Proof that the devs are not listening to the players.

mtglol

I don't understand why people are arguing for being able to play less.  Let's just make it a 24hr recharge time and cost crystals each match!

You're not forced to play the game. Don't want to use all the charges? Don't.

Steeme

naphomci said:

This slight was more because the implication of the statement was that the devs were unavailable all week because of Canada Day. I highly doubt they were off the entire week. Personally, I am firmly against people working on days off, I just don't think one day off means a week of not changing it.

Canada Day weekend, or any long weekend in the summertime, is quite a popular time for people to book vacation time in Canada.  In fact I had taken that week off as well.

You can "highly doubt" whatever they say, but it doesn't change the actual truth, and it just makes you look silly when you jeer at them.

Skiglass6

It is like the people in the top coalitions that are complaining are being told to suck it up and stop complaining. Just don't play all the nodes if you do not want to play so much. But they forget that it was the complaining in the fist place that made them change the recharge rate. 

For the players that say they do not want to wait 8hours to play after they lose. Do not forget that after this event stops being a coalition event, it will still be playable, like fateful showdown, at your own pace. One defeat after another. Or after you figure out how to win without cast out or cycle, you can try with just commons and uncommons. And if you win to can post a brag thread. I hear people like reading those. 

madwren

I mean, it's great that you want to turn everything into an elite vs. new player argument--it's cool that you have a passion and all--but there are plenty of players across all levels of play and capability that dislike the 4-hour refreshes. We know this from the poll results, and the feelings of the communities we play in and communicate with daily. 

Why try to paint it as some nefarious plot, instead of empathizing and recognizing the valid concerns of those individuals? 

Why should a competitive environment be unnecessarily arduous and/or punitive, and why would you want to attempt to strike down any attempts to generate a fair and balanced environment that benefits both sets of players?


The premises that are flawed:

1. That it's a zero-sum situation, and anything that benefits hard-core players must necessarily have a negative impact on the casual/new player. It doesn't. .

2. That "more attempts" is the most effective solution for a player who cannot defeat difficult content; i.e. that a person that could not attain progression at 450 with 8h nodes will have a greater likelihood of attaining progression at 750 with 4h nodes simply from trying twice as often.

3. That 8h nodes were more responsible for people's inability to meet progression than:

 - Arbitarily difficult content geared primarily, although not exclusively, towards specific card combinations that many players do not possess
-  The spontaneous doubling of the amount of ribbons necessary to meet progression
- The nerfing of rewards making it more difficult to obtain necessary cards and/or level planeswalkers that might provide an advantage

4. That the opinion of individuals regarding the arduous task of keeping up with nodes is somehow negated because they choose to compete fully in a event that is a competitive coalition event and not an individual event

The most common defense for 4h nodes seems to be: "More chances! I can play more often!" That's not an argument. It's a side effect.

Ohboy

madwren said:

I mean, it's great that you want to turn Ieverything into an elite vs. new player argument--it's cool that you have a passion and all--but there are plenty of players across all levels of play and capability that dislike the 4-hour refreshes. We know this from the poll results, and the feelings of the communities we play in and communicate with daily. 

Why try to paint it as some nefarious plot, instead of empathizing and recognizing the valid concerns of those individuals? 

Why should a competitive environment be unnecessarily arduous and/or punitive, and why would you want to attempt to strike down any attempts to generate a fair and balanced environment that benefits both sets of players?


The premises that are flawed:

1. That it's a zero-sum situation, and anything that benefits hard-core players must necessarily have a negative impact on the casual/new player. It doesn't. .

2. That "more attempts" is the most effective solution for a player who cannot defeat difficult content; i.e. that a person that could not attain progression at 450 with 8h nodes will have a greater likelihood of attaining progression at 750 with 4h nodes simply from trying twice as often.

3. That 8h nodes were more responsible for people's inability to meet progression than:

 - Arbitarily difficult content geared primarily, although not exclusively, towards specific card combinations that many players do not possess
-  The spontaneous doubling of the amount of ribbons necessary to meet progression
- The nerfing of rewards making it more difficult to obtain necessary cards and/or level planeswalkers that might provide an advantage

4. That the opinion of individuals regarding the arduous task of keeping up with nodes is somehow negated because they choose to compete fully in a event that is a competitive coalition event and not an individual event

The most common defense for 4h nodes seems to be: "More chances! I can play more often!" That's not an argument. It's a side effect.

You're polling and talking to people who by definition aren't the new/casual players. This pool of players don't often find themselves here to take your self serving polls, or to the private chat groups to give an opinion. Everytime someone talks about a poll or private conversations as if it's a good cross section of the population, I'm forced to wonder if they're dishonest or clueless. 

It could be 20 mins recharge and still be fair to everyone. The point is that you are punishing yourself. You want to reach the top, but you're afraid that others might be willing to work harder to get there. So you're protesting to bring down the limit cap. Playing in every charge is completely voluntary. You put in what you want to put in. Why drag others down just so you don't have to climb further. You're saying "we want everyone to have less to play because we don't want to play so much". 

1) I never said that. It's true that this specific case is a hardcore vs casual situation though. Only the hardcore players would even care about more charges. Casual players benefit from infinite recharges. 

2) the point isn't about getting them to 750. It's to give them attempts to win what they previously couldn't. This gives players a sense of progression. They get actual proof that they are indeed actually improving. Hitting progression is also such a milestone, but the more concrete one is beating what used to be an unbeatable boss. Have you seriously forgotten the thrill of the hunt, and the exhilarating victory that comes after many failed attempts? This is what keeps people interested. You're bored of the event precisely because you no longer have those things. Don't take it from others. 

3) no I'm not. I'm just not conflating the issues. The pve event was badly designed and practically demands you use cycling and disables. The max progression doubling was bad for everyone. Rewards for pve really didn't change much for the casual player I think. BUT, like I said, this isn't about progression. This is about keeping people interested. The people you can't seem to relate to. Here are some general examples :

- casual gamer that logs on once a day in the evening. Instead of 9 games, he now gets to play 18.

- mid tier player who can't beat a boss/get an objective. Now he gets more tries. 


Side effect or not, it's good for the casual player. I could mirror your statement and say 4h charges wearing down veteran players who can't seem to bring themselves to miss a single charge is also a side effect, not an argument. That statement of yours serves absolutely no purpose in the context of this discussion. 

naphomci

Steeme said:

naphomci said:

This slight was more because the implication of the statement was that the devs were unavailable all week because of Canada Day. I highly doubt they were off the entire week. Personally, I am firmly against people working on days off, I just don't think one day off means a week of not changing it.

Canada Day weekend, or any long weekend in the summertime, is quite a popular time for people to book vacation time in Canada.  In fact I had taken that week off as well.

You can "highly doubt" whatever they say, but it doesn't change the actual truth, and it just makes you look silly when you jeer at them.

Since you seem intent on making me into some malevolent malcontent, here is the response I got from Brigby originally:

@naphomci Since today is Canada Day, and Hibernum is based in Montreal, I'm unfortunately unable to ask the developers today about whether there are any changes to Trial of Zeal for this weekend. Apologies for the inconvenience.

That statement heavily indicates a single day issue, so you can "jeer" at me, but try and put some effort in first. My point was that Brigby stated that because the devs would be out that specific day, the devs couldn't have changed it prior, during the week.

Gilesclone

I think the real problem is ToZ itself.  Node 3 is just not fun.  So playing it over and over again is torture.  Changing the refresh rate doesn't fix that.

naphomci

Ohboy said:

You're polling and talking to people who by definition aren't the new/casual players. This pool of players don't often find themselves here to take your self serving polls, or to the private chat groups to give an opinion. Everytime someone talks about a poll or private conversations as if it's a good cross section of the population, I'm forced to wonder if they're dishonest or clueless. 

This is a terrible non-argument. You are suggesting that somehow, new players don't come here, but the new players posting in this thread prove the contrary.

As for relying on polls or discussion from here, where else should they rely? Your comment insinuates that there is no information that can be honestly used. So, basically any discussion is invalid under your approach.

Ohboy

naphomci said:

Ohboy said:

You're polling and talking to people who by definition aren't the new/casual players. This pool of players don't often find themselves here to take your self serving polls, or to the private chat groups to give an opinion. Everytime someone talks about a poll or private conversations as if it's a good cross section of the population, I'm forced to wonder if they're dishonest or clueless. 

This is a terrible non-argument. You are suggesting that somehow, new players don't come here, but the new players posting in this thread prove the contrary.

As for relying on polls or discussion from here, where else should they rely? Your comment insinuates that there is no information that can be honestly used. So, basically any discussion is invalid under your approach.

Presence of new players here does not mean the demographic isn't lopsided. There are African americans who appear at trump rallies too, but his demographic is noticeably weak in African Americans. 

They can rely on stats taken from the games instead of user polls in forums that are lopsided. And while we don't know if they use them properly,  we know they do track certain stats from previous posts. What we do know is that forum opinion polls aren't the best tool for any decision making, ever. 

Steeme

naphomci said:

Since you seem intent on making me into some malevolent malcontent...

Nope, I'm just giving you an objective opinion.  Since you can't take a hint, I bid you good luck on getting the developers to cater to your needs while at the same time you poke them with sticks.  Have a nice day.

Phillmoore

It's amazing how this splits the community.  The vitriolic comments don't help.  Just because not everyone agrees with a point of view doesn't mean it isn't a valid point of view.  4 hours.  Or 8 hours.  Seems to effect strong coalition players most who feel that they must play every node   Rather than enjoying the opportunity to actually PLAY every node.  Again, having the chance to retry and beat a god every 4 hours is better than having to wait 8 hours.  What's the point of a game when we are left waiting for content to play 

and again please don't say story. We've done that! 

shteev

Phillmoore said:

It's amazing how this splits the community.

Indeed. The community seems to be evenly divided between players who don't like an aspect of the game, and players who don't like players who don't like an aspect of the game.

Theros

Just completed 750 ribbons as of this posting with 4 games left, no game lost. Bosses on node 3 are so hard and time consuming that my priority is to win the game, forget secondary objectives. I just want to get get my progression rewards fast and be done with it. My cycling decks do lose to 3.x bosses sometimes. In my case 8 hours will be too much, I don't want to continue playing until Monday or Tuesday. Like @Phillmoore said, 4hrs is better than 8. 8hrs would be ideal if we played less games.

Yawgmoth

People quickly forget what made the great outrage of our times (#notanotherdime, top coalition name changes, etc...). NONE of the problems that caused the outrage were fixed to this day but more new ones appear.

Worst of the new problems is the TOZ event. It requires a ridiculous amount of work to keep up with the recharges and the rewards are pitiful, compared to the amount of work required - worse than in typical weekday events. And what we get for it? A couple dupes and 1/7th of a mythic? Miserable...

Ohboy

shteev said:

Phillmoore said:

It's amazing how this splits the community.

Indeed. The community seems to be evenly divided between players who don't like an aspect of the game, and players who don't like players who don't like an aspect of the game.

Ironically meta considering your post is the only one here that actually doesn't hold anything to do with the 4h vs 8h debate. 

Mainloop25

Phillmoore said:

What's the point of a game when we are left waiting for content to play 

and again please don't say story. We've done that! 

Once upon a time I found myself in this dilemma as well. Then I started an alt account, and now I can't find enough time to play all my nodes across two accounts. Not the solution for everyone but it's an option I guess. 

Steeme

shteev said:

Phillmoore said:

It's amazing how this splits the community.

Indeed. The community seems to be evenly divided between players who don't like an aspect of the game, and players who don't like players who don't like an aspect of the game.

The only division here is coalition players that are "forced" to maximize their score vs. everyone else.

With regards to the OP, 4 hour recharges means I, and many others, can finish with this event before the work week starts.  To me, that far outweighs the benefits of only dealing with 8 hour charges.

So you can see that this is really only an issue for a small percentage of the population.  I don't mean this in a "popular opinion" type of way, just the simple straight fact that only a small percentage of players "have to" get a perfect score.

babar3355

I am going to just chime in to say that it is OK for a game to have some content geared towards the late game players.  ToZ is clearly in this vein as the bosses are exteremly strong and require good strategy and some strong cards (or just endless cycling).  Newer players can attempt RAtC and other mid week PvE events as often as they would like.

It seems silly to alienate and annoy coalition focused players who do have the capacity to beat these encounters just to make it easier for newer players to hit progression.  Especially since as soon as the newer playeres figure out how to beat the bosses they will be with everyone else who hates the time commitment this event takes 3 out of every 4 weekends.

Ohboy

babar3355 said:

I am going to just chime in to say that it is OK for a game to have some content geared towards the late game players.  ToZ is clearly in this vein as the bosses are exteremly strong and require good strategy and some strong cards (or just endless cycling).  Newer players can attempt RAtC and other mid week PvE events as often as they would like.

It seems silly to alienate and annoy coalition focused players who do have the capacity to beat these encounters just to make it easier for newer players to hit progression.  Especially since as soon as the newer playeres figure out how to beat the bosses they will be with everyone else who hates the time commitment this event takes 3 out of every 4 weekends.

The only people concerned about playing every charge are top coalition players who voluntarily put themselves there to earn rewards not available to the rest of the population. 

Everyone else stops whenever they like. More attempts is better because not everyone will play every charge. Some get wasted by casuals who for example maybe don't log in on Saturdays perhaps due to hangovers, and others are used up for attempts on the bigger bosses. 

If what separates top coalition players from the rest is commitment and effort, then to insist everyone gets less chances so that they don't have to spend that much time on the game is... I'm not even sure how to describe it. 

The top players do it to themselves in return for rewards. If they don't like it, they can sit it out. They just want to do less and still get rewarded. 

octal9

Steeme said:

It's time to start segregating casual and competitive play. 

I haven't read the entire thread but segregating these two playstyles is the solution. 

I wish I could update my answer on that first poll, because when the second poll rolled around I realized that the entire event structure needs to be fixed. Not just the recharge.

1) Start the event on at 5pm UTC (the usual start) on Friday.
2) Lower the raid health. (optional, see 4)
3) Reinstate 8hr recharge to sate the competitive players.
4) Freeze the coalition leaderboards at event "end". This can be at raid health = 0, or at 3PM UTC (the usual event end time) on Monday - whichever comes first, perhaps.
5) Allow players to continue at their own desire until 3PM UTC Wednesday to sate anybody that wants more opportunities to play.

Competitive players get their leaderboards, casual players get their progression.