Development Thread - (11/15/16)

Hibernum_Will

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the first Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest Development Thread! We've been busy working on upcoming releases - which means we haven't had a lot of time to chat with the community. To give you an idea where the game is headed, and answer some frequently asked questions, we’re going to start posting Development Threads when we get a chance.

First off, we’d like to thank everyone for the feedback - keep it coming! You’re an awesome community and we’re lucky to have such wonderful fans. While we haven’t had time to respond to every thread, let me assure you that the team actively follows the discussion. Your feedback is a huge help.

Without further adieu, let’s talk about Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest!

What’s up next for Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest?

We’re working on a few long-term features based on community feedback. They’re not at the point where we can share many details - but hopefully we can say more soon! In the short term, we’re working on refining Events, fixing bugs, improving the game’s stability, and improving the layout of in-game screens and menus. And of course, we’re always working on getting the next card set and Planeswalkers ready.

What’s up next for Events?

The community feedback on Events has been awesome. For competitive events, we want to move towards shorter Events with fewer matches and improved optional objectives. We also want to release more PvE Events with hand-crafted opponents. In the long-term, we want a larger variety of Events. There have been a lot of great suggestions from the community!

What’s with the new design for the Event’s Rewards menu?

We’re transitioning to a new in-game layout. To ensure a smooth transition, we’re releasing small parts of the new layout with each update. Expect to see more changes soon!

The newest releases didn’t have new Story Mode encounters. Why?

Story Mode encounters are great for new players; however, for our long-term fans we want to focus on Events. By focusing on Events we can provide interesting challenges that don’t necessarily fit in the Story Mode format. As mentioned above, we’re working on more PvE Events.

Please let me save multiple decks for each of my planeswalkers!

This is something the team has wanted to add to the game for a long time. We’re currently working on some interesting ideas for this, but the feature is still very early on in development.

Maintenance takes a long time. Please speed it up!

We’re working on it! Over the next few weeks and months, updates should get a lot smoother with less downtime. We’re also actively upgrading our servers over here to reduce unexpected downtime. In the meantime, thank you for your patience!

Animation speeds have changed in the last few updates. How come?

We’ve been working on reducing unnecessary wait times in matches. In October, we increased the speed for a number of animations. We also increased how fast the gems fell - but many players found this disorienting, so we dialed it back. We’re still trying to find the ideal balance - and we’re still looking for other ways to speed up matches. Keep up the great feedback!

Why don’t you give more details about…?

We don’t want to keep the game’s development a secret - but we also don’t want to make promises that we later have to break. Game development is a dynamic process; our understanding of the game is constantly changing and evolving - so our priorities can occasionally shift. Other times we find that a new feature doesn’t work as well as we had hoped it would, so it doesn’t end up making it into the game. We try our best not to announce something until we’re certain we can deliver on it. (Also, sometimes a surprise or two is nice - we’ve got a few planned for the game’s one-year anniversary in December!)

Thanks again for your support and keep the feedback coming. There are a lot of great ideas and questions that we haven’t had time to address - so stay tuned for upcoming Development Threads. In the meantime, thank you for playing Magic: the Gathering - Puzzle Quest!

yunnnn

Thank you.

Ampmp11

Thanks for this update! Time for a purchase

SpaceDuck

It's great to hear about the development work you guys are doing and I can't wait to see what's coming in December!

What I'm really hoping to see is some of the mythic card bundles come back to the store again for a "last chance" offer and maybe even come to the vault some day for purchase with gems. Any possibility of this happening in the near future?

Nitymp

Thanks for the info!

Plastic

I see that you, Will, mention bug fixing and not releasing content that tested out buggy to begin with. That's fine, but in my eyes it feels like too many repeated bugs slip through and get ignored through multiple patches.

Why are players still dealing with the bug affecting Liliana's Grave Mist ability? Same with Jace's Mind Sculpt. These were reported back to the Zendikar release I believe.

If bugs we report are on your to-do list, I think it would go a long way to let us know you're aware of them. In the meantime, you're letting players assume you are oblivious to the issues or just don't care.

Hibernum_Will

Plastic wrote:

I see that you, Will, mention bug fixing and not releasing content that tested out buggy to begin with. That's fine, but in my eyes it feels like too many repeated bugs slip through and get ignored through multiple patches.

Why are players still dealing with the bug affecting Liliana's Grave Mist ability? Same with Jace's Mind Sculpt. These were reported back to the Zendikar release I believe.

If bugs we report are on your to-do list, I think it would go a long way to let us know you're aware of them. In the meantime, you're letting players assume you are oblivious to the issues or just don't care.

Hi Plastic - thanks for the reply! Given the number of cards and Planeswalkers in Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest bugs are one of the bigger challenges we have to tackle. Sometimes when fixing a bug, it appears to be fixed in one case but still occurs in another. Other times bugs can be difficult to reproduce.

That said, the forums have been a huge help locating bugs - we actively have team members try to replicate bugs that are reported on the forums. Please keep the bug reports coming! (I just checked and there's a bug entered for both both Liliana's Grave Mist ability and Jace's Mind Sculpt - I believe this is actually a separate issue from the bug that happened earlier in the year.)

Hibernum_Will

SpaceDuck wrote:

It's great to hear about the development work you guys are doing and I can't wait to see what's coming in December!

What I'm really hoping to see is some of the mythic card bundles come back to the store again for a "last chance" offer and maybe even come to the vault some day for purchase with gems. Any possibility of this happening in the near future?

Hi SpaceDuck - I don't think we have anything like this scheduled for the near future, but it's an interesting idea! I'll pass it along to the team.

yunnnn

Hibernum_Will wrote:

That said, the forums have been a huge help locating bugs - we actively have team members try to replicate bugs that are reported on the forums. Please keep the bug reports coming! (I just checked and there's a bug entered for both both Liliana's Grave Mist ability and Jace's Mind Sculpt - I believe this is actually a separate issue from the bug that happened earlier in the year.)

How about the bug with Seasons Past crashing on Android devices? It's pretty discouraging to pay real money for mythics that can't be used. I'm fairly sure a less nice player would have just done a chargeback.

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=53619

wink

Hibernum_Will wrote:

SpaceDuck wrote:

It's great to hear about the development work you guys are doing and I can't wait to see what's coming in December!

What I'm really hoping to see is some of the mythic card bundles come back to the store again for a "last chance" offer and maybe even come to the vault some day for purchase with gems. Any possibility of this happening in the near future?

Hi SpaceDuck - I don't think we have anything like this scheduled for the near future, but it's an interesting idea! I'll pass it along to the team.

Just want to chime in to say that I would like this too.

majincob

Huzzah for development threads! I'm excited by the possibility of shorter events with better objectives! Are you going to make it more accessible for people in different time zones?

madwren

Thanks for checking in!

Leaffe

An active presence is GREATLY appreciated! I had just been considering shelving the game and moving on, but seeing a response from the team greatly increases my desire to stick around. Thank you.

Rootbreaker

Animation speed might be a good thing to let us control in settings.

majincob

Rootbreaker wrote:

Animation speed might be a good thing to let us control in settings.

30 second games in QB!

Ohboy

If events are going to be shorter, are there going to be more events, or even overlapping events?

I hate the downtime when there are days between events as it is. Which way is the team swinging towards? Bigger or smaller gaps between events?

GrizzoMtGPQ

Not all of us old timers dislike story! Please continue to create and release story content. It gives us something to do other than events and grinding in QB. We want an SOI story. We want the OGW story. We want a Kaladesh story. This stuff is fun!

blacklotus

Thanks for the announcement. Looking forward to next month.

jimilinho_

This was an unexpected surprise.

Just great to hear that there's plenty of things being worked on

khurram

While it is understandable that you guys want to focus on events i think you should also release new story content for each set. It gives the game more depth having a story to go through for each set. You can simply recycle the old PvE event encounters as story mode if it seems like too much work. Also It seems highly unlikely that you guys are going to run OGW pve event again. Add those encounters as story mode. Do the same with Avacyn's Madness for SOI once Kaladesh is released.

Morphis

To be brutally sincere here all I read is the usual stuff.
Based on this post I presume nothing will change.
The game itself and communication about it will keep going in the same direction.

Maybe I'll be surprised but as of now I won't count on it.