I will (fight for a pity timer).
Veteran players have no issue targeting cards and completing collections but newer players still do. And those trying to catch up will be those who benefit the most from a pity timer as they spend to open more packs than the others do.
This is directly about making sure that opening packs don’t leave a bad taste in people’s mouth. That hope of building their collection to reach the state where they can fully enjoy the game is so much greater for those newer players who are playing catch-up. They need that boost more than the old-timers.
I’m a veteran player and I’ve only opened 1 Mythic out of 8 M19 PPs and various event M19 packs I’ve opened, which means I have 2 M19 Mythics including Dragon Hoard. And yet I’m not bothered by it nor am I even rushing to spend Jewels to make up the gap because I can afford to wait. I’ve got a good enough card collection to handle Standard without that many M19 cards.
Newer players don’t have that luxury. They can’t handle the damage to their competitiveness that a sustained barren run inflicts. That’s why they benefit most from the pity timer. It helps them get something when they have nothing. If some people only care to argue for things that are in their self-interest, that’s their call.
If people want to propose an Orb pity timer, I would like to propose an idea I think would help those on a dry spell when it kicks in while not perverting people’s objectives for opening packs and leading to more whining. I do like the idea of an Orb pity timer because it sidesteps the disappointment of pulling a dupe Mythic from a guaranteed Mythic pity timer.
So the idea is to have an Orb pool that increases each time you open a pack/PP from a set without a Mythic. Think of it like the lottery jackpot which snowballs when no one strikes the jackpot. This could be from the first pack/PP you open for the set or after X number of barren packs/PPs. The Orb pool would then pay out once you open a Mythic/Masterpiece or until Z number of packs/PP of that set has been opened by the player whichever comes first.
The developers would néed to do a bit of math to figure out the proper value for X to start adding Orbs into the Orb pool for the latter option. However, I believe this is a better option as it allows them to add more Orbs per pack since the Orb pool additions start when the player is already down on their luck. Psychologically this will provide a bigger boost than seeing it tick up in small amounts when you’re lucky and still see it tick up in small amounts when your luck is bad. If the ticks start from the first pack, they may be barely significant enough to counter the bad luck and just be more free Orbs for lucky people.
Next, the Orb increment should gradually increase with each successive barren pack/PP. This is because if it takes say an average of 20/4 packs/PPs to pull a Mythic, a player running 20 barren PPs has fallen behind so much more than a player who had a barren run of 8 PPs. The first player has gone through 5 barren ‘cycles’ vs the second player who went through 2 barren ‘cycles’. That’s a lot more to catch up on.
Also if the increments are larger than a dupe Mythic at the tail end, the developers might want to consider adding only in the tail end and only for dupe Mythic pulls some Orbs even in the pack where the player opens their Mythic before the Z pack count kicks in. This is so the player doesn’t perversely get disappointed by pulling a dupe Mythic. As an example if a player was going to get say 550 Orbs for their 12th barren PP, they’ll get annoyed that they got a dupe Mythic for 500 that also reset their Orb pool count. But this idea is really more to finetune the concept. It will also of course depend on how long the pity timer count is as that will delirectly influence whether this long tail will still even exist.
The Orb pool should also be affected by the first month bonus Orbs effect. This is to account for what they have lost out by not opening a Mythic during the bonus period. Meaning to say if typically 200 Orbs would have been added to the Orb pool for say opening an M19 PP now, it would inatead be 300. But once the bonus period ends, subquent packs would just add Orbs without the 50%. So one could have a subsequent barren pack/PP of the same set add less Orbs into the Orb pool than the previous one when the game updates with the patch to remove the Orb bonus, but that isn’t a big deal. This is also why an Orb pool is useful cause it can account for any combination of Orbs which could arise from this difference in pack value during the bonus and non-bonus periods.
Thoughts?
Tl;dr If you want people to not feel bad or dread opening packs, soften the bad outcome with some icing on top. If you want people to spend money on the game, make buying the main currency not have that chance to feel really bad. Snip off the long tail of bad luck.
