Training Grounds Beef

wereotter

majincob said:

wereotter said:

khurram said:

wereotter said:

Serioisly, take away the event deck slot. Also on a tangent note, the excessive numbers of him in that event might hint that he's over powered and might need a rebalancing. 

Take away the event deck slot? Wth.
You realise event decks are one of the best things to have happened in a while. It has also fixed matchmaking among other things. 

Just because some people don't want to face koth?

Event decks in general are great. Event deck slots for training grounds are the cause of the problem that changed it from random opponent, and and strategy to, from my recent tracking, 75% matches against Koth. It's not entirely not wanting to face him as much as wanting to face something else too. 

It's no different from QB (which is what TG is, just with less prizes). You only faced PW people were playing in QB. They might switch their deck around when they weren't playing but it's always been a sea of Koth and Nahiri.

That was never the case when I played it. It always pulled a more randomized selection of opponents. You didn't have to enter Quick Battle as an event, so it didn't have any basis to pull from like it does now. You could be matched against any deck that matched your level, or at least that's what I seemed to encounter. I didn't have a 75% Koth battle rate else Training Grounds wouldn't have suddenly felt so overrun by him now. 

UweTellkampf

A simple switch standard/legacy would do the trick for me. I would be able to play whatever I like in an environment suitable for the choice of cards I make. 

WiLDRAGE

I'll go one further to what people are asking; I want BOTH a Standard and a Legacy version.  That it doubles the rewards shouldn't even be an issue since they made Training Grounds out to be for helping new players.  All it did was make Runes even harder to obtain for new players.

Edit:
PS. Ban Koth.

Brigby

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to give a quick update.

I spoke with the developers, and they agree that it'd be ideal to implement a toggle to switch back and forth between "Standard" and "Legacy." Having said that though, they have a lot of major features and fixes on their plate right now, so that toggle has unfortunately taken a backseat to those items on their to-do list.

Rest assured though, I'll be sure to bring it up with them again in the future, since they have said that they would like to develop that eventually.

Ohboy

Here's what I do for testing, standard or legacy. 

If I want to test how quickly a combo can come out, I load up story mode guardian of melatis. That story mode opponent casts a creature an hour, and it's a great sandbox to gauge how efficient it is to draw into my combo. 


If I want to test how well it will fare under high stress conditions, I load it in TG. I want to play it against the koths and Nahiris. 

You want to stress test your decks against the worst TG has to offer you. If it can't handle those decks, it's not going to be able to handle the ai when it lucky cascades in enraged mode. 

I get winning is fun. But it's training. You want to put yourself in losing situations, because you sure as hell don't want to be in that situation for the first time during an event. 

madwren

While I think a Standard-only variant would be a good development, I'll second what ohboy said--there is value in facing powerful decks.

I actually found playing against Legacy decks to be very valuable testing for Trial of Zeal, for example. In lieu of, say, node 3.2, I can go in against a power-Koth and see how quickly my deck can adjust/react to its sheer speed and power.

Mainloop25

I agree that there should be a training grounds area to see how you fare against koth/Nahiri in events. But even though qb is gone, it was only there to either farm runes and/or try and get a free rare/mythic. Let's all admit that we only play TG to get a quick 15 crystals.  

Ohboy

Mainloop25 said:

I agree that there should be a training grounds area to see how you fare against koth/Nahiri in events. But even though qb is gone, it was only there to either farm runes and/or try and get a free rare/mythic. Let's all admit that we only play TG to get a quick 15 crystals.  

Most of the time that's true of course. 

But even in the old QB, it served to help tune your decks against hyper aggressive decks. 

Steeme

Ohboy said:

Here's what I do for testing, standard or legacy. 

If I want to test how quickly a combo can come out, I load up story mode guardian of melatis. That story mode opponent casts a creature an hour, and it's a great sandbox to gauge how efficient it is to draw into my combo. 


If I want to test how well it will fare under high stress conditions, I load it in TG. I want to play it against the koths and Nahiris. 

You want to stress test your decks against the worst TG has to offer you. If it can't handle those decks, it's not going to be able to handle the ai when it lucky cascades in enraged mode. 

I get winning is fun. But it's training. You want to put yourself in losing situations, because you sure as hell don't want to be in that situation for the first time during an event. 

You can't test your decks against the "meta" in training grounds right now.

"Standard" does not have aggro decks that also have 3, 5, and 6 cost removals at-hand.  They are different decks for different times.  They use different cards and rely on different mechanics and combos.

The goal is not to test against a legacy rage deck, but to test against a deck that more closely resembles something you can face in the current PvP events.

If my deck gets stun-locked by Ob Nix using legacy cards, it does not mean I will get stun-locked by Ob Nix with Standard cards.  So it is not as accurate a test as I would like.

mournfen

I remember QB being flooded with Koth and Nahiri pretty badly. The power and speed of Koth decks represent ToZ 3.1 accurately. OB is still very strong without Legacy cards, current creatureless builds still run as smooth as pre-rotation. Really just lost cheaper removal and BtB, and it doesn't even matter since meta is much slower. If you see OB change PWs it's called playing the meta. If I know 90% chance it's creatureless OB I change to a deck to counter it. 

I think standard TG is needed, but not to deck test. Since players do not build to accomplish objectives in TG your argument to test your standard deck hold limited weight. How many players run 6-7 mythics and 2-3 rares, in standard cards? I can probably be accurate when I say not many outside top 5 coalitions. If you truly want to test against power and synergy in a non-Koth environment fight Ulamog. More accurate results than wanting to go against someone's embalm deck running vampire kitty and cast out. It will leave you thinking I can easily do 3.x on ToZ when you can't because the actual power difference is huge between average PvE standard and PvP standard events. I still think it needs standard so newer players can just win and get their crystals quick.

BTW current meta is Cast out lockdown or Drake/Haven easy counter since everyone seems to run it or something similar.

wickedwitch74

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to give a quick update.

I spoke with the developers, and they agree that it'd be ideal to implement a toggle to switch back and forth between "Standard" and "Legacy." Having said that though, they have a lot of major features and fixes on their plate right now, so that toggle has unfortunately taken a backseat to those items on their to-do list.

Rest assured though, I'll be sure to bring it up with them again in the future, since they have said that they would like to develop that eventually.

Thank you for the update, Brigby. Good news, even if we'll need to wait awhile.

Adding a toggle for standard vs. legacy would be a huge boon for those wishing to test/play decks under certain conditions (i.e. not against Koth ALL THE TIME!).

When they are designing this, I hope they see fit to develop a layout which will allow further customization of opposition decks. This would be a very cool feature, being able to designate deckbuilding restrictions (block specific, rarity specific, etc...)

This would be a very rich feature.

dj55

wickedwitch74 said:

I'm ok with the idea of the "Training Grounds".  I appreciate the move to a lower stress, less grindy environment, and I enjoy the 15 gem perk as the final reward. 

Training Grounds, and Quick Battle before it, is the place to test new decks before throwing them into an event.

There are quibbles I have with the design, and I will follow this post up with those, but I have one BIG beef.

As I build these standard decks, and try to test them out, why am I being thrown into battles against "Legacy" decks playing all of Legacy's greatest hits.

It is incredibly frustrating trying out my new thopter/cycling/energy/embalm deck, only to get flattened by The Pig, or skewered by a buggy Olivia. 

Implementing a Training Ground that allows players to:

A. Choose Legacy vs. Standard
B. Perform Matchmaking in a fair and accurate manner

Should be at, or near the top of Development's list.

You have asked us to accept these changes by imposing Standard and "Training Grounds". Fine... I enjoy the challenge and the breath of fresh air, but this was a seriously missed development effort causing the community much frustration.

I came in here to write a post on exactly this topic. Decided to see if anyone else has the same thoughts. Glad I'm not the only one! 

There should definitely be a toggle for standard vs legacy. Far too many people just get their kicks stacking a deck full of every good mythic they got since the beginning of the game. Trying to test a standard deck against these decks is ridiculous! 

We can all stack our decks like that, but what's the point. They can't be used in the new events. If there was a legacy training ground, then people could battle crazy decks, but let the people who are actually trying to put thought into their decks have a legitimate way to play and test them. 

Please bump this to the top of the dev queue!

btw...everyone has an Olivia, Ulrich, Decimator, etc., so nobody thinks you're cool because you have them and put everything in the same deck. 

Brigby

*Since this is an old discussion thread from June, with comments and opinions that are potentially no longer valid or the same, respectively, we'd like to request that a new discussion thread be created to continue this topic. Thank you!