A proposal for a new event schedule.

UweTellkampf

I really used to like Firf, but as almost everything, it became stale for the fact that it was the "same old story" over and over again with same old vehicles. This week was my first where, except for one node, I simply played, whatever decks I wanted to try. I would not miss it one second. 

On the topic: This is a great suggestion. manifold and practical.

blacklotus

the positive thing i found about firf is cycling decks also works superbly with "cast 5 of something" objectives.

Kresgwyr

Lots of great ideas in this proposal, well done mate.

Szamsziel

Firf is boring because on each node the same objective is required.  as so decks are pretty similar -3-4 vehicles ( in each deck the same). And as there are just few good vehicles I see Kiran, boomship, harvester every time... As long as opponent I'm facing is going to get objectives at all

Phillmoore

This is a great schedule and addresses the issue for recharge rates by giving more content spread into the weekends and not just week days.  Let’s hope that this is picked up and doesn’t cause issues with regards over stressing the network when staff are not available to deal with break downs.  

Superb 

AdriA

It has more legacy events than standard events, I disagree on that.
The first three tiers is good to get an amount of cards to build a competitive deck but not enough to get useful cards from all sets. And platinum tier is the most competitive tier.
Besides that, there is more useful cards in some previous sets than current sets, they try to balance the cards but somehow it isn’t perfect. More legacy events let new players in disadvantage most of the time.
But the proposal has lots of events in a week, which is good, this give us options to decide which event is more suitable for us to play.

Gilesclone

While standard events would be nice, we know they have the legacy events available 

TheDragonHermit

My preference would be for the weekend legacy event to reward Origins cards, as that seems to be a major set that will not be rotated out any time soon. It would give the players that need them a good solid base on which to build.

babar3355

Totally agree @thedragonhermit.  I would just add that I hope they fill the weekend PvE event with events other than RotGP and even some of the PvP monthly events.

bk1234

I still wonder why the weekend PVE event is not rotated with HOD. Everyone really likes that event — except me — and regarledss I see the value in rotating it in. 

Also I wonder why Legacy sets are not rotated into the vault anymore. 

babar3355

bken1234 said:

I still wonder why the weekend PVE event is not rotated with HOD. Everyone really likes that event — except me — and regarledss I see the value in rotating it in. 

Also I wonder why Legacy sets are not rotated into the vault anymore. 

HoD is too generous would be my guess. 

Don't get me wrong, I am excited Oktagon is here.  But I still think this game will be losing players as long as D3 maintains their whale poaching mentality and doesn't make the game approachable for people of all financial positions.

[Deleted User]

Personally, I like FiRF. This is mainly because I want to expand my kaladesh collection and i can consistently get the objectives now. Unfortunately, I started during the transition from kaladesh to Amonkhet. 

However, i hated the event when i first started because... come on 5 vehicles..? Wasnt going to happen with my collection unless I ran a bunch of sky skiffs and the rest of the lameo 2/2 vehicles.. and then get my face bashed in by decks with better cards. Lots of rage phone throwing during that era. 

Therefore, although I personally like it for my own reasons, i wont lie, i feel:
1. It is a bit stale to have the same objective on all the nodes. 
2. It is extremely difficult for newer players to be competetive with their cards.
3. The objective is ridiculous hard without cycling or extreme card draw. The only benefit to this objective being difficult is that it provides a larger margin for error because a lot of other people will have the same difficulty, aside from those that may have a strong collection of vehicles. Therefore, i feel if the objective was difficult but accessible (and feasibly useable) to all, it would have been better. For example, if it was cast 5 humans (not sure if there are a lot of accessible humans but under the assumption that it is accessible and of course useable), it may have been better. Granted for some summon 5 humans may not seem that hard, but harder than 3 atleast..

bk1234

babar3355 said:

bken1234 said:

I still wonder why the weekend PVE event is not rotated with HOD. Everyone really likes that event — except me — and regarledss I see the value in rotating it in. 

Also I wonder why Legacy sets are not rotated into the vault anymore. 

HoD is too generous would be my guess. 

Don't get me wrong, I am excited Oktagon is here.  But I still think this game will be losing players as long as D3 maintains their whale poaching mentality and doesn't make the game approachable for people of all financial positions.

Rewards could be adjusted to align more with other PVP events. I'm not a programmer, but it seems they have easily cut back rewards many times before so this should be a quick adjustment. 

[Deleted User]

As far as the prize pack reward for legacy events, i dont know how i feel about that. Honestly to me, legacy cards feel useless. It feels useless because i rarely use them, let alone have good ones. But mainly there are no coalition events that require them. Plus, its so hard to get good ones without dumping what few pennies are left in my bank account... however, oddly enough i do want them. Perhaps its the desire for something new or just getting a new card but i do want them. But this desire is really low on my list of priorities for this game - its just not logical for me to invest here.

However, having access to standard boosters in the legacy events is not a bad idea. It provides more value and may increase participation and maybe, just maybe some small amounts of revenue. But lets assume this happens, how many more pig olivias would i end up seeing due the rewards being standard? I feel like this would be a potential problem due to increased participation from veterans perhaps - not sure. 

In the end,  legacy feels like a huge untapped source of value and potential options. But i dont think it will be easy to make balanced.

Here are some thoughts:
1. Legacy needs to be balanced. Some of those cards need some serious reworking because they are crazy overpowered. But this may irk some people with those cards.. especially since from what I understand some people bought them...
2. Legacy needs to be more available. I still dont understand why booster packs rotate in the vault at times... its like yay, i have crystals but.. i have to wait forever for the booster i want to buy to come around again, yippie (not that i would buy legacy boosters just saying) But anyhow, perhaps have a free 2hr legacy booster and standard booster running together? This wont give away the farm and could be a positive thing considering the detrimentally depressing change from the 3 card booster to the 1 card booster. I cant think of anything else.. 
3. After balancing and increasing availability, it might be feasible to have maybe 1 legacy coalition event. ONLY one, perhaps that rotates? as a test in the future. This will allow legacy to stay relevant and may generate some revenue.

AdriA

I also agree with @TheDragonHermit. The idea to have another legacy event rewarding, especially, new players would be a very good welcome to them.

span_argoman

bken1234 said:

Is there anyone who genuinely looks forward to FiRF? I mean I like it sometimes just to test really crazy decks that have absolutely nothing to do with objectives in enraged mode -- it's basically my TG for Enraged. I've never once built an event optimized deck for it though. 

I don't dislike FiRF, it's like any of the other events to me. And I think summoning Vehicles as an objective fits the Kaladesh setting.

But the selection of Vehicles available mean that you can't build a deck that is robust enough to deal with all the challenges that non event-optimised decks can throw at it unless you have the Mythics.

What I think could have been a simple fix to the frustration with FiRF was to simply move the summon 5 Vehicles requirement into the 1-point objective slot and have the varied one in the 2-point objective slot.

That way players without a good selection of Vehicles can still build decks that yield a good number of extra points whereas competitive players looking to squeeze every bonus point out of their decks can run Vehicles.

Kinesia

@span_argoman Switching the objectives would be good. I'd also still like it reduced to 3 vehicles. It's far less oppressive.

span_argoman

@Kinesia Here's the thing about an objective on the number of creatures to be summoned, the difficulty of meeting the objective varies due to multiple factors including:
1. The general usefulness of creatures of that type
2. The actual creatures the player has in their collection
3. Access of the player to other cards that can help to summon these creatures (draw, ramp, fetch)
4. The level of your opponent planeswalker and consequently how much time you have to summon out your Vehicles
5. Any match modifiers like Enrage

Except for the last point, that's a more long-winded way of saying that the difficulty of achieving the objective depends on the player's mastery tier and card collection.

For instance all the summon 2 creatures or more objectives in Terror and Emrakul's Corruption (except EC Green Node) are too easy at the Platinum level imo. If everyone is scoring a perfect score, there's no differentiation. Though having it at 6 & 8 back then triggered off massive complaint threads like Emrakul's Corruption is not fun at all.

I feel like 5 Vehicles is a decently challenging number for Platinum players, though it might perhaps make more sense to be 5/4/3 for Gold/Silver/Bronze. There are also cards from HOU and AKH which have greatly helped in hitting the 5 Vehicle objective. Cycling helps. The new draw cards help. Mythics like Uncage the Menagerie or Vizier of the Menagerie are a great help if you have them of course.

I feel like this is one of the objectives which is trying to influence deckbuilding but doesn't really achieve it because of its indirect manner of influence. If say the objective were instead to have at least 3 Vehicles in your deck of 10, and you would get the bonus points as long as you won the match, I think that could be more palatable for people. Though it would probably take quite a bit of work for them to code something like that I guess?

Kinesia

I understand, though then the objectives sneakily start affecting the time pressure of the event. I can't afford to do something properly and patiently when I have multiple charges and to meet the requirements it takes me 20 minutes or more for a game.

I want the time pressure of things stated upfront honestly, not snuck in the back door.

I would much rather make things harder for platinum in some other way that isn't just "stretch the game out longer".

Gilesclone

From recent experience I can tell you that 5 vehicles is virtually impossible for many if not most bronze players.   With say, only 2 vehicles in your deck and an opponent with 50 hp, it doesn’t even have to be enraged to end before that happens.