Power Creep

THEMAGICkMAN

Ok this is getting out of hand, in origins you had sub-par power and toughness to mana cost ratios. Then bfz gave us a 6 mana 4/4, serene steward. better than anything in origins. Then ogw had oath of gideon, essentially a 5 4/4 support that also triggered rally and you could get more tokens upon landfall white. SOI had devils playground, a 4 mana spell that gave you 4 1/1s, essntially a 4/4 for 4 mana. Now eldritch moon is giving us a number of cards with power and toughness to mana cost ratios better than we've ever seen. There are a number of cards that are simply too powerful, if this goes much furthur it *WILL* be a major problem for the game as a whole. Devs, i hope you see this and take action, whether thats nerfing the OP cards, stopping the power creep or somethibg else entirely, please do something. Fast.

THEMAGICkMAN

Andrea

well, the game as a whole is a pay-per-win.
Devs can either put a lot of effort in balancing cards and sets (see hearthstone, to a degree), or just go rampage with every set, so that money keep flowing.
There is always time for subsequent balancing with maintenances and fixes

Andrea

On the other hand drop rates are awful to say the least.
AWFUL.

Abogmar

I think it is pretty much the same as in paper magic. Yes, stats are getting better but the cards (at least for the newest edition) still pale in comparison to some older ones (in my opinion). I think none of new cards of this set come close to drowner, crush or olivia. While stats increase, their abilities don't overwhelm me.

speakupaskanswer

Agreed, I haven't seen anything totally overpowered yet. Except for Imprisoned in the Moon, maybe. But which creatures with crazy stats are there?

shteev

I think power creep is a real problem at the moment. If we were to use paper MTG an a parallel, it feels to me like we're somewhere in the middle of Urza's block right now.

4/4 creatures are a really good example, because it really, really looks as if they're just being made 1 mana cheaper with every expansion just so that it's easy for players to see that they're an upgrade for their decks. We now have the 4 mana Devil's Playground, which is brutally efficient and has a huge upside which gives it the capability to kill 2 creatures in combat, or allow it to be sacrificed for a big advantage.

There's quite an obvious trend in 6 power creatures too. A while ago Skysnare Spider's mana cost was increased from 12 to 16. To this day I have no idea why; Soulblade Djinn was allowed to stay at 12 mana for a 6/5. Then along came the 6/6 Akoum Hellkite for 12, 6/6 Hanweir Captain for 12, 6/6 Nephalia Moondrakes for 11, and now we see the 6/5 Selfless Spirit for 10 and 6/5 Docent of Perfection for 9. All at rare.

These trends are very easy to spot, and can't go on indefinitely. We can debate whether or not a 0 mana 4/4 will be any good in the Platinum meta game... it may not be. But it will certainly render huge swathes of cards utterly unplayable by comparison. Why on earth, 3 blocks in, new 6 mana 2/2s are still being made is beyond me. Who on earth are they for?

However there are far, far worse problems happening with power creep that are more difficult to quantify because the cards involved are less obviously comparable, even tho it's pretty easy to tell they're OP.

The (only) card I will be talking about today is Behold the Beyond. The fact that I could go into the Emrakul's Corruption event with 2 bad cards in my deck, maintain control of games indefinitely, and not lose a single game, even against decks which were not built around this restriction, should really set some alarm bells ringing. If the deck posted in this thread
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=53582
is that good when 20% of its cards I'd tear up and never play again if I got the chance, then how good is it the rest of the time?

Behold the Beyond is far from the only offender. There are a lot of cards out there right now which are so powerful they allow the players with the largest collections to do whatever the hell they want, all the time. I've got some of them, I haven't got others. Behold the Beyond I do own.

However I think what happened to Kiora gave us all a fright. No-one was expecting Kiora to be nerfed.. and I, for one, was certainly not expecting her to be significantly un-nerfed almost immediately as a result of player feedback. It seems very unlikely that the rapid changes to Kiora were made as a result of playtesting or data gathering. This has made me particularly nervous of calling for specific cards to be scaled back in power... if I make a strong case for any of my own cards to be nerfed and it happens while the rest of the field is left at full strength, I'm not going to be able to compete any more. But my own cards are the ones I can talk more authoritatively on. On the other hand if there's no credible way I can call for the reining in of a subset of cards which I consider to be overpowered (which intersect to a greater or lesser degree with my own collection) without rightly being accused of bias.

Furthermore I'd add that the open sharing of information is in nobody's best interest any more now that the system of coalitions is in place. If I discover an extreme way to exploit a card or planeswalker, I no longer come onto the forums and complain that it's OP... I just tell the rest of my coalition about it and we'll use it to win better prizes (Disclaimer: Many members of my coaltion are a lot nicer than me ) It's even possible there are people out there deliberately exploiting bugs instead of reporting them. The posts about Emrakul's Corruption on the forums gave a good example of the lack of free flow of information; I posted my deck for the black node to attempt to promote discussion, but there was almost none. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to give away their winning tech. I didn't really want to do it myself. I certainly wouldn't have revealed new decks built with cards from a brand new expansion.

Where does this mean the game is going? Well the ties for 1st place with perfect scores in Nodes of Power are getting bigger and bigger every time. That's not a good sign. Players who never lose are looking at stagnation, boredom, and then maybe leaving MPQ and finding a different game to play.

Say it with me now: 'Magic Puzzle Quest is dying'.

THEMAGICkMAN

I made a post similar to this a while ago, totally agree, just look at my signature! However they can always just nerf things. But it is a problem. Totally agree, and right now, magic puzzle quest is dying

Ertai Planeswalker

They need to choose a power level that plays well and try to stick to it, also for new sets. I get that uncommons are allowed to be a little more efficient than commons, rares more efficient than uncommons, and mythics more efficient than rares. I also understand that the basic 5 PW's are weaker than the PW's that can be purchased. While the game should stay accesible to free players, I get that spending a little money gets you the better stuff. It's the business model this game thrives on.

Having said that, the power level of cards of a certain rarity should roughly stay the same both in and between sets. The same is true for the purchaseable PW's. At this rate, the value of the cards depreciate faster than a car.

paralistalon

Well said, shteev. I think the current business model really comes down to: institute power creep with each new expansion but have it mostly at rare/mythic and couple this with poor drop rates so that our paying customers can part with a couple hundred dollars trying to get them, wait a while, then nerf those very cards a few months later to compensate for the power creep, then repeat with the next expansion. The only other strategy to keep players buying, which they do use to be fair, is to create cards that are only linearly strong, like allies. Allies are pretty strong if you get all the right cards, but they won't make any more allies so once you have the deck you have the deck and have to move onto the next linear mechanic. I don't think there's much in the way of constructive criticism. I don't know how I would change their system and still be as profitable. This isn't like paper magic where they have a full time staff of like 20 people play testing for months in advance with rotating formats. This is a freemium cell phone app game. It's designed to get out there and make as much money as possible before the interest dies down, which is what will happen since there's no way to make it a true PVP game.

Hibernum_JC

To be fair, the goal is not to institute power creep. Power creep happens a bit naturally over time as options develop (and new abilities come into play).

As the game evolves, we also take a look into mana costs, card power, etc. We've learned a ton with every set we make, and we tweak the rules to mana costs over time. The problem that this causes is that, over time, this is "power creep", even though it isn't the intent. In no way are we pressured or even have the slightest goal of going "Okay so we want this new set to sell, so we'll make the cards more powerful than the previous set". I think everyone here who knows the game's development over time knows I'm very open about these things and I would actually come out and say it if we intentionally put power creep into the game.

The other issue is that making constant changes to a ton of cards is not necessarily a desirable thing, since it ends up causing confusion towards a large portion of players (not you guys, the ones who are on forums, obviously) - if one day card X does a certain thing and the next day it does something different, you need to start relearning cards you are using. We have a lot of these players who do not frequent forums, do not read patch notes, do not get involved in the community (and this is perfectly normal) so we have to keep in mind that we cannot ignore these players. When we make changes to cards and Planeswalkers, we do so with the intent of balancing and fixing problematic cards when they absolutely need to be fixed.

I'll say as an aside that the Kiora changes were intended because we are seeing numbers internally that players are constantly frustrated playing against her - quit rates against Kiora far outpace every other Planeswalker. We decided, however, that it was better to do smaller changes to see if it fixes the problem, and we felt one of the biggest offenders was her first ability, which is frustrating to play against. Kiora is strong and will most likely be strong for a long time (she still was post-changes, btw) because she combines 2 of the game's biggest strengths, which are ramp (green's thing) combined with strong control (blue's thing). Ramping in MTGPQ happens in multiple ways (either direct mana gain, gem conversion or gem destruction, with gem conversion typically being the strongest one, destruction being more RNG-based and mana gain being the most consistent one) and is stronger than in paper magic in a lot of ways, so it's a constant balancing act on our part. Kiora's changes were in absolutely NO way motivated by the desire to sell new Planeswalkers, and I can say that with absolute confidence. I would much rather design interesting Planeswalkers than change current ones so that the new ones become more interesting. The new Jace and Liliana are steps towards that direction - strong mono-colored Planeswalkers that are focused around certain mechanics/archetypes and are strong in their own right.

Steeme

Hibernum_JC wrote:

To be fair, the goal is not to institute power creep. Power creep happens a bit naturally over time as options develop (and new abilities come into play).

A bit of power creep is fine, otherwise people would just keep using the same old decks. I like seeing cards with a lower mana cost, but have some sort of caveat to use (eg. discard mechanics). Then you can decide whether to go the faster, riskier route or the slower more reliable route.

Hibernum_JC wrote:

I'll say as an aside that the Kiora changes were intended because we are seeing numbers internally that players are constantly frustrated playing against her - quit rates against Kiora far outpace every other Planeswalker.

Here's the issue: You needed to nerf Kiora because the AI absolutely abuses her. However, by nerfing her, you are punishing the players using her on the offensive. You could say the same about Koth: In the hands of the player, he's good for fast play, but not the absolute king; in the hands of the AI, he's an absolute nightmare and players can get repeatedly steamrolled due to the AI's ridiculously high multi-cascade rate coupled with a pure red deck which is mostly destructive.

I agree with nerfs when they are necessary. But please consider that it's the AI's ability to outpace the player coupled with the spamming of the first ability that can really be a nuisance to players. That's likely why there was complete outrage when Kiora's second and third abilities were also going to be nerfed.

PajdaCZ

When I was playing against Kiora or Koth, most of the times I was a bit annoyed by the AI spamming their 1st ability, but rarely I lose the game against them. I'm not saying I am some lifeless player, online and playing 24/7, I never won any mythics or fat packs in the QBs, but I had several dozens of plays to learn that I never have problems with PW's abilities but their cards.
You always know when the AI uses the ability and you can prepare yourself for it to lose as little as you can, in more positive words, to gain the most you can...
"Hey, Koth will now destroy some gems and most likely will get some cascade, cast spells or summon some fat piggy, so let's prepare some destroy/defense..."
"Kiora will drain me now, let's boost the loyalty"
"Liliana will discard me, let's reorder the cards..."

and so on. I find it much harder to fight against the AI's cards, than the abilities...

Hibernum_JC

Steeme wrote:

Here's the issue: You needed to nerf Kiora because the AI absolutely abuses her. However, by nerfing her, you are punishing the players using her on the offensive. You could say the same about Koth: In the hands of the player, he's good for fast play, but not the absolute king; in the hands of the AI, he's an absolute nightmare and players can get repeatedly steamrolled due to the AI's ridiculously high multi-cascade rate coupled with a pure red deck which is mostly destructive.

I agree with nerfs when they are necessary. But please consider that it's the AI's ability to outpace the player coupled with the spamming of the first ability that can really be a nuisance to players. That's likely why there was complete outrage when Kiora's second and third abilities were also going to be nerfed.

The AI doesn't have a higher rate of cascades than players do, so while I understand confirmation bias is a very strong thing, Koth is exactly the same when played by a player or the AI. However, and this is one thing you've hit on quite nicely, is that Red in general is very straightforward, with lots of burn and does not necessarily rely on card combos, so just playing every card as it becomes available is a very viable strategy with Koth. The AI is good at playing that, so Koth has a higher chance of being "well-piloted" in the hands of the AI. The first ability is incredibly important for the AI right now, and it's something I'm focusing on in the design of future Planeswalkers in that it has to be something that is easily usable by the AI but yet isn't completely overpowered. I think I've settled on something where it's satisfying for both sides - if you play with a PW, you'll get a good first ability you can spam and will give you good stuff without being too situational and the AI can reliably use it.

As I've always said, things can always change, and will when it is deemed necessary.

EDHdad

You needed to nerf Kiora because the AI absolutely abuses her.

Personally, I'd rather have Kiora borrowing 6 mana from me than Liliana ripping 2 cards out of my hand, but that's just me.

My general observation is that people get salty when the opponent goes after their stuff. When Chandra was hitting you in the face nearly every turn for 3 loyalty, people complained. When Jace was Nerfing and Ajani was disabling creatures for 3 loyalty, people complained.

Ob Nixilis is objectively one of the most powerful walkers in the game, but nobody ever complains about him, because the AI spams his first ability with a full grip of cards. Meanwhile, most Ob Nixilis decks are built around using his -18, which I have never seen cast by the opponent.

People also get salty when a deck cascades, cascades, cascades and then vomits their hand, draws a new hand and cascades, cascades, cascades.

Most of the offending cards or planeswalker's abilities in this type of deck have been Nerfed. Examples, Day's Undoing, Animist's Awakening, Season's Past, Ulvenwald Hydra, Harness the Storm, Noyan Dar Roil Shaper, Nissa's first ability, etc.

I'd expect Koth's first ability or his red mana generation to get Nerfed at some point because of this. But it wouldn't be to sell a new Koth, but to reduce the unfun game experience of less spiky players.

EDHdad

The first ability is incredibly important for the AI right now, and it's something I'm focusing on in the design of future Planeswalkers in that it has to be something that is easily usable by the AI but yet isn't completely overpowered.

You might also considering changing when the walker uses their ability. Some walkers will spam their first ability, even when it does nothing. Ob Nixilis and Sarkhan will pay life to draw cards, even when they have 6 cards in hand. Sorin will spend loyalty with no creatures on board to gain 0 life and gain 0 mana.

Dologan

I think we should all recognise that the devs face a nightmarishly tricky (and probably doomed) balancing act of multiple conflicting interests and priorities.

On one hand, they understandably want to build a income, both significant and steady, but on the other, they also don't want to alienate those users who can't afford to spend much/any hard cash at the game. How much of an advantage should they offer those who are happy to pay a lot, so that they feel suitably rewarded and encouraged to do so, while also making those who can only pay a little feel it's worth to do so, and that those who can't/won't pay at all can reasonably keep up by other means? How do you do that without destroying the system of artificial scarcity that the whole model depends on?

They also want to build continuing interest, while also ensuring a certain balance of newer with older content and sensible card power economics. The mere novelty of a new set and mechanics obviously counts for something, but let's face it, if most new cards in a release don't seem like they offer any meaningful improvement to our current decks, would we be keen enough to invest in them (and hopefully, for the devs, with hard cash)? Even if the developers don't consciously want to introduce power creep, they do want to make content interesting, and what interests us players? To no small extent, power, of course, let's not kid ourselves. And as people will have had more time to collect the powerful rare/mythics from previous sets, it will be harder for any new set to cause excitement, unless it raises the bar that little bit higher on a few cards... Should we then really place the blame entirely on the devs for giving us what we crave?

If Magic Puzzle Quest is dying, we are all helping to kill it.

This may be ultimately inevitable, but I can think of a couple of ideas to keep it going a little longer:

- The ability to have deck restrictions for certain events, or perhaps, dedicated QB arenas, based on a particular set and/or maybe even card types (i.e. a limit of, for example, 1 mythic and 2 rares per deck). Elite players with their libraries chock-full of the best mythics and rares might baulk at the latter idea, but I believe it would encourage creativity and strategy and also give newer/poorer/unluckier players a chance to get top rewards, which are currently inevitably hogged by the people who already have collected most of the overpowered cards anyway. This would limit power creep to some extent, since the competition between releases would be contained, and could even breathe some life into many common cards that could be potentially interesting if they weren't currently eclipsed by more efficient newer/rarer cards. (But, for gods' sake, also introduce a (long overdue) way of saving decks along with it too. I'd hate to have to manually rebuild decks card by card every time) - A system of card exchange. I understand that mythic/rare card drop rates can't be as good as players might wish them to be if the balance of scarcity that fuels the game is to be maintained. I can also see the problem of putting arbitrary individual cards for sale, which would again negatively affect scarcity, homogenise the meta-game and crank up the "pay to win" aspect. However, I believe that a system of true exchange (i.e. giving up access to a certain card in exchange for another) would go a long way to address people's complaints of drop rates of stronger or duplicate cards. Doing it in a P2P way might be difficult to implement technically and would open a whole can of worms of commercial farming and a black economy which is probably best avoided, though, so I think a semi-random server-based one could largely avoid the pitfalls and maybe even contribute to revenue: for a fee of a moderate amount of crystals (+ a dupe?), one could be given the chance to exchange one card for another from a random selection of 3 (or whatever) others of equal rarity (and maybe set, type and/or colour?). Relative scarcity would be preserved, and it would still be a trade-off and somewhat of a gamble, but players would at least feel they have a reasonable chance of getting something decent that they could use, and developers would get potentially valuable insight into which cards are unbalanced.

yunnnn

Hibernum_JC wrote:

The first ability is incredibly important for the AI right now, and it's something I'm focusing on in the design of future Planeswalkers in that it has to be something that is easily usable by the AI but yet isn't completely overpowered.

It seems like you're limiting your own design space because of how the AIs currently act, rather than questioning if the AI should actually be loose-cannoning their pw abilities as soon as they come up.

Why not let the user set up some basic rules governing how their PWs act (set priority of pw abilities)?

Almost all Jace 2.0 and Obs decks rely on their ultimates to finish the opponent, but the AI is utterly incapable of playing these decks to anywhere near their potential. A simple series of checkboxes will drastically ramp up the power of these decks, creating a more realistic battle experience for everyone.

ZW2007-

Hibernum_JC wrote:

The first ability is incredibly important for the AI right now, and it's something I'm focusing on in the design of future Planeswalkers in that it has to be something that is easily usable by the AI but yet isn't completely overpowered.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the AI currently uses the first ability of some planeswalkers to no effect. As Sorin, the AI will use the first ability with no creatures in play; 6 loyalty spent, no mana or life gained. As Ob Nixilis, the AI will use the first ability even if it has six cards in hand; 3 loyalty spent, 1 life lost, no cards drawn. Same can be said of Sarkhan. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to change this but I'd imagine something can be easily done to prevent it. An AI controlled Gideon 1 won't target a player's creature. Same with AI Jace 1 not targeting it's own creatures. Liliana 1 also needs to be fixed so that she's not discarding her only card each time (sure, very rarely she is ahead with creatures on board and keeps you both with an empty hand but more often than not, the AI has an empty board and you were already ahead and the AI just puts your win on cruise control). I think that covers them all but I'm not sure. Jace 2 might use it's ability even without a support in play though I don't remember seeing it happen before. Nissa is borderline but still benefits with a full hand so I don't include her.

Solution:
Sorin: Creatures in play > 0, use ability. If not, do nothing.
Ob/Sarkhan: Cards in hand < 6, use ability. If not, do nothing.
Liliana 1: Cards in hand > 3, use ability. If not, do nothing.

Morphis

To be honest saying that Koth is as valid in the hand of player as in ai is very short sighted.
Koth is much more random than kiora.
He can easily be stopped from playing at all or he can explode in whole hand unleashed in the field in one turn.

Player should (and will usually) go for reliable wins.
Anyways for ai it is better to choose something that can go on both extremes.
Cause if ai would alway get the "average" result there would be no match.
Getting to play nothing at all in one match, and insane mana gain in one single tune in another match is a better result.



So Koth is basically a really good planeswalker in the hands of ai.

For players Koth is great for quick battles.
Beside that other red planeswalkers (except Chandra probably) are a better choice for players.

So how this is involved in power creep?
It is cause the insane result put a much lower time clock on the opponent.
I wrote it another topic:
A couple expansions ago an insane cascade would put some pressure on board. But what? Usually some 6/6 creatures.
Bad scenario but we had some time to react.

Nowadays you can get a board full of creature with average attack of 10+.
this puts a much higher pressure counting raw power alone(not counting that most of those creatures will grow/have other effect while the worst back in the days was a creature getting 1/1 bonus each turn).

TLDR: power creep make chain cascades even "more op".
Since cascades are random and having or not removals in hand(modified by how many you run of course) is Random, you have less chances(less turns) to get out of this "unlucky" cases.
Koth is master of randomness.

shteev

EDHdad wrote:

Ob Nixilis is objectively one of the most powerful walkers in the game, but nobody ever complains about him, because the AI spams his first ability with a full grip of cards. Meanwhile, most Ob Nixilis decks are built around using his -18, which I have never seen cast by the opponent.

It would take literally seconds to modify Ob Nixilis so that he spams ability 3 instead of ability 1. I wonder why this hasn't been done? Is it because it would broadcast to the wider player base how broken he is?

Morphis

shteev wrote:

EDHdad wrote:

Ob Nixilis is objectively one of the most powerful walkers in the game, but nobody ever complains about him, because the AI spams his first ability with a full grip of cards. Meanwhile, most Ob Nixilis decks are built around using his -18, which I have never seen cast by the opponent.

It would take literally seconds to modify Ob Nixilis so that he spams ability 3 instead of ability 1. I wonder why this hasn't been done? Is it because it would broadcast to the wider player base how broken he is?

That does not make much sense.
He can't spam third skill.
If you mean he would save for it... Well that's not always the best thing to do.
In my opinion it would be simple to code him properly(or miles ahead current ai):

- use first skill only if you have 4 or less cards in hand
- use second skill only if you have no removal in hand(would be better to evaluate current threat level but let's forget about this finesses)
- use third skill

Order would be as current ai(tries always to cast the higher loyalty skill first.