As I understand it, the weekly cap on wildcard purchases is intended to keep people from collecting all the cards too quickly, and the developers hope this will keep the meta from getting stale too quickly. I guess I'm wondering what their definition of "too quickly" is.
There are 24 Champions in the game, and you can have 3 copies of each, so 24 x 3 = 72 is the maximum number of Champ cards you can collect at this time.
If I spent all my wildcards and shards after only three vault openings, I would now have over 40 Champion cards. I am confident that I could easily collect all 72 by the end of the first month. Someone more dedicated than me could have them all a bit sooner by grinding every region with Expedition XP. (I've only completed one region, but I'm very close to finishing my second.)
I've heard several streamers expressing frustration at having to wait to craft a wider variety of decks. My question is: Is the throttle really working as intended?
It seems like it's making paying players unhappy in the short term, while not really slowing things down all that much when you consider the bigger picture. After all, this game is surely going to last a while, and it could be many months before we see an expansion.
Furthermore, once that expansion does arrive, people will easily be able to acquire most of it immediately with saved resources. (I've seen no indication that the current resources won't work on future content.)
It all sounded like a good idea on paper, but I'm not sure the result (a month or less before whales have a full set) is worth the frustration -- especially when the people you are frustrating are the only ones actually giving you money.
@OldManSanns: Your posts on this topic don't bother me at all, but I do get annoyed when people start talking as if an animated sticker is some kind of emotional assault. It makes sense that you might want clarification on the general intent of the emote, even if I will never agree that these innocuous things could ever be used in a truly hurtful way.
Seeing as you think that elusive and challenger minions are the only options, I can see why you think that, but you're ignoring LOTS of other counters Riot put into the game, and don't understand how to counter them (as are the people that upvoted your post).
The following spells can kill Greenglade Duo, even when buffed:
Thermogenic Beam
Black Spear
Mystic Shot
Purify
Single Combat
Culling Strike
En Garde
Get Excited
Noxian Guillotine
Whirling Death
Avalanche
Detain
Grasp of the Undying
Atrocity
Vengeance
Frost kill effects
Judgement
The Ruination
With elusive options, challengers and the above cards, you CAN deal with elusives. Put some in your deck
No one is arguing that they cannot be killed or countered. But most decks don't have room to include enough counters to deal with the sheer volume of elusives in the elusive deck. To do so would make it impossible to perform the main function of the archetype you're trying to build.
After more play time in the elusive meta, I'm pretty sure Riot will have to raise the mana cost of elusive across the board at the very least.
i guess we found the braum emoter when things go his way. thoroughly explains why emote isnt bad and defends it with his life. yeah im not surprised if you are that kind of guy that doesnt use the emotes as a way to acknowledge your opponent but rather to upset him
Sorry to see you prefer ad hominem attacks over actual logic. You must get super-triggered by the Heimerdinger emote.
i dont actually. i like it a lot. most ppl so far only used it to express that im taking too long to make my play. which makes sense they emote that im thinking a lot so its cool even tho they are like:"cmon man make ur play im dying here"; while im like: "chill man, genius at work here no need to complain, ur aggro deck can wait"
That's actually pretty fucking toxic from their point of view, but hey, feel free to act like you're emoting "correctly."
OK, others have already covered the fact that P&Z has fantastic removal spells that OP forgot.
But there's another point to be made -- just having spells in its own lineup isn't the whole reason P&Z is the "spell" region. There's also the fact that it's the region that gives the best payoffs for building a spell-heavy deck. Two of its Champions have explicit perks for casting spells, and the other two are just generally good in spell-heavy decks.
On top of that, lets try to remember that mono decks are extremely rare in this game and not at all encouraged by the game's design. So it actually would not matter at all if P&Z lacked spells or had very few good ones. If you think another region has better spells, or has the specific spells you want, you are free to build a deck that includes that region. Heimerdinger won't mind!
i guess we found the braum emoter when things go his way. thoroughly explains why emote isnt bad and defends it with his life. yeah im not surprised if you are that kind of guy that doesnt use the emotes as a way to acknowledge your opponent but rather to upset him
Sorry to see you prefer ad hominem attacks over actual logic. You must get super-triggered by the Heimerdinger emote.
I believe that Elusive would probably be easier to balance if it was more accessible to all regions. The reason Flying works well in MTG is because every color has at least a little bit of it, and there's specific counters to them. Even if Green has the fewest Flying creatures, they're also the best color at countering them.
Kinda like Demacia and Freljord have lots of Challengers, and Shadowed Isles is good at removal in general?
The developers will look at statistics first, then if it's on the borderline, they may factor in player sentiment.
There are plenty of other denial cards and tactics in the game (represented in every faction) that are just as strong, but because they are not worded as straightforwardly ("stop certain effects"), players tend not to think of them as unfair.
Playing around cards like Deny is simply part of the game. Watch some streamers if you need to see how it's done. If you're just too impatient to wait for an opening, I don't know what to tell you, but I don't think that's a good reason to change a reasonable card.
As for "solo winning certain match-ups," that is actually OK, too. Every deck and strategy has bad match-ups. If Deny is your deck's only weak point, that is all the more reason to keep it as it is.
I'd also like to point out that, with its 9-mana cost, The Ruination severely limits what else its user can play during the rest of the round. So assuming that you, as their opponent, don't spend all your mana early that round, you should be able to grow back a decent foothold on the board. And if you've already emptied your hand by that point, you're probably playing an aggressive deck that should've sealed the deal before it got that far.
Moreover, the whole point of control is to beat aggro by surviving until aggro runs out of resources, so it's totally fine if a control card is what makes that happen. Aggro players sometimes assert that it makes control cards OP, but it actually means everything is working as intended.
I'm sure Riot is monitoring the performance of all top decks.
If it turns out that elusive-heavy decks (or individual elusive cards) are statistically overperforming, they will just nerf stats and/or mana costs.
Elusive as a game mechanic is nothing new. It is exactly the same as flying in Magic, so there's no way the developers aren't aware of potential problems. It's just tricky to tune the stats of minions like these in a brand-new game.
One thing they do in Magic is publish cheap removal spells that target flying units specifically, or have bonus effects when targeting a flying unit. That may be something to consider for the next set of Runeterra.
I think this phenomenon will steadily diminish as people gain more Champions.
People are doing it now because they can get away with it (and because they lack the Champions that would fit in those decks).
In other words, it's fine, and even if it bugs you, you will probably see less of it in the future.
(I absolutely do not think Champions need to be stronger.)
Also, how do you even know whether your opponent has Champions or not? I have played entire games with a 6-Champ deck without playing a Champion. You may assume they copied a budget no-Champ list, but that is just an assumption.
Each rare capsule has a chance to become an epic capsule, which immediately rolls again for a small chance to become a champion capsule.
So while it may look like they are random capsules, they do actually start as three rares.
The fact that these upgrades are so hard to detect is one reason I think the rarities should just be fixed, not "rare with a chance of upgrade." Even when people get really lucky like you did, they probably don't even realize it, so the "feels good" moment never actually occurs.
Calling these things toxic is the very height of emotional fragility. I can't believe someone who would say that can even stand to go near any part of the internet.
More broadly, an etiquette is a set of expected and accepted behaviors. To build an etiquette around these emotes is just setting others up to fail.
Forming expectations about how others use stickers is pointless because there is no verbal component, and they can easily mean different things to different people.
Likewise, the belief that certain usages are not acceptable can never be more than a personal opinion, not a shared social convention.
Even if someone made a "Snowflake's Guide to Runterra Emotes," you could never be sure any significant portion of the player base would read it, so your expectations and acceptance of other people's usage would still be based on absolutely nothing.
If you honestly believe spells are too powerful, that only means you are not using enough of them. Everyone has access to them, after all. If you choose not to use them for some reason, it's time to re-examine your deckbuilding priorities.
Nexus health is perfect at 20. Games do not need to be longer than they are.
All regions do not need Deny. Every region has ways to achieve a similar result, even though it may not be as bluntly stated as "stop an effect."
If you feel like you are not drawing enough cards, you need to account for that in your own deckbuilding, not by changing the rules of the game. There are plenty of ways to draw more cards; it's not the game's fault if you can't be bothered to use them.
Again, not complaining about a lack of free stuff. THAT WAS NEVER MY POINT.
The only reason I mention "slightly better" static rewards is because taking away the random upgrades would actually diminish the overall rewards you receive unless they slightly bump up the baseline a bit.
Let me put it another way, as I think there are some misunderstandings about my intent.
First, this isn't about jealousy that maybe someone else got better stuff than me. I'm fully aware of the Law of Averages and that these things tend to even out over time, creating a level playing field for everyone. It's not about some imagined immediate "unfairness."
(I do disagree that these upgrades are a "feel good" feature. I strongly doubt most players are even remotely aware of the baseline rewards, so they may not realize what the upgrade even means. I will add, however, that random positive reinforcement is the oldest psychological trick in the book, and frankly I find it a bit insulting to be treated like a lab rat in a Skinner box. If the game is good, I'll play it. I don't need to be cajoled with mind games.)
Also, I'm not accusing Riot of any kind of bait-and-switch here. I know they never promised not to randomize rewards. I'd be surprised if they ever considered any other way. I'm just saying I wish they would take their philosophy about purchased items and apply it throughout the rest of the game.
To say "all card games have always done it, so that's just how it is" has already been proven false by killing randomized packs for purchase. By extension, there's no need for rewards to have random rarities.
Note that I did not say "no randomized rewards." I'm perfectly fine with receiving a random rare card, for example. But it should always be a rare card, not a common card with a 10 percent chance of upgrading.
@KANSAS: Yes, I would like to completely abolish upgrading rewards in exchange for slightly fewer rewards that are slightly better by default and totally consistent in their rarity.
One of the biggest things that attracted me to this game was that Riot had ditched the random-packs model, allowing the players to craft exactly the cards they want. In particular, the uncertain rarities of the cards in random packs often leads to a feels-bad situation when, for example, you get nothing but forty dust worth of garbage in Hearthstone.
So in Runeterra, I kinda hate the way that, even at max level, the Vault reward is mostly bad cards by default, with a random chance to upgrade each drop. It is basically full of random packs!
(For those who don't know: A diamond chest contains several hundred shards plus three rare capsules. Each rare capsule contains a handful of common cards and one guaranteed rare, much like a Hearthstone pack. And also like Hearthstone, there's a very small random chance that each capsule and card can spontaneously upgrade to a rarer version of itself.)
Getting three rare capsules that fail to upgrade out of a diamond chest is a bit of a letdown, considering how hard you worked to earn it.
I would much rather receive slightly fewer, better rewards than a larger number of weak rewards that might upgrade if I get lucky. A diamond chest should guarantee at least one epic capsule, don't you think?
This whole random upgrade thing is just a throwback to the microtransaction model everyone is starting to despise, which I thought Runeterra might be trying to move away from. Can we please just ditch it altogether?
As I understand it, the weekly cap on wildcard purchases is intended to keep people from collecting all the cards too quickly, and the developers hope this will keep the meta from getting stale too quickly. I guess I'm wondering what their definition of "too quickly" is.
There are 24 Champions in the game, and you can have 3 copies of each, so 24 x 3 = 72 is the maximum number of Champ cards you can collect at this time.
If I spent all my wildcards and shards after only three vault openings, I would now have over 40 Champion cards. I am confident that I could easily collect all 72 by the end of the first month. Someone more dedicated than me could have them all a bit sooner by grinding every region with Expedition XP. (I've only completed one region, but I'm very close to finishing my second.)
I've heard several streamers expressing frustration at having to wait to craft a wider variety of decks. My question is: Is the throttle really working as intended?
It seems like it's making paying players unhappy in the short term, while not really slowing things down all that much when you consider the bigger picture. After all, this game is surely going to last a while, and it could be many months before we see an expansion.
Furthermore, once that expansion does arrive, people will easily be able to acquire most of it immediately with saved resources. (I've seen no indication that the current resources won't work on future content.)
It all sounded like a good idea on paper, but I'm not sure the result (a month or less before whales have a full set) is worth the frustration -- especially when the people you are frustrating are the only ones actually giving you money.
@OldManSanns: Your posts on this topic don't bother me at all, but I do get annoyed when people start talking as if an animated sticker is some kind of emotional assault. It makes sense that you might want clarification on the general intent of the emote, even if I will never agree that these innocuous things could ever be used in a truly hurtful way.
No one is arguing that they cannot be killed or countered. But most decks don't have room to include enough counters to deal with the sheer volume of elusives in the elusive deck. To do so would make it impossible to perform the main function of the archetype you're trying to build.
After more play time in the elusive meta, I'm pretty sure Riot will have to raise the mana cost of elusive across the board at the very least.
That's actually pretty fucking toxic from their point of view, but hey, feel free to act like you're emoting "correctly."
OK, others have already covered the fact that P&Z has fantastic removal spells that OP forgot.
But there's another point to be made -- just having spells in its own lineup isn't the whole reason P&Z is the "spell" region. There's also the fact that it's the region that gives the best payoffs for building a spell-heavy deck. Two of its Champions have explicit perks for casting spells, and the other two are just generally good in spell-heavy decks.
On top of that, lets try to remember that mono decks are extremely rare in this game and not at all encouraged by the game's design. So it actually would not matter at all if P&Z lacked spells or had very few good ones. If you think another region has better spells, or has the specific spells you want, you are free to build a deck that includes that region. Heimerdinger won't mind!
Maybe if there were a Burst spell that turns your next spell into a Burst? (Or turns Slow into Fast, and Fast into Burst?)
Then you could get undeniable spells, but at a mana and card premium.
Sorry to see you prefer ad hominem attacks over actual logic. You must get super-triggered by the Heimerdinger emote.
Kinda like Demacia and Freljord have lots of Challengers, and Shadowed Isles is good at removal in general?
Oh, right. I did forget about that.
Still, it's a weird thing to be bothered about!
The developers will look at statistics first, then if it's on the borderline, they may factor in player sentiment.
There are plenty of other denial cards and tactics in the game (represented in every faction) that are just as strong, but because they are not worded as straightforwardly ("stop certain effects"), players tend not to think of them as unfair.
Playing around cards like Deny is simply part of the game. Watch some streamers if you need to see how it's done. If you're just too impatient to wait for an opening, I don't know what to tell you, but I don't think that's a good reason to change a reasonable card.
As for "solo winning certain match-ups," that is actually OK, too. Every deck and strategy has bad match-ups. If Deny is your deck's only weak point, that is all the more reason to keep it as it is.
Moreover, the whole point of control is to beat aggro by surviving until aggro runs out of resources, so it's totally fine if a control card is what makes that happen. Aggro players sometimes assert that it makes control cards OP, but it actually means everything is working as intended.
I'm sure Riot is monitoring the performance of all top decks.
If it turns out that elusive-heavy decks (or individual elusive cards) are statistically overperforming, they will just nerf stats and/or mana costs.
Elusive as a game mechanic is nothing new. It is exactly the same as flying in Magic, so there's no way the developers aren't aware of potential problems. It's just tricky to tune the stats of minions like these in a brand-new game.
One thing they do in Magic is publish cheap removal spells that target flying units specifically, or have bonus effects when targeting a flying unit. That may be something to consider for the next set of Runeterra.
I think this phenomenon will steadily diminish as people gain more Champions.
People are doing it now because they can get away with it (and because they lack the Champions that would fit in those decks).
In other words, it's fine, and even if it bugs you, you will probably see less of it in the future.
(I absolutely do not think Champions need to be stronger.)
Also, how do you even know whether your opponent has Champions or not? I have played entire games with a 6-Champ deck without playing a Champion. You may assume they copied a budget no-Champ list, but that is just an assumption.
Each rare capsule has a chance to become an epic capsule, which immediately rolls again for a small chance to become a champion capsule.
So while it may look like they are random capsules, they do actually start as three rares.
The fact that these upgrades are so hard to detect is one reason I think the rarities should just be fixed, not "rare with a chance of upgrade." Even when people get really lucky like you did, they probably don't even realize it, so the "feels good" moment never actually occurs.
Calling these things toxic is the very height of emotional fragility. I can't believe someone who would say that can even stand to go near any part of the internet.
More broadly, an etiquette is a set of expected and accepted behaviors. To build an etiquette around these emotes is just setting others up to fail.
Even if someone made a "Snowflake's Guide to Runterra Emotes," you could never be sure any significant portion of the player base would read it, so your expectations and acceptance of other people's usage would still be based on absolutely nothing.
No. My wish is that the rewards were less random in rarity.
But if they took away spontaneously upgrading rewards, it would diminish the overall value of rewards received.
To offset that, they would need to slightly increase the baseline.
This would result in the same amount of rewards overall, not an increase.
If you honestly believe spells are too powerful, that only means you are not using enough of them. Everyone has access to them, after all. If you choose not to use them for some reason, it's time to re-examine your deckbuilding priorities.
Nexus health is perfect at 20. Games do not need to be longer than they are.
All regions do not need Deny. Every region has ways to achieve a similar result, even though it may not be as bluntly stated as "stop an effect."
If you feel like you are not drawing enough cards, you need to account for that in your own deckbuilding, not by changing the rules of the game. There are plenty of ways to draw more cards; it's not the game's fault if you can't be bothered to use them.
Again, not complaining about a lack of free stuff. THAT WAS NEVER MY POINT.
The only reason I mention "slightly better" static rewards is because taking away the random upgrades would actually diminish the overall rewards you receive unless they slightly bump up the baseline a bit.
Let me put it another way, as I think there are some misunderstandings about my intent.
First, this isn't about jealousy that maybe someone else got better stuff than me. I'm fully aware of the Law of Averages and that these things tend to even out over time, creating a level playing field for everyone. It's not about some imagined immediate "unfairness."
(I do disagree that these upgrades are a "feel good" feature. I strongly doubt most players are even remotely aware of the baseline rewards, so they may not realize what the upgrade even means. I will add, however, that random positive reinforcement is the oldest psychological trick in the book, and frankly I find it a bit insulting to be treated like a lab rat in a Skinner box. If the game is good, I'll play it. I don't need to be cajoled with mind games.)
Also, I'm not accusing Riot of any kind of bait-and-switch here. I know they never promised not to randomize rewards. I'd be surprised if they ever considered any other way. I'm just saying I wish they would take their philosophy about purchased items and apply it throughout the rest of the game.
To say "all card games have always done it, so that's just how it is" has already been proven false by killing randomized packs for purchase. By extension, there's no need for rewards to have random rarities.
Note that I did not say "no randomized rewards." I'm perfectly fine with receiving a random rare card, for example. But it should always be a rare card, not a common card with a 10 percent chance of upgrading.
@KANSAS: Yes, I would like to completely abolish upgrading rewards in exchange for slightly fewer rewards that are slightly better by default and totally consistent in their rarity.
One of the biggest things that attracted me to this game was that Riot had ditched the random-packs model, allowing the players to craft exactly the cards they want. In particular, the uncertain rarities of the cards in random packs often leads to a feels-bad situation when, for example, you get nothing but forty dust worth of garbage in Hearthstone.
So in Runeterra, I kinda hate the way that, even at max level, the Vault reward is mostly bad cards by default, with a random chance to upgrade each drop. It is basically full of random packs!
(For those who don't know: A diamond chest contains several hundred shards plus three rare capsules. Each rare capsule contains a handful of common cards and one guaranteed rare, much like a Hearthstone pack. And also like Hearthstone, there's a very small random chance that each capsule and card can spontaneously upgrade to a rarer version of itself.)
Getting three rare capsules that fail to upgrade out of a diamond chest is a bit of a letdown, considering how hard you worked to earn it.
I would much rather receive slightly fewer, better rewards than a larger number of weak rewards that might upgrade if I get lucky. A diamond chest should guarantee at least one epic capsule, don't you think?
This whole random upgrade thing is just a throwback to the microtransaction model everyone is starting to despise, which I thought Runeterra might be trying to move away from. Can we please just ditch it altogether?