Kudos + How to keep Improving MTGPQ

babar3355

First off, thanks to the D3 and Hiberium teams for listening to the community and making some great changes in the recent patches. I won't touch on some of the bugs, as I know those will be fixed in due time. I want to list accomplishments in this patch and make some further tweaks to please a broader array of players.

**** Objectives - You guys really listened and created objectives that don't feel like a complete grind. Endless stalling is impossible with the redefined objectives... nice job. There are at least 18 players in platinum currently with a perfect score, this will likely thin out. If not, I think its more of a function of so few games rather than too easy of objectives.

***Recommendation*** Change the timer to 6 hours and increase the nodes back to 5. The objectives fixed the main issue, but you removed too many games! Terrors in the Shadows went from 48 fights (I think) to a mere 15. Keep in mind that despite the fact that people complained about such intense events, WE STILL DID IT. Gamers want to play their game.. I feel like removing 2/3s of the events is leaving me with nothing to do in game (not going to grind QB). The problem with EMN event was that each game could take 15-30 minutes to grind through, and there were 48 of them over 2 days. 48 games wasn't the problem... the 15-30 minute games were.

Timer queues - I love that this was changed so that you don't have to be waiting at your device when the event begins to have any hope of getting a top 5 slot. I assume this will help reduce server issues as well. Thank you! I also like that you lengthened the node recharges as 3 node events begin to feel like a job when you have to do one before bed and one soon after you wake up.

***Recommendation*** Change the clock to 6 hours and/or add more nodes in. An 8 hour clock feels too long in the other direction unless you are going to run multiple events concurrently. I played my Dovan Bane event nodes in about 10 minutes then had to wait 8 hours to do anything else in game. I love that you listened to the community but it feels that you went a bit too far (like speeding up the cascades a month or so ago).

Communicating with the fan base - No recommendation here, just really glad you are doing it and hope you keep it up.

Providing new content to keep us engaged including cards, events, mechanics, etc. Kudos! Enjoying the content so far even though I wish there was more of it!

***Recommendation*** Tier rewards based on score rather than pure rank. In the current Terrors event there are at least 18 perfect scores currently. Even though you fixed the start time race, there will still be an end event race when the last node becomes available. So the person most likely to win the event is whoever lives in Europe, Asia, or is willing to be up/wake up at 4:00 AM EST / 1 AM PST? Why does this have anything to do with what rewards you get? I was perfect in the last NoP event and ended up 26th place because I had a lunch meeting when the event started. This event is shaping up for a similar outcome because I don't want to wake up at 4:00 AM to play a game =/. And at least recognize that most of your players are US based and you couldn't find a more inopportune time for them.

Do it just like in golf. All players with perfect scores get first prize, if there are 26th of them then no one gets the 6-25 prizes and whoever is in 27th gets that price. You may dole out a few more cards, but its the only fair way to do it unless you intend this to be a race.

LoVe1AnGe

Completely agree with everything and moreover with the tie scores rewards.

But I still think 4h refresh is enough to have a live if there's much more than 3 charges. 8h is way too long when babar3355 and me don't really play anything else cuz QB isn't fun in the end.

Kevinanth

Agree with everything here. Excellent suggestions.

THEMAGICkMAN

Totally agree with this. I hope that the devs read this.

Yawgmoth

I am personally happy with the 8 hours recharge, it's now so much less pressure on my real life. Although combined with low node count in this **** event there's very little gameplay, so when I got more free time there's not much to do in this game. But I think those changes were deliberate because D3 is planning to run more events per week, also simultaneously. Would be ok to run a short & low pressure singleplayer event like this **** or Dovin's Challenge together with a fixed low pressure coalition event.

Also fully agree on rewarding all players with the exact same point count the same.

Morphis

Harder objectives + less games makes luck a bigger factor than before.
That's just common logic.
That means(in my perspective) it's worse than before competition wise.

For the quality of games, some objectives right now demand even more boring decks than before....
Don't lose more than 2 creatures?
Playing hexproof only creatures does not even guarantee success.
So either creature less deck is needed or one turn kill deck.
Both require too much time to setup for me.
But probably some people like playing this way.

For the nodes not starting full, yes a great improvement that's been suggested ages ago... This means there is hope that by 2020 we will have deck saves.

For the fact itself the event lasts only one day well it's better for me.
I feel less interested in the game recently so playing it less is good.

murtagon

Great post however I still think the whole concept of round timers is bad.

8 hours is good to address the time zone issues, 6 hours is not. 6 hours forces people in certain time zones to wake up in the middle of the night to play the game. We need a game that allows us to play within our own schedules.

The simple fix to this is remove rounds. Give everyone the maximum number of rounds per node and the completion time. People will play when they are able to without interfering with personal lives. Now that the game is moving to having daily events there is plenty of event activity to keep players engaged.

This opens the concern related to tie breaking. Here is a link to the suggestion article with an option to make tie braking more than just a race to complete nodes.

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=55898

Make tie braking an active part of the game instead of a passive calendar time based system that punishes players in different time zones.

Ohboy

I suggest events last at least the 2 days it used to run. With reduced starting nodes, increased recharge time and reduced event length time, the number of games played in the event is hit by a triple penalty.

Do concurrent events if necessary. In fact, I highly recommend it.

Theros

I personally like the 8 hours recharge. It provides lot of flexibility in playing the game and do other things.

The one thing I would like added is that each node gives 1 more chance in case you lost a node so that you adjust your deck. LosING on first try and having to wait too long is not fun.

arNero

The new node timer system is definitely a major improvement; that 8+ hours lead time before we start losing stock definitely makes it significantly less punishing for the players on the parts of the world who just won't want to wake up at the wrong hour to play this game. Thank you very much.

Irgy

I agree that halving the timer, reducing the starting charges and reducing the duration, all at the same time, was overkill. I just want to say, if you fix it, please keep the fact that the nodes have more capacity than starting charges. So for instance don't just put it back up to 5 charges to start, put it up to 5 and increase the capacity.

I also agree 6 hours would be fine under the current system, because if the nodes still charge up to 5 (I don't know for sure if they do or not) then that's still a 12 hour window to finish your first round of games, and up to 18 hours if you don't care about tiebreakers.

Finally I'd just like to say, I can see why you might not want to risk giving out prizes based on score or having an "everyone wins" tiebreaker, but the time based tiebreaker sucks. Even just a random tiebreaker would be better, because then at least people don't all make life harder for each other (and the servers) by playing exactly at the recharge time. I'm glad it's at a bad time for the USA because now something is even more likely to get done about it.

losdamianos

Yawgmoth wrote:

I am personally happy with the 8 hours recharge, it's now so much less pressure on my real life. Although combined with low node count in this **** event there's very little gameplay, so when I got more free time there's not much to do in this game. But I think those changes were deliberate because D3 is planning to run more events per week, also simultaneously. Would be ok to run a short & low pressure singleplayer event like this **** or Dovin's Challenge together with a fixed low pressure coalition event.

Also fully agree on rewarding all players with the exact same point count the same.

Finally the voice of reason
8 hours gives us our life back
please do not change to 4 hourss

Turtleoleo

8 hours is a bit too tight. I started the Terrors event as soon as it was live and am going to miss the final reward by 5 points due to some lousy luck.

I cant really play better when the game decides to give me nothing but support/spell draws in a 6 creature deck

losdamianos

Turtleoleo wrote:

8 hours is a bit too tight. I started the Terrors event as soon as it was live and am going to miss the final reward by 5 points due to some lousy luck.

I cant really play better when the game decides to give me nothing but support/spell draws in a 6 creature deck

problem in this case is not 8 hours recharche but the overall length of the Event which should last longer

babar3355

Well I am too inept to post the picture. But in platinum I am currently 16th of the 17 platinum players with perfect scores. That's the problem with only 15 fights even with objectives that require an element of luck. But its also the problem with the scoring system. You expect me to play a game at 4:00 AM to have any hope of placing in the top 5. Its just a stupid system. Plenty of better solutions.

For those of you who want your life back, you realize you aren't forced to play this game right? They even decoupled these competitions from coalition scores. You might only want to play 3 games every 8 hours, but some of us would like a little more. Why cow tail to those who want to play the least? No one is forcing you to engage.

Ampmp11

8 hrs is too long. I keep checking the app and there's nothing to do. I've finished story mode, finished all my event nodes and there's no way I'm jumping into QB early for that grind. Having nothing to do in the game will eventually push me to another game.

Also fixing the charges to store more charges at the beginning helps some players more than others. Now anyone playing in the European time zones or further have a much bigger advantage of finishing in the top because now the only thing that matters is when you finish the last recharge. Which most of the USA is still asleep. I refuse to wake up in the middle of the night (4 AM) so I can get a chance at placing better.

losdamianos

babar3355 wrote:

Well I am too inept to post the picture. But in platinum I am currently 16th of the 17 platinum players with perfect scores. That's the problem with only 15 fights even with objectives that require an element of luck. But its also the problem with the scoring system. You expect me to play a game at 4:00 AM to have any hope of placing in the top 5. Its just a stupid system. Plenty of better solutions.

Either D3 prioritize certain timezones or will reward EVERYONE equally based on how many points were scored regardles of WHEN have you finsihshed because you had WORK/SLEEP to do

babar3355

losdamianos wrote:

babar3355 wrote:

Well I am too inept to post the picture. But in platinum I am currently 16th of the 17 platinum players with perfect scores. That's the problem with only 15 fights even with objectives that require an element of luck. But its also the problem with the scoring system. You expect me to play a game at 4:00 AM to have any hope of placing in the top 5. Its just a stupid system. Plenty of better solutions.

Either D3 prioritize certain timezones or will reward EVERYONE equally based on how many points were scored regardles of WHEN have you finsihshed because you had WORK/SLEEP to do

Couldn't have said it better myself.