Planeswalker Arena: Sorin

ifsandbuts

Win with 20 or less HP?! Seriously?

For THE Planeswalker built around lifelink?!

Then I win with 13 HP, but you count the lifelink (which didn't get added to his HP!) that would've ocurred after the deathblow and say I finished with 35 HP.

This game used to be awesome. Now it sucks royally and is very boring. Ya'll blew it...

Delnai

Yeah I just don't understand the design philosophy behind making Planeswalker Arena objectives counter to what the planeswalker naturally wants to do. Totally turns me off of these events. Just seems like bad design. 

I mean, this is a MtG game. You'd think they'd have read some of the key lessons from MaRo, who's been dropping game design stories/advice on us every week for like 16+ years. I don't even dabble in game design and I've read enough of his stuff to get the basic idea: find what your players want to do and reward them for doing it. See lesson 5 of this article http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/twenty-years-twenty-lessons-part-1-2016-05-30 and even more relevant lesson 13 from part two: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/twenty-years-twenty-lessons-part-2-2016-06-06. I mean, whoever's making this game is allowed to disagree, but let me tell you I sure as heck don't enjoy it. 

ZW2007-

If scores in my bracket mean anything, noone enjoys it. They have really doubled down on making this game unfun. They changed the Emrakul's Corruption event because we said it was unfun to have to cast so many x and so many eldrazi. Now they just found a new way to make it unfun while at the same time making rewards unrewarding. Top it off with the same events over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and you get a very stagnant game with a very resentful player base. a stagnant game with a resentful player base isn't a profitable game, which is the opposite of what their goal should be. I wonder if there's any correlation between a game that plays the opposite of how it should and a game that resluts in the opposite of what it should... anyone who finds the current state of affairs to be fun, I'd say they are a very boring individual that's likely never actually had fun. Anyone out there know what D3 and hibernums stock values look like? I'm too lazy to look so I'll just assume bad unless someone shows me otherwise.

Steeme

Agreed 100%

Any objective that says "win with XX or less HP" is an auto-skip objective for me.

Any objective that requires me to hard-cast 6 or more of any creature type in an enraged event is also an auto-skip objective.

Unfortunately it becomes a reach the progression and move on type of event.  I play all my charges just in case I can reach top 100.

THEMAGICkMAN

Here's some better objective ideas: 
Sorin: win with 70 or more HP for obj.1
Obj.2 take 30 or more damage during the firght. 
This way you have to use his strengths to get both objectives, gaining life. Very doable, and it fits his design. 

Sarkhan: win with 3 dragons in play for obj.1
 Not to sure about the second one, probably kill X or more creatures or win within X turns - the idea is the first one. Plays around his design and strengths, let's you use his ability and other dragon tokens. I'm kinda proud of the design on the objective 1 for sarkhan. Again, tough but doable. 

Steeme

THEMAGICkMAN said:

Here's some better objective ideas: 
Sorin: win with 70 or more HP for obj.1
Obj.2 take 30 or more damage during the firght. 
This way you have to use his strengths to get both objectives, gaining life. Very doable, and it fits his design. 

Sarkhan: win with 3 dragons in play for obj.1
 Not to sure about the second one, probably kill X or more creatures or win within X turns - the idea is the first one. Plays around his design and strengths, let's you use his ability and other dragon tokens. I'm kinda proud of the design on the objective 1 for sarkhan. Again, tough but doable. 

Much better!

Some modifications to make it more challenging, while exemplifying the planeswalkers' strengths:

Sorin:

1. Win the match!

2. Win with full health.

3. Take 30 or more damage.

Sarkhan:

1. Win the match!

2. Win with three different dragons in play.

3. Use the Dragon's Breath ability.

Now I could get on board for the above objectives.  The focus is basically on playing the match to the best of your abilities, maintaining control and at the same time leveraging the key strengths of the planeswalkers.

There's still a challenge involved.  Since Lifelink on creatures doesn't trigger on the death blow, Sorin will need perfect health before the death blow.  For Sarkhan, you need to play 3 different dragons and use his ultimate, which gives us a reason to stuff every dragon into the deck (even Freejam Rejent and maybe Mirrorwing).

Ohboy

This is all due to power creep both in cards and player level at the top tier leading to easy ties with perfect scores. 

There are only a few ways to solve this, and we can't reject them all. 

1) what we have now, (very hard secondaries) 
2) nerfing all the top cards to remove "I win" decks
3) improving ai drastically
4) identify the decks that give players the most trouble and match them against all players. 
5) dilute winner and prizes(leading to the weird protest now) 

They've tried them all at some point or another. Personally I prefer(2), but we know how kiora and baral went over. 

(1) is obviously unpopular, and even the rumor of (3) has caused dissent. (4) was their original solution, and we've been urging them to move away from it. We all know how (5) went over. 

So really, pick your poison. I pick (2).

THEMAGICkMAN

Ohboy said:

This is all due to power creep both in cards and player level at the top tier leading to easy ties with perfect scores. 

There are only a few ways to solve this, and we can't reject them all. 

1) what we have now, (very hard secondaries) 
2) nerfing all the top cards to remove "I win" decks
3) improving ai drastically
4) identify the decks that give players the most trouble and match them against all players. 
5) dilute winner and prizes(leading to the weird protest now) 

They've tried them all at some point or another. Personally I prefer(2), but we know how kiora and baral went over. 

(1) is obviously unpopular, and even the rumor of (3) has caused dissent. (4) was their original solution, and we've been urging them to move away from it. We all know how (5) went over. 

So really, pick your poison. I pick (2).

Before anyone's else says it (and of course someone will) bringing everything else up in power level is NOT the solution. Firstly it take a tremendous effort from the devs, and that's not to mention that we have OP stuff now. We don't need EVEN MORE OP stuff. There is no way that will help anything ever. 

Szamsziel

And standard solution for event is... Use low level planeswalker. I wish I hadn't level my planeswalkers. 

Ohboy

I want to see you summon 6 dragons with low level Sarkan haha. 

Soft solutions that combat one loophole will always irritate others. 

Szamsziel

6 dragons in enraged match? I don't even try this with 60 lvl one:) 

AlanA1

I wonder why are so many events Enraged? It ruins those events and the possibility of reaching secondary goals...

Ohboy

Because we can't all get perfect scores. That's no longer a competition. 

A challenge is only a challenge when there is a significant risk of failure. 

Potential catastrophic failure for trying to gain 3 bonus points would be a nice meta game design if we weren't all already conditioned to expect easy perfect scores. 

Laeuftbeidir

I actually do like challenging events. Also if it's nearly guaranteed that I can't get all scores..if it fits. But challenging is one thing : secondary goals directly in contrast to what a planeswalker is meant to do just.. Doesn't feel right. Not at all. A goal like "get 90 damage" for sorin would be challenging, but would feel right. The six dragons in the other hand.. It fits for that dragon dude, but without the dragon tokens counting.. Meh.
The third node gives at least a use for my most useless planeswalker

AngelForge

Ohboy said:

Because we can't all get perfect scores. That's no longer a competition. 

A challenge is only a challenge when there is a significant risk of failure. 

Potential catastrophic failure for trying to gain 3 bonus points would be a nice meta game design if we weren't all already conditioned to expect easy perfect scores. 

I agree with what you say, but the rewards are to low to actually bother. But I like the the prices are streamline as they are now. So, I think it would be a good step to make the secondary objectives less challenging so that. I don't think that the prizes will ever be raised.

hawkyh1

Ohboy said:

This is all due to power creep both in cards and player level at the top tier leading to easy ties with perfect scores. 

There are only a few ways to solve this, and we can't reject them all. 

1) what we have now, (very hard secondaries) 
2) nerfing all the top cards to remove "I win" decks
3) improving ai drastically
4) identify the decks that give players the most trouble and match them against all players. 
5) dilute winner and prizes(leading to the weird protest now) 

They've tried them all at some point or another. Personally I prefer(2), but we know how kiora and baral went over. 

(1) is obviously unpopular, and even the rumor of (3) has caused dissent. (4) was their original solution, and we've been urging them to move away from it. We all know how (5) went over. 

So really, pick your poison. I pick (2).

I would pick a slight variation to option 2. instead of
straight nerf they could make it more rock/paper/scissors
style. each encounter would be interesting and maybe
challenging even with op cards. similar to what they tried
with dovin/c2/n2 but more pronounced.

HH

babar3355

Ohboy said:

This is all due to power creep both in cards and player level at the top tier leading to easy ties with perfect scores. 

There are only a few ways to solve this, and we can't reject them all. 

1) what we have now, (very hard secondaries) 
2) nerfing all the top cards to remove "I win" decks
3) improving ai drastically
4) identify the decks that give players the most trouble and match them against all players. 
5) dilute winner and prizes(leading to the weird protest now) 

They've tried them all at some point or another. Personally I prefer(2), but we know how kiora and baral went over. 

(1) is obviously unpopular, and even the rumor of (3) has caused dissent. (4) was their original solution, and we've been urging them to move away from it. We all know how (5) went over. 

So really, pick your poison. I pick (2).

This isn't even remotely an all inclusive list.

6. Structure a tie breaker system that rewards all ties with the same prize. 

7. Make challenging objectives that don't feel as much like a chore.  (The main complaint in this thread is the objectives are counter to the essence of the PW's.)  Sorin should be gaining life with his vampires... but he really can't due to the stupid objective choice. And why are we randomly enraged in the arena?  Made sense in the Innistrad events... not so much here.

8. Give out more prizes to more people in all brackets to help newer players, rather than hit the entire player base with incentive ruining austerity.  Why is it weird to protest a system that has sucked much of the fun out of the game?

Anyway, I pick 2,3,6,7,8. 

shteev

Ohboy said:

This is all due to power creep both in cards and player level at the top tier leading to easy ties with perfect scores. 

There are only a few ways to solve this, and we can't reject them all. 

1) what we have now, (very hard secondaries) 
2) nerfing all the top cards to remove "I win" decks
3) improving ai drastically
4) identify the decks that give players the most trouble and match them against all players. 
5) dilute winner and prizes(leading to the weird protest now)

These are not the only solutions to the problem. Some kind of swiss tournament or Elo rating system has long been mooted as a solution to these problem. There are probably others, too, but as luck would have it this is one that I've been wanting to talk about for a while.

Simplistic solutions to the matchmaking problem are often being suggested on the forums, and the problems which the current matchmaking causes are often over simplified to 'I play [redacted] too much and I don't like it!'.

Players want to play games appropriate to their levels of skill, and their collection. If a player loses against a powerful deck which is way too tough for them to cope with, it would make a lot of sense for their next game to be matched against a less powerful deck.

And, contrary to popular belief, there are high level players (like myself) who do WANT to be regulary matched against incredibly powerful decks. However, what I DON'T want is to be matched against power decks in an event where my competitors are randomly matched against weak decks. If I have to struggle against awesome players like [redacted], [redacted], and [redacted], then by god, I don't want to be beaten on the leaderboard by someone who only had to play against weak players like [redacted], [redacted] and [redacted]!!! That is totally unfair.

Games like this and this and this and especially this just should not be happening, ever, regardless of where you're the underdog or the overdog.

Ohboy said:

Personally I prefer(2), but we know how kiora and baral went over.

Kiora is a good example, really.... there was a backlash at the time, but I think everyone accepts now accepts that the nerf needed to happen, don't they? The same will happen with Baral. Both outcrys were driven by those who bought them and knew that they were paying for extreme amounts of power.

Ohboy said:

3) improving ai drastically

even the rumor of (3) has caused dissent.

This is the second time you've stated this recently, and it's not my recollection of events at all. There's a search function on this forum... I'd like to see some of this dissent.

Mainloop25

Ohboy said:

This is all due to power creep both in cards and player level at the top tier leading to easy ties with perfect scores. 

There are only a few ways to solve this, and we can't reject them all. 

1) what we have now, (very hard secondaries) 
2) nerfing all the top cards to remove "I win" decks
3) improving ai drastically
4) identify the decks that give players the most trouble and match them against all players. 
5) dilute winner and prizes(leading to the weird protest now) 

They've tried them all at some point or another. Personally I prefer(2), but we know how kiora and baral went over. 

(1) is obviously unpopular, and even the rumor of (3) has caused dissent. (4) was their original solution, and we've been urging them to move away from it. We all know how (5) went over. 

So really, pick your poison. I pick (2).

Those "very hard" secondaries are usually nonsensical and seem like very little forethought went into creating them, so that's why they are unpopular. 

Nerfing the top cards, as much as I wouldn't like it, is probably a necessity at this point. At one point I would have kicked and screamed about it, but I've come around to it.

Improving AI drastically would be a help, but matchmaking would have to improve at the same time. I like the Elo system and I think other people do too. As Shteev said, where is this dissent that you mention? In that thread about AI from last week? There were a few people who chimed in about concerns of the repercussions. Not exactly what I'd call dissent.

#4 is more or less what we have now, and no one likes it, and for good reason. If they were to do that, why even call it PvP at that point? Might as well put a "boss" skin on those decks and call it PvE. I don't remember this being brought up as a solution either.

It's not weird to me that there is a protest against diluting prizes while doing almost nothing to improve the experience of playing for those prizes.

Kiora is a planeswalker not a card, so that's not a great example to use. And the Baral change is very much looked forward to by everyone who is sick of seeing a cheap loop deck. And the Kiora change turned out to be pretty well-received.

madwren

Ohboy said:

Because we can't all get perfect scores. That's no longer a competition.

Is that really the case? A soccer game that ends in a tie doesn't suddenly become less of a competition.

We COULD all have perfect scores. You still have to play the games, you still have to build a deck, you still have to face Killmersibrian, you still get to have bragging rights vs other coalitions and players, and you're still striving to score higher than as many people as you can.

Basically, scoring 10x points in NoP is the same as other progression objectives, except for the end result, there's  unequal prize distribution.

EDHdad

Why the heck can't we all get perfect scores and win top prizes?
1st prize is a random rare which is probably a duplicate, a booster pack which is probably all duplicates, and some gems which will eventually go for some unopened material, which will probably all be duplicates.

50th prize is a random rare random rare which is probably a duplicate, a booster pack which is probably all duplicates, and some gems which will eventually go for some unopened material, which will probably all be duplicates.

750th prize is an unopened pack which is probably all duplicates and some gems which will eventually become some duplicates.

1000th prize saves you the trouble of opening all those duplicates and crushing them into runes by giving you the pile of runes that the 1st place player will probably wind up with after all the dust settles.

I really don't see any reason why 1,000 people couldn't tie for 1st place and all receive the #1 prize.  It isn't like people are competing for a guaranteed [insert name of most wanted mythic that you don't have here].