Re: Gems grind rate is TOO slow

Well, it's a shame you appeared to be unable to keep the discussion constructive. So be it, I don't think I should waste any more of my time on you, highly unlikely you are able to add anything useful.

I have a few problems with many of the ideas in post.

"Hearthstone, the game pvz heroes tries to imitate, and I reached legend rank there".

This sounds to me like it comes from someone who's only experience in CCGs is Hearthstone. PvZ Heroes is actually one of the more uinque CCGs out there right now, with the main similarity to Hearthstone only being that it has a climbing resource value and you draw a card each turn (and this is because almost all online CCGs play like this with a few exceptions like Solforge). On the other hand it has many differences: it's lane based, it's asymetric (plants play differently than zombies), and has things like the block meter that make it a very different experience. Oh, I guess it has ranked play and quests, I guess that's why you think they are similar games (even though most CCGs use this popular system of rewards and competitive play).

"There are no premium currency there".

Yes there is, its called money. You can buy packs and entry to the arena directly with money. The only difference to here is that you have to take one extra step here to first buy gems, then buy whatever you want with those gems.

"Free means free and gems aren't free in this game."

Yes there are. It is true that there aren't an unlimited amount of gems per day in this game, but neither are there in Hearthstone. You are limited to 1 quest per day and a certain number of gold that you can grind. Ranked is just as limited and as difficult as it is here (though I definitely had a much easier time climbing this ladder than the one in Hearthstone) and the only really "unlimited" way to grind in Hearthstone is the Arena. I don't know if they will add something like that here, it would certainly be nice, and we can certainly hope but give it some time, this game is only a few months old while Hearthstone has a few years behind it.

"Ever heard of "time is money"? I've even specifically mentioned it in the OP, 40-50 gems per day is nothing since you need 2000 for the most obvious purchase. Time investment is too much for the reward you get in the end"

This is the most pathetic thing of the whole post though. Basically, you are equating playing PvZ: Heroes to having a job. "Time is money"!? Yeah, that applies when you are working or taking care of a family or something constructive but THIS IS A GAME!!! You don't play to make money, you play to have fun so basically the time you spend on this game is your freaking return on investment, not the other way around. If playing this game is a chore, then, yeah, don't play it, but don't write bullwad about Time is money!

Of course, you are free to give feedback to the developers saying that you feel that the progression is too slow for you, which is what you really meant to say, I believe. Personally, I disagree, though. I found that getting the full set of commons during the first few weeks of playing and then purchasing the 2K packs from gems obtained from the quests and ladder gave me a very decent speed of card acquisition. Perhaps your problem is that you are not getting as many of the highest rarity cards (legendaries) as in other games (Hearthstone) but then you really have to think about just how important they are. With the current metagame I can guarantee you that legendaries are by no means critical to having decks that succeed.

It also sounds to me like you are incredibly impatient and are incapable of enjoying a game for what it is. You don't need to get all the cards within the first month to have fun or be competitive, that's just not how it is supposed to work and if that's how you expect it to work then no wonder you are upset and seem to think that the game needs money to be played.

Here was my progression:

First 2-3 weeks: Got the first 6 heroes and spent $6 for the starter pack to get an extra hero. Played enough to get all the quest gems (since you can accumulate 3, you can sleep 9 hours without missing out) and got my first 2K pack. I was lucky enough to get 2 new heroes, though back then they didn't have any hero quests and you only got half the cards you get now, but that was enough to improve all my decks considerably and make it even more fun.

Next 2-3 weeks: Got up to 700gems and then got a flash sale for 1300gems so I went for it. Only got 1 hero though (and half the cards you get now). 

Took a 1 month break.

Next 2-3 weeks: Got another 2k gems and this time got a whooping 3 heroes.

Final 3-4 weeks ☹️after global release) This time there were hero quests so between that and the ladder and the normal quests and the weekly 100gems quest I eventually got to about 4k. I played a bit more and eventually hit that elusive 5k gem mark and decided to go for it. Got only 1 new hero but lots and lots of cards (and planty of legendaries, about 5!)

To me this is a pretty great rate of progression. It took me about 3-4 months to get to taco league. During this time I had many, many hours of fun playing and a smooth progression. To me, that is a good thing, since, you know, I downloaded this game to spend time on it for fun, not to arbitrarily get gems.

If to you this sounds like a terrible deal to you, then that's your problem right there, you are just focusing on quantity of rewards as opposed to looking at what the fun and joy you get from the resources you have in the game.

I am sorry, before we proceed any further do you mind opening the sticky thread of this forum, you know, this one http://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/PvZ-Heroes-Worldwide-Launch-is-here/m-p/5634444 and telling me the date of it? Maybe my reading comprehension is lacking.

Sorry, from this reply, I thought you had understood but now I re-read it...

"You could indeed be playing for 30 weeks, sure. If you're a developer or one of the special snowflakes who live in a country when PvZ:H got an closed release on iOS, when everything was basically free indeed, heroes were actually dropping from packs unlike now etc. etc."

It looks like you didn't. But don't worry, it's not from a problem with reading comprehension, just from not knowing where to look.

I will explain.

The game has been released in what is called "limited release" for about 6 months now in various countries around the world. You can see the original announcement back in May.

https://www.pvzheroes.com/news/introducing-plants-vs-zombies-heroes

This should explain the miscommunication here. Basically, there is a large number of people around the world who have been playing this game for a while now. You should also know that things where not free and in fact were more expensive in general because back then we didn't have hero quests and the packs contained HALF the cards that you get now. Feedback was given and behold, they doubled the number of cards you get for you special people in the world-wide release. While that felt really bad for those of use who got a bunch of half packs, you should know that even with just have the cards you got, we were all able to make very fun and competitive decks.

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@megraam wrote:
So you were the part of this limited release until the have decided in a truly EA way things are too easy for players who don't pay2play and cut everything. 

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Quite the opposite. EA made it EASIER for players who don't pay. They made the pack contain twice the number of cards. They also made it so that at least 3 of the 6 cards have a chance of being rare or higher. Before only one of the 3 you got could be rare or higher.

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@megraam wrote:
You have got a 100 gems quest weekly and I have seen 1 quest like this in 3 weeks,

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To tell the truth, I haven't confirmed it's weekly. Somebody in reddit said they were seeing it weekly and I'm pretty sure I've seen it at least once a week. This is AFTER the global release so nothing has changed. Perhaps it's not guaranteed to be weekly and I was just having good luck.

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@megraam wrote:
You were actually able to get heroes from packs and the whole forum is swarmed with us who don't get any heroes at all etc.etc.

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Perhaps they did reduce the probability of getting heroes and maybe even legends. Probably to be more in line with the drop rate in other CCGs since they were considerably high (I've opened many packs in hearthstone and have like 5 legends total!) But the fact is that you don't need many heroes or many legends to be competitive or to have fun. They certainly add to the variety though but you can expect to get them as part of the progression through the game. I repeat YOU DON'T NEED THEM ALL!

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@megraam wrote:
So you being part of this release don't get how things are for those who play since actual release. If you claim time isn't an investment here, how about you dust all you have got till 18th of October? Because like you said time doesn't matter here, right?

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I was actually considering just creating another account so that I could get more cards from the gems you get from the ladder since the packs have doubled in size. Do I need to repeat this? DOUBLED IN SIZE!!! I decided not to since I was happy with where I was in the progression. It's kind of like just restarting an RPG. You might do that if you want to play through it all again, but if there is no need to, then you just continue on.

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@megraam wrote:

Next, Hearthstone doesn't have a premium currency. You can buy packs for gold. You can win packs in arena when pay2win factor is nonexistent, only your skill matters. You can do it as much as you want. Here you get 70-80 gems per day and that's it, bye.

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Saying that Hearthstone doesn't have premium currency is meaningless because you can still use money to buy packs or to buy entry to the arena, so that's basically the equivalent of a premium currency. If I pay $10 to buy a couple of packs its EXACTLY THE SAME THING as paying $10 to buy some gems to buy a couple of packs. And similar to the fact that you only get 70-80 gems here, you only get a limited amount of gold per day in Hearthstone when playing ranked or unranked, but frankly I find that the usefulness of the cards you get in PvZ is actually more than the cards you get in Hearthstone per time spent playing.

Now granted, it does have the arena, but as I said before, it is also an older game and we don't know if PvZ won't add a similar game mode in the future. After all, it's only a few months old.

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@megraam wrote:
And time IS an investment here. All games are on this basis: you either waste a lot if time waiting to get a quest or you buy it for money.
Time/money ratio here is screwed, this is my point. 

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Nope, this is pathetic. If you are not having fun playing, then just don't play, play something else. Unless you are working for a gem farmer so as to sell an account (which is against the TOS and should be illegal), the time you spend should be time you are enjoying. The more time you spend playing a game and having fun, the better. If this is not your case then you really need to rethink your life and what you are getting from playing video games.

Now, if you are not having fun because you are being beaten up, then you just need to find a less competitive game or one with a progression that suits you.

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@megraam wrote:

And I don't even mention paid cards which you can't get from non$$$ packs and you can't craft it. Turkey anyone?

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As long as there are ways to play the game competitively without having to own those cards, who gives a rat's tail? Consider it an extra thing, a collector's item, something to entice people to spend money so they can have a business model, you know, to invest more time into making more cards and stuff. 

1. Pay2win?

What? How is this game PAy2win. I have a LOT of legendary cards, and I hardly include any of them in most of my best decks. They actually did a poor job with a lot of the legends. I know for sure a lot of players got to rank 40 without paying a dime. I am doing great without paying a dime too, so I don't see how this game is pay2win. If anything, you need to invest a lot of time to farm legendary cards in hearthstone to win. I am also a constant legends player in hearthstone, and I have to say the grind is much harder there in terms of obtaining a competitive deck.

2. Gems/currency

Does it matter? you can get to a good rank with just basic cards or rare or below. I am pretty sure it is your misconception that the grind is harder here because you have played hearthstone for a long time, and you forgot how long it took you to get a competitive deck. I remember when i started, and I never put money into hearthstone, I didn't get a real competitive deck for 6 months (took 3 months to get my first legendary card, which was lorewalker cho LOL).

3. Imitating hearthstone

I don't even know how to respond to this, if you think this game is imitating hearthstone, you simply have not played enough CCGs.

As far as the reduction in probabilities of getting legendaries in packs goes, here is my experience:

During the initial release I bought 3x2k packs, plus 3 starter packs, plus I opened about 10 packs from the hero quests, plus the first pack you get during the tutorial (you purchase it for 100 gems).

That's 3x23+ 10 + 2 = 83 packs.

I got 7 heroes (plus 1 guaranteed)

trickster

barrel pirate

9000

double mint

= 11 legends for 83 packs that's 1 legend every 7.5 packs

After the release I bought 1x5k pack and have opened 4 packs from hero quests.

That's 64 packs. 

1 hero

9000x2

bananasaurus

hero wannabe

octazombie

armour plant

= 7 legends, for 64 packs that's 1 legend every 9.1 packs.

Obviously this is just anecdotal data and not necessarily representative of whatever the real probabilities are, but a drop from 1 in 7.5 to 1 in 9.1 doesn't really seem very significant to me, specially given that the packs DOUBLED IN SIZE!

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@Gabochido wrote:

Quite the opposite. EA made it EASIER for players who don't pay. They made the pack contain twice the number of cards. They also made it so that at least 3 of the 6 cards have a chance of being rare or higher. Before only one of the 3 you got could be rare or higher.

Except they haven't. Who cares if it's now twice the number when the heroes drop rate is, you know, 10-15 times lower? There is a guy above bragging how he has all the heroes easily and he is playing since this betatest. And we, who actually played since 18th of October, hasn't got a hero from the 30 packs at all. I am not the only one here.

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@Gabochido wrote:

To tell the truth, I haven't confirmed it's weekly. Somebody in reddit said they were seeing it weekly and I'm pretty sure I've seen it at least once a week. This is AFTER the global release so nothing has changed. Perhaps it's not guaranteed to be weekly and I was just having good luck.

 

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Having a good luck here is irrelevant then. I have seen one quest like these during these weeks and that was it. You can't include it on daily basis, these quests are an exception, not a rule. And this is how quests are THESE days.  

Isn't it a nice fun easy quest which fills your quest bar, wastes your renew cooldown and wastes your actual chance to get a new proper quest which has reward more than 10 gems? Next in line: play with a hero you don't have, buy things in store for $100 etc. etc.

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@Gabochido wrote:

Perhaps they did reduce the probability of getting heroes and maybe even legends. Probably to be more in line with the drop rate in other CCGs since they were considerably high (I've opened many packs in hearthstone and have like 5 legends total!) But the fact is that you don't need many heroes or many legends to be competitive or to have fun. They certainly add to the variety though but you can expect to get them as part of the progression through the game. I repeat YOU DON'T NEED THEM ALL!

Of course you don't need them all. However, the situation here is that you should say "you don't need them AT all", any other statement is irrelevant to the situation. Because we don't have them at all. Hero drop is a natural boost in form of gems, cards and premium pack from the hero quests. You were without hero quests at first but you've got it eventually and completed them all. Anyway, playing since closed release has given you an opportunity to have all heroes. We struggle to get at least one. This is a problem.

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@Gabochido wrote:

I was actually considering just creating another account so that I could get more cards from the gems you get from the ladder since the packs have doubled in size. Do I need to repeat this? DOUBLED IN SIZE!!! I decided not to since I was happy with where I was in the progression. It's kind of like just restarting an RPG. You might do that if you want to play through it all again, but if there is no need to, then you just continue on.

What a hypocrisy. "I have got a lot of heroes and cards when drop rate was high so I have though to remove all my HUGE advantage I have got from this time but then I thought again and decided not to do it". Great. how about you actually prove your point by deeds and start a new account for sure? Then you are going to see what I am talking about.

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@Gabochido wrote:

Saying that Hearthstone doesn't have premium currency is meaningless because you can still use money to buy packs or to buy entry to the arena, so that's basically the equivalent of a premium currency. If I pay $10 to buy a couple of packs its EXACTLY THE SAME THING as paying $10 to buy some gems to buy a couple of packs. And similar to the fact that you only get 70-80 gems here, you only get a limited amount of gold per day in Hearthstone when playing ranked or unranked, but frankly I find that the usefulness of the cards you get in PvZ is actually more than the cards you get in Hearthstone per time spent playing.

Now granted, it does have the arena, but as I said before, it is also an older game and we don't know if PvZ won't add a similar game mode in the future. After all, it's only a few months old.

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Yes, and rewards you get in hearthstone without paying money are MUCH MORE than in pvz:h when you do the same.

1. Time investment: if you do include the arena which is a huge advantage over lack of such in pvzh, then it blows pvzh out of the water immediately. p2w doesn't matter in arena, you can play it as much as you want, you get a really nice rewards there AND have fun. This is a perfect way to spend time before you are able to build yourself a deck for the ladder. Do I need to remind you don't have to be a genius to make arena in your game? It's nothing but oversimplified mtg draft after all. Do I need to remind you it was in hearthstone from the very beginning so argument about old game is irrelevant?

2. Crafting: check the hearthstone system. You have to dust 320 commons/80uncommons/16rares to craft a legendary. Would you please tell me how many commons do I have to disenchant in pvz:h in order to get the legendary, huh? Hearthstone has a 2 cards per deck limit so you have to keep only 2 copies and dust the others. PVZh has 4 cards limit (which is really stupid since the deck is 40, not 60 cards) so you have to keep all 4, as in crafting cost is multiplied by 2.

3. Time investment for the ladder: in hearthstone you get enough money to buy a pack every 3 wins daily. Would you please, pretty please, tell me how many games does one need to win in order to buy a pack here? ESPECIALLY since you are given H coins for winning and H pack isn't actually a pack.

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@Gabochido wrote:

Nope, this is pathetic. If you are not having fun playing, then just don't play, play something else. Unless you are working for a gem farmer so as to sell an account (which is against the TOS and should be illegal), the time you spend should be time you are enjoying. The more time you spend playing a game and having fun, the better. If this is not your case then you really need to rethink your life and what you are getting from playing video games.

Now, if you are not having fun because you are being beaten up, then you just need to find a less competitive game or one with a progression that suits you.

Well, this was my exact point though.

This game isn't fun to play because time investment necessary for the progression isn't really worth it and they bottleneck you to a point you can't progress anymore. So it's time for me to uninstall it and warn everyone who don't want to spend an additional $500 to do the same unless they change it and make it fun again.

And pay2win like pvzh doesn't mean more competitive at all.

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@Yzakami wrote:
>Crafting: check the hearthstone system. You have to dust 320 commons/80uncommons/16rares to craft a legendary. Would you please tell me how many commons do I have to disenchant in pvz:h in order to get the legendary, huh?

This is where I know you're a troll.

1) Can't disenchant basics in PVZH

2) Same disenchant:craft ratio as Hearthstone.

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It appears you're unfortunately unfamiliar with a concept of rhetorical questions. Kindly educate yourself before you proceed.

Anyway, you have given the answer I have 'asked' for: commons of Hearthstone are disenchanted for 5 dust and basics of pvzh are 'recycled' for 0 sparks as they can't be disenchanted at all.

Simple as that. You need 320 commons to craft a legendary in HS and you can't craft it disenchanting basics in PVZH.

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@Yzakami wrote:
Huh, you can disenchant uncommons (aka PVZH's commons) instead, which give more sparks and hence less are required to craft legendaries... thanks for proving yourself wrong! 🙂

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Ahhh, so you equal pvzh UNCOMMONS to HS COMMONS? Good, good. Now please be a good boy and answer a question for me: in HS you get 100 gold for 3 wins, so you can buy a pack for this gold. How many wins do you have to get in PVZH to get a pack equal to a HS pack, huh? Please, do your math, I am all ears.

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@Yzakami wrote:
>How many wins do you have to get in PVZH to get a pack equal to a HS pack, huh? Please, do your math, I am all ears.

That I'm not quite sure about, however you may try selling the salt from your posts to buy packs in PVZH <3

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So first you've called me a troll and then switched to trolling yourself? How nice. Well in gold league (the last one you can actually progress steady without being p2w) you get 35 gems per advancing a rank. To advance a rank you need 8-10 wins counting the win streak/breaks, which brings us to 24-30 wins per pack. Almost 10 times more than HS.

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@bringerofdarknes wrote:
Maybe you never watched any of the YouTube videos during the games Soft Release in Select Countries showing off how easy it was to get basically everything in the game I for 1 certainly have they nerfed the hell out of everything and made it harder to get than it was before!!! It would certainly explain why you are calling everything easy to get and saying we're wrong well I'm here to tell you you're wrong because I've seen it myself so argue all you want but these complaints are not lies, truth

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They haven't watched these videos, they have played by then themselves. Quite ironic they are such in a denial now about it.