Unpopular Opinion: Needs cycling a nerf?

Ohboy

both 1 & 2

ElimGarak said:

Look up the OGW-pro-tour ... Happens anyway, even if people do know how to play (and develop) the game for over 20 years

For reference. 
 
http://www.quietspeculation.com/2016/02/the-pro-tour-metagame-a-beginning-not-an-end/

Laeuftbeidir

both 1 & 2

wickedwitch74 said:

My guess is that programming the AI to cycle would prove way too difficult. It's not simple decision-making, and we've already seen the AI do some pretty hokey things with targeted spells.


The game is not in a healthy place right now because of cycling.

I freely admit that I abuse the mechanic in an effort to farm as much unobtainium as possible before something gets done.

My theory before cycling was a thing: either the AI will cycle every card, always or no card, never. Turned out to be the right idea...well, not much knowledge was neccessary. The AI would not need to learn cycle, if the main problem of that strategy would be adressed. 

I wouldn't even say that you abuse the mechanic. You use the mechanic exactly the way it was introduced. The problem is not the problem we see, the problem is the general concept behind the design of those cards. Maybe even not that, but the basic idea how this game works in the mind of the person responsible for those cards.

It is kind of a red thread during the last couple of sets.


By the way: 2.1k views o.O? This seems to be more interesting than I thought.

shteev

both 1 & 2

Laeuftbeidir said:

My theory before cycling was a thing: either the AI will cycle every card, always or no card, never.

Hibernum's Razor, my friend...

shteev

both 1 & 2

Shefet Monitor just let me activate N3's ultimate on turn 3. Is that too good? That seems too good.

You *could* say that I was lucky to get 3 Shefet Monitors by turn 3, but of course I wasn't, because I cycled into them.

I leveled up my N3 all the way to level 19 for this event, and am still beating lvl 60 Kioras. Sure saved me a lot of runes.

Matthew

I am the neutral opinion

ElimGarak said:

The real offender here is the devs failure to fully implement cycling. The AI can't use it, so it's not fully implemented. No need to NERF anything, just get the job done.

Based on this comment, I'll have to at least give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you weren't here for the nightmare that was pre-nerf Baral.

Putting this kind of consistency in the hands of the AI is a terrible idea. The complete unfairness of it is the reason they re-ran the event for Rishkar's Expertise after they had adjusted Baral.

Ohboy

both 1 & 2

In other words, the real solution is to fix cycling, which is too broken right now. 

IM_CARLOS

Cycle is a combo-machine like  baral was a machine. 
In paper magic there were always stone-paper-scissor in form of: control, aggro and combo decks. 

But MtGPQ is not control oriented. Yes you can have control of the board for the moment but a cascade late control is gone. 
That's why a combo, a machine always win in this game, if the benefit of the combo is greater than the benefit of a well tuned aggro deck, because control is only very low in MtGPQ. 

To be honest, it is fun to make machine go round  in the first is true fun, but if it works it is just work. 

Conclusion: this game needs more control options, but in lack of interrupting effects it is way more limited than paper magic. 

So let's hope for the machine or the next olivia to break the silence of the cycling machine and bring more fun in the game again. 

shteev

both 1 & 2

IM_CARLOS said:

But MtGPQ is not control oriented. Yes you can have control of the board for the moment but a cascade late control is gone. 
...
Conclusion: this game needs more control options, but in lack of interrupting effects it is way more limited than paper magic.

I disagree. Control has always been strong in this game.

Locking a game down now has never been easier with Cast Out and the interaction that Sphinx's Tutelage has with cycling.

shteev

both 1 & 2

You know it's funny, people don't seem to have gotten bored of cycling yet.

Ohboy

both 1 & 2

Oh they're bored. 


Just like they're bored with grinding pve. 


But they'll do it anyway because the thrill of winning for them overcomes the boredom. 

tfg76

If the devs are interested, @Brigby , here's a proposal on how to fix cycling. It's basically modelling it more like the card game, which is generally a good policy given that Wizards put a lot more thought into their game than D3 does with theirs.


1. A cycling card has some additional "selector" so that the card can either be "playable", "disabled", or "cycling". If it's the first, it's played with its normal effect once it reaches its mana cost. If it's the second, it's neither played nor cycled. If it's the latter, it will be cycled once it reaches the cycling cost, during the regular playing cards stage (just after a swap). Cards that are in "cycling" mode store only as much mana as is needed for the cycling cost (so perhaps it should be possible to be both "cycling" and "disabled").

2. Cycling cards go to the graveyard, not to exile. This enables a bunch of cards and abilities and opens up the door to many nice interactions (such as reanimation).

With 1), you get rid of the infinite cycling loops (since cycling can only happen once per swap), but retain the nice property of cyclers in that they can be situational. I suspect that cards like Drake Haven will still be good, but not as overpowered as today. At least cycling games will be shorter (since you don't have to do all the manual work to move the card to the top, then to the bin, confirming).

Cycling is making all standard events pretty boring at this point, as at least 50% of the games are auto-wins (either you or the AI is playing a cycling deck). I think a tweak is in order.

Ohboy

both 1 & 2

(1) is even further away from the paper design than the current implementation, and (2) buffs cycling. 

Cycling can be brought closer to the paper counterpart just by pricing the cycling costs of all colors closer to the method used to price the cost of most red and black cycle cards, and Nerfing new perspectives to just give 1 mana. 

tfg76

@Ohboy You're right in that it's further from the paper design of course. What I meant was that in the paper game, cycling is an ability that can be played when you could play a spell, so the implementation is more similar to how cards are translated in general, as opposed to a totally separate mode of using them.

Agree that 2) buffs cycling, but in a way that's interesting and opens up a bunch of cool strategies. As it is now, they've translated a bunch of cards that simply "don't work" (counting cycling cards in the graveyard, for instance).

ErikInVegas

Change cycle costs & nerf new Perspectives

A meta problem that has appeared repeatedly is unlimited loops. 

In the existing game engine supports like New Perspectives should lose 1 shield each use, extra draw cards shouldn't be able to draw themselves, etc.  These features have already been used to fix past cards. 

Or they could implement strict physical card modeling so people could mill themselves into a loss and many existing cards would suddenly have real play value. 

MTG_Mage

both 1 & 2

MTG_Mage said:

There is a really simple solution to fixing cycling.
The three cards that are required to be altered are New Perspectives, Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted.
Look at the change that was done to Gonti's Aether Heart, whenever this supports effect is triggered it loses a shield.
All of them have 3 shields each and so does the heart. I don't suggest increasing their shield values since cycling causes you to draw so drawing into another one of these low cost supports is high.

I am quoting myself here since this fix for cycling uses a solution that was used in game before. @Brigby I just wanted to make sure you saw this

rafalele

It is perfect as it is

I think that this poll is ended. No new ideas.

Cycling is not the most important thing to be mended in this game.

It DOES NOT harm any player because IA cannot manage Cycling (if IA could you use it my opinion should be quite different).

The Cycling mechanic allow new players to get some wins that without it should not be possible (amazing opponent's high HP in events). I do not understand why you do not use it if you do not like it. This way, your problem is solved unless your real problem is that others can win as you can, without the need of your heavy rare, mythic and masterpice collection.

Remember that there are more players in the game that do not write in forums than those who write.

Your real challenge should be winning the events without using the Cycling while others do.

Volrak

both 1 & 2

rafalele said:

It DOES NOT harm any player because IA cannot manage Cycling (if IA could you use it my opinion should be quite different).

There are different kinds of harm, and I hope I can explain a perspective you may not have appreciated yet.

Different players love different things about the games they play.  For some, it's the challenge of competition, and their progression in their ability to overcome that.

In its current form, cycling removes both the challenge and the progression.  It's obvious how it removes the challenge.  It removes the progression when new cards don't materially improve your decks' performance, so they become kind of irrelevant.

When a game closely resembles "push a button to win" (only more like 100 buttons), such players start questioning why they're spending their time going through the motions of a solved challenge over and over again.  Making up their own challenges (e.g. trying to perform as well using a weaker non-cycling deck) could be an option, but that would no longer a challenge of competition; it would be an artificial self-imposed constraint. 

So the harm is to the motivation of such players to play the game, and in many cases the player base has or will just lose them.

shteev

both 1 & 2

rafalele said:

I think that this poll is ended. No new ideas.

That's the second time recently someone has declared a discussion over.

That's not how a forum works.

rafalele

It is perfect as it is

Volrak said:

rafalele said:

It DOES NOT harm any player because IA cannot manage Cycling (if IA could you use it my opinion should be quite different).

There are different kinds of harm, and I hope I can explain a perspective you may not have appreciated yet.

Different players love different things about the games they play.  For some, it's the challenge of competition, and their progression in their ability to overcome that.

In its current form, cycling removes both the challenge and the progression.  It's obvious how it removes the challenge.  It removes the progression when new cards don't materially improve your decks' performance, so they become kind of irrelevant.

When a game closely resembles "push a button to win" (only more like 100 buttons), such players start questioning why they're spending their time going through the motions of a solved challenge over and over again.  Making up their own challenges (e.g. trying to perform as well using a weaker non-cycling deck) could be an option, but that would no longer a challenge of competition; it would be an artificial self-imposed constraint. 

So the harm is to the motivation of such players to play the game, and in many cases the player base has or will just lose them.

Can you imaging trying to win any event battle (also training grounds) being a new user. Cycling could help new users to improve their chances and motivation and so to learn to love this game.

You can always forget about cycling cards and try other ways to win. Let the rest of us decide what to do.

rafalele

It is perfect as it is

shteev said:

rafalele said:

I think that this poll is ended. No new ideas.

That's the second time recently someone has declared a discussion over.

That's not how a forum works.

Have you read the rest of my post?

I did not asked to close the thread, just said that there is no new ideas and write my unpopular point of view.

I thought that a forum allow users to express their opinions.