10 gran and 30 gran lottery + other suggestions

[ANIMEniac]

Let's not forget the high price of the cards reflect how competitive the game can be. People are not buying the $50 cards to play casually. Some are collectors (like those YGO collectors dishing out thousands for Shonen Champ Cards), but the main paying group is the competitive pros. They will be using those cards to win large amounts of money in regional/national tournaments.

It would be nice for a small lottery for common/uncommon cards. It would greatly help fill out the starters as well as allow people to splash their deck a bit. I've played splash from the near begining and it does make a great difference in play just running a few cards of another color.

[DanTheTimid]

The other thing to consider in regards to magic is that cards have a limited life, in the sense that after three or four expansion packs come out, the older cards are no longer tournament legal cards. Which means they are worth more while they are still valuable to pros but worthless once their legal use is over. This of course disregards collectors for the time being, since people are still paying outrageous prices for black lotus.

Well there are multiple formats actually, I, for instance, play type 1.5 where many of the truly ridiculous cards are still banned but cards never cycle out like they do in type 2. There are also still players who play type 1 where almost everything legal including black lotus.

Alteils cards (and thus packs) will always have less value then magic cards, for many of the reasons listed but probably the biggest reason is simply that you can't trade or sell specific cards so cards have no resale value. For many players of real card games they justify their spending on their hobby by saying that buying cards is an investment and should they ever lose interest in the game or need money they can always sell off cards. Alteil doesn't not allow this, other then possibly selling your account (which I believe is probably not allowed), any money you invest in the game is forever gone with absolutely no potential monetary return on investment. This more then anything else truly makes it hard to spend on alteil. Not just when compared with other card games, but with any games period, if I say bought a video game I always have the potential to sell it on ebay or trade it in to a game stop once I've beaten it and grown tired of it.

Because of this fact, alteil cards effectively cost you much more then they let on (or perhaps you could say real cards or games cost you less). With 2 packs of magic I might pull 1 decently desired uncommon in one pack and one decently desired rare in the other. When I finally quit the game I can sell those cards and while I won't probably get all my money back (unless I'm willing to wait a long time for the perfect deal to come up), on average I'll probably end up getting atleast half of it back. So that 4 bucks for 10 cards actually proved to be more like 2 bucks for 10 cards.

Its also worth noting that Magic the gathering didn't always cost as much as they do now, they're prices have gone up as they've established themselves. Now a days you can buy cards and KNOW you'll be able to find other players to play with or sell your cards too, that wasn't the case when the game was still young. This is also something going against alteil right now. Its not yet established, finding opponents is hard and theres no telling if the game will survive long term. If the game dies a year from now those cards you bought went from only having virtual value to having literally no value.

For these reasons I don't think its unreasonable for players to expect the initial prices to be lower then they currently are. As the game establishes itself I can understand the prices going up, but right now your taking a big risk with purchases and it takes quite a bit of money to really get something for your money (a pack may only cost 1.50 but you really need atleast 2-3 copies of a unit to use it and its even harder to make use of cards that aren't from your initial starter so it can take quite alot of packs before you actually get to use any of the cards you bought).

Getting back to the initial topic, I do think having both a 30 gran and a 10 gran lottery would be a good thing even with our limited 1 and 2 star card pool. I also think there should be gran given out for games played in the 10+ arena (not wins or losses but simply for playing games, possibly with the clause that you don't give up or that the game lasts at least 5 turns or something) to encourage people to keep playing even if they're losing in those arenas, and of course I think the game would be greatly improved with a buying/selling/trading system but that atleast has been stated will never be happening so its kind of pointless to keep bringing up.

[shyster]

I personally play type 1 or rather I would if I could find any local games. That is why I took to alteil I have been looking for a CCG to pick up ever since I lost a place, and people to play magic with. I picked up magic during second edition and continued actively until homelands, which is when the local store went out of business.

1.5 is too restrictive, I personally need my demonic tutor and maze of Ith.

Back to the point though as Dan so acutely pointed out Alteil cards have no real value whatsoever, you cannot hold them, smell them, or even play with them outside of online. So if you spend 100 dollars and this game dies out a slow painful death then you are out that money. Also the fact that it cannot be recouped in any way, you cannot get a physical card of any of your virtual cards, nor can you win real world money in any tournaments, at least not yet and not anytime soon as it would appear.

[Tenkai]

A very good post from DanTheTimid: he mentioned all the reasons why I and probably alot of other ppl won't spend a dime on alteil.

I know a Trade/Sell/Buy system was discussed before but maybe the gms can try to convince the japanese devs, that it will benefit alteil in the west in many ways: they need to realize that stuff that's working in japan doesn't have to work in west too.

Hope some gms are reading this topic and consider some of the good points mentioned here. Right now the future of alteil doesn't seem to bright...

[arfort]

I also think there should be gran given out for games played in the 10+ arena (not wins or losses but simply for playing games, possibly with the clause that you don't give up or that the game lasts at least 5 turns or something) to encourage people to keep playing even if they're losing in those arenas, and of course I think the game would be greatly improved with a buying/selling/trading system but that atleast has been stated will never be happening so its kind of pointless to keep bringing up.

Currently you do get grans to play. You get (victories * 2) - losses in grans. So if you're average at 50% wins then you get 1 gran per battle you fought. Not a bad deal.

And if the japaneses have 10 gran lottery we'll get a 10 gran lottery too when there are enough 1-2 star cards for it. Same for EX cards lottery.

[shyster]

Currently you do get grans to play. You get (victories * 2) - losses in grans. So if you're average at 50% wins then you get 1 gran per battle you fought. Not a bad deal.

And if the japaneses have 10 gran lottery we'll get a 10 gran lottery too when there are enough 1-2 star cards for it. Same for EX cards lottery.

Well Arfort that assumes you can get at least a 50% rating plus on top of that you need at least 5 battles + 1 - losses to even make more than the free 10 gran just for playing once each week. For many people that seems hard to do. Plus you need the time for that many battles.

Secondly it has already been said that we will get the same 10 gran lottery as the japanese in the future. However what is being proposed here is a 10 gran lottery of JUST 1-2 stars. The japanese only have the 10 gran lottery as their main lottery because they have enough cards to do it that way. The point of implementing a 10 gran lottery now would be to allow people to flush out and vary their decks without having to wait three days, or a week and a half to play the current lottery, or buy a booster.

[teasel]

you know if there wasn't that -1 limitation but it was actualy a 0 people could actualy lose all they want and still get a nice chunk of grans... i mean losing is already annoying (even more if it was a treasure battle for a common you needed against someone full of bought cards) so why punish the players even more?

[ciroth]

Unless your friends have over 10 accounts active on FFXI, they are not spending anywhere near 20 dollars a month on it. In fact, they pay out less than WoW monthly with one account ID active. You really don't sound like you know what you are talking about right now, since your figures are off and you aren't thinking forward in regard to continued expansions in figuring in how much people will "need" to spend over time. Honestly, if you were to try and get multiple copies of just the EX cards, you have already spent more in one month on this game than most MMORPG games.

Uhhh right, 10 accounts? that is about 100+ a month. 1 account is about 11-13 dollars, each additional character after 1 is an extra dollar. i have 2 extra mules so i pay about 15 dollars a month, i have a friend with about 5 mules. I know the prices since im still a active FFXI player.

I consider it worth the price since 1.50 is a small amount for some extra happiness. And to the person who said "Americans don't think like me," umm... i have yet to find another person who thinks like another person without arguing, maybe its just because my univeristy friends are mostly int. political majors. They never agree on things

EDITED since i wrote the first draft up a little offended, toned it down a bit more


BTW... Black Lotus for MTG, expensive card but IMHO... pretty cruddy card to be worth something that much, then again i only play blue and green.

[Phades]

Unless your friends have over 10 accounts active on FFXI, they are not spending anywhere near 20 dollars a month on it. In fact, they pay out less than WoW monthly with one account ID active. You really don't sound like you know what you are talking about right now, since your figures are off and you aren't thinking forward in regard to continued expansions in figuring in how much people will "need" to spend over time. Honestly, if you were to try and get multiple copies of just the EX cards, you have already spent more in one month on this game than most MMORPG games.

Uhhh right, 10 accounts? that is about 100+ a month. 1 account is about 11-13 dollars, each additional character after 1 is an extra dollar. i have 2 extra mules so i pay about 15 dollars a month, i have a friend with about 5 mules. I know the prices since im still a active FFXI player.

I consider it worth the price since 1.50 is a small amount for some extra happiness. And to the person who said "Americans don't think like me," umm... i have yet to find another person who thinks like another person without arguing, maybe its just because my univeristy friends are mostly int. political majors. They never agree on things

EDITED since i wrote the first draft up a little offended, toned it down a bit more


BTW... Black Lotus for MTG, expensive card but IMHO... pretty cruddy card to be worth something that much, then again i only play blue and green.

IE account IDS. FYI, you can live without mules by abusing the mail system that you would have to re-log to do anyway, unless you need to hide sales, in which case you are abusing the system in a greater manner anyhow. Only over 11 initially if you inlcuded tetra master for whatever reason. 10 dollars + 9 extra ID slots = ~20 dollars... Still, i laugh at people with more than 1 mule, only futhering the skewed JP perception of "normal" player account characters and allows them to not address item stacking issues associated with synthing.... BUT that belongs elsewhere.

Also, things like channeling and black lotus enabled first or second turn win condition combinations, so i would hardly consider them "cruddy". But, you are also going on the assumption of 1 normal pack, while most people are referencing the EX packs at 4.00 for 2 cards and a bonus card. If that is the trend for expansions here, you are looking at 12 dollars (IE greater than a "normal" FFXI subscription) every expansion per expansion cycle per color for sets of 3 if found useful, not including normal cards etc.

[shyster]

I consider it worth the price since 1.50 is a small amount for some extra happiness. And to the person who said "Americans don't think like me," umm... i have yet to find another person who thinks like another person without arguing, maybe its just because my univeristy friends are mostly int. political majors. They never agree on things

EDITED since i wrote the first draft up a little offended, toned it down a bit more


BTW... Black Lotus for MTG, expensive card but IMHO... pretty cruddy card to be worth something that much, then again i only play blue and green.

If you were refering to me when you said this "Americans don't think like me," I never said anything like that. I was making a statement about the way you worded your sentence, which does not necessarily have anything to do with the way you think. Americans will rarely refer to themselves in a third person sense, or to other fellow americans that way. That was why I made the logical jump that you were foreign.

And yes black lotus is overpriced, but it is far from a cruddy card, even ignoring the channel fireball, you could get a five or six mana creature out on the first turn if you had one or two moxes as well.

And when did you start playing magic? Blue and green was not a common thing I saw during my day.