Q&A with Oktagon - November Edition (11/27/17)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the November edition of our Q&A session with Oktagon. We know the community has a lot of questions about Magic: Puzzle Quest's future, and how their vision will shape it.

Here to answer your questions is Pedro Estigarribia, one of Oktagon's Game Designers.
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What do you consider to be the best period of this game’s life, and what can the community do to help MtGPQ get back on its feet again?
We see this project as a brilliant idea fusing two distinct franchises, Magic: the Gathering and Puzzle Quest, and we believe Hibernum has done their best when creating the game. Our team has done a lot of work playing and analyzing both Paper MtG and Puzzle Quest MtG. This, and community feedback, will help drive the future of MtGPQ.

Community members have given us a lot of awesome ideas to work with, so what we ask of you is: Keep the ideas and feedback coming! We are always listening and looking for great ideas to implement!

Can we get an update on the fix for the Something Went Wrong error?
We are aware that the Something Went Wrong error has been a recurring issue for some time now. We are currently working to solve it. Due to the fact that there are multiple ways to trigger it though, it will take some time to completely solve. However, rest assured that the error will gradually disappear from the game; it will just take some time.

Can we get a sneak peak at the current ideas behind Booster Crafting?
Sure. No Duplicates!

We are currently working on an explanation of how the crafting system will work, and we plan to release this post in the coming weeks.

What are some of the expectations your team has for Ixalan?
Since Ixalan will be the first content release created and developed completely by Oktagon, we are all very excited! We have been working hard to capture the feeling and mood of an amazing set.

Will there be improvements / changes to Events and its schedule in the future?
We understand that it has been a while since new events were added. To put you all at ease though, we are planning to create events related to the world of Ixalan. 

Regarding formats, the game will continue to support two: Standard (most recent sets included) and Legacy (all collections included). We will be releasing a dev post explaining the formats, alongside Ixalan's release.

Schedule-wise, we are working on changes to the rotation variety, based on community feedback.

Do you agree with Mark Rosewater and "Designing Magic" that all cards should be balanced by mana cost, instead of rarity?
For the most part, yes. We believe that cards should be balanced around mana costs, with rarity slightly affecting the final values. After all, rarity should count for something.

Our overall design philosophy is very similar to paper MtG, as far as balancing the five colors and the abilities within them, so you can expect to see some changes in that regard. However, these changes will happen at a gradual pace to make sure the meta-game's stability. This is true for both Planeswalkers and cards.

We do plan to retroactively balance problematic cards, that are affecting the meta-game in a negative way, but this will take some time.

Are there any plans to improve or re-balance Planeswalkers?
Both. We plan on re-evaluating old Planeswalkers in the future, but initially the focus will be on the new ones. However, we can say that some changes to the design process were made to make them more in-line with their theme, mood, and feel.

Will Story Mode be expanded?
We can't say much right now about this, but we do plan to bring in MtG's vast lore into the game in new and exciting ways. We are all very excited about this.
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We hope you've enjoyed the November Q&A session with Oktagon.

As always, I will post a thread at the beginning of each 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. Cheers!

Matthew

Thank you for the updates! There are a lot of tantalizing and positive things about this thread. It's still a game of wait-and-see at this point, but this will definitely help me to justify doing so.

Keep up the hard work, Oktagon. The community does appreciate it, even though that might not always be immediately apparent when looking through the forums.

octal9

Lots of good answers here. I (and many others, I'm sure) am hoping  Oktagon can deliver on them. 

bk1234

Good stuff thanks!!

THEMAGICkMAN

This is a ton more than I expected, looking really hopeful!

blacklotus

my cup is gradually filling up by Octagon. 

keep up the good work, and a top prize tier 300 jewel event running every weekend. It definitely attrracts more players, old n new with it running than not. 

Mburn7

As much as I hate generalities (saying "we'll do it eventually" isn't very useful or promising) I can't complain about anything that was said here.  Sounds like you guys really do care about the game, and are going to take it in the right direction.

Guess We'll have to wait for more updates for the specifics.

Still, Thanks! (Also for those of you keeping score at home, we now have Oktagon: 2, Hibernium: 1 in terms of promised monthly Q & A updates.  New Record!!)

Mainloop25

Yay! I was looking forward to this Q&A, and there were some pretty good answers to pretty good questions. Excited to see how these ideas pan out in reality. 

TheDragonHermit

Really excited about the BC announcement, can't wait to see what Oktagon has in store there.

DBJones

I'm feeling very hopeful right now, especially about booster crafting!

Drewster

It's on like Ixalan! Looking forward to it all!

Ohboy

I'm concerned about the no duplicates in crafting bit ending up being too generous. Would be disastrous if history repeated itself and they ended up cutting back later and triggering another round of austerity measures.

Hope they were thoroughly briefed on the mistakes of the past.

Furordraco

wohooo BC! thanks oktagon this all seems to be going in a good direction. Our hopes for the game are with you Okta!

Mainloop25

Ohboy said:

I'm concerned about the no duplicates in crafting bit ending up being too generous. Would be disastrous if history repeated itself and they ended up cutting back later and triggering another round of austerity measures.

Hope they were thoroughly briefed on the mistakes of the past.

 My speculation is that this will be offset by the amount of duplicates needed to craft cards. I imagine that this will be high because of how many people have been hoarding cards(and somewhat encouraged to do so). I wouldn't think Hibernum would have given much thought to this, but it seems like Oktagon is more aware of the consequences of thoughtlessness in these matters.

James13

I'm both excited and concerned.  The player in me obviously loves the idea of being able to get all cards.  On the other hand, The game does need financial flow in order to exist and too easily achievable full collections run counter to having any income.  We'll have to see how they propose to implement it.  I'm sure this is why it takes so long to come up with a finalized model.

Either you have to tie it to a monetize-able resource like crystals in addition to the dupe-card-credits or I'd even be willing to pay a small cash amount to get the absolute guarantee of the new card.  Pure speculation.  Have to see what they have in mind.  The balance I'm sure isn't easy to find.

babar3355

As a proponent of collectibility, I of course see the need for balance and care.  Of course we don't expect every player to get the full set on day 1.  However, if done properly, I believe the ability to complete a set could really drive competition and cash flow.  

Also, don't forget other sources of potential revenue they could consider (skins, foils, etc).

All I all, encouraging Q&A but would love an idea of when we get Ixalan

Matthew

babar3355 said:

Also, don't forget other sources of potential revenue they could consider (skins, foils, etc).

From a cashflow standpoint, I can't believe they haven't attempted to monetize this yet.

Gunmix25

Excellent Q&A this month! Well done Oktagon, well done.

Only question that came up a lot but was politely deferred in the Q&A was "when is Ixalan planned to be released." 

I guess they still have a ways to go before having anything concrete to tell us. Not a complaint, mind you, but more of a revelation as to where they are with the set at this point in time. 

Volrak

James13 said:

I'm both excited and concerned.  The player in me obviously loves the idea of being able to get all cards.  On the other hand, The game does need financial flow in order to exist and too easily achievable full collections run counter to having any income.  We'll have to see how they propose to implement it.  I'm sure this is why it takes so long to come up with a finalized model.

I agree with much of this.

James13 said:

Either you have to tie it to a monetize-able resource like crystals in addition to the dupe-card-credits or I'd even be willing to pay a small cash amount to get the absolute guarantee of the new card.  Pure speculation.  Have to see what they have in mind.  The balance I'm sure isn't easy to find.

There are other possibilities.  One example (I'm not saying it's likely or necessarily desirable) is that the number of dupes required to craft a non-dupe card increases as the number of cards at that rarity you're still lacking decreases.  That kind of sliding cost can be equated in some sense to the likelihood of dupes (from normal drops) increasing as your collection becomes more complete, but without the psychological feel-bad of opening a dupe.

Brigby

*Please keep all comments on the topic of questions in the Q&A. If you would like to discuss the business models of either Paper MTG or MtGPQ, please continue that discussion here:

Comparing Business Models of Paper MtG to MtGPQ

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Volrak I like that idea a lot. It might take more and more dupes to finally get a card but you can eventually get it. Right now there is no hope that you can ever get missing cards. It would be nice to be able to try all the combinations. New cards in new sets will continue to drive interest. There is really no good reason to not let us slowly get to all the cards. Just make it take time so that we have something to work toward.

I actually liked how Duels did it. They only let you get 4 dupes of each common, 3 dupes of each uncommon, 2 dupes of each rare, and only 1 of each mythic. Packs would not award cards that had been "closed out".