tonight and was discussing with other players the new reforging system has had.

Now before I begin, I want to make sure that EVERYONE is aware that this is intended to be constructive, and i mean no ill will to anyone.

With that being said Id like to go over a few points.

  1. The current reforging rates and the rates on the release.
    As many of you are aware, the very fist day was absolute madness! In a good way though. There were new and exciting things, and many of us were testing everything out. In that madness we all were of course reforging all of those pesky worthless cards we had in hope of getting something better. The yields from this were great! I was able to get a few good cards that I had been working towards. and would up with some extra cards for trading and selling. And like many of us after running through about 20ish reforges I found myself broke and in need of gold. Well for the next few days I started grinding as much gold as I could and as soon as I had enough for a few more reforges.... I notice a drastic change in the system. about half way though my stockpiled gold I realized that I was not getting ANYTHING near as rewarding as before. And first thing I did was hop on Discord and sure enough the system was nerfed. With that, I still carried on in hopes that my luck would change. Pouring Rare after Rare in to the system only to continue to be disappointed.

    Now I have some things with this story I would like to bring up...
    A. The reforging rates were dialed back due to the  overwhelming amount of good ultra rares and rares the system was producing. Well to be honest I feel like the rates being reduced doesn't address the issue. By the time the rate adjustments were changed, it was too late. What I mean by this is all of the veteran players who had a huge stockpile of excess cards and gold had already reforged their stockpile. So if you had plenty of cards, and gold you had a field day on day 1. and for those who are still fighting to get a deck above level 90, already had little to no gold simply for the fact that they were still trying to buy card upgrades. So the veterans really reaped the rewards and those still trying to make their way, didn't get much.

    B. The Marketplace has been all over the place but slowly things are starting to settle. With the settling I am noticing 2 things. First the price of commons and uncommons are higher, but are starting to get lower (which I figured was going to happen anyway). And lastly, the price of the good cards (Infect, Enlightenment, Harvester, etc...) are starting to rise again. Now I understand the premise of supply and demand. But I feel like if the reforging system stays where it is at, it will slowly loose steam and will become an unused feature. When and if that happens we will see the market start to go back to its old ways.

    C. Booster Values. What I mean by this is the what a booster is really worth. Now that most rares and ultra rares that did have a decent value to them (Overlords, Lost Warlord, Rageflame, etc...) are now lower than ever, causing the value of an average  booster to not be worth it. Now I know now we do have to factor in the rising price of commons and uncommons, but even with that a booster at the current discounted rate of 350 BFP, isn't really worth it. Once the price changes back to the normal 450 BFP, then its rally going to make it harder to buy a booster over going and buying cards in the marketplace.

    NOW with that said, I know that A and C are contradicting to each other. 1 implies that the cards need to be easier to get, and the other implies that some cards are so cheap, that boosters are worth it anymore. I would like to offer a suggestion but im not really sure what I could suggest.

    IMHO The issue all comes back to the day 1 rates and the veterans that were able to mass reforge their entire collection. The cards that were at one time a pleasant surprise in a booster (Overlords, Lost Warlord, Rageflame, etc...) are now stocked up on the market, and the higher end cards are being held on to waiting for the top dollar price again.

    I feel like there might be an easy fix to this issue... Can there be a limit on the reforging system that grants "Boosted" rates for the first X cards and after that the rates start to decrease? This would stop the abuse of mass forging, and still grant newer players the same benefit that the veterans got on day 1?
     
  2. My next point I would like to bring up is gold. As previously stated for the veterans a gold supply isnt an issue, but for the newer players it is. When the reforging system came out, I had roughly 20k of gold saved up, as I was still saving for those expensive t2 and t3 upgrades. of course just like everyone else I depleted that pretty quick with some reforges. Now that reforges and upgrades are eating gold, its now more import than ever to have some. Is there any works in the making that might be revamping the gold situation?

 

With all of that said, I would like to make it clear that I am beyond grateful for all of the efforts of the SR team. I know that all of you have jobs/school outside of this project and you all are volunteering your time to provide us such an amazing game and I truly am grateful.


Also that I don't want this to come across as bashing the reforging system. I think that it is a great idea and that it will retally benefit the game in many ways. When I was watching the live stream and it was announced I was blown away with excitement and it really is a great concept.

Please take these thoughts as a 10,000 foot view of the newish players. 

Thank you all again for all that you do!

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I personally aggree to 100% with all your points. Reverting the Reforge rates and limiting it would be the most logical solution. I know the intention of the reforge was to have something to spend gold on but this only applies to a maximum of 20% of players, all newer players are suffering alot from that change, which is unfair and also lead to a crash in the market.

Don't get me wrong its great to see commons and uncommons having some value but all the ultra or good rare cards are near unobtainable for anyone that isnt hoarding BFP to buy extra copies to gamble with it after the nerf or saving for days to buy them from the store. I personally loved the reforge on day1 but ran out of gold in less than 5minutes, I've gotten 3 harvester from crappy ultras which was great, I finally didn't have to grind 3weeks straight to afford a single card I needed since i never get something good out boosters. I know why you nerfed the rates but the majority of players shouldn't suffer from the abuse of the veterans.

This leads to another issue being that the grind for the good stuff is unreal for newer players unless you get lucky with your first boosters. Im very certain many players quit already because their first boosters were terrible and they dont have fun in grinding weeks to afford the good cards for their desired deck

 

Suggested Fix: Limit forging rares and ultra rares to 3 times a day, Revert the reforge rates to what it was before(this would also fix the gold issue for anyone that isn't sitting on 50million gold)

 

-Regarding the booster issue: this will always be a consistent issue as some players are more lucky than others, I'd like to suggest a mechanic you often see in 'pay-to-win' games being a pity system. Make it so you are guaranteed an ultra rare every 20packs you buy from every given booster. This would give an intention to buy boosters because even if you are unlucky you are atleast guaranteed something good after a while. I know there are some bad ultras aswell, but these have value for reforging atleast.

I'd even go so far and say implent this system for promo cards.Like buying 200 booster of any given booster guarantees a promo card in there. Even if luck isnt on your side you have an intention to keep going. (Of course those numbers may need testing and tweaking).

I personally had 0 promos in over 500booster, my last 70packs had 2 ultras which were nox carrier and tortugun. I barely see a point in playing anymore as whenever I buy a daily booster, I'm loosing most of the bfp I earned for playing today, while others get 3 promos in less than 100packs.I know I'm not alone with this issue, but I won't drop any names for privacy reasons. Sure some players are more lucky than others but it really kills the fun in even opening a boosterpack ever if you know 95% of them will loose you bfp. A pity system would be a great fix for anyone that isn't lucky.

Some might say just sell your boosters, but let's be real this is Card and Strategy game. Not being allowed to open boosters in a Cardgame is unacceptable and doesn't make any sense. Every other cardgame on the market uses the same feature as it's fair for those that aren't lucky and they don't want people to quit if they are permanently unlucky(Like Hearthstone, Magic The Gathering or Shadowverse, just to name a few).The great thing about the pity system is that is NOT abuseable like the reforging is right now. This would also give great intention to log-in for your daily pack as there is a promo awaiting you at the end of the road.

 

Suggested Fix: Add a pity-system to all boosters in the market

 

I really hope we see some change in both of these issues,after all we would all be happier if we had more players to play with and all the mentioned fixes benefits all players rather than just the veterans.

 

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A) There was no way to avoid that because the damage ran deeper. The reforging system should've been present since day 1, ideally. However, that was unfeasible at the time and so cards had one year to just pile up. The damage accumulated. This resulted in the volatile effect reforging had when released. There was no way to avoid that, no matter what. The people that already had stockpiles of worthless cards waiting would always end up benefiting the most, adjustments or not. That is an undoubtedly unfortunate reality. As you noted prices are already starting to settle in again, after the initial massive oversupply distributed itself. The small size of the community slows down this process but you can already see it at work.

B) All rarities are now loosely tied together in value. Previously that was not the case. Which resulted in Cs becoming completely worthless, you couldn't even sell them anymore. Same was true for most UCs, with just a handful of outliers. As for Rs, most of them were slowly dropping in price more and more. On the other hand the popular URs kept inflating endlessly because supply was lower and they were the last remaining magnet for all the BFP that are constantly generated. The gap became larger and larger.
Now all cards have inherent value, if not for play then as reforge material. The price floor was raised, while the ceiling was lowered. Which also means as soon as there is an oversupply and prices drop, these cards become attractive purchases as material. On the other hand, if cards start to inflate like before a similar thing will happen in that it becomes an attractive option to attempt reforging into these cards. If the floor drops, it drags the ceiling down. If the ceiling rises, it drags the floor up.

C) We already had a one-month booster discount on release. From this we know for a fact that as soon as the discount gets disabled the vast majority of prices will rise accordingly across the board. Which means that a price change of boosters won't actually change their relative value. In any case, if you buy your daily booster for another 100 BFP discount, you will most definitely always see a positive return if you open a few. Overall the booster value settles at roughly the normal market price (be it 350 as of now or 450) although we saw gradual distortion pre-reforging. The real question is in which card pulls the value is concentrated.


The entire thing relies on people opening boosters, reforging and participating in the economy. However, reforging needs to find a sweetspot where people continue engaging with, so that it can fully unfold. If it turns out people stop doing it for whatever reason, it has to be looked at why that is.
 

@Reckoning There seems to be some anecdotal bias when it comes to the UR chances here. You are suggesting a pity system to get one every 20 packs. This means that you think a 20 pack streak without an UR is a thing that regularly happens. However, UR chances are 19.5%. Which means that you get one every 5 boosters in the long run. Looking at my own booster history of 361 (which contains some Mini Boosters), I have exactly one time where I open above 20 boosters, 28 to be exact, without an UR. I also have streaks of opening several URs in a row or in short succession. In total I pulled 71 URs. Which, you guessed it, averages out to 19.67%.

It seems you are evaluating UR chances as much lower than what they actually are based on selective memory.

Of course, odds don't protect against bad RNG and a pity-system would. But I wonder if the situation is as dire as you think it is. Your sample size is even bigger than mine. I'd be very surprised if you ended up below 15% UR pulls.

Dallarian likes this
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Like I said its great to see the trash cards having some value BUT you cant deny there's some massive scam going on in the ah 24 7 for all the good cards and it will get worse over time since prices will ramp again as you said.

This is drastically shown with all the promos out there and cards like infect or enlighten, especially if u log in at late evening. I'm simply looking for a solution to get new players going faster rather than just benefitting the guys that have everything already. Of course it is no big deal if u get 10 crappy rares in a booster followed by a good one but it is a big deal for all newer players. A pity system would atleast make it fair for all of us even if ure unlucky. Same goes for the reforge. Supply won't increase(for the good cards) if rates are terrible besides for the people that have stockpiled enough bfp to sink 10k in that system how it is now, be it reforging or opening boosters.

Supply increases if people open more boosters, may aswell give them an insentive to do so even if fortuna isn't on your side especially regarding promo cards.

If people have an insentive to keep playing rather than starting the game with 10 crappy boosters and quitting again,it would increase the playerbase aswell as equaling out the bfp among all players. Of course there will always be some that have more than others but the gap wouldn't be as ridiculously large like it is now.

I could easily name you 20people that stopped opening boosters and using the reforge alltogether because of that exact issue, no one wants to grind weeks to feed bfp to that 1guy which has everything already just because rates are bad and getting unlucky on top of that. as a result of that people just sell every single card they get whenever possible for a way too high price or sell the whole booster alltogether.

In my opinion i would even make booster non-tradeable, add a pity-system and add better rates on the reforge aswell as limiting the reforge to 3-5x a day. We all just wanna play with our favorite decks instead of scouring the ah all day long until the card you want has a reasonable price again. making booster and reforging better would help alot and give an insentive to coming back for ur daily booster/quests.

Some last words: yes you are correct there is definetely some bias for booster as whenever I finally get an ultra its 1 of the worst in 90% of cases. I have yet to open a single enlighten, infect,firedancer, avatar,dreadnought, nether warp g,Thunder wagon R or Forest elder g. Basically every single valueable card besides harvester and Disenchant g I have never gotten and those only once. That said the damage is done I just want no one else going through this pain aswell.My collection is almost complete but most people in my spot would've quit after the first 50packs already, which benefits none of us.

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Hey all! I 100% aggree with RX8Toxic! On the topic of buying boosters are not worth it all i can say that i dont have all the cards and i have very little amount of gold which i need for upgrades therefor i buy boosters with my daily bfp cuz getting 400-500 bfp is sooo easy you just need to play 3-4 games each day and boom you get a booster which is not only fun to open but sometimes contains cool URs or even promos. Im not a market seeking player i dont buy cards that often only if i rly need them for something fun. Back in the days when the original game was live i always wantwd to open boosters but they were sooo freakin expensive you had to grind so hard to get one and you might open a tons of cheap useless cards. So back then it wasnt worth it unless u payed for it with real money but pfp was a precious resource. Nowadays you can buy almost anything within a month of playin so i think the game and the boosters are in a pretty good state. On the other hand reforge rly should reward you but with a limited high chance as you guys mentioned. But leave tbe boksters alone they are the most balanced and fun things in the game.

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So I notice a lot of players have been claiming that boosters are currently not worth opening and I would like to address this issue. While it is true that the average worth of a booster has decreased, this is not that surprising given that there is a -100 bfp discount for all boosters right now, we gave out an unprecedented amount of free cards, and Reforging has recently come into existence and been used nearly 300,000 times. In terms of active players within the last 3 months, nearly 1/5th of all cards in existence have been Reforged. 

Right now the current cost of a general booster is 350 bfp. I have attached two images which show the various statistics related to how much current boosters are worth, one with promos included and the other without promos included in the value evaluation. Ignore the first booster in each image because that is the current value of a mini-booster, the second booster shown is the general booster. 

image.png

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As you can see, boosters are, even without accounting for promos, nearly identical in worth to their asking price. A person who purchases a booster with their daily discount, thus paying only 250 bfp, will on average make ~100 bfp in profit if he were to sell all the cards he received on the market. This means that boosters are worth purchasing in the current moment. Before the update, the general booster was worth on average 411 bfp without promos and 421 bfp with promos. There is a reason 420 bfp was the general selling price for boosters, as this was the break-even point. We expect when the discount is discontinued on January 18th that card prices will increase again to (hopefully) stabilize the average booster value around 450 bfp.

Now if boosters are actually worth opening, why does it feel so unsatisfying? I have a theory that opening a booster worth 250 bfp feels as bad as opening one worth 100 bfp, while opening a booster worth 500 feels far less satisfying than one worth 1100. Now what Reforging did a wonderful job of doing is putting lower and upper bounds on the market. All cards now have an inherent worth. This means cards which were currently worthless or less costly due to being unviable or because you only needed one charge are now worth a lot more, while very expensive ultra-rares are worth a lot less. This means you rarely truly get a terrible booster, but you can still get unsatisfying ones, particularly if you are not into trading. On the other hand, you are even less likely to get the big payday you used to even if you are steadily making money and getting good cards. 

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27 minutes ago, WindHunter said:

As you can see, boosters are, even without accounting for promos, nearly identical in worth to their asking price

Hey, sadly this is not completly true. I thought first the same. But don't forget, this is a price based on listings. There are still a lot cards that are not often traded which are listed unrealistic high. So the value that SMJ is always a bit (we don't know how much) higher then the real value of a booster.

If you want, I can look for some extreme samples, have seen many the last days. But I guess you get the point.

 

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I have the actual sale data as well, I just haven't had time to parse it fully yet. But if you want a snapshot of how wildly card sales can fluctuate here are two examples, Master Archers and Coldsnap. We plan on making a fuller report on the current economic state once we have been able to fully sift the data. I want to clarify these are in-order of sale. So yes, the one Master Archer sold for 3bfp and the next one for 19 bfp. Same for Coldsnap, one for 66 bfp and the next for 100 bfp.

image.png

image.png

 

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12 hours ago, WindHunter said:

I have a theory that opening a booster worth 250 bfp feels as bad as opening one worth 100 bfp, while opening a booster worth 500 feels far less satisfying than one worth 1100.

I had a very similar thought. If Boosters are economically worth, it is not the same thing how Booster-Opening _feels_. Pre-Patch, you had a Crap Booster filled with Portal Nexus and Altars of Nihils, but HUGE rushes when you got your LSS/Shaman/Frost Mage or your Wheel/Shrine of War/etc. In the new situation, those rushes are dampened, cause the big cards ain't that big anymore, but the crappy Uncommons and Rares gained hugely in value. But those gains doesn't make you feel good, our ape-brains do not care if an Uncommon is 30 BFP or 3, and they do not care if Altar of Nihil is 10 or 70. But, economically, this makes a HUGE difference.

(As a sidenote, I'd like to add that sometimes in games you have to design how it feels for the player and not the cold-heart truth. But the market economics of this game is not the right place for such an approach.)

Something different that RX8Toxic wrote, I agree with his assessment of the first weekend. Long-time players, especially those who cycled through Boosters for a while, had a huge opportunity to cash in BIG on piles of Commons and Uncommons. Just imagine what could have been if it were the other way around - worse rates for the first rush and after that then an improvement in %-rates. But it's all too easy to talk smart afterwards, the damage is done, and the best course of action is to wait for the market to settle - "sit tight and assess".

I'm 100% sure the system is already alot better then before the patch, and there is no need for instant action.

Edited by Kapo
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  • 3 weeks later...

Market is terrible in thing in. CCG at first place.  Not using market for buying at all (only bought Earthshaker, Home soild and Cluster Explosion, which I’ve never got in boosters). All cards I got from boosters I use for charges. If it’s expensive crap I don’t need like infect (overhyped cards)I sell it. Overall if card cost less than 200 bfp and it’s bad (Shrine of Greed, Altar of Nihil, Magma fiend etc) , I just reforge 4 of those into another crappy card and now need to open 3 more boosters to reforge it into yet another crappy card. It’s not very fun and engaging cycle, but much better than auction as for me.

And yeah boosters value overall is ok. But very discouraging seeing players always getting promo cards (especially good ones) when you got nothing at all or Fallen Skyelf (worst promo imo, even price-wise, while, I don’t like Lyrish knight as a card(not pvp player), it’s very usable in pvp on general basis, can be used good in cpve for fun, FS is overall very bad stat-wise unit mostly for bosses (but even there I’m not using it).

 

 

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