League entry fees

[Eukalyptus]

The entry fees for the All Cards and My Cards leagues are currently debated. Voice your opinion here. No ranting about the prize supports for each leagues, that is out of my hands! You'd want to mail MarcinS about that.

The current fees are:

Sealed - 50 gold (won't change)
All Cards - 1 series 40 gold, 3 series 50 gold, 10 games per series
My Cards - 1 series 35 gold, 3 series 50 gold, 10 games per series

The reasoning for AC being more expensive (although slightly) than MC is simply the fact that MC needs gold to build a deck. Also, a player who wins 50% of his games in any league should at least cover his fee in packs. The contents of those packs is irrelevant. Buying packs is risky as we all know. You enter a league to play competitive and get packs/foils. Packs are risky.

And I want to be completely honest with you. We WANT you to have patience regarding building your collections. I remind the players who won the S-Foil lottery how much fun they had afterwards with the game. We don't want you to have all available cards too soon, to not spoil the fun. I could have left the fees at 50 gold like they were before, but I chose to make those changes for the community, for you, because I think they make things better than they were before.

So, shoot. At me if you need to, but be objective about this. And again, no ranting about the prize supports, please.

[daisukeman]

I know this has more sides to it, and we need to consider all aspects as a whole.

For instance, not necessarily league fees should be lower if only dailies are lowered and perhaps AC prizes are better (I'm not saying they would be necessarilly the same as MC, but just to cover a non-gold-loss for AC leagues).

This is just to mention an example scenario, I understand it would need to be well-thought of and discussed.

It would be useful to list premises here of what has to remain the same (for example, if we already know that weekly wage / prizes /card prices are not subject to debate).

[Eukalyptus]

All Cards and My Cards entry fees are open for discussion. Sealed will stay the way it is. I don't like the idea of an entry fee that needs the player to save up for two weeks just to join something fun, hindering other leagues and/or card/pack buying in the process.

[Cthulhu]

I think that Sealed and MyCards (both the 1- and 3 serie) fees are just fine (also makes sense no fee to be bigger than the weekly gold), I think that  the entry fee for 1 serie-All Cards is way too high given the AC prizes and the number of games, and the prizes for 3 series-All Cards are too small given the time invested  (yeah I know you cant do anything about prizes, but maybe MarcinS will read this..) I'd say you could safely  make AC 1 series back to 25 gold.

I also think that the Daily entry situation (2 months since the reset there is a single Movie Daily and not many more FotR ones fired) is much more important and concerning than the League entry fees, so I won't spend any more time discussing Leagues.

[sgtdraino]

My understanding is that Euk has no control over the Daily and Single-Elimination entry fees, though I agree they are a much bigger issue.

I don't have strong feelings either way about league entry fees. As far as motivating people to participate, I don't think the league entry fees have any significant effect. I think the real motivating factors are about 70% prize support, and 30% whether or not players like the format.

I don't want to hijack this discussion or start a rant, but I do think the biggest issue of all is league prize support. And while I realize the moderators have no direct control over that, I can't help but feel if they threw their support behind asking MarcinS to adjust that, he would be more likely to respond than from joe-blow random player emails.

[Eukalyptus]

I don't want to hijack this discussion or start a rant

But you did anyway, thanks for that.

As for the rest of that paragraph, you find the answer to that in the FB Gemp group, as I solely want to discuss the entry fees here. Feel free to open another thread about prize support issues.

[Valtor]

Summary first ; anyone interested can read on for more:

For me, the current entry fees Euk has listed at 50g for Sealed and 3 serie MC, and 35g for 1 serie MC, are all ok.

AC fees are too high; I would not pay 50/40g respectively to enter 3/1 serie AC league.

I probably would pay 35g (or maybe 40) for 3 serie AC, and 25g for 1 serie AC.

In more detail :

First, a couple of points I think are relevant to bear in mind on this issue:

1. It is not valid to look at entry fee in isolation from prize support. The two are connected as part of a risk/reward balance.
2. Entry fee/prize support, ie gold, is of relevance (and probably of interest) only to players who want to collect My Cards (for whatever reason).
I am such a player. Although my impression is that there are a large number, probably the majority, of players who do not ever play with MC. So concern about fees and prizes may be something of a minority interest pastime.

My own view on entry fees is subjective, affected by my self perception as a player.

My experience to date suggests that I can reasonably expect to win about half my league games. This seems likely to place me in the 33rd-64th group in Sealed, 9th to 16th in MC or AC. Of course I might do better, but then I might do worse.

Buying packs is risky as we all know.

Agreed. Actually it is more than risky - would I spend 10g to buy a pack, or to buy that Aragorn's Bow that I need? I have never bought/will never buy a pack.

The contents of those packs is irrelevant.

I do not share this view. The contents of a pack are the equivalent of 4.16 gold. Occasionally a pack will provide a R that I need (or even a foil R), and for sure provides a chance of that, but generally this does not happen. A prize pack does not have a value of 10g.

So, from my perspective (throughout I assume a target of achieving 5-5 per serie), where does the risk/reward balance lie?

a) 50g for 3 serie MC is fine. 50g fee for a prospect of winning 14 packs and 6 C of my choice; equivalent to 60g and 14 chances to get a useful R.

b) It follows that 50g entry fee for Sealed is also fine by me.

c) 1 serie MC - 35g for potential 8 packs and 2 C, equivalent to 34g and 8 R chances. Also good. Lower potential reward ratio, but the investment of time and effort required is less than in 3 serie MC.

d) 3 serie AC ratio is 50g fee for 48g in cards (11 packs) and 1 serie AC is 40g for 21g (5 packs). On that basis, 1 series AC at 40g is way too expensive for my liking. In addition, AC is less fun. Call me sentimental, but I have greater attachment to decks made from cards I have individually selected, whether the deck is "tier 1" or not. Anyway, at times I like to play eccentric decks. There is more scope for this in MC.

We WANT you to have patience regarding building your collections.

Absolutely fine by me. In fact I prefer it that way to how it was before the January 2014 reset.

[Eukalyptus]

The league fees will change to the following, starting April 12th:

Sealed: 50 gold

My Cards

• 1 Series 25 gold, 10 games per series
• 3 series 40 gold, 10 games per series

All Cards

• 1 Series 35 gold, 10 games per series
• 3 Series 45 gold, 10 games per series

Enjoy.

[sgtdraino]

Thanks for doing what you can on this issue.

I was wondering: For 1-series events, would it be possible to have more games? It was months between Expanded All Cards Leagues, and then it's 10 games and done. Expanded All Cards is what I most look forward to playing in Leagues, and as such, I really want to play MORE of it, more often.

[Eukalyptus]

10 games is the league system for now.

The thing with Expanded is, that it cannot be a multiple series league, just part of one. Same as every format. I know that you favor Expanded, but I won't put it in more often than necessary, as other players prefer other formats and I like to keep things in balance somewhat.

[sgtdraino]

The thing with Expanded is, that it cannot be a multiple series league, just part of one. Same as every format.

You are currently running a 4-Series Movie League, a 3-Series Fellowship League, and have a 3-Series Towers Standard League scheduled. I see no reason why you cannot do the same for Expanded (Sets 1-15, sets 1-17, sets 1-19). I know this has been requested multiple times in the past, and not just by me.

I know that you favor Expanded, but I won't put it in more often than necessary, as other players prefer other formats and I like to keep things in balance somewhat.

For the past 2-and-a-half months, Expanded has consistently beaten out Movie as the second most popular format, with only Fellowship being more popular (as always). And yet Expanded consistently gets the shaft League-wise, with MarcinS never putting in the Hunter starters, never any Sealed Leagues for it, and unlike practically every other format, it never gets multi-series constructed leagues. This is not balance. Especially not for the #2 most popular format.

And don't get me started on the Dailies.

[Eukalyptus]

The thing with Expanded is, that it cannot be a multiple series league, just part of one. Same as every format.

You are currently running a 4-Series Movie League, a 3-Series Fellowship League, and have a 3-Series Towers Standard League scheduled. I see no reason why you cannot do the same for Expanded (Sets 1-15, sets 1-17, sets 1-19). I know this has been requested multiple times in the past, and not just by me.

I simply just don't have that option for the leagues. Don't you think I would have done it if I could? I'm pretty limited league wise. Which is the reason I did that Block Worlds league last year. I know about the popularity of Expanded in casual, but that doesn't mean I'll put Expanded up as every other league. I want to keep diversity. I kept Expanded almost exclusively for All Cards, so more people could join and play. Maybe its time to go Expanded My Cards.

You want Hunters Starters, please mail MarcinS. You want Expanded Dailies, please mail MarcinS. I have no control over the situation for these and you know that. And for the record, I'd like a Hunters Sealed, too.

[sgtdraino]

I simply just don't have that option for the leagues. Don't you think I would have done it if I could? I'm pretty limited league wise.

Thank you for enlightening me. However, the immediate solution seems obvious: If the options won't allow you to schedule a multi-series Expanded League, then simply schedule 3 single-series Expanded Leagues back-to-back. Its still not as good as a multi-series, since the prize support is crappier and we'd have to pay the entry fee again each time, but at least it would give us Expanded players a chance to play our favored format competitively for as long a period as the other formats enjoy. This seems only fair to me since Expanded is still being excluded from all Sealed League participation. As it stands now, we have to wait for months at a time to only get to play ten games over the course of about a week.

ETA: Actually, don't I recall there being a multi-series Expanded League once, in which the last series was Open?

[bibfortuna25]

IIRC, WOTR Sealed comes up in the rotation as previous Sealed leagues finish. Assuming each Sealed league takes a month, and there's five Sealed options (FOTR, TTT, ROTK, custom, WOTR), you can reasonably expect a WOTR Sealed league every five months.

I'd like to see a Hunters sealed league too, for the record.

[Legion]

How would it work, though?  Decipher only released starters for 2 blocks, not 3.