Training grounds suggestion

Gunmix25

@Brigby Might I suggest an additional reward of sorts once a player reaches their daily max quota of "rewards" offered for using training grounds? Making healing potions infinite for just that event post-maxed rewards until the reset of the next event? No point having a healing potion counter be applied after all rewards that could be earned have been done so. There isn't anything that I can see that necessitates the need for such limitations. This change I think would be beneficial for newer players to play test many deck options on a continual basis after earning their rewards rather than wait for the timer to reset from losses incurred from just trying to test a deck. It would significantly be in theme with what I believe you and the Devs were trying to create with that event.  My two cents. 

toastie

Just make wins 300 runes again. It's awful now.

wereotter

toastie said:

Just make wins 300 runes again. It's awful now.

Comical considering how many were complaining that they had more runes than they knew what to do with. Fact remains that the rewards now are better unless you do more than 6 matches a day, and that's not counting how you determine the value of guaranteed mana crystals from the 5th win.

madwren

wereotter said:

toastie said:

Just make wins 300 runes again. It's awful now.

Comical considering how many were complaining that they had more runes than they knew what to do with. Fact remains that the rewards now are better unless you do more than 6 matches a day, and that's not counting how you determine the value of guaranteed mana crystals from the 5th win.

You're conflating a couple of issues here. People with lots of runes complained they had nothing to spend them on. They simply wanted opportunities to spend them on minor beneficial upgrades, like deck slots, or even the old basic booster packs.

Now, ideally, creating these opportunities would solve the surplus issue for veteran players, while new players would continue to accrue runes at a pace of their own choosing for their primary purpose, which is leveling planeswalkers. 

However, by reducing runes, they're making that primary purpose more difficult. This has a negative effect on newcomers to the game. It has a minimal immediate effect on those individuals (like myself) who have hundreds of thousands of runes stored up.

Sure, you can still "grind" story mode as much as you want--but it isn't as fun as facing actual player decks, and there's no reward EXCEPT runes, and the only challenging levels use an outdated mechanic (devoid) that makes it extremely difficult to test competitive decks. 

Make no mistake, this is punishing the people at the low end. Those who "had more runes than they knew what to do with" aren't the ones that are most affected. 

wereotter

madwren said:

wereotter said:

toastie said:

Just make wins 300 runes again. It's awful now.

Comical considering how many were complaining that they had more runes than they knew what to do with. Fact remains that the rewards now are better unless you do more than 6 matches a day, and that's not counting how you determine the value of guaranteed mana crystals from the 5th win.

You're conflating a couple of issues here. People with lots of runes complained they had nothing to spend them on. They simply wanted opportunities to spend them on minor beneficial upgrades, like deck slots, or even the old basic booster packs.

Now, ideally, creating these opportunities would solve the surplus issue for veteran players, while new players would continue to accrue runes at a pace of their own choosing for their primary purpose, which is leveling planeswalkers. 

However, by reducing runes, they're making that primary purpose more difficult. This has a negative effect on newcomers to the game. It has a minimal immediate effect on those individuals (like myself) who have hundreds of thousands of runes stored up.

Yes, I understood the problem, however you missed the point of my post and that's for the likely majority of players (those who don't spend a lot of time in the game) the rewards from training grounds are actually better than the rewards for quick battle. They're also better for those who did play often, but, like myself, don't like the PvP aspects of the game, and so mostly avoided quick battle.

madwren said:

Sure, you can still "grind" story mode as much as you want--but it isn't as fun as facing actual player decks, and there's no reward EXCEPT runes, and the only challenging levels use an outdated mechanic (devoid) that makes it extremely difficult to test competitive decks. 

Debatable. Personally I tend to absolutely HATE the PvP events, largely because I feel like I'm being trolled the entire time with decks massively more powerful than mine, against planes walkers who have every tool to make sure I don't meet objectives (like being paired off against any black planeswalker, especially Ob Nixilis for every node that wants me to only summon a certain number of creatures or not loose too many, or against Chandra for nodes that require me to take x or less damage), decks that clearly don't have the objectives of the event in mind (even after the matchmaking changes), or some combination of these. I much prefer the challenge of PvE decks, even with their redundancy.

Thuran

To be fair, if you are finding yourself short on runes, just farm heroic story encounters. They give 250 runes per win, and can typically be done a lot faster than pvp battles. Sure they are also a lot more boring and i'd much rather get 15 runes every 10 trial wins, but eh, better than grinding them 100 runes at a time

toastie

wereotter said:

toastie said:

Just make wins 300 runes again. It's awful now.

Comical considering how many were complaining that they had more runes than they knew what to do with. Fact remains that the rewards now are better unless you do more than 6 matches a day, and that's not counting how you determine the value of guaranteed mana crystals from the 5th win.

As a newer player who is still leveling most their planeswalkers, this has been a HUGE loss of runes. I really don't want to have to grind against the same few heroic decks to get them.

tfg76

I have to say I like Training Grounds better than Quick Battle, simply for the fact that it gives me a realistic chance at winning some crystals, whereas I felt that Quick Battle required me to play dozens of games for anything more than 100 runes. I mostly play the 4 games a day now for Training Grounds, and it's fun to play some non-objective decks for a change.

Steeme

I would like to highlight one of the key points made in the OP:

Please remove Healing potions from this game and each match should begin with PWs at full health

Under the old QB system, it made sense because it was a race for the top spot based on total number of wins, and there needed to be some type of penalty for force quitting and moving onto a next opponent (ie. force quit against Ob Nix / Jace for speed).

Under the event system, it no longer makes any sense:

1. For PVP / PVE events, there are a limited amount of charges on each node.  If a player force quits a match and restarts it with full health, they are already penalized by losing a charge.

2. For Training Grounds, there are only 4 matches for personal progression and there is no leaderboard.  Since there is no leaderboard there is no benefit for the player force-quitting and restarting.  In addition, there is no reason to penalize players if they happen to lose.

As a side note:

I thought they said the Training Grounds were supposed to be a "stress-free" event for players to test new decks.  My experience has been the opposite, some matches may be push-overs but the majority of decks I face are filled to the brim with optimized combos and it makes for a very stressful experience when testing anything new.

I think they are trying to match based on comparing libraries?  Yes, I have quite a few cards, but I don't always play the best cards.  I've been trying to construct / test energy theme decks (ie. Energize 5 and cast no spells), or trying new PWs (Ajani 2) but the matchmaker puts me up against Kiora with all the best cards, any red PW spamming lightning runner every turn, etc.  Makes it very unforgiving to actually test new decks, since they just get steamrolled.

Matthew

Steeme said:

As a side note:

I thought they said the Training Grounds were supposed to be a "stress-free" event for players to test new decks.  My experience has been the opposite, some matches may be push-overs but the majority of decks I face are filled to the brim with optimized combos and it makes for a very stressful experience when testing anything new.

I think they are trying to match based on comparing libraries?  Yes, I have quite a few cards, but I don't always play the best cards.  I've been trying to construct / test energy theme decks (ie. Energize 5 and cast no spells), or trying new PWs (Ajani 2) but the matchmaker puts me up against Kiora with all the best cards, any red PW spamming lightning runner every turn, etc.  Makes it very unforgiving to actually test new decks, since they just get steamrolled.

Personally, I am enjoying how difficult the matches are over there. If I test a deck, I want to know how well it will do against the toughest opponents before I take it into an event. This has been a very good way for me to litmus test my deck ideas. If I can learn the strengths and weaknesses of my decks in an environment where nothing is on the line, against really difficult opponents, I will be able to better prepare for the real thing.

I just wish I could do so for 300 runes a pop, instead of 100...

madwren

Steeme said:

I would like to highlight one of the key points made in the OP:

Please remove Healing potions from this game and each match should begin with PWs at full health

Seconded!

Tilwin90

Yeah, now Healing Potions are quite pointless really. Besides, the "healing after match ends" is disturbing, uncontrollable, and causes random objectives losses because it seems to make little to no sense. If you removed healing potions you could solve that issue too.

span_argoman

I don't know if I'll laugh or shake my head if the developers remove the healing potions but keep the fact that planeswalkers don't regenerate their health immediately after a match. "People want the health potions removed!"

madwren

span_argoman said:

I don't know if I'll laugh or shake my head if the developers remove the healing potions but keep the fact that planeswalkers don't regenerate their health immediately after a match. "People want the health potions removed!"

Haha..now this post deserves the LOL tag. I can totally see it.

Brigby

@Gunmix25

Sticking to the original topic of suggestions for Training Grounds, it's certainly interesting of an idea for infinite healing potions once progression has been reached. 

Just to play [insert-religious-entity]'s advocate real quick: Would this not be exploited though if players could continuously play and acquire theoretically an infinite number of Mana Runes since they won't ever run out of health?

wereotter

Brigby said:

@Gunmix25

Sticking to the original topic of suggestions for Training Grounds, it's certainly interesting of an idea for infinite healing potions once progression has been reached. 

Just to play [insert-religious-entity]'s advocate real quick: Would this not be exploited though if players could continuously play and acquire theoretically an infinite number of Mana Runes since they won't ever run out of health?

Since the primary use for runes is to level planeswalkers, and considering the current matchmaking issues wherein level 10 planeswalkers are being paired off against level 60, would allowing those who want to invest the time in game playing enough matches to level a planeswalker from 10 to 60 on limitless runes really be such a bad thing?

I could see how this could be an issue for the company if there were items for sale for runes, such as packs, that the company would lose money on, but I don't know that I see the loss for the company in allowing players to rack up as many runes as they like.

Laeuftbeidir

Brigby said:

@Gunmix25

Sticking to the original topic of suggestions for Training Grounds, it's certainly interesting of an idea for infinite healing potions once progression has been reached. 

Just to play [insert-religious-entity]'s advocate real quick: Would this not be exploited though if players could continuously play and acquire theoretically an infinite number of Mana Runes since they won't ever run out of health?

In theory? Yes, but with that many planeswalkers available, especially including creatures with lifelink, it has "always" been possible to run fight after fight without even using the potions.
I only use them in the beginning of events, when multiple charges are available and the node is restricted.

span_argoman

Brigby said:

@Gunmix25

Sticking to the original topic of suggestions for Training Grounds, it's certainly interesting of an idea for infinite healing potions once progression has been reached. 

Just to play [insert-religious-entity]'s advocate real quick: Would this not be exploited though if players could continuously play and acquire theoretically an infinite number of Mana Runes since they won't ever run out of health?

@Brigby Just some perspective on the 'infinite' mana runes. Each Training Grounds win gets you 100 Runes. Say you play the fastest decks around like Nahiri Zoo, you're still gonna take an average of 3 minutes per win. Assuming a 100% win rate, you get 2,000 Runes an hour.

A mono-colour planeswalker costs 80,000 Runes to level to level 60. So you need to win 40 hours of Training Grounds just for one mono-colour planeswalker. Double that number for a dual-colour planeswalker.

Unless MtGPQ is a paying full-time job, the 'infinite' Runes isn't anywhere close to a concern. What this means is the Runes earned from Training Grounds beyond the initial 4 matches are a pittance compared to the amount of Runes newer players need to level up their planeswalkers.

Steeme

As long as you don't get any runes for force quitting (ie. completion is required), I don't see an issue with having a PW start with full health at the beginning of every match.

Ohboy

Improve runes back to 300 and ignore the first world complaints about excess runes. 

Problem solved. 

Or just explain to them that they have excess runes only because you're flooding the market with runes for players' benefit. The side effect is that runes must become worthless. 

It's not a conflating of issues. These two things are tightly linked. You cannot just print currency and hope it doesn't get inflated to hell. Hyperinflation is a real thing. 

So you can cut back on the printing and give it some value(cash) , or continue printing like a madman and remove all value(monopoly money). 

Mainloop25

Ohboy said:

Improve runes back to 300 and ignore the first world complaints about excess runes. 

Problem solved.

Cool. Agree up to here.