Update Thoughts and Trial of Zeal

24

Comments

  • mournfen
    mournfen Posts: 89 Match Maker
    edited May 2017
    First time I played Temmut with a deck that is very consistent; the result was a shower scene from Oz. When you force players to go standard when it has been out for a whole 4 days you cannot help but get backlash. As for comparisons to paper mtg, when can I buy cards I want to use? Competitive standard (not FNM) usually starts about a month after a sets initial release, at the very least players are comfortable with the cards and understand what the meta will be like. You have pre-release and release events then typically another week or 2 you get SC Opens and TCG events, and let me reiterate, "YOU CAN BUY THE CARDS YOU NEED TO BE COMPETITIVE," which is very relevant. Many solid players are having trouble with this event. The best analogy to paper MTG is the majority of us are now the new player with a few decent rares maybe on a good draw a 2nd tier deck playing against top tier 1 deck. I have played paper mtg competitively for years and I would never go "with just what I have."  If the game must transition to formats, like wren I agree and understand it is a necessary evil, the ability to actually acquire cards you want needs to be implemented sooner than later. 
  • Delnai
    Delnai Posts: 187 Tile Toppler
    Tigerpawz said:

    Which side note I feel like half of my coalition has quit now, 11 of them aren't registered for Trial of Zeal and we are 19th on the leader board. 
    Im actually liking restricted format events. (Probably because I'm lucky and have Thopter Spy Network, Gaea's Revenge, and Hixus.) But it's clear from participation in my coalition that I'm in the small minority. A new set just came out! We should be seeing a huge bump in participation. Instead it's just about flatlined. 
  • scydrex
    scydrex Posts: 15 Just Dropped In
    Szamsziel said:
    Hmm I have mixed feelings.  It's a challenge to cook new decks which is nice. Lack of Olivia caused me to redesign approach - any idea how to get lifelink in red? :) however the problem I see is amount of grind needed to get last reward (seriously 850???) and the bugs in game itself. 

    BTW: kudos to developer for designing description for 2.3 Names ability!!!! 
    Lifelink and gaining life through spells is not working on most nodes. I was one turn away from winning 3.3 with a Dovin deck featuring Hixus and Confiscate. I was already aware that lifelink was not working, form attempting the node with Sorin. I tried to gain life via spells, with the new cycling card, but to no avail either.

    I honestly do not mind the expansion restrictions, as they force me to put on my thinking cap, but when you take away lifelink AND first strike (while seeming to work just fine for the AI), it will be an uphill climb for most.

    Perhaps the God-Faraoh has covertly altered the rules of Magic to create this scenario. 
  • hawkyh1
    hawkyh1 Posts: 780 Critical Contributor
    life gain via support cards and lifelink creatures have
    worked fine for me. (it saved me on 3.2). I used sorin
    on that take 60 damage objective node and it worked
    fine.(both lifelink creatures and sorin abilities)

    is it just the cycle life gain card playing up?

    HH
  • madwren
    madwren Posts: 2,259 Chairperson of the Boards
    scydrex said:
    Szamsziel said:
    Hmm I have mixed feelings.  It's a challenge to cook new decks which is nice. Lack of Olivia caused me to redesign approach - any idea how to get lifelink in red? :) however the problem I see is amount of grind needed to get last reward (seriously 850???) and the bugs in game itself. 

    BTW: kudos to developer for designing description for 2.3 Names ability!!!! 
    Lifelink and gaining life through spells is not working on most nodes. I was one turn away from winning 3.3 with a Dovin deck featuring Hixus and Confiscate. I was already aware that lifelink was not working, form attempting the node with Sorin. I tried to gain life via spells, with the new cycling card, but to no avail either.

    I honestly do not mind the expansion restrictions, as they force me to put on my thinking cap, but when you take away lifelink AND first strike (while seeming to work just fine for the AI), it will be an uphill climb for most.

    Perhaps the God-Faraoh has covertly altered the rules of Magic to create this scenario. 

    If you're using Alhammarret's Archive, stop--it's breaking lifelink.

    I haven't had any issues with lifelink except for when Archive is on the board.

    Hopefully that'll help.
  • gruntface
    gruntface Posts: 161 Tile Toppler
    On the flipside of the bosses health issue (which is pretty funny at this point), if it had gone the other way and had health that was too low, we would have seen a ton of complaints.

    With the now expanded progression  (the players asked for something to play for beyond 450, they have it now and should have expected there to have been changes to earlier thresholds tbh) had this fight lasted just 2 days there would have been uproar as not a would would have hit 850. 

    Even with a card pack as the gold at the end of the rainbow, people would still have been mad on missing out (heck, depending on when they pull the plug it may still happen). Now I think about who we are dealing with I fully expect the worst of both worlds, an overly long grind with no-one hitting progression ????????
  • shteev
    shteev Posts: 2,031 Chairperson of the Boards
    gruntface said:
    On the flipside of the bosses health issue (which is pretty funny at this point), if it had gone the other way and had health that was too low, we would have seen a ton of complaints.
    How quickly we normalise the incompetence of the dev team. As if the only options for the bosses' health are too high and too low, and setting it within acceptable tolerances is something we would be foolish to expect, like a new update working, or cards being balanced.

    The health system is flawed. We experience it as X amount of time which runs out and then the event ends. Can one player influence how quickly that time passes? Can his entire coalition? Can a megacoalition make enough of it's members care to make that X amount of time run faster or slower? No, they can't. They should just cheat the system, like some people think they cheat the duplicate system, or some people think they cheat the in-game cascades. Leave the display as % health, sure, but make it last a fixed amount of time so it lasts for a fixed number of respawns. They don't have to tell us what that number is, and it doesn't have to be the same every time. They can just use the system to ensure that the event isn't over too quickly or slowly.
  • gruntface
    gruntface Posts: 161 Tile Toppler
    shteev said:
    gruntface said
    On the flipside of the bosses health issue (which is pretty funny at this point), if it had gone the other way and had health that was too low, we would have seen a ton of complaints.
    How quickly we normalise the incompetence of the dev team. As if the only options for the bosses' health are too high and too low, and setting it within acceptable tolerances is something we would be foolish to expect, like a new update working, or cards being balanced.

    The health system is flawed. We experience it as X amount of time which runs out and then the event ends. Can one player influence how quickly that time passes? Can his entire coalition? Can a megacoalition make enough of it's members care to make that X amount of time run faster or slower? No, they can't. They should just cheat the system, like some people think they cheat the duplicate system, or some people think they cheat the in-game cascades. Leave the display as % health, sure, but make it last a fixed amount of time so it lasts for a fixed number of respawns. They don't have to tell us what that number is, and it doesn't have to be the same every time. They can just use the system to ensure that the event isn't over too quickly or slowly.
    Fwiw I've been suggesting the same thing since avacyn so good luck with that :)
  • Delnai
    Delnai Posts: 187 Tile Toppler
    gillkonam said:
    Those who have nothing constructive to contribute are useless.
    How meta. 
  • Laeuftbeidir
    Laeuftbeidir Posts: 1,841 Chairperson of the Boards
    I managed to get past 3.1, and had 3.2 nearly beaten as well.. So yes, it is possible. I'll finally figure out strategies for all nodes.

    My biggest issue - the rewards are a proper joke. Anyone did the math how many fights you'd need to get progession?  It takes days for me to win a stupid basis booster.

    And is the progression the same in all tiers?
    850 for platinum should be possible.. For gold it might happen. Some really really lucky silver players might have extreme luck, but for btonze, there's no way.
  • Froggy
    Froggy Posts: 511 Critical Contributor
    edited May 2017
    I will always go back to deckbuidling being the key. I run 3 mythic, 2 rare, 3 uncommon and 2 common cards.

    Lost 1 game to 3.3. Beat 3.1 and 3.2 each time. Others in my coalition run totally different decks and make it through. So it is not just one card combo that will pull you through. Tough - yes. Isn't that the point? Isn't a challenge what this forum has been complaining about for months? It was painful to go through it before the release. Now there is nothing but complaining (not all, but a lot!).

    If I had not figured to out, I would probably also complain. Instead, I worked with my coalition members and we helped one another figure it out. In spite of the errors in the game currently running, at least there is COMMUNICATION and something to do!...
  • Thuran
    Thuran Posts: 456 Mover and Shaker
    I completely agree Froggy! 

    People seem to think that end game pve content like this should be easy and require little deckbuilding effort and no attempts! 

    Yes, node 3 is likely impossible to complete for bronze players, but THOSE ARE BRONZE PLAYERS, they are not supposed to be able to beat those nodes. It is called progression, and being able to beat node 3.3 would be meaningless if you could do it with baby's first deck.

    Frankly, I'm loving that pve is challenging again, and it is great to see the coalition brought together to try and figure out how to beat each node. Heck, I finally managed to take down 3.3 today, and it felt GREAT, felt like it was earned after having to put that much work into it.

    Amonkhet just released, are these people really expecting to faceroll the hardest content in the same right off the bat?!

    Frankly, I think the event is hard but is also supposed to be hard!

    That said, the rewards are appalling and really needed to be improved a lot! Where is the exclusive card that Ratc used to award us? Why are we getting basic boosters on such a hard event? I think a more appropriate reward for the current challenge level would be replacing all the basic boosters with AKH boosters, and the final reward for 850 points in platinum should be a random rare. Maybe also increase from 30 mana jewels to 40, just for good measure.

    I actually think that the biggest issue here is how the rewards don't reflect the challenge. Of course, for those rewards given the challenge would have to be a LOT lower.
  • Tigerpawz
    Tigerpawz Posts: 8 Just Dropped In
    When you guys are talking about deckbuilding being the key to beating these events you are absolutely one hundred million thousand percent right.

    I can't build a deck without cards. I can't get cards without crystals. Thus we fork out some cash for these crystals and face potential dupes. (I still haven't opened the godly cycling combos everyone is talking about.) Or  we grind with events that take a progressively longer time to accumulate crystals while failing do to so with an inadequate collection of standard specials.

    As I mentioned in the first post I really do enjoy standard for PVP. PVE is awful for it. So I'll say it once more to really hammer the point home. I can not innovate without the tools to do so.
  • Corn_Noodles
    Corn_Noodles Posts: 477 Mover and Shaker
    Ohboy said:
    Let's look back and see what happened in the last 2 events. 

    They underestimated the amount of hp required.

    Clearly this is an overreaction to the other side. 

    Is it? It could be that the health is the same and they've lost a large number of players. Or it could be that with the difficulty of 3.x, there isn't much damage being done to the boss. Probably a combination of both of those.
  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phase said:

    4) Boss abilities are not even readable for several battles. AMONKHET_GODS_ABILITY, NEHEB_THE_WORTHY_ABILITY, etc. I am still not even sure what 3.3 does. Draws some cards, deals 10 to you, buffs a guy, makes vigilance tokens, and some black effect I have no idea what.
    I've been trying to figure it out, since it all happens so fast, but I'm fairly confident the Amonkhet gods ability is:

    Your opponent takes 10 damage
    Draw two cards
    Summon warrior tokens with vigilance
    Give the first other creature you control +4/+0
    You gain 5 life

    Basically a mashup of the abilities of all 5 gods without the requirement to discard cards or sacrifice creatures.
  • hawkyh1
    hawkyh1 Posts: 780 Critical Contributor
    wereotter said:
    Phase said:

    4) Boss abilities are not even readable for several battles. AMONKHET_GODS_ABILITY, NEHEB_THE_WORTHY_ABILITY, etc. I am still not even sure what 3.3 does. Draws some cards, deals 10 to you, buffs a guy, makes vigilance tokens, and some black effect I have no idea what.
    I've been trying to figure it out, since it all happens so fast, but I'm fairly confident the Amonkhet gods ability is:

    Your opponent takes 10 damage
    Draw two cards
    Summon warrior tokens with vigilance
    Give the first other creature you control +4/+0
    You gain 5 life

    Basically a mashup of the abilities of all 5 gods without the requirement to discard cards or sacrifice creatures.
    3.3 opponent needs a creature to be able to use the
    ability.

    HH
  • morgue427
    morgue427 Posts: 783 Critical Contributor
    anyone else notice no gold cards listed as event rewards? does that mean these will never be given out as a rewards to all the grinding on this event?

  • Dropspot
    Dropspot Posts: 200 Tile Toppler
    You guys here don't have any idea how the game works for the majority of the player base.

    People just play at random coalition using only in game chat. In this environment is very dificult to deckbiuld together, that said I am sure the grand majority of the players don't have any chance beating 3rd node. 

    That's why boss hp is only 25% down after 3 days.

    I really think they overshoot by a lot on the 3rd node the game should be dificult not impossible for the grand majority of players.

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