Gilded Lotus: Bait and switch

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
21

I don’t have much more to add besides what’s already been well articulated by @Sarahschmara and others. I will just say that I am disappointed with this portential nerf. I don’t think the card is broken in it’s current state. The low shield count means that it can be difficult to keep lotus around for long and making it not a great pair with the with mass gem conversion that exisits in many types of decks.

I am in the camp of people who have never spent a dime on this game until the Karn / Lotus package and feel that a good portion of that value for money is being taken away retroactively.

22

Me i’ve never spent until karn and lotus is the reason why. I had enough crystal to get him if I wanted to

23

I don’t even think Gilded Lotus is a good card, but I’m offended by this nerf simply due to the fact that there are so many f’d up totally busted cards in the game and they go on a bizarre nerfing spree of almost all the cards in the Karn package. Jousting Lance nerf? Really. Bloodtallow Candle nerf? lolwut?

It’s a really confusing bunch of changes that feel needlessly punitive and relegate a small group of cards to the trash pile.

I do get the distinct impression that people at Oktagon don’t really play or understand MTG, and if they do, they really do weird things as they adapt cards to MTGPQ.

24

Remember that initial blog post by Octagon? When talking about qualifiers for balancing, they said a card will meet “Gishath’s sharp teeth” if:-

  • The card is the cornerstone of a one-deck metagame, with the deck being linear AND unplayable by the AI.
  • The card creates the feeling of a Pay Wall, due to rarity limitations and its part in a truly overpowered deck.
  • The card is overshadowing all other strategies and stifling all player options in certain events.

Do the cards that came with Karn meet that criteria?
No.
So why does Gishath gets to munch on these?
If anything has changed they should clarify.

Because now it definitely feels like a bait and switch regardless of what their intention was.

25

they are more likely to nerf karn himself. I wouldn’t be surprised.

26

If they do so, Troy will fall.

27

To be fair, we all knew this could happen, just as any purchase of exclusive cards would also entail the risk of a possible balance change at a later date.

In addition, we should remember that this was primarily a Karn package, which included Gilded lotus as part of his basic deck. As such, any questions of refunds should fail, as we knew there was a risk of change, and because we still received the product advertised: Karn, along with his basic deck.

Furthermore, your purchase also gave you early access to those cards, and you got to use the pre-nerf gilded lotus for a prolonged period of time. As such, you got the immediate value you were promised, and the cards did exactly what you expected them to do prior to the purchase.

This is not a case of false advertising, nor was there any kind of promise that these cards would never be changed.

It is not a case of being promised a card down the line, and then receiving a different card; You got the +2 Gilded lotus upon purchase.

You got what you paid for, and ahead of purchase you knew that the cards were subject to possible balance changed. There are no actual grounds for claiming refunds.

Or do you want a full refund every single time a card or planeswalker is adjusted for the sake of balance?
When you purchase any card, do you seriously expect it to be set in stone for all eternity?

And yes, I usually don’t pay anything to play this game, and yes Gilded Lotus was the card that put the karn package over the top for me. But just like any average customer, i knew or should have known that it would likely be nerfed if it had turned out to be necessary.

Heck, even if it isn’t op, you are all fully aware that they might tweak the mana costs and effects of cards, especially regarding cards that you know are still undergoing testing.

D3 should not give a refund of any kind.

You knew what you paid for, you got exactly what you paid for and accepted the terms and risks. So complaints now are frankly just whining.

28

Yes, yes , everyone is well aware cards are susceptible to change in the future and the refund is an extreme request from a few, but it’s more out of frustration of such an drastic turnabout from a presale that , basically, got changed so quickly after a purchase when it didn’t need to be. We all knew River’s Rebuke would get nerfed eventually for its impact on the game, but it is still pretty op for a rare. They used Gilded Lotus as a selling point to make some cash and draw to buy Karn with some common so-so cards then they took them back behind the shed and gave them a beating. All the cards became way below average now and indirectly nerfed Karn by shutting down the Lotus. No one really expects a refund as you believe , but it’s a small protest on how they have approached this blatant bait and switch. They easily could have waited for the buff and nerf update after the DOM release to lessen the impact at least. Dang! I’m still trying to level Karn with it’s extreme leveling curve so I haven’ experienced the full impact of Lotus with him. in a court of law you are absolutely correct , but its very poor business practice.

29

Your legalistic take is accurate in every legal sense. It also contains the fundamental weakness of any legalistic evaluation and lacks any consideration for environmental variables not explicitly defined in the leagalities. As such, it overlooks customer satisfaction, trustworthiness, and other intangibles that greatly impact revenue and their overall business model.

Yes, they can invoke legalities and not offer any compensation. Yes, we can invoke customer dissatisfaction and refuse to spend money for products that are so risky.

It’s their right to decide which is more important to them.

30

Well put, kind of like Overwatch. You paid for the game but they keep nerfing the heck out of it. False advertising or balancing?

31

Since everybody is giving their take, here is mine:

  • the karn bundle was very good for its money
  • we knew d3 has the right to rebalance everything
  • the nerf to gilded lotus is unnecessary
  • was it a bait and switch? I don’t know, but it felt like it, because most of the player base didn’t feel gilded lotus was broken or even op.

To summarize: I can live with the nerf, but I believe it gives the community the wrong message, because it fixes something that is not broken, while long lasting problems are yet to be addressed

32

Calling everyone a whiner just because we complain about an absolutely unnecesary nerf (as you said, we all know this might happen, but it is still absolutely unnecesary and unfair considering that people paid some cash for the bundle and also for the card) is not very nice of you.

33

I don’t think that this is quite a matter of bait and switch. I like the Hanlon’s razor approach . This game has always had a problem with a lack of real beta testing . This is just irritating on several levels .
First , like many other people, I bought karn almost solely for the lotus . Card was sweet. Karn is fun, but with the recent barrage of releases , I was so far behind levelling pws that I knew it would easily be a month or two before I would use him. So now we have a second case of a card that everybody paid cash for getting a nerf. It’s hard to trust a dev team that has to go back and tweak things after release and it seems like that ability is being used as a crutch . Not good.

Secondly, this isn’t a minor nerf . It brings the card from near auto include, to barely playable. It’s not like baral where he was still ridiculous after the nerf ,just no longer a party in a can. By party, I mean degenerate combo deck .

Thirdly, I just hate nerfs. People cry for nerfs all the time ,but I hate it. I like having cards that are crazy powerful. I like not being allowed to build lazy decks because I’ll just die to thing a or thing b. It’s a strategy game that’s turning into a safe space for laziness .

I’m losing faith again. It happens a lot with this game and that’s a problem in and of itself. I hope this trend doesn’t continue

34

This sums up my feelings as well.

Calling people whiners and telling them to suck it up does not correct the problem. Sure… this is the internet where anonymous over-reacting is expected, but is it a handful of people or does the complaining represent the community as a whole? There are a LOT of people saying similar things about these changes. Not just on these forums, but in Discord, Slack and Line servers as well. Yes, D3 had the right to do it, but that doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make it in the best interest in the future of this franchise. Dismissing people as whiners without examining the overall impact of the issue is just as bad as complaining just to complain.

35

Exactly. The fact that they’re fixing/balancing/nerf whatever you want to call it isn’t what’s egregious about this action. It’s that there’s so many other cards that don’t even work properly, others that are actually OP, PW’s that need revision, etc, that’s nerfing nearly everything in this one bundle IS sending a pretty nasty message about how they value paying players. “Thanks for the money, now get bent” is how it comes across.

36

Not a bait and switch in my mind, as since Baral we’ve known that changes can happen to anything (even if they don’t (How I loathe you, Olivia)). But it’s mind-boggling that they nerfed so many cards so needlessly. I guess the stats showed everyone who bought Karn playing with the lotus? I would have thought they’d wait for a bigger sample size/the excitement of a new card to die down before making a change. To me, I have less questions about a bait and switch than I do about the reasoning for the alterations, and, as someone else asked, when they decided to make the changes vs. when they informed us of those changes. From an ethical standpoint, once they decided to make a change, they should have immediately notified everyone (IN APP, not everyone is on the forum).

37

Actually, yes. Many of us have this expectation, as many CCG mobile games give full refund of in-game resources for cards which are altered in any way. Eternal, Hearthstone, Shadowverse… Other games have set a precedent that a refund of some kind for the value of the card is reasonable and should be expected. The company doesn’t have to stand by that precedent, obviously. But it’s going to lead to player anxiety/negative sentiment.

38

Other card games I played do give full refund when something is altered. The changes to karn package is too specific, they could have used all that energy to fix more bugs and other more problematic cards that are worth looking into. They played a fast one on us.

39

Just spent my first money on this game based on Karn and lotus, and this makes me very unlikely to ever spend more money. Sure, it was within their rights to change it, but legal doesn’t always mean good business. I feel stupid for spending money on a phone game now, and extra stupid for it being 20 bucks! That’s the price of a lot of very good complete steam games.I figured since I had sunk so many hours into this game, maybe it was time to kick a little back to the developers, even if I think their price model sort of sucks. So an expensive PW, and a very good rare seemed like the right time to do it.

I doubt they will, but I hope they re-think this card change. Especially with the changes to the other cards in the deck, it just seems really slimy.

40

If they nerfed Karn I could see this blowback, but lotus was a bonus in my mind, not the purchase. It’s a rare card that needed a tweak that’s it. The fact people are upset about a piddly rare mana card says a lot about how it needed a balance. Maybe they overdid it and will change it again. Who knows? But all this upset over a bonus card in one of the cheapest PW bundles is trite.