Meltdown has several problems - here's one way to fix a lot of them in "one go"

[Shadow Era]

Meltdown is a limited sealed format, so it has to have an entry fee. Why? Because in a free to play game, everyone would just play meltdown and not have to spend a cent to have fun and be competitive right from the start. We need to make a little bit of money to pay for the servers and our coders.

I explained elsewhere that I left out an important part of the final winnings calculation: the ranked players will be divided into tiers that get a point percentage modifier, eg perhaps the top 10% will get a 25% bonus to their points. This is what makes the rankings matter, so that the top players will indeed win back more than they spent.

In the next release the time limits for meltdown will either be increased to 5 minutes or just removed if we disallow joining meltdown games as it is currently (you need a time limit on the second guy or it isn't fair to keep the first one waiting forever).

We appreciate all your comments and we'll keep listening and making improvements!

[Icebear]

I explained elsewhere that I left out an important part of the final winnings calculation: the ranked players will be divided into tiers that get a point percentage modifier, eg perhaps the top 10% will get a 25% bonus to their points. This is what makes the rankings matter, so that the top players will indeed win back more than they spent.

We appreciate all your comments and we'll keep listening and making improvements!

kyle,

please be moore specific (a "e.g. perhaps..." is surely not a detailed info at all)

is it exactly the upper 10% that will earn more then they paid?

can you guarantee that this is the case?

what about a player who plays 1000 games, but looses all?

right now he would spend 200000 gold (and would have 10000 score, being the top #player). what would he win?

imagine another player playing only 200 games, winning ALL.
would cost him 40000 gold, and would have a score of 6000.
lets say he would be second after the example player above.

what would the second guy earn back?

please respect that (whenever its about a paid system, which meltdown is) you really should be SPECIFIC about the rules.

so please finally give us detailed rules (without any 'perhaps' in them),
and let us know how much gold these two example cases would earn (eventually in percentage of a jackpot).

you GOT to have a specific algorithm calculating the wins, please share the details,
i feel we deserve to know that, dont you?

[Superhiro]

I agree completely. It's fine that meltdown will cost most players gold to play, but at least the whole process should be transparent.

[Helio]

I think meltdown needs a per day limit for the weekly challenge. Otherwise there is no point for the casual player to play. In other words someone that only plays 1 game a day can't win any gold.

What about a head to head format where both players pay 200 gold and winner gets 250 and loser 0?

[Awer]

Here's a rule of thumb. Anyone who keeps it in mind will find their life easier, especially the folks at Wulven:

"Even if you are optimistic,
don't forget to be realistic,
for whenever it possibly can,
the * will hit the fan."

(Should be easy to remember. No offense intended to anybody.)

That said, I'd like to thank the good people, especially Kyle and Gondorian, for their new replies. I too would like to hear deeper details about the whole system, hopefully more is on the way.

We need to make a little bit of money to pay for the servers and our coders.

I'm privileged to have received some university-level training in software and game design, and the first thing they teach us is that it makes the most financial sense for a company to design things thoroughly before they start implementing them. If you don't design your product properly at first, then you have spent resources in building something that's broken in the first place, and you'll have to spend extra resources fixing it afterwards. (Not to mention the headache for the end-users in the meantime.)

The designing of the card game itself would seem to be in good hands - there's a whole team sitting around the same table doing that. Ideally, the situation would be the same for all the things that fall "outside" the card game in the digital version, meaning user interface, the inner workings behind the weekly competition, rating & reward systems, deckbuilder, marketplace etc. However, the recent mishaps with the decay system and the issues with Meltdown lead me to believe that's not yet the case, or that the people doing the designing part of these areas aren't doing a very good job.

The good news is that there's a lot of smart people here on the forums who love the game so much that they're willing to invest a lot of effort to improve it, free of charge. Wulven has already taken them into the Design Team and Player-Focus-Groups, with good results. If only they would "open the doors" for such people to improve the rest of the game's aspects in their design phase (before implementation), I believe that Wulven would save itself a lot of time, trouble and money.

[bluebird503]

Meltdown is a limited sealed format, so it has to have an entry fee. Why? Because in a free to play game, everyone would just play meltdown and not have to spend a cent to have fun and be competitive right from the start. We need to make a little bit of money to pay for the servers and our coders.

I explained elsewhere that I left out an important part of the final winnings calculation: the ranked players will be divided into tiers that get a point percentage modifier, eg perhaps the top 10% will get a 25% bonus to their points. This is what makes the rankings matter, so that the top players will indeed win back more than they spent.

In the next release the time limits for meltdown will either be increased to 5 minutes or just removed if we disallow joining meltdown games as it is currently (you need a time limit on the second guy or it isn't fair to keep the first one waiting forever).

We appreciate all your comments and we'll keep listening and making improvements!

Meltdown is not a traditional limited format in the sense that you dont keep the cards you get, at least that's my understanding only tried it out last night one match, the actual format looks good though, especially if you keep limited in mind in future set creation. If you do keep your cards completely ignore this next paragraph, cause then it would actually be extremely cost efficient to play this format.

Entry fees for limited ques In an example mtg, cover your 3 packs, and then some amount that goes in to the pot(100 percent of it) You make profit on the Packs being sold, and the rest goes in to the hands of the players. From what I can tell the rake you are bringing in in meltdown is too high, and the structure of the system scares away casual players because of cost, unlike traditional limited formats where casuals at least acquire cards as well as doing well sometimes and winning prizes, you are basically only awarding players who put in the time/gold and are decently skilled, and that's the cost for everyone else to play what appears to be a cool new format( I am concerned about some aspects of it, what I've read on forums about long drawn out games, but I haven't played)

Limited needs to retain the tradition of building your collection, it's basicsally making opening product worth it cause you get play time from it, instead of just opening product to open product.

The major issue here is, it would suck to pay for 4 packs, just to play a 1 vs 1 and done, I know I never would do that, you need some kind of automated tournament system of 8 players with a Swiss or something, so I can justify paying for 4 packs (this is why a league system like I mention later would be the best alternative to your current format, especially since it doesn't sound like there is any chance


So while I agree, there does need to be a price of entry, I don't agree with the way you structured the system. Trust me, people are willing to take a loss too play limited formats, i myself have drafted a ton.. Every single 4-3-2-2 player on Mtgo is taking a loss, and every Swiss draft player is just trying to break even, and only the good players make profit in 8-4s itd not like daily events and release events ehere payouts favor average players . Having everything tied to the weekly competition is silly and there has to be an alternative option/method of playing that has a fee, but maybe a different payout method, and maybe you keep your cards.

Also i can't figure out if I can play this mode on mobile devices or not, I know I can access on my pc, i just played a match last night but when doing a search in forums, looking st the meltdown announcement, checking the FAQ I have yet to find information on this ( I just found this thread while going through search results)

The fact you haven't just made automated on demand Swiss tournaments with entry fees/payouts Based on Mtgo really shocks me, the model that keeps competition high and easily accessible is right there, the only reason I don't play the constructed part of this game is because of the pain it is to play in events etc. (ok I'm exaggerating, I find the gameplay repitive as well, without much interaction since everything is at "sorcery" speed, looking forward to a new set to spice things up, and bring me back to the constructed part of this game) the Mtgo tourney for prizes is right there , i just que up, this game is just a gateway drug for me to use when I'm on mobile, you need to make it into a real drug please. I would play this game a lot more if it had something similar.

If you really want an awesome structure you can use for meltdown. go look at leagues from Mtgo that are currently disabled, where you start with a sealed and then add a new pack each week, and play vs others in your league with your deck, over a period of time. I would easily pay 800-1600 gold or a small amount of shadow crystals for a league I can play in over 3-4 week, even if you put a match limit, like say you can play a total of 3 matches a week, but with the option of playing up top to 6-8 matches per week maximum, EVEN if I don't keep my cards at the end, it would feel like a much better investment to be able to compete for a month with that gold instead of one and done like the current format. Like I said, I would be willing to pay shadow crystals for a league system.

Here is there current in person league system for RTR ( http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Eve...s/league-facts). You can google to find info about the other

I honestly really would like to see a league system, as well as automated tournaments in this game, and it really shouldn't be that hard if you have a good team working with you, you should have a few good programmers.

Hope I was helpful, going to play some more meltdown myself, I like the fresh feel to the game, like I said I was tired of constructed in this game a long time ago, looking forward to future sets/ and hopefully more limited formats

[bluebird503]

After playing 25-30 games of meltdown(played meltdown on the ipad too, needed to update ... ), I overall like the format, even if it is a little slow sometimes(win by poison/enflame/decking), yet my criticisms remain of the pricing structure(considering you don't keep the cards), and I would like too see automated tournaments and leagues(especially leagues, make it happen)