A more sober reflection on silly event objectives

buscemi

We all got a bit of a shock, didn't we, when RatC rolled around? 1.1, with it's 5 energize and <=3 turns was pretty random, but 3.1's 400hps to get through in 4 turns was bloody ludicrous.

At first, many players, including myself, railed at the randomness of these objectives. 'How are we supposed to get perfect scores!?' we cried. 'These are next to impossible!'. Players on the other side of the argument pointed out that perhaps even players at the top of the game were not *supposed* to get perfect scores all the time. And dyou know what? With hindsight, I think they're right. Make no mistake, I consider these objectives to involve a far, far higher degree of randomness than skill. But perhaps the RatC event is a good place for objectives like this. There is no individual leaderboard; only a progression ladder which is achievable to a certain % of the player base even without getting these extra 5 point bonuses; and a coalition leaderboard, consisting of teams of 20 players... team scores will be less affected by randomness as some players within a team will get lucky and others won't. In fact, it makes team chat kinda fun, doesn't it? 'I got the 3 turns kill!!! ' 'Curse you, I missed it by one!! '

However, now we have a PvP event, EmO, and it's blue node has another objective (<=5 turns) which is determined largely by luck. Only the top 5 players are getting mythics, and it's basically just a matter of luck who gets put there. Those top 5 are the players who have the right combo cards (whether through luck opening packs, or worse, just buying a ton of booster packs), got lucky in their matchups, and got lucky in their games. That is too much luck for my liking, personally. There's some skill involved, but let's not underestimate the degree to which it plays second fiddle to luck.

(The other 2 nodes in EmO have their problems too, but they're not as bad as the blue node. I really like the '0 supports' one as a deckbuilding challenge, but if the matchmaking system decides to pair you up against one of those Kiora decks that's designed to win in 5 turns, then you probably aren't going to get higher up the leaderboard than one of the other 3000 players in the bracket who didn't have to fight her. And, personally, I have a grand sum of 0 decent Energize cards available to me to play in the black node. Anyone else feel like that?)

Back to the <=X turns nodes, tho. There are some serious problems associated with these objectives specifically and what they say about the design of the game. Let's not forget they were not a mistake.. the dev team wanted decks to exist in the game which were capable of defeating 3.1, to the degree that they playtested it a lot (Perhaps even more than they tested 3.3 to see just how irrititating all those Fabricate animations were)

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Believe it or not, we do test these objectives.

It's not unwinnable. Very difficult, yes. Maybe a bit too difficult, yes.

Unwinnable? No. I have done it myself.

It's important to note that not all objectives and encounters will be beatable by all players. A lot depends on your available cards, deck building, planeswalker, etc.

M'colleague Irgy commented perfectly on 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.

There's not much more I can add to that point. It's just so blatantly self evident that cards & decks which are capable of dealing 400 damage to an opponent in 4 turns are bad for the game.

I do have a couple of other points I'd like to add, tho, and they relate to just how interesting these decks are to play.

Firstly, the act of building a 4 turn deck is interesting (if you have the cards). The act of testing it can be fun too; whenever you make a new deck you can find brand new decisions to be made, and in combo decks like this they can be quite subtle and interesting. I had about a days worth of fun building, testing, and then playing my 4 turn Kiora deck before it all got a bit automatic and dull. I wonder how many other players feel the same? If no changes are made to these events, I can be expecting to watch the same 10 cards looping and the same graphics whizzing around the screen for the next 2 months or so.

Secondly, a deck which wins in 4 turns does not have any room for interaction with an opponent. All the cards in the deck must be geared towards the goal of winning the game quickly. If there was room in my 4 turn Kiora deck for an Imprisoned in the Moon or an Engulf the Shore, you can bet I'd whip it out and make it win more consistently on turn 4 by adding another combo piece. (You can count Prism Array as interaction if you like, but I didn't put it in because it disables creatures, I put it in because it will draw me >50 cards a turn). Interaction is a key part of the fun and variety of this game (There's a reason why WOTC stopped printing cards with Mind Twist, Sinkhole, Balance, Hymn to Tourach, and Stone Rain in paper MTG long, long ago). Plus, if your PvP opponent should happen to throw out a card which you actually need to answer in order for your combo deck to continue working? Well, that's you out of the top 5. Bad luck.


Tl;DR viewtopic.php?f=31&t=50869

bk1234

Still waiting on a video and decklist.

madwren

bken1234 wrote:

Still waiting on a video and decklist.

Gotta clear the photo rights first.

AettThorn

I'm fine if they are going to create more and more challenging events, but then they risk alienating more and more players who can't compete. If this was meant to be a "hardcore player only" type of event even for basic progression, then they need to be upfront about it.

Those extra five or ten points each battle might not seem like much when you can routinely win the 50-point battle that is 3.3, but when you can't, those secondary objectives are kind of critical to get basic progression.

I really don't know what the solution is if we have some people wanting more challenges, and others just wanting to try to have fun while still trying to be slightly competitive. We might end up having some events where the more casual players can't compete. But then don't lock exclusive cards behind these events.

They also need to take a much bigger pass at making sure that event objectives are actually correct. That's just basic QA/QC that they seem to be missing.

madwren

buscemi wrote:

At first, many players, including myself, railed at the randomness of these objectives. 'How are we supposed to get perfect scores!?' we cried. 'These are next to impossible!'. Players on the other side of the argument pointed out that perhaps even players at the top of the game were not *supposed* to get perfect scores all the time. And dyou know what? With hindsight, I think they're right. Make no mistake, I consider these objectives to involve a far, far higher degree of randomness than skill. But perhaps the RatC event is a good place for objectives like this. There is no individual leaderboard; only a progression ladder which is achievable to a certain % of the player base even without getting these extra 5 point bonuses; and a coalition leaderboard, consisting of teams of 20 players... team scores will be less affected by randomness as some players within a team will get lucky and others won't. In fact, it makes team chat kinda fun, doesn't it? 'I got the 3 turns kill!!! ' 'Curse you, I missed it by one!! '

I think this is an excellently expressed point. Though I think that most players should have a chance to complete most objectives, as long as it isn't locking them out of progression, then I can understand--and even support--the "it's ok not to score perfect" nature of the objectives.

However, the event's been dragging on for awhile. If they adjust the hp downwards, a lot of people who managed to hit progression this time around will likely not be able to in subsequent iterations of the event. If that's the case, then I'll be sorely disappointed on their behalf.

bk1234

AettThorn wrote:

I'm fine if they are going to create more and more challenging events, but then they risk alienating more and more players who can't compete. If this was meant to be a "hardcore player only" type of event even for basic progression, then they need to be upfront about it.

See my post here

I'd like to talk about the implications of another objective in RAC and then I will move on to EO: 3.2 -- Energize 10 or more gems. This is an easily obtainable objective for anyone who can get to this level. The problem is that the objective is set up to make the AI more successful and the player fail. Let's look at three of the cards for this opponent:

Planar Bridge
Dynavolt Tower
Gonti's Aether Heart

All three cards utilize the Overload mechanic to basically kick your butt -- and in order to meet the objective, you are basically feeding them fuel to do so -- you're given the choice to either drop an objective or help the AI beat you. This objective sets the average player up to fail. Now any top tier player can beat this with both objectives, I didn't find it particularly difficult -- but how many top tier players are there, really? A few hundred -- out of 21K playing this event?

I'd like to talk about how a balanced event should be designed:

New players should be able to beat a few levels and maybe get an objective or two.

Mid-level players should be able to get through almost all if not all of the levels without building to objectives.

Top-level players should be able to beat all levels and get many objectives.

Now I've been through three of the PVE events at this point and I know as a team leader that they are rough on the first go round. First, they're always poorly tested and broken in many places. Second, they are always oddly balanced. But I have never seen a level actually designed to make the average player help AI beat them -- this level is set up for failure.

With more and more top tier players getting burnt out and leaving or playing down, it's time for Hibernum to start thinking about the player base that is still coming up -- the mid level players -- the ones who aren't completely jaded and over the bull****. Designing objectives that are challenging and complementary to a 500 card collection versus objectives that can only be obtained with an 800+ card collection are a key to retention.

Onto EO -- or what I'm calling "The Great Cheater Trap of 2017"

What the actual heck?

Like OP, I actually like the no supports objective. I really like no supports / spells or high support / spells objectives. Perhaps this is a personal preference, however Saheeli remains my favorite PVP event ever. As a pretty balanced deckbuilder, I like breaking that mold and trying something new. However, this event is an example of either 1. catering to top tier players or 2. someone not thinking things through.

I have a fast Dovin deck -- anyone at my level who has Deploy and the pig and the twins and flagship does. It's a situational deck though. I won with all of my energy in 6 rounds every time. I think that's phenomenal. However, I've thought about this a lot and I believe only could have consistently won with 5 if I had Saheeli. I don't have Saheeli -- MOST people don't have Saheeli. It was an event reward very early on. MOST people playing weren't even into events or even the game when that event happened.

I feel strongly that this event should be shelved until she is available for crystals.

Similarly I hate the energy objectives on all of the tiers, there just aren't many energy generating cards that will stand up to the Platinum and Gold tiers. So we are forced to just stick terrible cards like Decoction Module into our decks when we could be building something really cool for a different, better objective.

In other words -- this Kaladesh specific stuff is not a win. People are saying it over and over and over and over again and no-one is listening.

Just once, it would be nice if someone BESIDES BRIGBY (who is the only one in 2 companies who gives a darn about anything) would read one of our rants, and reply with "I hear you, tell me more."

We do pay your salaries, you know.

gruntface

Agreed on the value of having more engagement from the developers with the community.

Beating a broken drum here but communication is so important and posting updates and staying silent is not helpful.

The post from JC about the win in 4 rounds or less objective was borderline insulting. All I learned from that is if you have access to every card in the game and known firsthand how the code is written it can be done. Quite a defensive, it can be done, quit complaining, post which utterly missed the valid objections raised.

We enjoy the game but the lack of stewardship is concerning. If the most active players are getting disillusioned, the game has no future. This is your chance to help us help you. Some positive items coming but please step up the interaction.

Steeme

It's gotten to the point where I don't even care about the objectives anymore. I simply don't have the time to optimize multiple decks for multiple concurrent events with seemingly random objectives, nor do I particularly enjoy intentionally gimping my deck to make objectives when it increases my chance of just losing the match outright.

hawkyh1

for 3.2, to meet the energise 10 gems goal I use consulate
surveillance(U,5 mana) followed immediately on the same
turn by die young(c,5 mana). both relatively accessible but
you need to use a black/white planeswalker like sorin. it does
needlessly take up a card slot(I need die young to stop gonti
heart, etc). (I suppose matching 2 energise gems for 3 life
might be useful if things got that desperate).
for me that objective is a plausible: play a moderately harder
game but get more ribbons for winning.

HH

Mainloop25

Steeme wrote:

It's gotten to the point where I don't even care about the objectives anymore. I simply don't have the time to optimize multiple decks for multiple concurrent events with seemingly random objectives, nor do I particularly enjoy intentionally gimping my deck to make objectives when it increases my chance of just losing the match outright.

^^^100% agree with this, and I'm in a top ten coalition.

Nitymp

Why can't we just do away with needing tiebreakers to sort rankings out and just award the joint X players the prize of the highest joint ranking? This does away with stupid time based tie breakers and the need to implement stupid RNG based secondaries!

bk1234

Nitymp wrote:

Why can't we just do away with needing tiebreakers to sort rankings out and just award the joint X players the prize of the highest joint ranking? This does away with stupid time based tie breakers and the need to implement stupid RNG based secondaries!

There's been many mentions of score based prizes. This makes the most sense.