Update on the Trial of the Planes Event (3/9/17)

khurram · March 2017

MTG_Mage wrote:

Since your restricted to one color of PW you can use the same one in multiple nodes, which makes you run out of potions.
My complaint about it is locking a PW in for each node...we are already restricted to a few choices so using the same PW over and over again is boring and repetitious. Keep the color restriction but DO NOT lock a certain PW to each node and allow a PW choice each time a node is used.

PWs arent locked actually. You can change your pw before entering each battle.

octal9 · March 2017

Alright, I took the free crystals and 100%'d the event.

Thins I liked:
1) the ability to switch PWs on the node. When I come up against an opponent I'm familiar with, (more on that below) I can switch to a PW tailored against my opponent.
2) opponents are event specific - this was my favorite part of the Halloween/vday events and I'm happy to see it here.
3) challenge. The difficulty level is good. I didn't feel a big difference between the last two nodes though.
4) event thematic. I like the idea of "bring out your best and see how it fares," it's a refreshing break from secondary objectives.
5) I actually like the idea of an entry fee but...

Things I don't like:
1) the entry fee is too high! 60 crystals is easy for us top 10ers to come by but it really needs to be balanced among your more casual players. Drop it at least 50% and remove the pack reward. Make the first tier reward 50-66% of the entry fee.
2) I'm really concerned about the unobtanium (jewel) reward. We're looking at 400 for a masterpiece pack which gives us an (unknown) chance at a masterpiece.

The exquisite archangel pack gives an apparent value of $10 to 160 purple, or about $37.50 for 400. If I play just this event (I know there are other sources but I'm going worst case scenario here), it will cost me 1600 crystals to earn that much - somewhere around (I'm eyeballing this) $60-65 - oh, and it would take over a month to earn. That's... a really bad value. And it is only giving me a chance at a masterpiece. A duplicate mythic for $60 would probably cause someone to spike a phone. I'm much better off buying a few weeks of server time for mtgpq.info for that kind of money.
3) the matchmaking is still very broken and, while not specific to this event, it makes me sad. I would LOVE to see more decks from more people - there are so many possibilities out there and so many interesting decks that people have made and sadly, we don't get to experience them because the matchmaking algorithm pits everyone against the same 30 players from a pool of over 20000. it's SO disappointing.

span_argoman · March 2017

My feedback on the event
As a Platinum player, I had a lot of fun fighting against decks that were stacked to be stronger than mine. I had advocated for this before and am glad to see it in practice. This is great to provide a challenge since the AI has not been able to keep up with us human players since OGW. I had a lot of fun fielding my best decks in this event without worrying about meeting secondary objectives. It was like old NOP all over again just more challenging which is even better. I reiterate that I really really like the challenging matches from this event.

Considering that this is an event with an entry fee, I see no issue with it being extra challenging. It's not suited for everyone and looking at its entry fee, it's not meant to be either. However, as many people have brought attention to, the rewards are severely severely lacking for the lower tiers. While I can understand the perspective that lower tiers should have less ready access to Mana Jewels, it is silly to make an event for them that isn't even worth the entry fee. I have highlighted before that this game is not very newbie-friendly. And newbies primarily need more cards to be able to move onto the next phase of the game. This change from Big Boxes and Fat Packs to Premium and Super Packs hurt the lower tiers a lot. There should have been a balance by giving them more boosters in Events to keep their card flow while the higher tiers get lesser cards in exchange for more Mana Jewels.

I would like to propose the following Progression reward structure for Trial of the Planes:
Points: Bronze / Silver / Gold / Platinum
5 : KLD pack . . / KLD pack . ./ KLD pack . . / KLD pack
10: 3-card pack / 3-card pack / 3-card pack / 1 Jewel
20: 1 Jewel . . . / 2 Jewels . . / 2 Jewels . . / 2 Jewels
30: 750 Runes . / 1000 Runes / 5 Crystals . / 3 Jewels
40: 3-card pack / 3-card pack / 3 Jewels . . / 4 Jewels
50: 2 Jewels . . / 3 Jewels . . / 4 Jewels . . ./ 5 Jewels
60: 3-card pack / KLD pack . ./ KLD pack . . / KLD pack

Main things to note are that the Jewels rewards stay the same but there's more room for additional stuff at the lower tiers. Bronze and Silver get additional Runes to help level up their planeswalkers and additional 3-card packs in the middle so they get more cards for their 60 Crystals. The KLD pack at the end is for a perfect score, which I think those of us who have played the event know isn't guaranteed. But having a bigger incentive for perfecting the event attracts people to try for it. The point is that there has to be a reward for effort. Otherwise, as people point out they might as well just save up for Premium Packs considering the current Progression rewards. The cost of ensuring a Mythic (without even guarantee that it won't be a duplicate or a bad one) ie. earning Mana Jewels is too high for lower tiers with the current reward structure of Trial of the Planes.

The net increase for each tier up will become:-
To Silver: +250 Runes, +2 Jewels, KLD pack instead of 3-card pack for final tier
To Gold: +3 Jewels, +5 Crystals, -1000 Runes, -3-card pack
To Platinum: +7 Jewels, -5 Crystals, -3-card pack
I would argue that a 3-card pack is insignificant to Gold and Platinum players so taking that away in exchange for Jewels (and Crystals for Gold) would be an attractive option for moving up.

Opportunity Cost
Now as we mentioned, not all the players will be able to hit perfect scores, so the rewards for players who lose 1-2 matches will be as follow:
Bronze: 1 KLD pack, 3 Jewels, 2 3-card packs, 750 Runes
Silver: 1 KLD pack, 5 Jewels, 2 3-card packs, 1000 Runes
Gold: 1 KLD pack, 8 Jewels, 1 3-card pack, 5 Crystals
Platinum: 1 KLD pack, 15 Jewels

Which to me looks fine (but feel free to comment). The lower tier players then have to decide whether they want to hoard their crystals to buy a Premium Pack which would net them a guaranteed Rare, or if they want to put in more effort to (over the course of 5 weekdays) get 15/25 extra Jewels, 10 more 3-card packs and 3750/5000 Runes. This is of course conditional on their decks being able to win 10/12 matches. But even if they lose another Progression band, the loss of the 2/3 Jewels are arguably the least valuable item to the lower tier players in the short term.

As for Gold players, it's a guaranteed Rare versus 40 Jewels, 25 Crystals and 5 3-card packs. Put it another way, that's a guaranteed Rare versus 0.1 Mythics, an 8% rebate and ehh 15 cards which you may or may not care about. Perhaps when a set is newly released, Premium Packs would be a bigger draw. But once you start collecting a significant number of Rares, the Trials might start becoming an attractive option. And I think having this kind of choice in the game would be a good thing.

For Platinum players, it's a guaranteed Rare versus 75 Jewels. That's 18.75% of a Mythic. As a Platinum player, I get a sufficiently steady stream of new Rares from events (and sometimes QB). Mythics are what I want to increase my chances of getting. Having an avenue to draw a guaranteed Mythic is a good option to me. So as a Platinum player I have no qualms about participating in Trial of the Planes as long as I can scrounge the Crystals to take part.

Another suggestion which would really help is to guarantee no duplicates of the player's existing Mythics/Masterpieces for the Elite Pack only. Enough people have elaborated on why. Just seriously think about the difference that makes.

MTG_Mage wrote:

Did not like the event

Its quick battle with your opponent getting an advantage. Problem with the random opponent is you cant prep for it.

Since your restricted to one color of PW you can use the same one in multiple nodes, which makes you run out of potions.
My complaint about it is locking a PW in for each node...we are already restricted to a few choices so using the same PW over and over again is boring and repetitious. Keep the color restriction but DO NOT lock a certain PW to each node and allow a PW choice each time a node is used.

You are allowed to change planeswalkers even in the same node. Just tap on the planeswalker banner in the bottom left when you're in the node to switch to another planeswalker. The 'locking' of the planeswalker at the event screen is actually superfluous.

speakupaskanswer · March 2017

Just another feedback that will sound familiar: I enjoyed the event format but I will not pay

again to play in it because it's simply a bad deal. Crystals have become more rare as it is and if I want to continue getting packs that have a chance for good cards or the occasional PW, I can't waste them on an event that gives close to nothing for it, especially since I can get

in other, free, events now. All in all, it's a good idea ruined by a bad idea.

ErikInVegas · March 2017

Once again it's very obvious that the people making these choices don't actually play the game with their own money which should disqualify them from design choices.

I understand that whales appear disproportionately profitable compared to other players BUT whales don't pay for games that don't have other players which is the situation MTG:PQ is headed towards.

MBA programs are still teaching how 'cleverly' Zynga 'maximized' revenue by burning players but what they're not teaching is that overexploitation of the playerbase alienated so many players that it crashed their stock price to just over $2 and they barely escaped bankruptcy. 5 years later they're at what? $2.80? The general market doubled and other tech stocks tripled and more....

They're still doing MBA internships so people can learn how to underperform.....

Shaidar · March 2017

Hey just a few thoughts from me, I just did the event for the sake of trying, so what I liked:
1. First of all I liked the idea of daily event that is fairly quick.
2. The challenge was interesting.
3. I liked the part where the PWs you can encounter are only ones enlisted in the event.

What I disliked:
1. Overall the entry fee and rewards seems like you're pointing middle finger at me while laughing.
2. The randomness, oh my, I can't even comment it, it's like 16 games, 12 of them against the same guy. Even though that was beneficial for me it wasn't fun AT ALL... I guess for some guys it might mean 12 losses straight away.
3. The progress of the rewards seemed weird and from what I heard the fact that different tiers get different rewards for the same fee is just meh.

Overall:
The event as a event wasn't THAT bad but the cost/reward is just not thought. There was really good lecture about game rewards done by one of the senior designers in Blizzard during this year's GDC (http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/rewa ... ideo-games), I'd suggest watching it once it's out in the vault. You're doing it perfect so far on what they said they've said you should NOT do. In general the whole idea of the currency is **** in my opinion and at least to me is like obvious way to gain more cash. And further more the entire patch was like trying to squeeze more and more money of the game which makes me feel less and less interested in the game. Furthermore releasing a 550

for $$ is like sticking it even more in the face - "Give us even more money, we'll possibly give you even cooler mythics".

So at least for me this game is more or less dying if not dead already, I'll stick around a few more weeks just out of curiosity how this **** will develop but I doubt you'll do anything meaningful to fix it. No offense but your designers aren't the brightest and that's being proven over and over and over again.

hawkyh1 · March 2017

I've used my free crystals to try out the event.

winning jewels 1 at a time feels rather unexciting.
what can I trade my jewels for?
how long will it take me to get 400 jewels?

what I think might make things more interesting is to
have a roster rotation of rares available for jewels.
instead of saving for a premium pack with a guaranteed
rare I could then compete for a chance of a rare that I
want. it'll cost more than 300 crystals on average but
for those looking for better chances at non dupe rares
this might work.(so effectively you'll get the same 5
boosters + rare but you can choose to trade in your
chance for a desirable rare when the roster favours you)
otherwise there doesn't seem to be anything worthwhile
for bronze and silver players.

HH

losdamianos · March 2017

LakeStone wrote:

Hi Everyone -

For starters, Masterpiece cards are the most valuable cards in the game, and we have made them a rare commodity, both to give our most advanced players something new to play with, but also to keep them from introducing power creep that will make the game harder for beginners. They should be the furthest thing from common and earning Mana Jewels to get boosters from the Masterpiece Collection is something that will take players some time.

I still dont get the idea of jewels why not keep what we already have dont change anything and just charge X times more for Masterpiece booster. Mythic used to be 350 so If masterpiece is 6-7 times harder 2000 crystals would be a reasonable price ?

Rough Tonality · March 2017

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium wrote:

How did I do? Ran a Kiora-Baral for all the nodes... you tell me

I hate you. lol

Kicksnake · March 2017

I liked the challenge going up as progress is made

But... for the rewards the time spent wasn't worth it (even at platinum)

I didn't bother finishing the 10 crystals at the end.

Plus.... all the other stuff everyone has already said about cost/prize value.

Update on the Trial of the Planes Event (3/9/17)

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