Development Thread - (12/15/16)

Hibernum_Will

Hi everybody!

Welcome to the second installment of the Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest Development Thread! Each month, we endeavor to put out a short post giving you an idea of where the game is heading - and to address some questions from the community.

We’ve been busy with the Kaladesh release and the game’s one-year anniversary, so we haven’t had too much time to chat on the forums - but rest assured that we’ve been following the discussion. The feedback that you provide is incredibly useful! We’re lucky to have such a great community.

Without further adieu, let’s answer some questions:

What’s changed since the last Developer’s Thread?

Lots! One of the big changes that you may notice is that we've reworked Events. We've rebalanced a lot of optional objectives in Events to make them more competitive. In addition, Events that have nodes now begin with nodes only partially charged. Nodes start charging automatically, so you can get to the top of a leaderboard - even if you start an Event late. Balancing Events is an ongoing process - we’ll be monitoring the new Events and will make updates in the future if they’re needed. We have already got some great feedback on the new Events - keep it coming! We’ve also crafted a ton of new Events, including a few unannounced ones. Keep an eye out for the Inventors’ Fair at the end of the month. This three day PvP Event is sure to be one of the biggest competitions yet. Top players in Silver, Gold and Platinum will have a chance to win the exclusive Mythic Dynavolt Tower! Since the last Developer’s Thread, we’ve greatly reduced the downtime when releasing a new update for the game, updated the UI and prepared a couple surprises for the Holidays. We’re certainly excited for what’s up next! (Oh, and of course the Kaladesh Card Set is now out!)

So - what is up next for Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest?

In the short-term, we’re preparing an update to fix some of the bugs that slipped through in the 1.9 update. The next update should also finish our major visual overhaul. In the medium-term, we want to start running multiple Events at the same time. We’re currently in the process of upgrading and testing our servers so that we can run several concurrent Events - ensuring you always have a new challenge to tackle!

Speaking of the visual overhaul, Energized gems can sometimes make the gem board hard to read.

We’ve gotten this feedback from a number of players. We’re still in the process of adjusting the visual layout of the game - and feedback from the community definitely helps shape the final result!

In Events, the first player to reach a score wins a tie on the leaderboard. Will this change?

In the long-term, yes. Events should reward you for playing smart and building the optimal decks - regardless of when you play the Event. However, in the short-term we want to use optional objectives to avoid ties by introducing granularity in the Event scores. (As mentioned above, Event balancing is an ongoing task. We’ll keep an eye on the leaderboards for the rebalanced Events and make changes in future if necessary.)

What happened with Thalia, Heretic Cathar?

We had initially scheduled the Emrakul's Corruption Event to run a few additional times in November; however, the Event wasn't meeting our internal standards. We had hoped that the optional objectives would encourage interesting deck building; however, we found that they were encouraging long and slow matches. As a result, we ultimately removed several Emrakul's Corruption Events from the schedule - including one Event that included the Rare card Thalia, Heretic Cathar. We decided it was best to release this card with the other exclusive Eldritch Moon cards, rather than hold it back for a future Event. We try our best not to needlessly set aside cards; however, due to the dynamic nature of game development, sometimes these things happen. Thalia, Heretic Cathar is no longer exclusive and can now be obtained from booster packs.

Let’s talk about “the Coalition exploit.”

A big thanks to everyone who brought this to our attention. We’re currently working on a system to ensure that Coalitions can’t gain an unfair advantage by cycling members during an Event. From what we can tell, very few (if any) Coalitions are intentionally using this exploit at the moment; however, we want to make sure it doesn’t become a problem in the future. The optimal strategy should also be the fun one. This exploit will be closed in next week’s update. After the update goes live, you will only be able to contribute to your Coalition’s score if you’ve joined your Coalition before the Event has begun.

Thanks again for all the great feedback! As always, there are a lot of questions that we haven’t had time to tackle - so be sure to look for upcoming Development Threads. In the meantime, thank you for playing Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest and Happy Holidays!

octal9

Thank you. Some of the issues mentioned above are right at the forefront. I'm a fan of the new event system - shorter, faster events are very nice.

I do have a few questions:

1) You mentioned tiebreaking may have a long-term solution. What tiebreaking systems are you investigating, if any?

2) Matchmaking is a big problem right now. There are a number of threads detailing the issue. Our primary concern is repeated adversaries not just over one event, but over every single event in the tier, for all players. For the players that share a bracket with Kiora1, Ahzim05, Brian1125 in gold, it is not uncommon to see them multiple times in the same event. And again, this happens to everyone.

Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

My questions are thus:
a) why?
b) Is this intentional? Should we be against the same pool of 20 or so players in our bracket, or should we actually be seeing variety from the (up to) 3000 different players in our bracket? When people are seeing the same person for 16% of their 48 matches, it's boring. "I've seen this deck and I know exactly how to beat it."
c) Why has there been naught but silence on this for almost 3 months?

nexus13

Thanks for communicating. Keep it up.

On Nodes of Power the new objectives did create some separation which is good but it seemed to do it in a method that had a higher degree of luck to it than skill. Taking 10 or less damage is pretty much out of your hands if you happen to face Chandra for example and the limited summoning objectives get ruined by spells that steal and return your creature or replace your creature (frog/moon). You can build to minimize these issues but there is a LOT of luck involved and with the shortened number of rounds you don't have a long term trend where you can see the affect of skill and deck construction playing out. Those factors will only be apparent now in the long term across multiple events, there is no space to make up for bad luck within a single event. I like the multiple shorter events but it is rough how there is no room for error because there are so few matches, I think it works out in the long run but it feels worse when one instance of bad luck ruins your chances for placement in the event and there is no chance to recover from it.

Glad to hear there are plans to change the tie problem.

NinjaE

Thanks for the great communication, and the positive developments!

sunprincess

Sad to see the coalition limitations - I am all for closing the exploit, but I hoped that it would just keep track of players' scores in the event, and then if they left/rejoined a new coalition mid event, the original one would lose their full score for the event, and the new one would gain it. That kept all the versatility of the current system, with no of the opportunities for exploitation

gulgoth

Was it intentional to increase costs of planeswalkers in the vault? The two added today are more expensive than previous times they were in the vault

Nitymp

I like the idea of having concurrent events, especially now that the charges are 8 hours apart so that it won't be a manic rush to complete everything. (remember the double saheeli rai event weekend anyone?!)

However, before you implement concurrent events, please, please, please, PLEASE implement multiple deck slots for each PW!!

wink

sunprincess wrote:

Sad to see the coalition limitations - I am all for closing the exploit, but I hoped that it would just keep track of players' scores in the event, and then if they left/rejoined a new coalition mid event, the original one would lose their full score for the event, and the new one would gain it. That kept all the versatility of the current system, with no of the opportunities for exploitation

I think the issue with this is the following:
1) Get 6 (or however many) coalitions in a family working together
2) Towards the end of the event, see which members of the mega-coalition have prefect scores
3) Reshuffle the membership of the coalitions to put all the perfect scorers in one coalition
4) Collect 1st place for having a coalition of perfect scores

Optionally, you can rebalance the coalitions towards the end of the event to have 2 or 3 high scoring coalitions instead of one perfect one. Or whatever the mega-coalition decides on.

bk1234

Can I get a point of clarification?

Will the concurrent events be individual and coalition or will two coalition events be running at the same time?

If it's the latter, how will we be able to adjust our roster for each event.

Many people like to pick and choose which coalition events they participate in.

Thanks!

Abenjes

offer Thalia up as an event reward and raise our expectations, take her away and dash our hopes... at least you addressed the issue.

cheers D3

madwren

Thanks for the post. It's very welcome, and I'm thrilled to hear you're closing the exploit. I'm likewise encouraged that you realize the new NoP objectives are a bit out of whack.

However, I think the community's really getting screwed over regarding Thalia. The chances of people attaining her from a pack is far less than being able to achieve her via progression in an event. While the stated reason was that EC "wasn't meeting internal standards", it's hard to view this as anything but punitive towards the community after everyone stood up and said, look, we hate this event, please stop it. Thalia should have been redirected into another event, instead of just being taken away. It feels as if this is a "fine, you don't like our event, then you won't get Thalia, take that."

Please note I was fortunate enough to get Thalia from a pack, so I'm not talking from sour grapes here. I love her. She's a fantastic card. It saddens me that so many coalition-mates and community members won't be as lucky.

techparadox

madwren pretty much hit the nail on the head for how I'm feeling about this. Instead of what could have been a guaranteed Rare in my collection, I'm now forced to fork over 600 Crystals and pray to RNGeesus that one of the maybe five non-duplicate cards I get out of the SOI Big Box is the Rare I could have earned through actual play and skill. Thanks, heaps, D3 & Hibernum. You really know how to make a guy feel welcome as a player.

Yvendros

madwren wrote:

Thanks for the post. It's very welcome, and I'm thrilled to hear you're closing the exploit. I'm likewise encouraged that you realize the new NoP objectives are a bit out of whack.

However, I think the community's really getting screwed over regarding Thalia. The chances of people attaining her from a pack is far less than being able to achieve her via progression in an event. While the stated reason was that EC "wasn't meeting internal standards", it's hard to view this as anything but punitive towards the community after everyone stood up and said, look, we hate this event, please stop it. Thalia should have been redirected into another event, instead of just being taken away. It feels as if this is a "fine, you don't like our event, then you won't get Thalia, take that."

Please note I was fortunate enough to get Thalia from a pack, so I'm not talking from sour grapes here. I love her. She's a fantastic card. It saddens me that so many coalition-mates and community members won't be as lucky.

Except, as you'll notice, only about a week after we didn't get thalia, they took SOI packs out of the store. wut?

ZW2007-

Hibernum_Will wrote:

What’s changed since the last Developer’s Thread?
Keep an eye out for the Inventors’ Fair at the end of the month. This three day PvP Event is sure to be one of the biggest competitions yet. Top players in Silver, Gold and Platinum will have a chance to win the exclusive Mythic Dynavolt Tower!

I'm surprised no one else has jumped on this yet so I'll take a stab at it. Way to be a bunch of *expletive deleted* teases with Dynavolt Tower. When I first saw that card I was really excited, it looked to be the best and/or most interesting card in the entire new set. Then I saw it was an exclusive and my excitement decreased but thought eh maybe I'll buy it. Then I saw it was an Event Reward!!! Holy wow, they are doing another OGW style PvE event that will reward a sweet mythic! What's that? It's not a fun PvE event? It's a three day PvP grind fest just like Saheeli? So, not only will the vast majority of players be unable to get it, they will also have to wait months for a chance at opening it from a pack. Gee, thanks.

*Removed Profanity*
- Brigby

madwren

Yvendros wrote:

madwren wrote:

Thanks for the post. It's very welcome, and I'm thrilled to hear you're closing the exploit. I'm likewise encouraged that you realize the new NoP objectives are a bit out of whack.

However, I think the community's really getting screwed over regarding Thalia. The chances of people attaining her from a pack is far less than being able to achieve her via progression in an event. While the stated reason was that EC "wasn't meeting internal standards", it's hard to view this as anything but punitive towards the community after everyone stood up and said, look, we hate this event, please stop it. Thalia should have been redirected into another event, instead of just being taken away. It feels as if this is a "fine, you don't like our event, then you won't get Thalia, take that."

Please note I was fortunate enough to get Thalia from a pack, so I'm not talking from sour grapes here. I love her. She's a fantastic card. It saddens me that so many coalition-mates and community members won't be as lucky.

Except, as you'll notice, only about a week after we didn't get thalia, they took SOI packs out of the store. wut?

An excellent point, sir.

schattenstern

Is there any hope of getting the Dynavolt tower by progression rewards?
Currently the ties are too big of a problem to distribute a exclusive card through this.

Hibernum_Will

octal9 wrote:

Thank you. Some of the issues mentioned above are right at the forefront. I'm a fan of the new event system - shorter, faster events are very nice.

I do have a few questions:

1) You mentioned tiebreaking may have a long-term solution. What tiebreaking systems are you investigating, if any?

2) Matchmaking is a big problem right now. There are a number of threads detailing the issue. Our primary concern is repeated adversaries not just over one event, but over every single event in the tier, for all players. For the players that share a bracket with Kiora1, Ahzim05, Brian1125 in gold, it is not uncommon to see them multiple times in the same event. And again, this happens to everyone.

1) We're looking at a number of options. As soon as we've settled on one - we'll definitely share it! (Sorry to be secretive but sharing too many details early on can lead to confusion.)

2) The team is aware of this problem. I can't guarantee when it will be fixed - but it's on our radar.

bken1234 wrote:

Can I get a point of clarification?

Will the concurrent events be individual and coalition or will two coalition events be running at the same time?

If it's the latter, how will we be able to adjust our roster for each event.

Many people like to pick and choose which coalition events they participate in.

Thanks!

In the short-term we'd like to avoid running two coalition events at the same time.

schattenstern wrote:

Is there any hope of getting the Dynavolt tower by progression rewards?
Currently the ties are too big of a problem to distribute a exclusive card through this.

We want Dynavolt Tower to be a really special Reward, so we're giving it out through the leaderboard. The length of the Event (and number of battles) should help with the number of ties. In Platinum, the top 25 players will win the card. (In Silver and Gold, the top 5 players in each room will win the card.)

Lucapaco

I'd like to see one day a statistic how my decks are doing against other players.
How many time someone has fought against them, how many times my deck was beaten or won.
Maybe some reward in runes for winning battle (something like 50 runes for winning battle).

That could be interesting to feature.

octal9

Hibernum_Will wrote:

2) The team is aware of this problem. I can't guarantee when it will be fixed - but it's on our radar.

Matchmaking is a huge pain point for many players right now. This is a non-answer, but I'm glad y'all are aware of the issue. Several other good changes have come down for events recently - fixing event matchmaking would be a massive boon for the game's health.

MrStem0

I second Octal on that one, matchmaking is my biggest gripe with this game!


Next,

If you are planning on running concurrent events often that is great, but are you developing a way for us to manage multiple decks as switching between cards for two separate events will become extremely tiresome.

wink

An issue with the win/loss ratio in Quick Battle is that once you've played enough games, your average is very hard to move. You could win 10 games in a row, or lose 10 games in a row and not have your percentage move at all.

It would be very nice to have a "recent" average, something like your win/loss ratio of your last 100 matches (or 200, or whatever), so that you can tell if you are getting better or worse compared to last week/month.