Nerd Reactor's Interview with Magic: Puzzle Quest Designer, JC Frenette

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

To celebrate the release of Amonkhet, and its upcoming appearance in Magic: Puzzle Quest, Hibernum's designer, JC Frenette, took some time to speak with Nerd Reactor about his experience designing the Amonkhet set for MtGPQ!

Check out the interview here: Interview with JC Frenette, designer of Magic: The Gathering Puzzle Quest

Haven't had the chance to take a look at the Amonkhet set in the upcoming 2.1 update? Well then you can check out all the revealed cards here: Amonkhet Card Set Gallery

sjechua

@Brigby Thanks for correcting the links to the Amonkhet Card Set Gallery.

Laeuftbeidir

I find it quite funny that the process of the design and pricing of cards is decripted in detail, but "playtesting" (or customer feedback) isn't mentioned at all. I guess that's what brought us Baral and RishkarsEx.. But to not be too salty: the progress as a whole was interesting to read!

E: If he has enough time for interviews, why not answer community questions from time to time.. Like in threads he already promised to monitor and answer to ?

Brigby

@sjechua

Fixed! Sorry about that. Not sure what happened there.

shteev

Thanks for this!

I've already started pulling my favorite quotes out of it.

GrizzoMtGPQ

Ooh, he might spend 5 minutes on a card! What a deliberative process.

nexus13

That article just scares me.  A card he would like to bring into MTGPQ? Shaharazad!  Does he never learn?  Looping and recursion have been some of the biggest problems in this game.  REALLY, REALLY NO.  This should never happen.  

It's also clear that his 'hardcore paper' players that are advising him need to be replaced.  Every set there are huge misses in intent on cards between paper and PQ, these advisers are not doing a very good job. 

EDHdad

In the early days, I once played Shahrazad, and my opponent cast Fork (making an extra copy of Shahrazad) and someone cast Ali From Cairo in one of the sub-games, and someone else cloned it, and the game lasted like 9 hours.

madwren

Great article. It's nice to see the ridiculous rarity tax on commons discussed.

"We do this because initially we had all these costs flat and we had several major problems, one of which was that Mythics ended up costing a ton compared to Commons. And you could easily make much better decks without Mythics by just loading up on Commons and card drawing abilities. It was really problematic, so I switched to a system where mana costs scale per rarity."

...instead rendering the vast majority of commons completely useless, and ensuring that power, and thereby success, is tied to higher rarities. That sounds like a strategy for making people want to buy cards, to me.

There is no reason we should be flooded with 11-mana 2/1 creatures. You want commons to cost more? Sure, that makes sense, to a point. But when you scale the mana cost without scaling the power and toughness, you eliminate an entire class of card and make it extremely difficult for newcomers to effectively compete.

There are 50 cards with a power of 2 or less but a casting cost of 10 or more. That's too many.

Ohboy

nexus13 said:

That article just scares me.  A card he would like to bring into MTGPQ? Shaharazad!  Does he never learn?  Looping and recursion have been some of the biggest problems in this game.  REALLY, REALLY NO.  This should never happen.  

It's also clear that his 'hardcore paper' players that are advising him need to be replaced.  Every set there are huge misses in intent on cards between paper and PQ, these advisers are not doing a very good job. 

@shteev

OMG they stole your idea and didn't credit you. 

EDHdad

Or possibly Shteev and the interviewee are the same person. 

EDHdad

@madwren - it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we could hide or archive cards, or if we could mark cards as favorites and search just for faves.

There are quite a few good, playable commons and uncommons, but there are hundreds of others which are pure jank.  Even with rares and mythics, only a relative handful are worth playing, except for some oddball secondary objective or to get Spell Mastery.

Ohboy

EDHdad said:

Or possibly Shteev and the interviewee are the same person. 

Shteev being JC makes a lot of sense suddenly.

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Lagartha still got that contact at WoTC? What would they make of this insanity? Spending so little time on cards? Neglecting playtesting? Insane common taxes? Someone there would flip out at this nonsense, right? I hope? ????

GrizzoMtGPQ

Regression testing via a spreadsheet? That's not something to brag about. This is an extremely ineffective method if you're doing this. How can you ensure anything balances against the previous cards if you design in isolation, neglecting existing cards?

//Removed Insult -Brigby

toastie

So the big takeaway here is that this sort of designing is 100% done to maximize profits, fun be damned.

jetnoctis

So, so much is wrong with this "design philosophy" that I don't even know where to begin. I hate that I like a game made by such people. Your rarity tax is utterly disgraceful. 

Azerack

Came here to see rants on JC's responses, leaving satisfied.

It's almost like reading responses from a current President and everything you hear you just shake your head.
I did notice he doesn't even mention playing the game, himself. If I had even seen one sentence where he mentions that he and his cronies (aka, the MTG paper players) playtest in-game how the cards work, I would have at least had some faith, but it seems like if he's not going to mention that, why would he mention the forums?

I wanted to not be so negative and say, "Wow, nice interview with a Designer!", but with the current issues, here (and mind you, I still play every day at least a little) I was unfortunately expecting an interview with this sort of tone.

"Power creep is always a problem in any sort of card game, and MTGPQ isn’t an exception. We have printed some very powerful cards, and until now every new set was constantly compared to the older cards in terms of power. Starting with Kaladesh I’ve been a lot more conscious about power creep because we were starting to have a problem on our hands, and it was necessary to slow it down as much as possible."

... Except Sky Sovereign, Gonti's Heart, Baral, Rishkar's Expertise and Heart of Kiran?

Why not have an AMA on Reddit? I'm sure everyone on this forum (and this thread) could structure constructively critical questions for you so you could help build proper morale?

blacklotus

whatever i wanted to rant and opined has already been said by everyone before my post. I will continue with my popcorn. 

Steeme

JC seems to admit his mistakes and attempt to adapt, which are good qualities.

Perhaps he doesn't move at the pace the community demands but at least we seem to be moving in the right direction.

khurram

@Azerack Sky sovereign and Heart of Kiran aren't OP. It may appear that way because the PvE events using them have tons of Mana which makes it seem like casting them is a piece of cake. Gonti and Baral have been reworked.