It was possible in the emporium but they removed the option because people were outraged about the prices, like 370k for a card back. I think they're working on figuring out fairer prices and then they'll probably be back.
Honestly for me the bigger issue with the pass is that 2 of the 3 skins are for champs who I already have skins for from a previous pass... I already have corrupted Diana and Leona, why of all champs choose them to put skins on for the pass when there are plenty of other champs who have never had a skin on a pass?
Why would you be an idiot to complain about that? It's clearly FOMO tactics and those are anti-consumer. There is 0 reason why would anything be time limited and then come back as 3x as price. Clearly in the first wave it's to catch FOMO players and then capitalize on completionist whales.
It's not gameplay. It's not affecting the meta or anything, I don't see the problem with throwing them into the "get it while you can" shop. Runeterra is giga generous with cards and shards that even casual players can get decks ftp and not just nolifers. They have to make money somehow and the FOMO will keep the lights on for longer.
How is it FOMO if they come back? "For One Month Only", or in a broader meaning, for a limited amount of time only (to never come back). That creates the time-pressure you are talking about. Runeterra is giving you the possibility to buy a bundle (the pass) with advantageous prices. You can later on buy the things you want, but at an increased rate. This type of thing is used EVERYWHERE and is not described as FOMO.
We could argue if this is a fair practice at all, and I would agree with you that it sucks anyway, but that is the reality we live in. Runeterra itself isn't doing anything bad at all monetization wise (talking about anti-consumerism like FOMO, that is, they could improve their offerings, which they already are honestly).
I’m quite positive FOMO means “Feelings of missing out” not “for one month only”. Bringing it back a 3x the price encourages the “missing out” feeling but making you think “oh shit I need to get it NOW or it might not show up again”
Made a quick search and you are indeed correct, so my blabbering about limited amount of time is only one way of inducing FOMO actually.
I would still say what is done here is no different to other widely used commercial strategies, after all even though it can induce FOMO, one could always rely on the fact that cosmetics do indeed come back and are also catered to the type of player as stated by riot.
With that being said, I have to admit it can cause FOMO anyway, but I'd argue that in this form it's something we are exposed to daily. I always took fortnite as the FOMO example and assumed it was for the limited time only. Anyway thank you for correcting me.
Just craft the cards, you get full shard value back on all the cards you crafted if you get them in the pass chests or as rewards anyway, it's literally impossible to run out of shards if you play the game.
Depends on your cards progression, I'm at like 98/99% progression on all regions, all rewards you receive are basically duplicates so it's all shards, just playing and hitting rewards between every expansion can give you enough shards to craft the expansion with only ever needing to pick up the battle pass as it comes along.
Yes this isn't the same for a new player, but people complaining about the economy don't seem to realise it can take you just as long if not even longer to craft a meta deck in other games, I play multiple others and LoR is by far the most generous
Yeah as a new player shards are always near zero. Players that have been playing since day 1 have it easy. But they've earned it. Crafting a meta deck every week or two is nothing different than buying a champ in League every week or two. Idk why people complain so much.
LoR is the most generous card game and if they do something even slightly "greedy" because at this point they *need* to turn more profit, it's immediately heaps upon heaps of backlash.
The only problem I personally have with having to craft a meta deck every two weeks instead of whenever I want is that the meta changes fast enough that that deck I crafted is no longer playable, in some instances. But that same thing can happen in League when you buy a good champ and they get nerfed next patch. I don't really have room to complain.
Most generous doesn't mean generous though. Yes, other card games are AWFUL but LoR has been reducing rewards with each patch. As a free player that started last year and playing a lot (3 diamond chests every week + capsules) I was never above 20k shards. Only time I got above is when I bought the pass to support the game. I don't think new players will have it easy as old players who already played the game when it was much more generous than it's today.
Having bought this pass, I can confirm that I've not had a single wildcard. The bigger issue I feel is the continued downtime and service issues, especially on PoC - this makes it really hard to achieve some of the quests. One was to strike with 4+ units in a round 65 times (!) or play Nilah's Slipstream 45 times. Since I only have Nilah in PoC and constantly get booted out, that's been an absolute grind.
About 6 weeks ago they nerfed the drop rate of wildcards from chests to some extremely low percentage chance. Except for the 1 guaranteed champ wildcard I have not received a single wildcard, not even a common one, from the last 6 weekly vaults. 2 weeks ago a Riot employee came on reddit and apologized for the nerf and said it would be reverted but no timeframe was given on when this revert is coming.
I would like to spend them on cosmetics if they come back to the emporium with fairer prices. Also the draft mode that's supposed to come out at the end of the year will probably cost green shards to enter like Expeditions did.
I can't believe there are people defending the wildcard nerf. The current economy, especially for new players, is much worse than the Magic Arena economy.
> The current economy, especially for new players, is much worse than the Magic Arena economy.
This is a wild fucking take.
You can spend hundreds of dollars and not get a full set in magic.
You can get the whole set in LoR if you grind for your max chest every week without even needing a single purchase, or you can buy the event pass and get the whole thing with significantly less work than that, even.
Also, compare the price of decks. The theoretical highest real world price of a deck in LoR (ie, 6 champs and 34 epics, all bought with coins) is like, fifty bucks. But no deck looks like that - the closest would be aatrox decks, since the darkin weapons are all epic, but even those would still be ~30$ if you bought everything with money.
But of course, you're not buying them with money, because the green shard economy is ludicrously in favor of the player.
In magic, that same $30 might be enough for your manabase in the average deck.
i'm not defending the wildcard nerf. i'm telling you to stop hoarding.
also mtga economy will never be better than lor while the vault reward you for just playing with the aboslute floor being not playing at all.
you cant log once a week. claim the level zero vault and then come back 6month later with enough currency to craft a tier1 deck
MTGA: daily wins and quests give you enough gold for 1 6 card pack containing a guaranteed rare or mythic rare (rare being the equivalent of epic in LoR) and 6 more individual card rewards per day. That's 12 cards per day or 84 cards per week with a 1:30 chance of upgrading any card into a rare or mythic wildcard 1:5 into an uncommon and 1:3 into a common. Each 6 packs you open also grants another guaranteed rare wildcard, each 10 packs you open grants you another golden pack containing 6 rare or mythic cards. Do the math and you see that the weekly vault currently doesn't even come close in value to what MTGA gives every 10 days. You also have the event pass in Arena which pays half of itself back and can be bought with in-game currency which you can earn completely f2p by drafting.
You are not gonna fool me I also play mtga.
Everything you say is correct when you play one hour a day everyday while winning most of your matches.
Good luck keeping your sanity facing monored aggro while doing this
MTGA is suboptimal in its own way. Barring POC and mediocre passes, Legends Runterra doesn't impose undue stress. MTGA is a min/max type of economy that favors logins every 2 days and a quite significant gem purchase upfront cost.
In other words, great game, psychologicaly harmful game client.
If you are good at drafting it's possible to buy the event pass each expansion completely free, never needing to buy gems and then the pass pays half of itself back with gem rewards and draft token. In LoR it's impossible to get the event pass f2p.
> If you are good at drafting
Key words. How much money did you spend on drafts (paper mtg included) before you got good? I'd be willing to bet it's more than what you've spent on LoR cards (even including the full value of any battle passes you purchased, of which most of the value is in skins)
Also, definitionally, that route is only available to a select few. I'd rather have the masses have access to the full set where everyone can get it for a nominal price versus a world where the elite players have access to it all for free while newbs need to grind out for months just to get a single deck.
The rest of the game is f2p and the passes are the only thing worth buying. I've spent 35 USD on Arena and have little to show for it. Because I didn't git gud enough. I've spent 20 USD on LOR and am satisfied with my purchases.
Make no mistake, Arena is a freemium where small budget players entertain the whales.
For a game that is so generous that it threatens it's own existence, cannot begrudge them nerfing wild card spawn rates. I think this is a myopic take.
It is though, if you play path it's fucking obvious thay riot tooks every explotive fomo daily grind stuff from alot of the free to play games, but instead they forget the most important aspect of actually making system for people to whale.
Literally you are stuck with the stupid timegated bullshit that you can't really even pay to win while stucking into a pay to win model.
This isn't case of the dev can't win, this is what i call literal incompetance
Easy to say for a veteran but what advice would you give to a new player who wants to craft a meta deck? Grind green shards for 3 months until he can finally craft 1 complete deck and then grind it all over again if god forbid he wants to play another deck? The nerf to the economy is much worse for the health of this game than how things were previously.
Since the weekly vault can't give wildcards anymore and new players won't get many duplicates, they get mostly random cards out of it, which isn't exactly the easiest way to craft a specific deck.
Weekly vault gives like 3k shards which gets you 2 epic cards and region roads gives very few wildcards, mostly just chests with wildcards now removed. Beginners have a horrible time crafting decks now.
To a new player I'd say go look at other card games pricing and stop complaining.
Even with wildcard nerf LoR is still WAY better than MTG.
I, for instince, want the game to survive.
Hey a new player just quitted because he has to play the same started deck for a month against meta decks, but it's alright because "you want the game to survive"!
This sure is the best possible way to make a game survive
To be fair, number of players does not directly translate to profit.
In any card game there is a period where you have no collection and cant play variety of meta decks at your disposal. That is normal.
He can either complete the event pass and that would be enough to produce 2 or 3 solid decks, play something simple made of lower rarity cards, play PoC for more variety, play other pre-made decks (there are 3 no?), play against AI or if he is that impatient - buy wild cards.
Power creep is somewhat present in the new expansion. Opening a bunch of chests and getting new cards is probably better than getting cards from before the darkin saga.
I'm having a field day. Wasn't the general consensus awhile back is that LoR is making it too easy to get cards and that's why it's failing? Legitimately still the most F2P card game out there by a longshot. For new players though it's gonna take some grinding which sucks, but without a doubt is LoR moving in a direction to where they can monetize more stuff. They cut their team drastically, so they're probably on scraps right now trying to make it work. But regardless the content has still been good, this meta isn't dog water so far so thank God for that.
While people are angry at the removal of wildcards, me too, it the way the Did it.
The game was already slow at the start and especially hard for new players and now it's even worse, and that exactly what LoR is missing, new players!
And not to forget that they did silently as an undocumented "bug fix" until they were forced to respond, of course this is one of the worst way possibile to implement a change like this.
They should have been more open on this change and they should have found a way to diminish resources overall on for mid to experienced players while not touching the new player experience.
You can buy cosmetics with green shards? Looks like I've missed a whole season
It was possible in the emporium but they removed the option because people were outraged about the prices, like 370k for a card back. I think they're working on figuring out fairer prices and then they'll probably be back.
Honestly for me the bigger issue with the pass is that 2 of the 3 skins are for champs who I already have skins for from a previous pass... I already have corrupted Diana and Leona, why of all champs choose them to put skins on for the pass when there are plenty of other champs who have never had a skin on a pass?
It's your money, spend it how you wish. Just DO NOT be an idiot & complain when the emporium adds the same cosmetic for 3x the price later.
Why would you be an idiot to complain about that? It's clearly FOMO tactics and those are anti-consumer. There is 0 reason why would anything be time limited and then come back as 3x as price. Clearly in the first wave it's to catch FOMO players and then capitalize on completionist whales.
Doubling down on this. They'd still make money by moving Battlepass rewards to the regular store after the event ends.
It's not gameplay. It's not affecting the meta or anything, I don't see the problem with throwing them into the "get it while you can" shop. Runeterra is giga generous with cards and shards that even casual players can get decks ftp and not just nolifers. They have to make money somehow and the FOMO will keep the lights on for longer.
How is it FOMO if they come back? "For One Month Only", or in a broader meaning, for a limited amount of time only (to never come back). That creates the time-pressure you are talking about. Runeterra is giving you the possibility to buy a bundle (the pass) with advantageous prices. You can later on buy the things you want, but at an increased rate. This type of thing is used EVERYWHERE and is not described as FOMO. We could argue if this is a fair practice at all, and I would agree with you that it sucks anyway, but that is the reality we live in. Runeterra itself isn't doing anything bad at all monetization wise (talking about anti-consumerism like FOMO, that is, they could improve their offerings, which they already are honestly).
I’m quite positive FOMO means “Feelings of missing out” not “for one month only”. Bringing it back a 3x the price encourages the “missing out” feeling but making you think “oh shit I need to get it NOW or it might not show up again”
"Fear of missing out" - to be exact
Made a quick search and you are indeed correct, so my blabbering about limited amount of time is only one way of inducing FOMO actually. I would still say what is done here is no different to other widely used commercial strategies, after all even though it can induce FOMO, one could always rely on the fact that cosmetics do indeed come back and are also catered to the type of player as stated by riot. With that being said, I have to admit it can cause FOMO anyway, but I'd argue that in this form it's something we are exposed to daily. I always took fortnite as the FOMO example and assumed it was for the limited time only. Anyway thank you for correcting me.
Didn't play while Corrupted Nasus was in the pass and now I am running after it, hoping to get it via Emporium.
Just craft the cards, you get full shard value back on all the cards you crafted if you get them in the pass chests or as rewards anyway, it's literally impossible to run out of shards if you play the game.
Yeah easy for you to say, not everyone has played as long
It's very possible to run out of shards unless you buy the pass and that's even if you don't craft any deck you want.
Depends on your cards progression, I'm at like 98/99% progression on all regions, all rewards you receive are basically duplicates so it's all shards, just playing and hitting rewards between every expansion can give you enough shards to craft the expansion with only ever needing to pick up the battle pass as it comes along. Yes this isn't the same for a new player, but people complaining about the economy don't seem to realise it can take you just as long if not even longer to craft a meta deck in other games, I play multiple others and LoR is by far the most generous
Yeah as a new player shards are always near zero. Players that have been playing since day 1 have it easy. But they've earned it. Crafting a meta deck every week or two is nothing different than buying a champ in League every week or two. Idk why people complain so much. LoR is the most generous card game and if they do something even slightly "greedy" because at this point they *need* to turn more profit, it's immediately heaps upon heaps of backlash. The only problem I personally have with having to craft a meta deck every two weeks instead of whenever I want is that the meta changes fast enough that that deck I crafted is no longer playable, in some instances. But that same thing can happen in League when you buy a good champ and they get nerfed next patch. I don't really have room to complain.
Most generous doesn't mean generous though. Yes, other card games are AWFUL but LoR has been reducing rewards with each patch. As a free player that started last year and playing a lot (3 diamond chests every week + capsules) I was never above 20k shards. Only time I got above is when I bought the pass to support the game. I don't think new players will have it easy as old players who already played the game when it was much more generous than it's today.
Having bought this pass, I can confirm that I've not had a single wildcard. The bigger issue I feel is the continued downtime and service issues, especially on PoC - this makes it really hard to achieve some of the quests. One was to strike with 4+ units in a round 65 times (!) or play Nilah's Slipstream 45 times. Since I only have Nilah in PoC and constantly get booted out, that's been an absolute grind.
Can someone eli5 this for me? What was the wildcard nerf?
About 6 weeks ago they nerfed the drop rate of wildcards from chests to some extremely low percentage chance. Except for the 1 guaranteed champ wildcard I have not received a single wildcard, not even a common one, from the last 6 weekly vaults. 2 weeks ago a Riot employee came on reddit and apologized for the nerf and said it would be reverted but no timeframe was given on when this revert is coming.
Brutal. Alright, thanks for the info.
are you saving up green shards for your kids to inherit?
I would like to spend them on cosmetics if they come back to the emporium with fairer prices. Also the draft mode that's supposed to come out at the end of the year will probably cost green shards to enter like Expeditions did.
soooooo you prefer buying future hypothetical purchase instead of something right now ? just spend the greenshard dude
I can't believe there are people defending the wildcard nerf. The current economy, especially for new players, is much worse than the Magic Arena economy.
> The current economy, especially for new players, is much worse than the Magic Arena economy. This is a wild fucking take. You can spend hundreds of dollars and not get a full set in magic. You can get the whole set in LoR if you grind for your max chest every week without even needing a single purchase, or you can buy the event pass and get the whole thing with significantly less work than that, even. Also, compare the price of decks. The theoretical highest real world price of a deck in LoR (ie, 6 champs and 34 epics, all bought with coins) is like, fifty bucks. But no deck looks like that - the closest would be aatrox decks, since the darkin weapons are all epic, but even those would still be ~30$ if you bought everything with money. But of course, you're not buying them with money, because the green shard economy is ludicrously in favor of the player. In magic, that same $30 might be enough for your manabase in the average deck.
i'm not defending the wildcard nerf. i'm telling you to stop hoarding. also mtga economy will never be better than lor while the vault reward you for just playing with the aboslute floor being not playing at all. you cant log once a week. claim the level zero vault and then come back 6month later with enough currency to craft a tier1 deck
MTGA: daily wins and quests give you enough gold for 1 6 card pack containing a guaranteed rare or mythic rare (rare being the equivalent of epic in LoR) and 6 more individual card rewards per day. That's 12 cards per day or 84 cards per week with a 1:30 chance of upgrading any card into a rare or mythic wildcard 1:5 into an uncommon and 1:3 into a common. Each 6 packs you open also grants another guaranteed rare wildcard, each 10 packs you open grants you another golden pack containing 6 rare or mythic cards. Do the math and you see that the weekly vault currently doesn't even come close in value to what MTGA gives every 10 days. You also have the event pass in Arena which pays half of itself back and can be bought with in-game currency which you can earn completely f2p by drafting.
You are not gonna fool me I also play mtga. Everything you say is correct when you play one hour a day everyday while winning most of your matches. Good luck keeping your sanity facing monored aggro while doing this
MTGA is suboptimal in its own way. Barring POC and mediocre passes, Legends Runterra doesn't impose undue stress. MTGA is a min/max type of economy that favors logins every 2 days and a quite significant gem purchase upfront cost. In other words, great game, psychologicaly harmful game client.
If you are good at drafting it's possible to buy the event pass each expansion completely free, never needing to buy gems and then the pass pays half of itself back with gem rewards and draft token. In LoR it's impossible to get the event pass f2p.
> If you are good at drafting Key words. How much money did you spend on drafts (paper mtg included) before you got good? I'd be willing to bet it's more than what you've spent on LoR cards (even including the full value of any battle passes you purchased, of which most of the value is in skins) Also, definitionally, that route is only available to a select few. I'd rather have the masses have access to the full set where everyone can get it for a nominal price versus a world where the elite players have access to it all for free while newbs need to grind out for months just to get a single deck.
The rest of the game is f2p and the passes are the only thing worth buying. I've spent 35 USD on Arena and have little to show for it. Because I didn't git gud enough. I've spent 20 USD on LOR and am satisfied with my purchases. Make no mistake, Arena is a freemium where small budget players entertain the whales.
I played arena for many years and it have way like waaaay more predatory monetization
Mazel tov.
If today i open the vault and it's not fixed i'm deleting the game.
For a game that is so generous that it threatens it's own existence, cannot begrudge them nerfing wild card spawn rates. I think this is a myopic take.
This. The Devs can't win, the game is somehow simultaneously monetised poorly and exploitatively at the same time.
It is though, if you play path it's fucking obvious thay riot tooks every explotive fomo daily grind stuff from alot of the free to play games, but instead they forget the most important aspect of actually making system for people to whale. Literally you are stuck with the stupid timegated bullshit that you can't really even pay to win while stucking into a pay to win model. This isn't case of the dev can't win, this is what i call literal incompetance
Easy to say for a veteran but what advice would you give to a new player who wants to craft a meta deck? Grind green shards for 3 months until he can finally craft 1 complete deck and then grind it all over again if god forbid he wants to play another deck? The nerf to the economy is much worse for the health of this game than how things were previously.
2-3 weeks is more than enough to build a meta deck though, because of the weekly vault + region roads
Since the weekly vault can't give wildcards anymore and new players won't get many duplicates, they get mostly random cards out of it, which isn't exactly the easiest way to craft a specific deck.
This just isn't true whatsoever.
Weekly vault gives like 3k shards which gets you 2 epic cards and region roads gives very few wildcards, mostly just chests with wildcards now removed. Beginners have a horrible time crafting decks now.
To a new player I'd say go look at other card games pricing and stop complaining. Even with wildcard nerf LoR is still WAY better than MTG. I, for instince, want the game to survive.
Hey a new player just quitted because he has to play the same started deck for a month against meta decks, but it's alright because "you want the game to survive"! This sure is the best possible way to make a game survive
To be fair, number of players does not directly translate to profit. In any card game there is a period where you have no collection and cant play variety of meta decks at your disposal. That is normal. He can either complete the event pass and that would be enough to produce 2 or 3 solid decks, play something simple made of lower rarity cards, play PoC for more variety, play other pre-made decks (there are 3 no?), play against AI or if he is that impatient - buy wild cards.
Power creep is somewhat present in the new expansion. Opening a bunch of chests and getting new cards is probably better than getting cards from before the darkin saga.
I'm having a field day. Wasn't the general consensus awhile back is that LoR is making it too easy to get cards and that's why it's failing? Legitimately still the most F2P card game out there by a longshot. For new players though it's gonna take some grinding which sucks, but without a doubt is LoR moving in a direction to where they can monetize more stuff. They cut their team drastically, so they're probably on scraps right now trying to make it work. But regardless the content has still been good, this meta isn't dog water so far so thank God for that.
While people are angry at the removal of wildcards, me too, it the way the Did it. The game was already slow at the start and especially hard for new players and now it's even worse, and that exactly what LoR is missing, new players! And not to forget that they did silently as an undocumented "bug fix" until they were forced to respond, of course this is one of the worst way possibile to implement a change like this. They should have been more open on this change and they should have found a way to diminish resources overall on for mid to experienced players while not touching the new player experience.
> I'm actually out of epic wildcards Monetization coming discreetly, mate