Avacyn's Madness secondary objectives.

buscemi

Once again, Avacyn has stubbed her toe on a chair and has started throwing her toys out of the pram.

I used to think I didn't like Avacyn's Madness very much [citation needed]. I'm pretty sure I used to really hate it, actually. But then Emrakul's Corruption came along and showed me the true power of the dark side, and now I seem to find Avacyn's Madness somewhat tolerable. Somewhat.

Principally, I think what raises AM so far above EC is the improved quality of her secondary objectives. Casting 6 werewolves and 8 eldrazi is hell, and can take ages. You have to build your deck to stall, and if you then meet someone else's deck which is also built to stall, you can be stuck playing that same game for an hour.

By contrast, many of AC's objectives encourage SHORT games. The most obvious of these is Ormendahl's 'Win the game in <=7 turns'. Can y'all do this all the time? I can do it sometimes. Sure, I find it infuriating when I am 'robbed!' of this objective through what I perceive as my bad luck and the nebulous and unfathomable ways of RNGesus, but at least the games don't take hours to play.

AM is not without it's problems. Watcher in the Web, with it's 'Lose >=7 of your creatures' objective can be a total pain, escpecially when your opponent does insist on merely disabling your creatures rather than actually killing them. But in general there are a number of objectives which just allow you to play your deck to win the game as fast as possible, in the way that all of the cards in it were generally designed to do: 'Take <=25 damage', 'Play <=3 supports', 'Finish with 90+ life'.

There's a pattern emerging here. 'Do this thing at least X times!' tends to create a long and tedious game, whereas 'Do this thing less than X times' tends towards the opposite. This pattern doesn't hold in all circumstances, but it's a good rule of thumb. Could this rule of thumb perhaps be applied to PvP as well as PvE events? It was great finally getting another Nodes of Power to play this week, but of course those huge ties for first place are a bit of a problem. Secondary objectives are one way of separating out the players a bit, but could we maybe have some short secondary objectives instead of those awful EC ones?

One place where the rule does break down a bit in AM is Persistent Nightmare's 'Cast <=2 spells' objective. PN is such a tricky opponent that you generally can't enter the game with one of your normal decks and just try killing him without casting a lot of spells... I personally found that the only way to beat this objective was to build a custom deck. How about you guys? It does, to a certain extent, discriminate against people without good enough collections the build such a deck.. but is that unfair? It is just a secondary objective, after all. There are plenty of players who can't even win the game against Avacyn. Similar objectives such as 'Play no defenders' or 'play no creatures with lifelink' certainly seem like they could be adjusted to PvP, but then, I'm not convinced that they'd solve that tiebreak problem we always get.

How do y'all feel about the secondary objectives we've been getting recently?

Mainloop25

Terror In The Shadows has a good balance of secondary objectives. They are unique enough to cause someone to have to rebuild their decks somewhat, yet not too hard that they cause you to stall the game in such a grueling manner as Emrakul's Corruption.

Ohboy

EC always felt like an experiment to me.

There's an urgent need to find a way to break ties, and the devs probably thought objectives that stretched the game would induce enough variance to do the job. Clearly that has not been the case.

I think most people already have powerful enough cards to control the game indefinitely, so that's probably not going to work for now. My guess is the next move will swing in the opposite direction. Incentise quick games with an objective hard to clear in a quick game.

For eg:

Win the game in 7 turns.
Play 2 creatures with defender

Another possible route is to make bonus objectives downright dangerous

For eg:

Win the game with less than 10hp left
Cast no more than 2 spells.

Mainloop25

That's not a bad idea. But people will complain no matter what the objectives are.

If the objectives changed for every event each time it returned, that would help keep events fresh.

bk1234

Mainloop25 wrote:

That's not a bad idea. But people will complain no matter what the objectives are.

If the objectives changed for every event each time it returned, that would help keep events fresh.

I partially liked the objectives for **** and Saheeli -- and I don't mind the objectives for Avacyn with the exception of the double objective levels and PN -- because that level is so OP that it's virtually unobtainable to most players.

I don't like double objectives though -- I think they should be either / or and they should be equal in value.

Ohboy

bken1234 wrote:

Mainloop25 wrote:

That's not a bad idea. But people will complain no matter what the objectives are.

If the objectives changed for every event each time it returned, that would help keep events fresh.

I partially liked the objectives for **** and Saheeli -- and I don't mind the objectives for Avacyn with the exception of the double objective levels and PN -- because that level is so OP that it's virtually unobtainable to most players.

I don't like double objectives though -- I think they should be either / or and they should be equal in value.

The key point in objectives I think is to make it hard enough or risky enough that not many people can make all of them, even if you have all the cards. That makes them true bonuses, and allows tie breaks.

jimilinho_

Buscemi is definitely the funniest one so far. Once I realized

Steeme

jimilinho_ wrote:

Buscemi is definitely the funniest one so far. Once I realized

Agreed, I think this one's a keeper. Especially when it's in all lower case letters.

madwren

I've been saying the same thing. While I may not like the AM event per se, the variety of objectives is great, and I like that they encourage diverse solutions rather than everyone putting the same eldrazi or vampires in their deck.

When you have counting objectives combined with limited card options, deckbuilding narrows. When you have more global objectives (spells, supports, life, speed), deckbuilding opens up.

Mainloop25

Curious if you like the game more or like it less since this post?

buscemi

Mainloop25 wrote:

Curious if you like the game more or like it less since this post?

Me? I'm up and down. I've taken time off when things have gotten bad; right now I'm pretty engaged with the game, although I'm very, very concerned about the fast combo decks doing the rounds at the moment. Deploy the Gatewatch was bad enough, but Rishka's Expertise is just being silly.

While you're necro-ing this thread, tho, something struck me about it, in the context of what's happening now in the game: There was a bit of an outcry over the <4 turns objective in RatC, and there's an ongoing thread about the <5 turns objective in EmO, which has drawn similar criticism.

So how come the Ormendahl level in Avacyn's Madness never attracted this level of ire? All I can think of is this:

Irgy wrote:

The problem with this is not that it isn't winnable. The problem is that it shouldn't be winnable.

If there's combos which are capable of achieving this objective, especially if reliably, then it's simply a very poor reflection on card balance. It's something to be ashamed of not something to rub in everyone's faces with this objective.

Ohboy

buscemi wrote:

Mainloop25 wrote:

Curious if you like the game more or like it less since this post?

Me? I'm up and down. I've taken time off when things have gotten bad; right now I'm pretty engaged with the game, although I'm very, very concerned about the fast combo decks doing the rounds at the moment. Deploy the Gatewatch was bad enough, but Rishka's Expertise is just being silly.

While you're necro-ing this thread, tho, something struck me about it, in the context of what's happening now in the game: There was a bit of an outcry over the <4 turns objective in RatC, and there's an ongoing thread about the <5 turns objective in EmO, which has drawn similar criticism.

So how come the Ormendahl level in Avacyn's Madness never attracted this level of ire? All I can think of is this:

Irgy wrote:

The problem with this is not that it isn't winnable. The problem is that it shouldn't be winnable.

If there's combos which are capable of achieving this objective, especially if reliably, then it's simply a very poor reflection on card balance. It's something to be ashamed of not something to rub in everyone's faces with this objective.

I think the simpler answer is that back then less players were accustomed to getting full score. Fateful showdowns got people thinking they had improved to a point where they could do every objective, and so the new objectives that weren't that easy to hit was like a slap in the face.

It's a brilliant observation and connection to make though.

Mainloop25

Ohboy wrote:

I think the simpler answer is that back then less players were accustomed to getting full score. Fateful showdowns got people thinking they had improved to a point where they could do every objective, and so the new objectives that weren't that easy to hit was like a slap in the face.

It's a brilliant observation and connection to make though.

Yeah I think you are right. Back then there were a lot more matches being played (were there 4 or 5 pies? ) instead of the 3 pies now.

People were struggling just to win against the main bosses, so the extra points felt more like just that, rather than now where any extra point counts.

Ormendahl gave a decent amount of points for winning without bonuses, and there were much more opportunities to gain points. Back then nodes reset every four hours.