Avacyn's Madness

Stormcrow

babar3355 wrote:

I agree with much of what Shteev has said, mainly that I incorrectly was productive at work and took care of my child when I should have been grinding. But let me throw some suggestions out that could have made the event much more fun.

1. Have each Coalition fighting their own version of Avacyn... This seems really obvious to me.
2. Make it a race to who can take down Avacyn the quickest. (This is how coalitions are ranked)
3. Make Avacyn challenging but feasible by most guilds over time, and add an exclusive card as the prize (ie Westvale Abbey, Avacyn, or Startled Awake)... probably the Abbey as I doubt you want everyone having the mythics.
4. Don't make repeatable goals for each battle that are mutually exclusive. It's fine to make them non-repeatable and mutually exclusive.
5. Explain the event in at least some detail before the event starts.

I appreciate you guys trying, but this was a pretty big letdown. Did the community just shock you with their vigor, or did you mean for the event to take 21 hours?

^Listen to this person. Or for that matter, hire this person!

Corn_Noodles

babar3355 wrote:

2. Make it a race to who can take down Avacyn the quickest. (This is how coalitions are ranked)

This just highlights the current problem with how events are run when you don't divide the brackets in some way. So basically the top coalitions will always be the ones that can rally their members to play the minute something goes live. I don't know if that's the best way to go. I think your suggestion would work if nodes did not start with full charges which would give people in other time zones or life situations a little breathing room. If you keep the 4 hours per charge and start each node with only 1 charge, that would give people at least 8 hours of breathing room (or more if nodes hold more charges than 8). I think 8 hours is plenty to cover more people's situations.

nexus13

So as a beta test this was probably pretty ok. Now with some knowledge of how everyone performed it can be re-run with each coalition having their own boss and each coalition boss can be set at a level where the average full coalition has some shot at beating the boss but it not be easy for them. Top coalitions will probably then finish in 2-3 days. I look forward to the next run with changes based on data gathered.

yunnnn

Event Feedback:

I didn't feel incentivized to win matches, because:
1. I didn't know what winning even means; we didn't know what the rules were!
2. Not challenging. Challenging and hard are different concepts. The other events are much more varied, because they force you to use multiple PWs. I took my strongest PW (level 50 Nahiri) and just creamed everything without ever looking back.
3. Lack of variety. I expected more variety in the battles in the form of secondary/tertiary challenges. But... when winning the main battle is 50 points, and the secondary is 3 points... it seems stupid to craft a deck to get those 3 points. I told my coalition to just aim for the main points because they were so high.
4. There was no personal ranking, so I didn't feel like I needed to try that hard. The saheeli event required me to get every point possible, every win possible. But when there are 20 people in the coalition, I didn't feel incentivized at all to do secondary/tertiarys at all (even though I still got them).
5. Less rewards. No personal ranking means that ~1/3 of the rewards aren't here. From a pure rewards perspective, I'd rather have a generic event.
6. Rewards are uninteresting. Want to keep us engaged? Give us an actual promo card. I know that is hard to do, but how about a piece of a promo card? Have these events every week, and the coalition gets a coin/shard/token if you win. 5 of these tokens can then be redeemed for the promo.

Pros:
1. Seems fun as a casual event. Losing 1 round doesn't mean the whole event is over for you. The ai decks are also a nice way to relax from annoying combo decks.
2. I got all the advancement awards before it ended. Yay for that...
3. Great way to test the coalition chat. B/c some fights were 40-50 points, I made sure everyone going into these fights were prepared for what was going to happen.
4. As always... it's better than nothing.

Cragger

The problem is that the game trains you to play more to win more. Dopamine circuits are reinforced with predictable event reward systems, people get hooked.

With this event, you "won" by killing the boss. What you win is the game turning off. No loot, no reward, no end title screen congratulating you on your victory. The lack of anticipated reward is the problem.

arNero

About Avacyn dying too quickly, well, yeah, I'm sore about that thanks to the fact it locked me out of the 450-ribbon reward (the oh-so-elusive booster pack) when I could've gotten it had the event lasted a few hours longer.

But I'm personally fine with the basic idea of Avacyn having shared HP. There are some other games I know out there who implement the same method. However, having to BEAT her on 1-on-1 match when she has unrestricted board wipe to actually DEAL DAMAGE to her event HP is annoying as hell. I admit there's probably a few infinite combos that could take down a 10000-HP Avacyn, but it's still pretty annoying when your effort to bring her to half health end up meaning nothing.

On that note, I HATE win-centric objectives.

The Node system is, IMO, not a good idea. Having 5 different nodes with massively different power levels among them is annoying, given that pretty sure some people WILL lose node stocks due to losing to Avacyn or some of the other tougher bosses and get nothing for the effort.

My one and only suggestion, complex as it may be, right now, is instead of using a node system with stocks and such, use something of a stamina system: Give a player 10 chances per day or something, and allow them to pick between 1 to 10 targets with different difficulty levels: Something like the Quilled Wolf in difficulty 1, Hulking Devil at difficulty 2 or 3, all the way to Avacyn at difficulty 11 (boss). The more confident players can try ravaging Avacyn to get the best ribbon rewards per game played, while the weaker players can do with difficulty 3 or below. That way, it reduces the risk of players losing their stocks for HAVING to play against enemy way above their level. Admittedly this also encourage those P2W players to hog all the ribbons for themselves, so maybe some not-so-linear rewards may be due; for example, award 5 ribbons for defeating level 1 enemy, 6 ribbons for level 2, 7 ribbons for level 3, 10 ribbons for level 5, 25 ribbons for boss or so, as opposed to 5 ribbons for level 1, 10 ribbons for level 2, 50 ribbons for boss etc; that would be unfair.

blacklotus

Rootbreaker wrote:

I think it would have been fine if they had explained how it worked in detail, but all we got were screenshots, the in-game UI, and a list of secondary objectives that turned out to be visible before we had to choose anything.

Some things that should have been made clear before the event started

-The event will end when Avacyn's HP gets to 0%
-Each of the five nodes works like a Nodes of Power node, in that it starts with 3 attempts, and the attempts start recharging after you've used your first one in each node. They're different in that the planeswalker you choose is not locked in. You can use any planeswalker you want.
-Each enemy has repeatable objectives that you can get every time you fight them.
-After you beat an enemy, you can fight the next one in that node (assuming you have attempts left) and beating the third enemy brings you back to the first one.

The UI checking off the objectives makes me think that maybe the 3rd point is a bug, but if not, it's definitely a terrible, misleading UI choice.

See. All the above info can fit into the start page of the event. Wasn't too difficult, was it?

Omega Red

I liked the event for what was worth. I actually liked that it was so brief and I didn't have to commit for intensive scheduled play over more days mid-week. I liked most of deck designs although the bosses mana bonuses were annoying. Rewards were bad but the node design and battles were good enough to keep me playing. That nightmare node was **** and owned my ****, other than that, not a frustrating experience. The big guys with decks full of mythics probably found the event not challenging enough for them.

I think this kind of event is perfect for weekends and to give special rewards such as Saheeli. Just make it last a little longer and make sure it doesn't lock after completion so the little guys can get their progression rewards too. You made the same mistake during the first MPQ boss battle, Ultron!

Azerack

Having played similar "Demon invasions" on other games, I was actually happy with the multiple "bosses" to play against as well as the varying level difficulties.

What I wasn't pleased with was the timing. I am honestly shocked she lasted as long as she did, but when it starts, I'm already at work. Unfortunately, I can ONLY work and cannot play (we'll call it 3pm UTC to 11pm UTC or 8am to 5pm PST). So by the time I get to play she was already at 44% health left.

When I went to bed, that night, I had played a bit, but the cooldown timers were HOURS long. Meaning, while I slept, she would be dead and I barely got the third to last event reward.

What I would suggest is TWO events just broken up in timing.
At least with Quick Fights and other events they have a set time so I can play until I'm "done" so I don't mind when they start.

I'm not going to suggest increasing the health of the "Monster" because that always leads to worse mechanics (at least in other games I've played with this sort of event).

Am I wrong for only working at work?

Buret0

So, has everyone given up after hitting progression, leaving only the top teams to finish this event? Seems like Avacyn's health has barely moved today.

newbee1kenobi

We didn't win anything special for killing her in less than 1 day last time ...
Maybe we will have some special prize if we let her live the whole time the event is supposed to last

Killyah

So, has everyone given up after hitting progression, leaving only the top teams to finish this event? Seems like Avacyn's health has barely moved today.

Yep totally. This is a really boring event with pretty poor prizes for the bulk of coalition's who can't compete for mythics. Now that I've hit the progression reward I'll do something else for a day or two and hope to never see this event in this form again. Yawn

Pacone

That is the problem with global events, players who cant run for the top spots understandably give up, and it's up to the top coalitions to finish the event for us all