Some News? Any News?

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Brigby is there anything you or the dev team can share about what's planned? We're all busy with booster crafting, finally getting all the cards we have coveted for so long, but there is an itch. We want it scratched. Something about what is coming next would be greatly appreciated.

span_argoman

Brigby has sent the January Q&A to Oktagon for some answers about a week ago. We should be seeing something soon.

babar3355

This is why I was concerned that objective 1 was booster crafting rather than Ixalan.  Sure, many of us were able to collect most of the cards and try out some cool new ideas.  But rebuilding decks to beat the same redundant events ad nauseum is not very rewarding, and quickly loses it's luster.

I think they should have announced what booster crafting was going to look like, then released Ixalan, then released booster crafting.  

Also a good lesson that the game isn't just about the cards.... there really needs to be a lot of time and attention devoted to non-card content.

Brigby

@babar3355
When the team was prioritizing development, we really had to think about which route was the most beneficial to player experience and/or the least detrimental. Did we want players to experience the exciting world of Ixalan first, but still encounter the frustration of duplicates, or did we want to open up players' collections by making duplicates useful, even though that meant delaying a new card set?

In the end, we knew how hair-pulling-ly (Yup, I  made that word up. Just go with it) frustrating getting a useless duplicate was, so we didn't want players to have to keep on experiencing that moving forward. We wanted players to be able to go into Ixalan, focusing on the excitement of the cards and the world that lies within them, instead of constantly worrying about when they'd get their first duplicate, that would just sit in their inventory forever.

bk1234

I’m actually still having a lot of fun playing with my new cards in old events. In fact, I almost never play individual events and since booster crafting, I’ve played almost all of them. 

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Brigby but when can we get a taste of Ixalan? Anything? @bken1234 is happy but some of us are restless.

span_argoman

With Grizzo's above post, I feel obliged to put it out here that many of us understand that the team is juggling working on actual content, fixing up pre-existing bugs and yet still responding to the community incessantly clamouring for more of this and that.

Bken isn't the only one content to wait a little more for the Q&A to get more information.

Gideon

It’s great that some of you have such extraordinary patience But one Card a day or one Card a week preview would really keep the excitement going. They must have made some cards by now. I hope.

EldrosKandar

I agree with span's and bken's sentiment, I'm very glad that booster crafting is back. In fact it is what brought me back into the game in the first place.

That said, I understand the sentiment of those eager to have new content, but it won't be that long. I would expect the next Q&A next week with hopefully some news.

FindingHeart8

Gideon said:

It’s great that some of you have such extraordinary patience But one Card a day or one Card a week preview would really keep the excitement going. They must have made some cards by now. I hope.

You're looking at it like mtgpq has the same budget and extensive R&D team that Wizards of the Coast has, which isn't the case.

Even with all the extra staff and game familiarity, Wizards still screws up (card misprints, not realizing how a card they made could be abused, etc).

Octagon has to reinvent the cards so they fit in mtgpq, then also make sure the coding works so those cards do what they say they're going to do AND the new abilities they're probably going to introduce.  Remember how many times the previous developers had to release patches to fix the energy counters when Kaledesh was introduced in this game?  I lost so many matches from random game freezes when too many energy counters accumulated on the board.

Firinmahlazer

I was about to write a long post about how much Octagon has done and had to do since the transition but I'll just say this.

Yes I'm restless. Rivals is about to hit paper and we haven't even seen Ixalan. But I also understand why Octagon chose to release Booster Crafting before Ixalan and that's why we're still waiting. They've given us an appropriate avenue to ask questions and every month so far someone has asked about Ixalan and they've replied. If they'd given us Ixalan first we'd all be asking about Booster Crafting right now. Ixalan will get here eventually. Its been this long, what's another few weeks?

babar3355

bken1234 said:

I’m actually still having a lot of fun playing with my new cards in old events. In fact, I almost never play individual events and since booster crafting, I’ve played almost all of them. 

I am the total opposite.  I have been playing a fair amount of training grounds, but other than that I just cant muster the energy.  Perhaps I am one of the few because I mostly have the cards I want and am sitting on 10K crystals and 3K jewels.  New decks are fun with new cards but legacy events with enraged and annoying objectives is not.  At least not for me.

@Brigby Thanks for the response.  You guys probably made the right decision.  I, of course, don't have any of the survey data, usage statistics, etc.  And I really appreciate the job you have been doing in communicating and making changes since Oktagon joined.