Economy throttle actually pointless?

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.

Yeah, it seems like the wildcards limit will work for this current set, but if players buy the maximum every week they’ll be able to get the entire next expansion when it releases, making the limit only relevant for new paying players (which seems against the spirit of the limits). Maybe they’ll make it so that you can’t buy wildcards if you have all the cards of that rarity already

Quote From FortyDust

My question is: Is the throttle really working as intended?

You know, that's in fact exactly what I thought when I first saw the actual numbers of the purchase limit. Riot's goal is a noble one, but I think for the limitation to be meaningful in keeping paying and free players on a more even playing field, they'd have to set it to something like 1 champion, 1 epic, 2 rares, and 3 commons per week.

The way things currently stand, I (as a free player) wouldn't be opposed to removing the limit. As you said, it's only going to fulfill its purpose for a couple of weeks, anyway. In that case, I'd rather let the people who want to spend their money give it to Riot so that they, in turn, can invest more funds into improving and expanding the game.

I would argue the inverse - I'd say the economy throttle is doing exactly what it's intended to do, assuming I read the intentions correctly. That is, the actual intentions, rather than what they really have to say to avoid enraging fans.

Most of us here are card game enthusiasts, and I'd imagine most of us have dabbled in other card games. How many have risen in great acclaim recently? And of those, how many are still major players in the card game world? I would wager an answer to the latter question would be 'none'.

The true purpose of the throttle isn't really to stop the meta from getting stale or anything similar, in my view. It's simply to avoid the game becoming stale too quickly. I emphasize 'too quickly' because it's an inevitability that people will complete their collections (or at least as much of them as is necessary for full experimentation). People can be frustrated at not being able to quickly complete their collections - that's not going to make many of them drop the game entirely, though. On the other hand, it's very common for card game players (who, in my experience, tend towards the obsessive on average) to complete a collection very quickly, play themselves through, and then burn out.

So - the throttle is simply to keep people coming back to earn their rewards and unlock a collection more slowly. That way, the game can continue to have an active player base.

It has to be said, of course - CursedParrot's comment above, noting that future expansions wouldn't work well with the current limitations. That is 100% correct - but that's fine, because the limitation isn't intended to be sustainable, according to my interpretation above. All it needs to do is keep the game thriving in the short term. After a certain point - and the next expansion is a solid milestone for that - if a community is still strong, it will be invested enough that it'll keep playing without needing that kind of incentivization to sustain it. But in this short term period, I believe Riot is simply trying to ensnare its player base and keep them from wandering off - and they are 100% correct to do so, in my opinion.

Final point - I would add to CursedParrot's post that not only will this model be unsustainable for future expansions, it will be actively detrimental at that point. Not being able to buy a lot of cards is a good thing (for Riot) right now - but skip forward two or three expansions and imagine a new player coming in. It's bad enough on Hearthstone, having to deal with top-tier meta decks with a limited selection of cards. Imagine being in that same situation and you can't even buy enough cards to close the gap. All you can do is buy enough cards to complete maybe one third of a meta deck - a deck which, in three weeks' time, may well have dropped to the middle tiers or lower. That would make for an atrociously bad new player experience. So I would venture that the current model will be removed at some point - I'd guess sometime around the next expansion.

That's my guess, anyway... but then, looking at League, Riot have never been particularly good at the whole new player experience thing :P

Quote From Bystekhilcar

So - the throttle is simply to keep people coming back to earn their rewards and unlock a collection more slowly. That way, the game can continue to have an active player base.

But, as I mentioned, if that can be done in a month, have they really succeeded? They've bought themselves a few weeks at most.

If the game itself isn't engaging enough to keep people coming back, those few extra weeks aren't going to matter at all.

(For what it's worth, I definitely think the game is engaging enough. If their reasoning is as cynical and insecure as you make it out to be, it's totally unfounded.)

I am actually starting to think they've got the whole thing backwards. Let us buy all the cards we want, but make us work for the cosmetic rewards. It is a lot easier to add new boards, pets, and card backs than to crank out new cards to collect.

I don't know. A month is longer than Artifact lasted, isn't it?

I mean, maybe I'm wrong. It's been known to happen (rarely :P). But I don't see their published rationale as holding up, so I'm forced to look at alternative views (and, y'know, it's what I'd do in their position, albeit in a different form).

Re: your point on cosmetics, that's pretty much where League's been at for a few years now. Though in my case at least, they sorta shot themselves in the foot; I don't think I've spent anything on League since they made it possible to get skins through regular play (though that may also be due to not playing as much as I once did...).

Quote From CursedParrot

Yeah, it seems like the wildcards limit will work for this current set, but if players buy the maximum every week they’ll be able to get the entire next expansion when it releases, making the limit only relevant for new paying players (which seems against the spirit of the limits). Maybe they’ll make it so that you can’t buy wildcards if you have all the cards of that rarity already

This. I think you shouldn't be able to accumulate wildcards bought with real money from multiple months. It defeats the whole purpose of "nobody can get everything instantly when a new expansion launches"

Quote From Apfelkomplott

Quote From CursedParrot

Yeah, it seems like the wildcards limit will work for this current set, but if players buy the maximum every week they’ll be able to get the entire next expansion when it releases, making the limit only relevant for new paying players (which seems against the spirit of the limits). Maybe they’ll make it so that you can’t buy wildcards if you have all the cards of that rarity already

This. I think you shouldn't be able to accumulate wildcards bought with real money from multiple months. It defeats the whole purpose of "nobody can get everything instantly when a new expansion launches"

There's the additional issue that you can buy wildcards and sit on them while still collecting cards via region rewards.

So it's not as simple as just cutting off wildcard purchases after the player has collected them all.

(I'm actually not sure I want or need to buy more wildcards at this point, because I have so many potential free ones waiting in the wings.)