Sealed League Costs

[MarcinS]

What's to stop players from creating accounts and exploiting leagues by conceding games to one singular account?

It's not like you have the most foolproof setup right now either.
-wtk

The difference is, that this requires 10 accounts and is easily spottable (player on top of rankings, who has not played against anyone else), vs 3 accounts and player is lost on the 50th place in the rankings.

[ket_the_jet]

Sure, you've accounted for the one primary account. But if you have the other 9 teams play each other to various success rates to have them all end up in the middle of the pack [with a few outliers in either direction] then you're system is beaten again.

The point is that nothing is perfect, so why wouldn't you want to reward players for participation. League prizes are pretty terrible. Common foils? Singular packs? You have to be fiercely competitive in a given week to get a decent promotional card, and that doesn't foster creativity in decks when everyone ends up playing corsairs or troll swarm, etc.
-wtk

[MarcinS]

Sure, you've accounted for the one primary account. But if you have the other 9 teams play each other to various success rates to have them all end up in the middle of the pack [with a few outliers in either direction] then you're system is beaten again.

If they are in the "middle of the pack", then there is only a little return above the entry prize.

The point is that nothing is perfect, so why wouldn't you want to reward players for participation. League prizes are pretty terrible. Common foils? Singular packs? You have to be fiercely competitive in a given week to get a decent promotional card, and that doesn't foster creativity in decks when everyone ends up playing corsairs or troll swarm, etc.
-wtk

Yeah, I was considering giving no prizes at all for non-collector's league, based on the "You Get Out of It What, You Put Into It" principle. Since there is no investment in cards required to play, no cards should be given out as a result.

Anyway, hsiale and CoS will be working on revamping the leagues and tournaments, lets hope they will come up with something. If they decide we should be giving out cards left and right, I'm fine, but that will quickly result in card devaluation and making the Collector's tournaments and leagues obsolete, which is something I want to avoid.

[ket_the_jet]

Sure, you've accounted for the one primary account. But if you have the other 9 teams play each other to various success rates to have them all end up in the middle of the pack [with a few outliers in either direction] then you're system is beaten again.

If they are in the "middle of the pack", then there is only a little return above the entry prize.

With ten teams, you could have one perfect run, two or three near-perfect runs, and the rest stumble into mediocrity.

Anyway, I still contend that there should be nominal prizes for any game played. If you are giving out 50 gold a week automatically, then maybe it could be 10 for a win and 5 for a loss? This is just an example...I'm not going to go into the mathematics of it but if a player effectively has the choice of joining a league or buying packs, what's the point?

Let's not forget, the real value of all of this is 0.
-wtk

[MarcinS]

I'm not going to go into the mathematics of it but if a player effectively has the choice of joining a league or buying packs, what's the point?

Well, that's the general idea and you summarized what I wanted to achieve. If you don't like a format/type of a league or don't have time to play in all leagues, you can just skip one, two or three and you're not "losing out" that much. Which is the reason, why leagues should not be giving out anything for free, or for little to no time/effort investment. Not playing a league was supposed to be a fair alternative, with just a little bit of downside, as if you compete, on average you'll have positive EV.

Let's not forget, the real value of all of this is 0.

Which is an argument to remove "My cards" collection and collector's leagues altogether, correct?