and hes back on it... bring on a reset!

[UnPapayaCoconut]

Voted NO. price cup and gold reset will be enough. Also not allowed foiling.

What exactly will a gold reset help? The people that have already abused this merchant then gets an even bigger advantage. The things you mention are good, but they are only useful if the collections are reset aswell.

[sgtdraino]

I voted NO. In general, I agree with ramolnar:

No. If "My Cards" is to be a viable option, and not just Super Sealed, there has to be a way to acquire cards to build decent decks. Trading is complicated and would lead to puppet accounts, so that means buying singles.

The real underlying problem was also identified by ramolnar:

The December 2012 price reset was supposed to fix things, but not having a price cap led to scarce lottery tickets.

"Farming Gold" is a violation of the Code of Conduct. If people are doing that to abusive levels, then their collections are the only ones that need to be reset.

I would be in favor of doing away with the foil exchange, for the simple reason that I find them annoying to look at, and when a player is using a LOT of them, it slows down the connection speed.

Other than that, I favor price caps. Just set the system so no card can ever cost more than 100g, and I think the problem will be largely solved.

ETA: and put Hunters starters in the merchant, dangit!

[Eukalyptus]

Farming gold refers to the action of doing so by multiple accounts. Opening packs to get and sell specific cards is not. You guys like to forget that all too easily.

I've sent those starters about five weeks ago to MarcinS in coded form. That nothing happened since then should speak for itself. All you're doing here is discussing a hypothetical scenario that will most likely never happen.

[UnPapayaCoconut]

I voted NO. In general, I agree with ramolnar:

"Farming Gold" is a violation of the Code of Conduct. If people are doing that to abusive levels, then their collections are the only ones that need to be reset.

I would be in favor of doing away with the foil exchange, for the simple reason that I find them annoying to look at, and when a player is using a LOT of them, it slows down the connection speed.

Other than that, I favor price caps. Just set the system so no card can ever cost more than 100g, and I think the problem will be largely solved.

ETA: and put Hunters starters in the merchant, dangit!

What you should vote then is Yes Thats just a reset with the merchant staying put.
Thats why theres 2 different kind of "yes"

[sgtdraino]

Farming gold refers to the action of doing so by multiple accounts. Opening packs to get and sell specific cards is not. You guys like to forget that all too easily.

IMO any abusive exploiting of the merchant system in order to gain gold should qualify as "farming gold."

What you should vote then is Yes Thats just a reset with the merchant staying put.
Thats why theres 2 different kind of "yes"

I don't want to vote yes, because I don't believe that My Cards should be reset for everybody, just for people abusing the system.

[bibfortuna25]

It's not abusive if you're following the rules, though. I gained the large amounts of gold I have by selling cards when I noticed their prices had skyrocketed. Then I used that gold to buy several hundred packs and flesh out my collection. There's nothing wrong with taking advantage like that. I earned my cards the legit way.

[Eukalyptus]

I earned my cards the legit way.

As did everyone pulling S foils.

[UnPapayaCoconut]

Farming gold refers to the action of doing so by multiple accounts. Opening packs to get and sell specific cards is not. You guys like to forget that all too easily.

IMO any abusive exploiting of the merchant system in order to gain gold should qualify as "farming gold."

What you should vote then is Yes Thats just a reset with the merchant staying put.
Thats why theres 2 different kind of "yes"

I don't want to vote yes, because I don't believe that My Cards should be reset for everybody, just for people abusing the system.

Alright I see where ur coming from then, fair enough.
Even though I believe that would be pretty hard to tell who's been abusing it and who hasn't. Especially as people seem to think it's ok selling a card for a sick overprice, just because its possible, despite knowing they are not nearly worth that much.
It's created a huge inflation.

Let's say I win a sealed league, I get 60 boosters. There's prolly like 20 players or so, many of them mediocre in terms of league wins, who can afford to get 5000 boosters.

It just surprises me that so many people think this is fine. It's not a very popular game, and ur killing all competition of what's supposed to be a "clone-mode" of the irl-game.


EDIT: I messed up the quoting, was supposed to quote sgtdraino.

[FrodosCousin]

I have a different perspective than many of you because I never play in tourneys and only play in sealed leagues.  My friend and I play on this site almost exclusively with each other because it is the best way to virtually recreate the weekly in-house game nights we used to have during the heyday of the game (and before I moved 1500 miles away).  The 50 gold per week works great for us as we get 5 packs per week to add to our my cards collections.  We never buy singles directly. Since we can't trade cards between us the way we used to, though, I will sell a card to the merchant and he will buy it, and vice versa, to mimic a trade.  If you reset collections...we have worked for months to build up a still small collection, and we talk for hours about which sets we plan to buy with next week's gold.  You guys are worried about the impact of My Cards abusers on leagues, tourneys, and the price of singles because of foiling...these things are problems.  But, please don't forget that there are some of us who just like the fact that we can slowly build a collection and play games like we are really in a local play group.  While we don't buy singles, we do use the merchant as a proxy for trading.  So, I suggest the following alternatives to your plans:

a) When accounts are signed up (or reset), have users select whether they want a singles account OR a trading account.  Singles accounts can't trade, and trading accounts can't buy singles.  While it's true that some dummy accounts might allow traders to take the best cards from a number of accounts and ship them all to a single account, if you can't buy/sell singles, this will be limited to only those cards gotten from 50 gold/week and prizes, so not too bad.  Plus, this is what my friends and I did for real-world tournaments back in the day...we all loaned each other all our best cards for tourneys.

b) Create a 3rd play environment (it could even be a very long-term league) where every 2 months, a new set is "released" to the environment.  Thus, even if a player successfully gets "all" the current cards through some system manipulation, there will be new cards to collect every couple of months.  This is also just like it used to be in the real world.  I never had all the cards, but close to a new set's release I would have finally collected enough cards to play well (while my neighbor got every card within a few weeks).  But, there was always a "reset" of sorts because the new cards would change everything.   I would definitely play in this environment because the "newness" wouldn't wear off for long but would get recycled every 8 weeks or so.  BTW, it might be interesting to mix up the cards into different fake "sets" so that each time we do this, we are not sure which of the existing cards are going to show up in which of the new releases every 2 months.  Could be fun.

Just a different perspective that may or may not add any value.
Adam (CaveTroll)

[Eukalyptus]

I have a different perspective than many of you because I never play in tourneys and only play in sealed leagues.

Funny, UPC says so, too ^^

[UnPapayaCoconut]

Funny, UPC says so, too ^^

What's funny, and when did I say that? I said that I'll stop playing mycards because of this, because its pretty much like all cards already. Instead of adding these perky comments, can't u provide us with an explanation on why u voted no?

[UnPapayaCoconut]

I have a different perspective than many of you because I never play in tourneys and only play in sealed leagues.  My friend and I play on this site almost exclusively with each other because it is the best way to virtually recreate the weekly in-house game nights we used to have during the heyday of the game (and before I moved 1500 miles away).  The 50 gold per week works great for us as we get 5 packs per week to add to our my cards collections.  We never buy singles directly. Since we can't trade cards between us the way we used to, though, I will sell a card to the merchant and he will buy it, and vice versa, to mimic a trade.  If you reset collections...we have worked for months to build up a still small collection, and we talk for hours about which sets we plan to buy with next week's gold.  You guys are worried about the impact of My Cards abusers on leagues, tourneys, and the price of singles because of foiling...these things are problems.  But, please don't forget that there are some of us who just like the fact that we can slowly build a collection and play games like we are really in a local play group.  While we don't buy singles, we do use the merchant as a proxy for trading.  So, I suggest the following alternatives to your plans:

a) When accounts are signed up (or reset), have users select whether they want a singles account OR a trading account.  Singles accounts can't trade, and trading accounts can't buy singles.  While it's true that some dummy accounts might allow traders to take the best cards from a number of accounts and ship them all to a single account, if you can't buy/sell singles, this will be limited to only those cards gotten from 50 gold/week and prizes, so not too bad.  Plus, this is what my friends and I did for real-world tournaments back in the day...we all loaned each other all our best cards for tourneys.

b) Create a 3rd play environment (it could even be a very long-term league) where every 2 months, a new set is "released" to the environment.  Thus, even if a player successfully gets "all" the current cards through some system manipulation, there will be new cards to collect every couple of months.  This is also just like it used to be in the real world.  I never had all the cards, but close to a new set's release I would have finally collected enough cards to play well (while my neighbor got every card within a few weeks).  But, there was always a "reset" of sorts because the new cards would change everything.   I would definitely play in this environment because the "newness" wouldn't wear off for long but would get recycled every 8 weeks or so.  BTW, it might be interesting to mix up the cards into different fake "sets" so that each time we do this, we are not sure which of the existing cards are going to show up in which of the new releases every 2 months.  Could be fun.

Just a different perspective that may or may not add any value.
Adam (CaveTroll)

The first idea looks like no-go to me , because it would limit an already very limited "my-cards-scene", even though I can see where ur coming from.

A reset and a restart without singles though, would be close to what u've been doing, even though I realize that you'll have to restart ur collection again, which sucks if you're playing the way you are currently. Maybe you could get into the mycards scene then as it would be more of what it was like in real life?

The 2nd idea is interesting imo, but it would probably be difficult to apply.

All ideas are welcome, so ur perspective definitely adds some value

[Valtor]

OK UPC. I have been giving this some thought. Here goes.

Opinions on whether there should be a reset are subjective and necessarily coloured by personal experience, so here is mine so far. I can't remember exactly when I joined the site, but I played my first casual game in May 2013. At that time I couldn't see the point in My Cards (MyC). Several casual games later I could see the point!

So I started spending my 50g per week pocket money on MyC starting 29 July. On good advice, I did not buy, and have never bought, any boosters; only singles. Joined the July/Aug TT Sealed, won some boosters. Joined the single serie MyC King Standard league in August with a poor but cheap Ent Berserker deck; won some more boosters. And so on.

All boosters opened as set 1, FotR. Decided what races to collect. Sold the rares I did not want. Bought the rares I wanted. Sold the rares I DID want if their price was high. Bought them back later when the price was lower. Sold rares I used in the Movie Block League that would not be useable in the FotR League; bought rares that would be useable.

So, 3 months on I have a viable rainbow/nazgul FotR deck. Played it in serie 1 and 2 of the current MyC There And Back Again Part 1 League.

All possible due to MarcinS merchant. Buy boosters. Sell and buy singles. So far as I am concerned, there is nothing "broken" about the merchant. It works fine. The fact that the popular rares are higher priced than the average, and the useless rares price at 0.02 gold each, is to be expected.

I anticipate there are a lot of MyC players with an experience similar to mine. Many also play in the Dailys or the single elimination tournaments. I can't do that. Anyway, all a reset would do is obliterate the MyC we have all collected and force us all to start again. As presumably happened in the April 2013 reset. No doubt many will not be prepared to put in the effort to do that, especially if the singles market is deleted. I'll come on to that.

It seems some players have very large amounts of gold. Presumably from opening Hunters and RoS boosters and being lucky enough to get S cards worth a lot of gold. I'll come on to that as well. [According to one member, the chances of finding an S in a Hunters (I think it was) booster is 0.083%.] At least some of those players have used that gold to buy boosters and sell the rares back to the merchant.

No doubt the S lottery winners have/can have all the cards they want. Well what's fun about that? Their collecting days are ended. They have my sympathy rather than my envy.

I'll do a separate post on the reset idea.

[Valtor]

I am relatively new here (see above), so with all due respect to the more experienced members my own view is that:

a) The ability to acquire 1 foil by trading in 4 non-foil cards should be removed
b) The S card lottery urgently needs to be fixed with S cards made available in merchant boosters and the crazy prices of certain Hunters and Rise of Saruman S cards reset to an appropriate level

but that:

c) singles should still be available for sale/purchase in the merchant;
d) all existing MyC collections should be left as they are - ie no reset of My Cards.

To explain, I cannot find a single reason given so far on this discussion that would justify a reset. The two complaints are that

(1) Some players who have won the S lottery have too much gold.
(2) Those players allegedly slow the site by mass opening of boosters

From what I have seen so far, complaint (2) is wholly speculative, in both its aspects. Game play lags - fact. The merchant never seems to. That is inconsistent with the idea that merchant activity is to blame for the lag. Noone knows whether mass booster opening coincides with lag - it is speculation. The gameplay lagged particularly badly for many hours during week commencing 28.10.13; the notion that someone(S) was mass opening boosters during that entire lag period seems fanciful imho. If (and unless) someone in a position  to verify it (ie MarcinS) agrees, (2) justifies nothing. So we are left with (1).

As to a) and b) above: The problem that UPC identifies in his OP (of some having too much gold, ie complaint (1)) is caused not by singles trading in MyC but by the S card lottery. The way to fix this is to remove the lottery.

The ability to buy foils seems undesireable, for several reasons. First, a foil should be a real find, one that is pulled from a booster, or won as a prize in a tournament, not simply "bought" by "wealthy" players. Second, the foiling system means that a MyC player interested in foiling is looking for 16 copies of each card, not 4. This, combined with the S card lottery, causes hyper-inflation of prices of popular rares, placing their purchase beyond the reach of many, if not most, MyC players.

These two issues are related. The huge amount of gold injected by each S lottery "win" unbalances the merchant's design equilibrium. The lottery winner can spend huge amounts of gold on foiling, or simply buying cards, thereby driving up prices and denuding the merchant of its stock.

c) and d) above: Even if some MyC players have all the cards, MyC is NOT the same as All Cards. Certain leagues/tournaments are only open to MyC players. The MyC players form a subset of the gemp community, identified by their interest in collecting cards as well as playing with those cards.
 
If  the singles market is removed, MyC will surely collapse as a playing option. The only players with useful MyC decks will be those who [can] play a lot of leagues/tournaments. Even they will not be able to obtain 4 copies of a given rare except by long (v-e-r-y long) passage of time and many thousands of games played.

In any event, if the collecting aspect of gemp MyC is to be retained, the singles merchant is necessary.

And there seems no point in being able to win/buy boosters unless there is an exchange mechanism, ie the singles merchant. Otherwise, how is anyone interested in collecting MyC to obtain 4 copies of any given rare? What is the point of preventing a player with 6 Aragorn's Bows (after opening, in theory, about 2,250 packs of FotR) from trading 2 of them for Flaming Brands of which he has none?

Voted no to reset.

But the S lottery and the foil purchase system should be fixed/withdrawn respectively.

For what it's worth. Sorry for length.

[UnPapayaCoconut]

@valtor
 "d) all existing MyC collections should be left as they are - ie no reset of My Cards."

So you want to remove the S-cards and the foil option, but dont think the collections need to be reset? (I mentioned many times how this doesn't make sense)
As someone said in the chat, in order to level the playing field, a reset is neccessary if these changes are to be made.
The insane amount of gold is not only because of S-foils, while they do ruin ALOT, some cards are, and some have been extremely overpriced. I dont think for example that a brute should cost 5000 that it has done at times, while a castamir costs 15.
For a while all fotr rares were 20+ gold pretty much, this happened because abuse of a broken merchant, by greedy people with alot of gold (or many accounts).

Anyway a reset of collections and keeping it selling singles with a set price of the rares (or atleast a cap) would be nice, but it would be alot of work.


EDIT: One of the key points for a reset is also that people don't want to play dailies anymore, because people are not in need of winning 10 boosters, since they can afford to get 2000. A reset would raise the activity of the my cards scene, even if it loses a few "virtual-gold-millionaires", who might give up when they have to play on equal terms.