My thoughts...

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Handoverfist
Handoverfist Posts: 21 Just Dropped In
Hello, I've never been much of a forum poster, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to recap my experience with D3 MTG Puzzle Quest.  Apologies in advance if this comes off a bit whiny, but I always believe its good to look at things in hindsight.  

Background
I started playing the game when SOI first came out and immediately found the perfect game to play when commuting to and from work.  The game had enough depth comparable to most tcgs while being quick enough to play games on a 30 min ride. Originally as most of us I started playing story mode focusing on trying to get enough gold to buy Koth (OP for new players). From there I was happy to discover the event/coalition structure allowing me to achieve progression in the game.  At first I started in a coalition that was only top 200 and was eventually able to move all the way up to a top 10 coalition.  A bit of background on my mythic collection to understand where I'm coming :
25 mythics with main highlights (Been quite fortunate although still desperately want deploy):
Emrakul - Strong with any ramp
Olivia - One of the best cards in the game capable of making a back deck into a pve monster
Seaons Past - generally overrated
Startled Awake - Strongest ramping cared in game

Issues with the game
  1. For many of us the best part of the game was pushing to higher coalitions and competing in high level events. Unfortunately, when I finally reached the upper echelon of coaltions the nerfs to rewards was implemented making it no longer worthwhile to even push for top 10 if you could reach top 25 (Generally easy if whole coalition hits progression). With the nerf going into effect the top groups stopped playing and made events feel like more of a chore
  2. Variety of events diminished for coalitions.  The one monthly event that had the majority of the jewels connected with it became the new carrot on the stick to try to push people to slog through tons of RATC (worst designed event....goes on forever with little reward) and NOP.  With these monthly events came the "force" push of a new planeswalker to buy, but the event itself is never repeated.  Nissa2 and Chandra2 for example have become useless planewalkers that had a onetime purpose.  Replaying these events regularly could have been done but since good rewards are tied to them I'm assuming they are purposely not brought back
  3. Baral - I'll keep my opinions short on him since he was finally nerfed, but from my perspective this was the most infuriating card to go against as a f2p player. My general thought process of the game is that its a grind with some light combos like zada, starfield, or ramp.  Most of these styles of decks have direct counterplay elements like demolish or removal over time.  For example, if someone plays piggy or olivia (even deploying it) you still have time to potentially win the game with removal. Being one rounded by Baral/spirit or something along those lines was both a time sink (Depressing) and had little element of skill.  This falls into the issue of everyone knowing the card was OP before it came out and yet nothing was done.
  4. Dupes - As I had mentioned before I have been in the hunt for Deploy since I first started playing the game.  From my perspective the card allows the most amount of flexibility of any mythic ie main decking demolishes or more removal. After the change in pack structure big boxes no longer being available thus a lower rate of return on chance of mythic, I spent 3,300 crystals (Saved through the lower returns on events) and received zero mythics and 2 new rares.  This is unacceptable in a system that promotes you getting dupes so you purchase more packs.  If the game had some sort of crafting system like Hearthstone I'm sure no one would mind dupes but the very case that you can even get a dupe mythic when you invest at times 1+ months to get one is the worst feeling that I'm sure many of us have experienced.
  5. Bugs - There's a laundry list of relevant bugs that somehow creep into production but I'll focus on two mainly.  The lifegain/lifelink bug that has been around forever and interacts on events where you need to be below a certain amount of hp prevents you from playing strong cards.  For those who aren't familiar lets say you're doing the black node for NOP and have to be under 20 hp if you gain some life even at max hp ie (You're running Lili2 and choose to play From Under the Floorboards and gain 3 life.  You now need to end up below 17 life even thou you used it at max hp....).  The second bug I'll tie more to updates as they often happen.  When a new update comes through that changes the ui/gameplay and causes the game for some people to be unplayable.  In my case this recent patch caused me to be unable to join any event/game/claim rewards (http://forums.d3go.com/discussion/63802/when-trying-to-claim-any-reward-or-join-a-match-claim-match-load-appears#latest)  I'll go into more detail why this tends to be an issue on my last point.
  6. Compensation/Customer Support - I'll preface this with saying that I'm not used to mobile game's support since I'm more of a pc gamer, but based on the prices that are charged for this game I would expect a higher level of support and QA testing.  Let's say for example in my case the game is unplayable after the update instead of being hindered from a couple of small events that just lose you out on gold you may have missed the one monthly event where all the rewards are heavily tied to.  You now miss getting the precious jewels (Tied directly to getting mythics) setting you back another month and the exclusive card that you're only able to get in the short term in these events.  In this case the most OP card of the set Rishkar's Expertise.  Support however doesn't offer you any opportunity on receiving jewels or cards for an issue that they had caused.  In many games if a game is down for X amount of days you would receive a prorated fee or a large scale "chest".  With Blizzard support they will event rerun an event or extend it until issues have been resolved.
Conclusion
This game has been an enjoyable experience for me, but many of us feel that the game is being watered down or the money element is being aggressively pushed.  I wish that D3 would consider advertising in the game with an option to pay for no ads as a lot of the main stay app games are utilizing this approach.  I personally couldn't imagine being a new player coming into this game as I feel it would take months to build up a reasonable collection.  I'm not sure on what I plan to do in the coming weeks assuming they fix the bugs... but I will definitely be looking at other games to play as many people in my current coalition have.

Thanks for reading

Comments

  • THEMAGICkMAN
    THEMAGICkMAN Posts: 697 Critical Contributor
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    @Brigby you should pass this on to the devs. 
  • Sirchombli
    Sirchombli Posts: 322 Mover and Shaker
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    I'm right there with you. Really sucks the fun out when there's not much upside.