What would D3 need to provide you in order to start saying nice things about the game again?

madwren

Kinesia said:

With the objectives...What's wrong with some being failable? It never ever depends just on your deck but on the opponents, like I said this is just an extreme example. There should always be a chance on Bosses but in PVP things aren't crafted there is no way to vet opponent decks. Make more failable objectives instead of getting rid of the ones we have so people aren't so precious about things.
Stop wanting perfect scores and give your ego a rest. Let yourself lose things and still have fun.
If you can't lose things but still have fun then you are the failure not the game.

To elaborate, there should never be an objective that a player can fail due to their being no way to achieve it. All objectives should have the possibility of being achievable in any matchup. This ensures that all competitors have a fair and equitable environment in which to play. 

For example, the referenced “kill 3 or more enemy creatures” objectives. 

There is no defensible reason that Player A should have the opportunity to obtain maximum points because he/she was fortunate enough to face decks with creatures in them, while Player B does NOT have the opportunity to obtain maximum points because he/she faced—through pure randomness, an opponent's creatureless deck that cannot generate or steal creatures, in which it is literally impossible to complete the objective.  

Player B is losing out on in a way that has nothing to do with skill level, nothing to do with their play choices, nothing to do with their deck construction, and nothing to do with their collection. It is a no-win scenario. It is an automatically failable objective. 

I cannot think of any competitive endeavor in which this would be acceptable.  Every person should have the chance to earn the same number of points as everyone else. When you have automatically failable objectives, this is not the case. 

Kinesia

I understand. But this is true in other decks too, it's just _obvious_ here.
Like "Take <10 damage" against a deck where your opponent just has direct damage spells. You can't easily succeed through no fault of your own.
While some people will succeed _by accident_ others will just be unlucky.
There are more nuanced examples too but the problem is _everywhere_ not just in your very trivial example case. The answer is not to hide the problem by getting rid of the one case people understand but to make it irrelevant by making it far more across the board. Every style of deck shsould have similar things they can come across.

For the _Bosses_ they can vet this, for PVP it's simply too much work, they need an AI to judge the decks vs the requirements and there are far more useful things for them to spend their resources on.

AdriA

I am struggling to get top 5 in events but most of the times I can't reach that rank. And the reasons are sometimes I make bad choices, the opponent break many gems and I don't or objectives are impossible to complete. So I think
to get better rank we need more luck than better cards or better deck strategies.
If I buy a $20 card it possible won't help me most of the times, so I may not be a competitor but only a collector.

bk1234

AdriA said:

I am struggling to get top 5 in events but most of the times I can't reach that rank. And the reasons are sometimes I make bad choices, the opponent break many gems and I don't or objectives are impossible to complete. So I think
to get better rank we need more luck than better cards or better deck strategies.
If I buy a $20 card it possible won't help me most of the times, so I may not be a competitor but only a collector.

A good coaliton can help you make the most of your cards and also how to play your deck. There are several big groups who can make room for you look in the coalition thread or send me a PM for an invite to my discord community. 

AdriA

bken1234 said:

AdriA said:

I am struggling to get top 5 in events but most of the times I can't reach that rank. And the reasons are sometimes I make bad choices, the opponent break many gems and I don't or objectives are impossible to complete. So I think
to get better rank we need more luck than better cards or better deck strategies.
If I buy a $20 card it possible won't help me most of the times, so I may not be a competitor but only a collector.

A good coaliton can help you make the most of your cards and also how to play your deck. There are several big groups who can make room for you look in the coalition thread or send me a PM for an invite to my discord community. 

I already have a coalition, thanks!

madwren

Kinesia said:

I understand. But this is true in other decks too, it's just _obvious_ here.
Like "Take <10 damage" against a deck where your opponent just has direct damage spells. You can't easily succeed through no fault of your own.
While some people will succeed _by accident_ others will just be unlucky.
There are more nuanced examples too but the problem is _everywhere_ not just in your very trivial example case. The answer is not to hide the problem by getting rid of the one case people understand but to make it irrelevant by making it far more across the board. Every style of deck shsould have similar things they can come across.

Why are you calling it "very trivial?"  There's no need to be insulting. I'm not sure what you're arguing, though. You're comparing two different concepts. 

You can win the <10 objective vs a deck full of damage. It may be difficult, it may be challenging, it may have a lot to do with luck, but it is actually achievable. 

Killing 3 enemy creatures, vs a creatureless deck, is impossible. It is not obtainable. It is removing both luck and skill from the equation and causing one person to have a -1 bestowed upon them. 

This has nothing to do with deck style. It's about possible vs. impossible.  Possible may suck, and have a lot to do with RNG at times, but the very fact it's possible makes it a fair competition. 

A person saddled with an impossible objective, on the other hand, is not engaged in fair competition. There's simply no defense for impossible objectives.

It's like having a football game where the home team starts out winning 10-0, and you say "Ok, opponents, you get one possession."  It's fundamentally unsporting, and neither fair nor well-designed.
 

shteev

I can feel another discussion about fairness coming on.

TheDragonHermit

I was hoping with the new team we would get lots of updates and information about upcoming stuff, but if anything it has gotten quieter on these forums, with no new news and even the bugs at times preventing play becoming a fact of life for the game it seems there is not much to discuss here...

Kinesia

<10 objective against direct damage isn't doable by design though. You can plan to prevent damage by creatures. But there are very few cards to prevent damage and not everyone has them. 
_Some_ people can plan against it but not many.

It's less fair than the no creatures one, that affects everyone equally if they are unlucky and draw that match up but my example 95% of people are unlucky if they get that match up but 5% of elitists can ignore the draw back.

I'm not trying to be insulting by calling it trivial or obvious, I don't need to insult you or praise you, both are useless, I just need to continually adjust what I'm saying until I can get people to understand, or until they can convince me that I'm mistaken.

Whether it is possible to succeed in a requirement depends on:

The requirement
The random match up you get
How you've designed your deck
How you're opponent made theirs
Which cards you and your opponent get randomly in order

And, yes, if they have no creatures then you can't kill 4 of them. But how restrictive do you want to get? How much time and effort do you want them to put into analysing possibilities?
There are other failure points above.

Is making something extremely difficult for everyone suddenly ok when 100% ruling it out is not?

So they ban creatureless decks in those nodes, so instead you start trolling with a single 25 mana common creature that the AI will not actually ever finish casting, let alone 4 of them.
Now people have the _illusion_ that they can always complete the requirement but that's not actually true, it'll never happen, because there is more involved than just having a creature in your deck.

And you should be able to do a "summonless" creature deck with tokens but your new restrictions would stop that.


That's why I'd prefer getting rid of the illusion that requirements should be attainable rather than try and enforce them in weird and arbitrary ways.

Even when you _think_ you can do them through skill and luck that's not necessarily true, you may not be aware of the it being impossible, but that doesn't excuse it.

shteev

Kinesia said:

So they ban creatureless decks in those nodes, so instead you start trolling with a single 25 mana common creature that the AI will not actually ever finish casting, let alone 4 of them.

Come up with a better example. Waiting for the AI to cast a 25 mana creature will give you so much time to set up that there'll be virtually no chance of failing your objective. This would be a terrible troll deck. Perhaps a little boring for people without Turn To Frog, but the continued preponderance of cycing decks in events demonstrates there is no shortage of players who will suffer boredom in order to score more points.

Kinesia said:

Whether it is possible to succeed in a requirement depends on:

The requirement
The random match up you get
How you've designed your deck
How you're opponent made theirs
Which cards you and your opponent get randomly in order

You forgot Something Went Wrong.

span_argoman

shteev said:

Kinesia said:

So they ban creatureless decks in those nodes, so instead you start trolling with a single 25 mana common creature that the AI will not actually ever finish casting, let alone 4 of them.

Come up with a better example. Waiting for the AI to cast a 25 mana creature will give you so much time to set up that there'll be virtually no chance of failing your objective. This would be a terrible troll deck. Perhaps a little boring for people without Turn To Frog, but the continued preponderance of cycing decks in events demonstrates there is no shortage of players who will suffer boredom in order to score more points.

Entirely possible to fail. Put it in a planeswalker with red/black cards that deal direct damage like Cruel Reality, Molten Vortex, Inferno Jet etc. As long as the AI doesn't draw those 4 creature cards out of the 40 cards in the deck, you'll be subjected to a barrage of direct damage. That kills the Red Node for HoR.

And even if the AI were to draw one of the 4 25-mana creature cards, it'll still take a few turns for the AI to cast the card out. Without Turn to Frog, the AI has to draw 3 out of the 4 creature cards for one to hit the kill 3 objective. A player could even feasibly be dead from all the direct damage before then.

Skiglass6

Since you are talking blue, your opponent would not need to draw 3 of the 4 creatures. Just bounce it and you can guess what Greg will do. 

Kinesia

I think most of what I'm trying to say is that there is so much randomness that has led to this point where you think you have control. But we need control for all the other people who haven't had the same randomness you have and it's actually easier to get rid of that illusion than it is to fix the disparity. There are things you _think_ you can do that you actually can't rely on, you can only do them because you are privileged.
argo_man has outlined better what I was thinking off, from my understanding the AI will prioritise mythics so if you have a common creature with a high cost but other mythics in the deck it will possibly never get to the point of casting the creature. Just including creatures in decks doesn't fix the problem.

span_argoman

Skiglass6 said:

Since you are talking blue, your opponent would not need to draw 3 of the 4 creatures. Just bounce it and you can guess what Greg will do. 

How does bouncing the creature help you with the Kill 3 or more creatures objective? Also I was referring to the Red node of HoR.

shteev

Ah. If what we're really talking about here is something akin to introducing an ELO rating system for picking your opponents, then I'm on board with that.

majincob

Why would they impose deck building restrictions?

Just don't make objectives that are actually impossible if someone decides they want to make a troll deck.

Because it's frustrating and un-fun.

Put your line in the sand where un-fun begins where you may, but for me it definitely includes "kill x or more enemy creatures" objectives.

Sarahschmara

majincob said:

Why would they impose deck building restrictions?

Just don't make objectives that are actually impossible if someone decides they want to make a troll deck.

I bet a lot of those troll decks are players with no good options for vehicles. Most vehicles are expensive and there aren't a lot of them to begin with. I could see this goal being more realistic IF tokens counted as creatures (much like sarkhan's summon 6 dragons goal) like they did originally. I get the feeling that the devs didn't remember all of the minor tweaks like tokens not counting as critters for summoning when creating the goals. 

bk1234

Sarahschmara said:

majincob said:

Why would they impose deck building restrictions?

Just don't make objectives that are actually impossible if someone decides they want to make a troll deck.

I bet a lot of those troll decks are players with no good options for vehicles. Most vehicles are expensive and there aren't a lot of them to begin with. I could see this goal being more realistic IF tokens counted as creatures (much like sarkhan's summon 6 dragons goal) like they did originally. I get the feeling that the devs didn't remember all of the minor tweaks like tokens not counting as critters for summoning when creating the goals. 

When I play FiRF and EMO, I don't play event optimized decks, I play my super-fun lockdown decks that I don't get to play in other events. 

The objectives are boring, I can't be bothered. These probably come off as troll decks (they are pretty nasty and AI plays them well), but in reality -- I'm just in it for a little extra currency and something to do. This is probably the case for a lot of people. 

Kinesia

5 vehicles is just too painful. If it was 3 vehicles I'd try an awful lot harder to meet it.
Take 10 or less damage... I let it stay down to luck. Take 25 or less I'd try really hard.
etc etc.
Whether tokens count as creatures varies, it counts for killing them, sure. There isn't any consistency in wording. If the objectives and the cards used the same words that would be wonderful!
The objectives use "summon" but it doesn't mean the same as "summon" on the cards which use "summon", "cast", "create", "enters the battlefield" and maybe even others...

I'm personally far far more annoyed by "play 2 or less creatures" in _multiple_ green events than I am at "kill x creatures". Killing creatures is on theme for red, not playing creatures at all is _not_ on theme for green.

Blue I like because there are events with "play spells" and events with "play supports", there are interesting variations that completely change playstyle, that's great.

I'd far far rather they add a whole heap of more objectives and even randomise a few rather than get rid of any.

In paper there are rarish cards that give the opponent tokens (we can do this with frog, but you need to start with a creature), some of these being introduced would get rid of complaints. The whiners could just use "Hunted Dragon" and the like and find something else to be mortally stricken about that was stripping them of a single point of their pointless perfection.

HypnoticSpecter

Not taking Columbus Day off when there's so much work still to be done would have been a nice gesture.