Q&A with Oktagon - October Edition (10/25/17)

Brigby

Q&A with Oktagon - October Edition

Hi Everyone,

Several weeks back, we started a discussion thread that requested players submit any questions they'd like Oktagon to answer. We narrowed down a list of the most frequent and hot-button topics, and compiled them together for their review.

Here to present to you their answers is Oktagon's Assistant Producer, Thorben Jensen.

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Who is Oktagon, and what is your vision for Magic, the Gathering: Puzzle Quest (MtGPQ)?

Oktagon Games is one of the leading game development studios in South America and was founded more than 10 years ago. We have worked with Steve Fawkner, the creator of Puzzle Quest, on other titles before and are very excited to directly contribute to the design and execution of Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest.

In relation to our vision for MtGPQ, please allow us to only share the most immediate portion of that vision, and hold the rest for later. We believe that great communication is an essential part of supporting the community, so rest assured that we will proactively provide you with more detail on other specific improvements, closer to the point at which we will be launching those initiatives.

What is your experience with paper Magic the Gathering (MTG), and how will that translate into designing cards for MtGPQ?
We have been avid players of paper MTG for years. As professional game designers and developers, we have also followed Mark Rosewater’s Making Magic Column for a very long time, so you can be sure that our implementation of new card decks will be influenced by him. More importantly, all of our decks flow initially from the Wizards of the Coast designs and balancing of that core game.

Our real avenue of creativity is how we translate that balance into a game with a different combat mechanic. As you might expect, it is a combination of art and science, and the artistic part is dominant. The design challenge of MtGPQ from the beginning is how best to mesh two quite successful gaming franchises in a way that maintains familiarity and accessibility to both audiences without alienating fans of either. Some concessions are frequently necessary to achieve this objective. Some common topics of debate within the studio involve card costs vs. rarity, how to avoid power creep, and which existing cards need to be re-balanced in light of the new card designs released by WOTC.

Are you planning on changing or adjusting the way Events work?
Naturally, we are always looking for improvements, but changes to the events are not the top priorities right now. Some of the factors we will be addressing on existing event design will be improving the objective systems, adjusting boss recharge times, and making scheduling a bit more timezone friendly. After the Booster Crafting System is deployed and balanced, we will also be expanding the variety of event types.

What is the team’s prioritization like when it comes to upcoming or new features?
We have just finished scheduling events through the end of the year and doing a broad based code/design review of both the client and server side of the game. Initially we are intent on finishing the Booster Crafting System that you have been patiently awaiting for so long. We are getting close on that, expecting to deploy it prior to the holidays.

The second priority is to catch up to paper MTG`s set release schedule. Third, we are in an early design stage of some new features related to story, cosmetic changes, game modes, as well as quality-of-life changes to the UI. Once these three priorities are complete, we will move on to potential improvements for the code/design review mentioned above.

How does Oktagon handle content testing and bug-fixing?
We understand that balancing new content is extremely important to the game, therefore we are actively working on a revised process to test and balance new cards, relative to existing older cards. Rest assured that new cards will not be developed in a vacuum.

Our QA Team is always searching for problems or potential exploits. Once identified, our Engineers give immediate priority to fixing those problems that can, or do, negatively affect your experience in the game. If you encounter an issue at any time, please notify us in the game forums and we will keep you and the community informed of our progress toward resolving those issues.\

How does Oktagon plan on communicating with the player base?
The lifeblood of any successful game is an active and engaged community. We will, together with D3 Go!, be scheduling monthly open Q&A sessions to clear any doubts you, the players, may have.
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And there you have it: the first completed Q&A session with the new development team, Oktagon Games!

As mentioned above, this will be a monthly Q&A session. Just like the October Edition, I will post a thread at the beginning of the month, requesting questions from the community. After a week has gone by, we will close the thread, and compile the Q&A list for Oktagon's review. Once they have provided us their answers, we will get it ready for posting on the last week of the month!

Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. We hope you enjoyed this first round of Q&A!

majincob

Like a shining ray of hope, communication illuminates my heart.

Sounds awesome! Keep it up!

Brigby

Why @majincob, that's quite poetic of you!

Mainloop25

A little less info than I was hoping for, but I am excited to hear that this will be a regular thing!

Krishna

My initial feeling upon reading this was one of optimism and encouragement. I love their priorities  (Booster Crafting, Faster New Content, Gameplay Upgrade in that order) and I really love that they have experience working with the creator of PQ and I really Really love that they are avid players of MTG! This all seems like a recipe for the improvements the community has been pining for. Thanks again @Bribgy for the update, look forward to the monthly QandA

madwren

This is a wonderful first step. Let's hope that they stick to their promises of communication, because that's really what many of us have desired the most (and for the longest period.) I'm encouraged that they seem to be more in touch with Magic as a game than previously. 

Kinesia

The bit I like the most is that they read Making Magic. That is a huge huge plus.

Mburn7

Dear Oktagon,

Thanks for the communication!  You have now tied Hibernium's record of 1 consecutive month of Q&A after promising it monthly!!  Lets keep it going!

Seriously though, thank you for this.  And thanks for giving specific details about what you plan for the future.  Expect to start hearing complaints and queries around Dec 12th about the booster crafting if there aren't any updates

DaddyO

Thanks for the communication. I might be in the minority but I'd rather get the Ixalan cards first and booster crafting later. Ultimately the card crafting is the more crucial development but new cards are the catnip that keeps me playing daily. We are on the stale end of the current set. 

I get nervous about the term "booster crafting". I do hope that we get a duplicate solution that gives trade up for non-duplicate cards and not just a trade in for another regular booster pack. 

My coalition is mostly paper players that have come to puzzlequest because we grew up with MtG. Think Friday night magic - We would enjoy to booster draft and play sealed deck. The limited environment is the place for really getting the most out of well designed commons and uncommons. The current environment encourages only using the bombs and relegates 80% of the cards to binder trash. 

I'm encouraged by the fresh start and wish the new team great success. 

Kresgwyr

Thanks for the Q&A, guys. Hopefully it's the first of many 

It's a breeze of fresh air to finally get some encouraging news, and a glimpse of what you have in store for us.

Edit: I see that you already planned events until the end of the year.

Can we expect some insights on that soon ? Especially, can you look into the overlapping coalition events issue that we had over the last weeks ?

Also can we expect some variety in terms of boss battles ? A lot of players are exhausted by the accumulation of RotGP, it would be really appreciated if you could mix the schedule with previous boss battles.

Drewster

Thanks. Great responses and I'm looking forward to the next update!

TheDragonHermit

Ok, a question I would like to put forward:
What is the specific vision you have for booster crafting? How will it address the issue of duplicate cards and will there be a mechanism for targeting specific cards? And if so what sort of mechanism?
I know I am asking for a lot of specifics for something that may change, but I feel giving players a clear vision as to the plans for crafting, and then giving reasons for changes made moving forward, such as balance or implementation issues, would give players a taste of the feature and really increase excitement.

Tangentially: Will you give us something to do with the premade decks that are mostly cluttering up our deck selection screen? 
I think that making them editable, perhaps with the limitations that went into them (a beginner deck must follow pauper rules for instance) would make them an almost ideal currency sink. It would give tinykitties like me who have been hoarding dupes for quite a while now a reason to target the cards in those decks for the convenience of having multiple slots, spending the crafting currency on something that wouldn't necessarily effect other players. Essentially giving the decision of chasing more power or convenience.

James13

I'm far more excited about the hint that story mode is getting attention.  Far more than anything else there, honestly.

Furordraco

Looking forward to booster crafting. Im curious to see how many hundreds or thousands of dupes will be required to craft a booster

TheDragonHermit

That is definitely true, more story mode would be a wonderful way to grind out some more crystals and runes.

babar3355

Or they could offer new levels of difficulty in the existing story mode for more prizes.  Lots more content for very little effort.

Ideally they would release a smarter version of the AI... but the easiest implementation would be to overlay the existing battles with enraged, superpowered, and/or legendary modes.

James13

Story mode has been languishing back in the original BFZ set pre-OGW for far over a year.  Encounters heading into SOI and up to current sets would be fantastic.

I would consider just slapping gimmicks on the existing Origins/BFZ encounters to be a disappointment.  I don't care about rewards.

Szamsziel

babar3355 said:

Or they could offer new levels of difficulty in the existing story mode for more prizes.  Lots more content for very little effort.

Ideally they would release a smarter version of the AI... but the easiest implementation would be to overlay the existing battles with enraged, superpowered, and/or legendary modes.

Yes! This should be easy way to enhance story! And as I have cleared whole story it provide me some incentive to go back to it. I'd also suggest to make one (random) story as daily goal with (random) mode as daily goal for small reward. (10 gold?)

Machine

Maybe less important, but what are your plans regarding mastery tiers? The current implementation is very old and getting less and less meaningful, as percentage wise more people will get into platinum tier. Changing the maximum threshold from 1000 to 2500 (for the platinum tier) to prevent people from resetting to bronze was the last change. This change didn't effect the way mastery tiers work.

Also, the incorrect display of five full mastery bars looks unprofessional and annoys me :-)

TheDragonHermit

Machine said:

Maybe less important, but what are your plans regarding mastery tiers? The current implementation is very old and getting less and less meaningful, as percentage wise more people will get into platinum tier. Changing the maximum threshold from 1000 to 2500 (for the platinum tier) to prevent people from resetting to bronze was the last change. This change didn't effect the way mastery tiers work.

Also, the incorrect display of five full mastery bars looks unprofessional and annoys me :-)

Or implementation of an entirely different system for tiers based on some skill metric rather than number of cards used often.

Mburn7

TheDragonHermit said:

Machine said:

Maybe less important, but what are your plans regarding mastery tiers? The current implementation is very old and getting less and less meaningful, as percentage wise more people will get into platinum tier. Changing the maximum threshold from 1000 to 2500 (for the platinum tier) to prevent people from resetting to bronze was the last change. This change didn't effect the way mastery tiers work.

Also, the incorrect display of five full mastery bars looks unprofessional and annoys me :-)

Or implementation of an entirely different system for tiers based on some skill metric rather than number of cards used often.

I like the concept of the mastery tiers, even if its original purpose to force people to use different cards isn't working the way it should.  I just think there needs to be a new tier above platinum