Pre-Release (v1.4) Notes (4/14/16)

loroku

LakeStone wrote:

- You can now sell card duplicates for runes.
Commons sell for 20 runes
Uncommons sell for 40 runes
Rares sell for 200 runes
Mythics sell for 1000 runes
To sell your duplicates, you can go into your inventory and tap the “Convert duplicates” button.
While we may or may not add a new function for duplicate cards in the future, we do not currently have any plans to do so.

I - and I'm guessing others who read this forum - will not be converting our cards when this releases because these prices are extremely undervalued. 1 mythic is worth 3 quick battles? That can't be right.

My personal suggestion:
common - 50
uncom - 100
rare - 500
mythic - 2500

That seems a bit closer. This thread has more opinions:
viewtopic.php?f=36&t=42852

loroku

Hibernum_JC wrote:

There was a mistake on our part when writing the patch notes - the data used to compare the stats is different than what it was in-game (there was an inconsistency that is now actually resolved). Regardless of the previous data, the new information is what will be in-game at the time of the patch.

As for Chandra, the goal was also to reduce her board control a little bit - Red is adept at dealing fast damage to Planeswalkers, but not so much to the board (she needs to spells to deal with the board, which are a more finite and limited resource). Her 2nd ability now costs more so she lost board control, but gained a lot of direct damage, which accomplishes two things: it puts her more in-line with her intended design and it speeds up games. Chandra's 3rd ability now is an actual, real finisher, and is meant to shorten games.

As stated before in multiple threads, we want to speed up the game (including when playing as slower Planeswalkers) so this is a step in that direction. We will see if game length actually massively changes or not - we hope it does, but we'll see if it actually does or not.

Thank you for clarifying! That makes a lot more sense.

alextfish

Yuck. Those are some massive nerfs across the whole planeswalker suite. I mainly play Chandra and Gideon, because I like to control and stabilise the board then win at my leisure (yeah, I don't do very well in Quick Battle tournaments, but it's just my kind of fun).

Taking Chandra's main board control tool up to 9 from 6 is a hugely painful nerf. (I had stopped levelling her at 43, obviously. And I can see that's a bit of a silly state. But wow, I wish the cost of Scorching Strike level 3 could have come down rather than being a pure nerf to levels 1 and 2.)

I most loved Gideon for the vigilance his first ability gave. I guess I'll still get it because I've got him at pretty high level, so the change doesn't affect me much, but I can see a bunch of people being gutted at this.

The changes to Liliana's Grave Mist make sense, and I guess the changes to Jace do too. I can see how Ingenuity would constrain your hand in designing spells.

alextfish

Hibernum_JC wrote:

scydrex wrote:

The second card is Languish. I was playing a Quick Battle and I hit two creatures with it. One was a 4/4 that had become 5/5 because of a Chief of the Foundry in the battlefield. Languish killed the Chief as it was supposed to, but the other creature, which should have died as well, since it was not receiving +1/+1 anymore, remained in play as a 1/1.

.
Cruel Revival is a peculiar case - it's a question of Black's "Pay for power" design motto. In this case, the cost is requiring a Zombie in your graveyard. It fits very well with the idea behind Black as a whole.

As for Languish, this is actually working as designed. Both creatures are getting damaged simultaneously, and everything resolves at the same time. What you're seeing happen is the following:

Both creatures are hit with -4/-4. Both creatures receive 4 points of damage, killing the Chief and leaving the other 5/5 as 1/1. Chief dies, so the buff is removed. The thing is that when receiving damage, you always reduce the buffed portion of Toughness first. So the 5/5 is basically a 4/4 with 1 extra Power and 1 extra Toughness. When it receives 4 points of damage, the 1 extra Toughness gets removed first. That's why you end up with a 1/1 at the end - stat buffs are always removed before the card's actual stats.

I don't know if that made sense, and I'd be more than happy to explain it a different way if it's too complex

I urge you to reconsider this design choice in a future patch, and get someone who understands the real Magic: the Gathering Comprehensive Rules to consult with your design team. In general, when a MTGPQ card looks like it does the same thing as its corresponding MtG card, it should do. When a creature like Chief of the Foundry dies, its buff should be removed from the creatures' "base" power and toughness.

I'm fine with you redesigning cards for the different gameplay needs of MTGPQ, such as making Chief affect all creatures not just artifact creatures. I'm even fine with removing the "up to" from Cruel Revival's text like you've done, though it could really do with better wording to make it clear that it needs a dead Zombie.

But Languish vs Chief and something else really should remove 5 toughness from the other thing, whatever order they're in. It's incredibly counterintuitive to anyone who knows MtG to have MTGPQ work this way, and there's nothing in the rules text of either card to suggest it'll behave differently from MtG.

ChrisTot

alextfish wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

scydrex wrote:

The second card is Languish. I was playing a Quick Battle and I hit two creatures with it. One was a 4/4 that had become 5/5 because of a Chief of the Foundry in the battlefield. Languish killed the Chief as it was supposed to, but the other creature, which should have died as well, since it was not receiving +1/+1 anymore, remained in play as a 1/1.

.
Cruel Revival is a peculiar case - it's a question of Black's "Pay for power" design motto. In this case, the cost is requiring a Zombie in your graveyard. It fits very well with the idea behind Black as a whole.

As for Languish, this is actually working as designed. Both creatures are getting damaged simultaneously, and everything resolves at the same time. What you're seeing happen is the following:

Both creatures are hit with -4/-4. Both creatures receive 4 points of damage, killing the Chief and leaving the other 5/5 as 1/1. Chief dies, so the buff is removed. The thing is that when receiving damage, you always reduce the buffed portion of Toughness first. So the 5/5 is basically a 4/4 with 1 extra Power and 1 extra Toughness. When it receives 4 points of damage, the 1 extra Toughness gets removed first. That's why you end up with a 1/1 at the end - stat buffs are always removed before the card's actual stats.

I don't know if that made sense, and I'd be more than happy to explain it a different way if it's too complex

I urge you to reconsider this design choice in a future patch, and get someone who understands the real Magic: the Gathering Comprehensive Rules to consult with your design team. In general, when a MTGPQ card looks like it does the same thing as its corresponding MtG card, it should do. When a creature like Chief of the Foundry dies, its buff should be removed from the creatures' "base" power and toughness.

I'm fine with you redesigning cards for the different gameplay needs of MTGPQ, such as making Chief affect all creatures not just artifact creatures. I'm even fine with removing the "up to" from Cruel Revival's text like you've done, though it could really do with better wording to make it clear that it needs a dead Zombie.

But Languish vs Chief and something else really should remove 5 toughness from the other thing, whatever order they're in. It's incredibly counterintuitive to anyone who knows MtG to have MTGPQ work this way, and there's nothing in the rules text of either card to suggest it'll behave differently from MtG.

Not to mention that this is inconsistent from the way that Supports "buff" creatures. Better believe that my 9/1 creature will die if my Veteran's Sidearm gets destroyed.

scydrex

I understood your explanation for Languish perfectly, JC. I'm just saying it works very differently from the card game.

I don't think dealing 4 damage should be treated the same as giving a creature -4 toughness. I haven't tried it, but I am guessing hitting a Erebos's Titan with two languishes on the same turn (with no creatures on your side in play) wouldn't kill it, which would be wrong.

I noticed that some abilities work quite differently in this game. Then other abilities have different names. I had to figure out that Prevent Damage meant indestructible. Why not just use the word "Indestructible"? I think it sounds more elegant.

If you do treat damage and -X counters for toughness as the same thing, you will run into a problem when creatures with protection from black are introduced into the game. A 1/1 with protection from black would ignore a Languish and keep on beating you up.

Another issue I have has to do with Hexproof on creatures like Gaea's Revenge. When you activate abilities such as Grave Mist, it does not take any damage. I have not tried killing one by playing Fleshbag Marauder and sacrificing a previously played creature, but I would guess that would not work either. Does Gaea's Revenge stay in play if someone plays The Great Aurora? It does not target either. I would guess it does get destroyed. I don't have either card, so I cannot test my hypothesis.

In summary, I think it would be helpful if you could create a page where you explain how Puzzle Quest magic differs from the traditional card-based game. Veteran players of the card game may be at a disadvantage, assuming something will work like they are accustomed to, then being surprised when they don't (like in the case of Languish). I have lost more than one game because I expected the rules to work like in the card game and it turned out to work differently. If you think your interpretation of the game works better, then great. But at least provide us the rules explicitly somewhere, to minimize mistakes while playing.

Hibernum_JC

scydrex wrote:

I understood your explanation for Languish perfectly, JC. I'm just saying it works very differently from the card game.

I don't think dealing 4 damage should be treated the same as giving a creature -4 toughness. I haven't tried it, but I am guessing hitting a Erebos's Titan with two languishes on the same turn (with no creatures on your side in play) wouldn't kill it, which would be wrong.

I noticed that some abilities work quite differently in this game. Then other abilities have different names. I had to figure out that Prevent Damage meant indestructible. Why not just use the word "Indestructible"? I think it sounds more elegant.

If you do treat damage and -X counters for toughness as the same thing, you will run into a problem when creatures with protection from black are introduced into the game. A 1/1 with protection from black would ignore a Languish and keep on beating you up.

Another issue I have has to do with Hexproof on creatures like Gaea's Revenge. When you activate abilities such as Grave Mist, it does not take any damage. I have not tried killing one by playing Fleshbag Marauder and sacrificing a previously played creature, but I would guess that would not work either. Does Gaea's Revenge stay in play if someone plays The Great Aurora? It does not target either. I would guess it does get destroyed. I don't have either card, so I cannot test my hypothesis.

In summary, I think it would be helpful if you could create a page where you explain how Puzzle Quest magic differs from the traditional card-based game. Veteran players of the card game may be at a disadvantage, assuming something will work like they are accustomed to, then being surprised when they don't (like in the case of Languish). I have lost more than one game because I expected the rules to work like in the card game and it turned out to work differently. If you think your interpretation of the game works better, then great. But at least provide us the rules explicitly somewhere, to minimize mistakes while playing.

Having a page where we differ from MTG in MTGPQ is definitely on our to-do list. We honestly haven't gotten around to it yet.

Keep in mind we do have to adjust certain rules and mechanics so they make sense for the card game. I understand that for MTG veterans they expect some things to work a very specific way, so I'll see what I can do so that we can publish something specifically for you guys that explains in every little detail how our keywords work. It won't come tomorrow, though!

I also understand some of you guys are disappointed in the values for selling back duplicates. I will reiterate this: we are taking all feedback into consideration. What comes of it we do not know yet, but (and I know this is a leap of faith here!) trust me when I say that we are aware, we are reading, and we are looking into stuff. If there's anything I can hopefully say is that you folks trust me at least a little!

scydrex

I don't think it's an issue of trust, JC. You are addressing matters in a clear, straightforward manner and providing full disclosure on your thought processes on how you are handling things. You're obviously still tweaking things around. As long as you keep user feedback present when making adjustments, the game should be a better experience every iteration.

I have two questions:
Do you keep Planeswalker vs. Planeswalker statistics? Say, in matches of Planeswalker A vs Planeswalker B, Planeswalker A has won 65% of the matches. I don't know if you want to share those statistics with us users, but at least that can help you look at what adjustments may be necessary. I suspect that Nissa and Jace have been dominating so far.

Second question: Will we ever get lifetime rankings, based on number of wins and winning percentage? You could do it by country as well as a worldwide ranking. You could also have an average placing in Quick Battle Events. I tend to finish in the 17 to 26 tier, as it usually provides the most gold, and I rarely get anything useful out of Origins Fat Packs, since I own most commons and uncommon, and open few new rates (and have just 2 mythics). The 7 to 16 tier is the absolute worst position to end up with, in my opinion. The amount of effort spent is not rewarded appropriately. You only get a Booster Pack, plus a rare (6 cards total) while guys from 6th place or higher get at least a rare and a fat pack (21 cards total). I avoid ending in the 7 to 16 bracket like the plague. In my opinion, everyone in 16th place or higher should get as well, either 40 (7 to 16), 50 (2 to 6) and 60 (1st place) for regular events or 80 (7 to 16), 100 (2 to 6) and 120 (1st place) for weekend events.

span_argoman

Just a brief response to scydrex, I've been playing QB using Chandra pretty much exclusively and my win rate (even including all the disconnect and crash losses from the early phases of QB) out of ~2,000 stands at 93.2%. So I doubt Nissa and Jace are the only ones who can 'dominate'. Also the same planeswalker and deck controlled by a player and by an AI are going to have vastly different win rates.

I've heard of others talking about playing Gideon to good effect though I haven't witnessed it myself so maybe it isn't that imbalanced between the planeswalkers, except maybe poor Liliana lol. In any case Jace and Nissa are both being nerfed in the upcoming patch, so I think we should wait and see if that addresses your concerns.

scydrex

span_argoman wrote:

Just a brief response to scydrex, I've been playing QB using Chandra pretty much exclusively and my win rate (even including all the disconnect and crash losses from the early phases of QB) out of ~2,000 stands at 93.2%. So I doubt Nissa and Jace are the only ones who can 'dominate'. Also the same planeswalker and deck controlled by a player and by an AI are going to have vastly different win rates.

I've heard of others talking about playing Gideon to good effect though I haven't witnessed it myself so maybe it isn't that imbalanced between the planeswalkers, except maybe poor Liliana lol. In any case Jace and Nissa are both being nerfed in the upcoming patch, so I think we should wait and see if that addresses your concerns.

I have been playing the game since February, and have a record of 1,593-300 after almost 1,900 matches, for an 84.2% win percentage. Like you, I also experienced a lot of in-game crashes, which also distorted my winning percentage a bit. Anyway, I started using Liliana A LOT in the early days. Her problem is not winning games, but just that games with her tend to be rather SLOOOW. I usually have plenty of creature kill on hand for nasty critters, and start discarding their hand away. But since I play a mostly zombie deck, my creatures simply lack the punch to finish matches quickly. My matches with her tend to grinds to the finish. I understand that if you want powerful, undercosted creatures without terrible drawbacks, there are better colors to play than black. Now I play four out of my five PW (my Chandra lacks the vast majority of the good creatures, so my games with her are unreliable) and normally beat the AI quite handily. Except when they get those crazy opening-hand cascades, which most people will lose to.

Keegan

span_argoman wrote:

Just a brief response to scydrex, I've been playing QB using Chandra pretty much exclusively and my win rate (even including all the disconnect and crash losses from the early phases of QB) out of ~2,000 stands at 93.2%. So I doubt Nissa and Jace are the only ones who can 'dominate'. Also the same planeswalker and deck controlled by a player and by an AI are going to have vastly different win rates.

I've heard of others talking about playing Gideon to good effect though I haven't witnessed it myself so maybe it isn't that imbalanced between the planeswalkers, except maybe poor Liliana lol. In any case Jace and Nissa are both being nerfed in the upcoming patch, so I think we should wait and see if that addresses your concerns.

"I've won 2,000 matches with Liliana at an 85% win rate. She's my QB tank." ~ No one ever

loroku

scydrex wrote:

Do you keep Planeswalker vs. Planeswalker statistics? Say, in matches of Planeswalker A vs Planeswalker B, Planeswalker A has won 65% of the matches. I don't know if you want to share those statistics with us users, but at least that can help you look at what adjustments may be necessary. I suspect that Nissa and Jace have been dominating so far.

Those might be less useful than you'd think. For example, I suspect that most of them are in the 90%+ range (not much deviation). Not to mention how level affects matches to a huge degree; Chandra (in the current meta) dominates in the mid-levels but Nissa tends to do better at level 50. Also, don't forget the two things we already know: the devs said that most people don't switch PWs much (which would throw off data) and anecdotally at least, Nissa is wildly over-represented (which would throw off the data).

Also, this data isn't particularly useful in the hands of people who cannot take action on it. Showing it to players would just affect the meta in negative ways; if people knew that Nissa was winning a lot, you'd never see another non-Nissa again. I mean, think about something like LoL or HotS: even informal gamer-gathered stats tend to skew the meta of that game. Another practical thing to consider: no other games release internal data like that. It's sort of unprecedented.

Finally, you can already infer the answer to your question from the changes that are coming (and you are right): there are big nerfs incoming to Jace and Nissa.

scydrex wrote:

Second question: Will we ever get lifetime rankings, based on number of wins and winning percentage? You could do it by country as well as a worldwide ranking. You could also have an average placing in Quick Battle Events.

I'd be against lifetime rankings unless they were highly specific (like to Quick Battles in a "season" or something) because it encourages an entirely different type of gameplay - certainly not one that encourages experimentation or casual play. It would also increase pressure on all other aspects of the game ("my game crashed! I need ranking compensation!") that this game, frankly, isn't ready for.

"Average" placing in Quick Battles is also easy to interpret: 250. It might skew a little higher (240?) thanks to many shards not completely filling, but if there are 500 placement rewards and everyone can only get 1, then the average is 250. Oh wait - did you mean average per person? Yeah I wouldn't want that, either, since crashes and lack of time are probably bigger factors than skill in QB.

scydrex

loroku wrote:

"Average" placing in Quick Battles is also easy to interpret: 250. It might skew a little higher (240?) thanks to many shards not completely filling, but if there are 500 placement rewards and everyone can only get 1, then the average is 250. Oh wait - did you mean average per person? Yeah I wouldn't want that, either, since crashes and lack of time are probably bigger factors than skill in QB.

Good job on demolishing most of my previous post
I have played other games where grinding is rewarded with placement in standings. Quiz Up, for example does that very same thing. You have monthly rankings for people who have played the most during the month as well as lifetime rankings for people who have accumulated the greatest amount of XP.

I contend that Magic Puzzle Quest developers could reward players who devote some significant time to the game in two ways:

First, by rewarding players who have devoted a lot of their time to the game within a single month (something I am sure they would like to encourage in any case). This reward may mean a simple ranking list, , , or boosters.

Second, they could create an achievement list, something many other games feature already. Things like "Win your 100th match" or "Win a game with 1 life left" or something like that. When certain milestones are achieved (like having played 100 games, regardless of result) there could be rewards as well.

I am not saying I would stop playing the game if these suggestions were never considered, but it would sure as hell encourage many others to devote some more time to the game.

Just my two cents, anyway.

Keegan

scydrex wrote:

First, by rewarding players who have devoted a lot of their time to the game within a single month (something I am sure they would like to encourage in any case). This reward may mean a simple ranking list, , , or boosters.

Marvel Puzzle Quest runs "seasons" of a month in PvP with both progression and placement rewards. I don't doubt we'll see similar functionality in the future, it's just a matter of when. This game is far from feature complete, IIRC events are the next focus after BFZ is up and running.

Second, they could create an achievement list, something many other games feature already. Things like "Win your 100th match" or "Win a game with 1 life left" or something like that. When certain milestones are achieved (like having played 100 games, regardless of result) there could be rewards as well.

We have the daily visit reward milestone, also present in MPQ (although in MPQ you have to actually win a battle to claim it). I think we'll just have that for the near future since this would be yet another layer of feature development. I dunno, I don't think the development team knows right now either. So much to do and can be done, I don't envy product management at all in making these decisions on feature prioritization.

Irving

Keegan wrote:

span_argoman wrote:

Just a brief response to scydrex, I've been playing QB using Chandra pretty much exclusively and my win rate (even including all the disconnect and crash losses from the early phases of QB) out of ~2,000 stands at 93.2%. So I doubt Nissa and Jace are the only ones who can 'dominate'. Also the same planeswalker and deck controlled by a player and by an AI are going to have vastly different win rates.

I've heard of others talking about playing Gideon to good effect though I haven't witnessed it myself so maybe it isn't that imbalanced between the planeswalkers, except maybe poor Liliana lol. In any case Jace and Nissa are both being nerfed in the upcoming patch, so I think we should wait and see if that addresses your concerns.

"I've won 2,000 matches with Liliana at an 85% win rate. She's my QB tank." ~ No one ever

I don't know my win rate with Liliana, but it's definitely higher than 85%. She's by far my most fun Planeswalker to play. Only reason she's not my usual tank is that I'm the beneficiary of the bug that means my Nissa gets to play L.1 opponents much of the time. Well, that and the best way to play her is to use things like Read the Bones and Priest of the Blood Rite that cost you life. I've posted elsewhere about it, but the problem with Liliana is that you really need a critical mass of rares to play her. My deck has 7 rares and 1 mythic.

EDUSAN

i just noticed that there is nothing about Malakir not getting extra +1/+1 after the 1st time or the green 5/6 reach not giving additional +2/+2 to the creatures when you match the special gem

i would have guessed that was going to get fixed since it has been reported since day 1 of the 1.3 patch

as a bonus note, im completely blown away (in a bad way) about how they decided to add 1 discard card to the rank 2 of liliana's 1st skill instead of removing 1 discarded card from rank 3...

Meto5000

EDUSAN wrote:

as a bonus note, im completely blown away (in a bad way) about how they decided to add 1 discard card to the rank 2 of liliana's 1st skill instead of removing 1 discarded card from rank 3...

I mean, most planeswalkers had their abilities tweaked, mostly making them objectively worse or weaker than they are in the current patch. However, they've succeeded in making every ability better than the previous tier which is something that's currently not true. Lilliana's discard skill is still good at level 2 since you make sure only your worst 2 cards are discarded. Her ability is such that once she gets ahead it's almost impossible for the opponent to get back into the game. And now her tier 3 discard ability is significantly better than her tier 2, where before it was more or less a direct downgrade.

EDUSAN

liliana's 1st skill doesnt affect your ability to come back into the game because it doesnt stop you from playing whatever card you draw in the next turn

So you have been massing a lot of mana to play a 15+ mana mythic but it got discarded by liliana.
Next turn you draw a card, got some lucky cascades and were able to play the 6/6 colossus.
How good was liliana's skill? good for nothing AND now she have 2 cards less to deal with whatever you played, besides having 2 cards less to deal with whatever you had on the battlefield before.

screwing a card you are trying to play IS the power of the skill, complaining about that is like complaining that when chandra has some creatures on and you play a 4/3 defender to stop them she kills it with ther 2nd skill. that is the objetive of the skill. The difference is that chandra spends mana to actively do something on the board while liliana spends her mana and 2 cards from hand to change absolutely nothing on the board

JVReal

Raising the cost of PW attacks just plain sucks. Why can't we choose what level ability we want to use?

If ability 1 level 1 cost 3, ability 1 level 2 cost 5, ability 1 level 3 cost 7... can't we decide to only use ability 1 level 1, because we want a buff right away, and maybe we don't want the extra stuff from the abilities higher level.

I seldom use the third ability of anyone because they are just too expensive for the benefit... now everything is just too expensive.

Some creatures I don't want to have vigilence, or berzerk. but I'd like to buff them a little bit, like my life link guys, i never want them defending me, i want them dealing damage and healing. I want to buff them as soon as possible. It feels like Gideon was hit last time, and now hit again. Poor guy won't see any action.

Unknown

9 for his lowest cost ability is stupid.

Planeswalkers need to be using their abilities constantly, to make it feel like you actually have a PW.

It is OKAY for them to be overpowered - just make them ALL overpowered.

I don't think anyone wanted the changes to the PWs the way they have been implemented.

9 mana if you're not going for pw mana is like half a game to get.

And thats for his FIRST ability.