Hey everyone!

Thanks again for all the feedback following some recent adjustments to the trade meter.

We thought we would expand on a few points regarding keeping the game viable while maintaining a healthy trade culture and confirm our next steps.

Having virtually unlimited trading in a game is really, really, difficult. Firstly, if you want to be generous with players - which we aim to be - then trading creates a strong incentive to find a means of making multiple accounts to trade all the free stuff back into a main account. Not all players, certainly, but a few that are, um, aggressively entrepreneurial. Restricting this raises other problems like how do you ensure you’re not penalising players who are part of the same group, or family, who are trading to support one keen player? It’s difficult.

Then there’s making the business sustainable. The universe of cards available through trading only increases, so more players can get large numbers of cards at an accelerated pace without spending any money. What speaks volumes about the quality of the player community is the fact there are so many of you who are really generous and ready to help others. However, as a business, it makes income really hard to predict.

Finally, there are cynical players out to take advantage of those who haven't got a handle on the relative value of cards such as newer players and those new players who make lots of bad offers, ‘pestering’ veterans and eventually getting frustrated because the cards they want seem so hard to come by.

This is nothing you’re not already aware of, but perhaps it sets some context for the question: Is the Trade Meter there to restrict or advise players?

The answer is, well, both.

We want to guide newer players as to what is a reasonable trade for their cards - so that they don’t get ripped off and feel bad, and so they don’t annoy other players with imbalanced trades.

And, we want to restrict imbalanced trades so that we don’t have to police ‘multi-accounters’ and so that the economy (and our ability to generate revenue) isn’t disrupted.

We are fully aware that the trade meter isn’t perfect and can produce odd results but it does, at least, treat all players equally.

Our plan is to continue to work on the trading algorithm to make it more reflective of how you would value cards. We will make more adjustments in the near future and we will let you know ahead of time. In the meantime, we have made the meter a bit more relaxed in the hope that this improves things until then.

Thanks for taking the time to read this - and please keep the feedback coming.