Planar Mana - What does PW/Cryptic want us to do as players?
Take this as much with a pinch of salt as you want. I don't have raw numbers or equations here purely just my anecdotal evidence now that we've had the first week without "over capping" as we have had before.
Upon the weekly reset of Planar Mana, I wanted to see how quickly I could reach that cap at a reasonable pace. So, I did a mix of the following: Mana Vault [lvl6] using Chromatic Mana to boost, cashing in reputation rewards from the different locations, and repeatedly running Mana Towers on Master difficulty. Without anything to intensive, after around 5 hours of this I had reached the Planar Mana cap on all colours (and had more than regained the Chromatic Mana I spent on the Vault).
Given I have all artefacts I use at maximum level, a decent set of gear I'm comfortable with mostly at 58 (one item at 55) and all the spells I use to rank 7 I want to work on upgrading my realm. I now have to wait a week simply to upgrade my two other "workshops" to level 7, and then another week to upgrade the Aetheric Core to 8.
There are things I can be doing aside from things that require Planar Mana, but it's not the avenue I as a player want to take at this time. I believe, bar Mystical Study spell unlocks I have all the spells; and I once again need to spend Planar Mana to unlock the ones I don't have. Although I can carry out other activities, it's also of note that it does leave me feeling like wasted time because I don't even earn the same Planar Mana resource in an "unrefined" form like with Aether.
So, my question is as follows: What does Perfect World/Cryptic want someone in my position to do? Or at least could someone who had a deciding factor in this present their rationale?
Pardon the supposition, but do they want me to not play for more than approximately 5 hours a week? Do they want to actively disenfranchise me as a player because I can't even work towards progressing how I want to because of a seemingly arbitrary cap on a resource? What other things, beyond gathering and improving Equipment, Spells and Artefacts should I be aiming for; such as regional reputation (although this is capped similarly)?
Comments
"Pardon the supposition, but do they want me to not play for more than approximately 5 hours a week?"
Sadly I think this is the answer. Everything except gold is capped but gold has almost no value considering how they let you flip items in the market. The current model is more likely to tempt you to buy "something" if your progress is slow. It's slightly insidious if this is the case but most FTP games are.
The problem is that before this week you could farm 30,000 mana on master if you only farmed on master and did not accept any other mana income. That was apparently a bug. As a side question : what's the point of playing master?
To answer one of your questions consider this : they save money if people have almost no reason to play when they are capped. The problem is that they lose money because people instead play a game without caps.
I think the developers expect you might try other decks when waiting for land upgrades - but why would you do that? It doesn't advance your character.
Please allow us to ignore or exceed the cap by playing master, doing Reputation dailies, using mana vault, and at least allow us one completion of each quest that still gives us planar mana after the cap. the things that exceed the cap should be published, the people who farmed 30k per week are way ahead because the rest of us did not realize the difference; and that door is closed now.
There are caps on way too many things. Apparently, they don't actually want us to play the game. Just blow money on it, realize our mistake, and then leave.
The 22nd April '21 update did nothing for this, nor any mention in the notes. Please could we at least get a rationale as has already been asked for?
In Magic Arena, there is zero incentives to play after attaining 15 wins each day. It seems like they want to do the same thing on a weekly basis.
I'm OK with the concept of caps, but they should be increased as one levels up - that would motivate players to keep playing.
The 29th April update news did nothing for this, nor any mention in the article itself. Please could we at least get a rationale as has already been asked for?
I agree as with 4 days left and capped out. If I level I waste that Planar mana on the rewards as it doesn't even give you gold for it. Also the quests give 250 gold when completed. Reputation is better saved for the Planar mana. So basically I was playing quite a bit. Then capped and went, huh really everything takes this and some are stupid, like the spells to research needing mana. Give me a break who would use it on that when you can level up you structures, and if you buy the spells then you realize you just wasted a weeks worth of mana.
I think the game it a fun one to play but, the cap is silly, there isn't PvP so why would they and you have all classes and all spells on one character creation. Why make another character when it isn't any different you are just level up the same thing, with no purpose.
At this time, not sure how long I will play as it seems that only thing you get it spell pages, but the spell pages are worthless as you need the mana to level up the structures, without the planar mana to level up the structures there is no reason.
Will continue seeing if they actually improve the single person economy, and inviting friends to play with you after you have lvl 7 spells isn't worth it as they will be way under powered to join you, and never catch up. So I wouldn't recommended friends join as the economy is so far shifted to that of a we just felt like putting this cap in because it is what we always do, and don't have any other good ideas, so lets just make it the same as everything else is now. Have people play 3 months then forget about the game and move on.
Just my thoughts on the Planar System as it really is what is wrong with the system, and so low, with way to high of figures on the leveling up stage.
I agree the entire system is a huge mess which is a shame because this is a decent game but it's gonna die real soon if this isn't addressed promptly. With the way the system stands right now it's literally detrimental to play for longer than it takes to just do your dailies each day. If you are playing at the Master level even if you do nothing besides the dailies you will still be over the cap in less than a week, much less in fact. So if you continue to play beyond that point you are effectively wasting thousands of potential Planar Mana from a variety of sources, dailies, reputations, missions, your Mana Vault (that one is particularly painful because with the 2+ day cooldown you would be lucky if you get to use it more than once a week which is just sad), etc. I've been wanting to farm for better new equipment and new mods for existing equipment I already have but there's zero motivation to do it with the way the system works right now.
As a side note the conversion rate of capped Planar Mana to gold is beyond abysmal and what's more even if it wasn't it would still be completely pointless because once you upgrade all your artifacts there is literally nothing to spend your gold on and you are just rolling in it. That is unless you have no life and camp the broker in Sanctum 24/7 hoping that some poor bastard who has no idea how useless gold is happens to sell something from the Zen store and you snatch it up.
Really the entire system needs a major overhaul and ASAP or the game will never make it past the open Beta stage and will stay like this for the foreseeable future (or until the Arc Games can no longer pay the server farm).
The 6th May server restart has been stated to contain no update notes. Please could we at least get a rationale as has already been asked for?
The 13th May update notes contain no mention of this issue. Please could we at least get a rationale as has already been asked for?
While I 100% agree with the OP, if you need an incentive to play magic (the card game, not the ARPG) then you are doing something wrong.
First and foremost I must say I appreciate the mention of caps in general in the state of the game post that was published today (18/05/21). For relevancy:
"We’ve been discussing adjustments to currency caps by looking at where players are at, where the real pinches exist, and how we can adjust them to keep the game balanced but make sure you all feel rewarded for your time in the game."
Before my addendum I will be clear here that my thoughts are primarily based on the speculation that the balancing factor is time. If that is not the case, then please could someone from Cryptic correct me; or at least for my own sanity tell me that is the case?
Given this I would like to stratify my position:
† By fully upgrading I mean getting each structure to level 10, and each Land to 9 using the differential values already observed to determine the scalar increase as speculated here. EDIT: As of the 20th May patch these numbers are outdated.
I believe it's poignant to point out the good as well as things we'd like to see improved. As of the 20th May 2021 patch notes we have had some interesting changes on this matter:
I can feel your pain but they did say a change was coming. I can say I should've waited till this update. The cost has been cut in two for mana requirements which is awesome because that means they are listening and give a hoot. All I say is keep on keeping on. I am hoping for a cookie too mate.
We do know that being a open beta there will be plenty of changes. So even though it hurts (I just spent a lot of planar mana to upgrade realm structures the day before) I am satisfied enough with the change and don't feel wronged at all.
Just helps get players into the content they want. Growing pains as it were. Like falling up stairs, it is a positive direction just a slightly painful solution.
Plus. Free pyromancer. Most excellent.