Why I am Upset about the Divine Scroll Drop Rate Increase
Less than two weeks ago, I began the process of repeatedly running through the Minotaur dungeon in order to max out masteries on my champions. Since then, I have earned 5,133 divine (red) scrolls. At an average of 4.5 scrolls per run, this represents approximately 1,141 runs through the Minotaur in addition to those required to obtain the lower-tier scrolls.
Today, changes were made to the game that will allow players to earn scrolls twice as quickly as they could in the past two weeks. If I have started running Minotaur tier 15 today instead of two weeks ago, I would have saved 570 runs, on average. This represents 7,980 energy and (given an average of about 3.5 minutes/run) over 33 hours of play time. Additionally, because I used gems to refresh my energy for Minotaur runs in particular, this represents a cost of 2,660 gems. Even if I account for natural energy regeneration over this period, I certainly spent over 2,000 gems just on this group of divine scrolls.
Was this worth it? I thought so at the time. I enjoy the game, and wanted to max out my masteries. But it’s clear that I would not have spent this time and money if I’d had any indication whatsoever that changes would be made to drop rates. This was not a decision that the developers made recently, and they could have informed us of the intention to change drop rates weeks or months ago, even if they hadn’t yet zeroed in on specific numbers.
I understand that changes are made to games all the time, and that changes to things like champion power are inevitable. I frequent the Plarium forum, the Reddit forum, and the official Discord channel. Over the past week or two, I’ve been recommending to clan-mates and on Reddit that players wait for mastery respecs because of the change to WM, and wait for skill book allocation because of changes to champions. In other words, I’ve been trying to use the information available to help other players make the best possible decisions.
Unfortunately, I feel that the lack of communication about upcoming changes caused me to spend 33 hours and 2000+ gems that would not have been necessary if I’d waited two weeks. Now, the time and money I spent feels like a complete waste.
I often defend companies (and have defended Plarium) when players say they are “entitled” to things. As a player, however, I do feel entitled to be able to make informed decisions about how I spend my time and money in a game. Because I didn’t know of the impending changes to Minotaur rewards, I wasted my time, my in-game resources, and my money.
On a final note, let me say clearly that I think this is a good change for the game, overall. I am glad that other players will not have to spend the same amount of time that I did on the Minotaur. I’m not saying that this change is bad; rather, I’m saying that it was handled badly by the developers and/or CMs, and that it represents a significant disrespect for the time and energy of players.
