Why ruin this cool new event with stupid objectives?

ElfNeedsFood

HypnoticSpecter said:

ArielSira said:

Skiglass; you most likely gained life while being at full health; that usually messes it up.

I would argue life total objectives should never be used until this (very old) bug is addressed. Why should we have to deal with bugged objectives?

Agreed. Is this in the bug thread?

Gilesclone

adman149 said:

Elephant in the room. Would people still be enjoying this event as much if they couldn’t just cycle for some of the wins? Make us play the tribal cards, not just avoid using them to fulfill objectives. I’m sure once you see a logjam of perfect scores or -5 in the top ranks, maybe people will agree cycling is the problem. Haven’t seen much of Omni in this event. I know...wrong thread Bken

Actually quite the opposite.  I started out this event not cycling at all, but because the objectives I’m cycling 2 nodes now.  And I’ve been crushed by an Omniscience/Nyx deck in the process.

adman149

Bken hit the nail on the head and made my point for me. The event objectives made many people immediately opt for cycling to succeed. There is the root of the issue. Terrible event design and a broken mechanic that renders the event boring. And this is the only new event we have until Rivals comes and who knows when that might be. 

Also to add to this thread, somehow what has gone under the radar is the increase in work needed to achieve the same rewards. HoD is 39 battles, while RTO is 55 battles. Adding in the increased length of time to complete most of these objectives, equals more work for the same rewards. Sure seems like they missed the mark on this one. Oh yeah, and no more rare reward, now we get to roll the dice with single ixl booster. 

Machine

bken1234 said:

Well, I've now played through this event twice -- and it seems they have gone through the forum and found everything we said we hated since the beginning of a game and put it in an event. 

Did they do because they thought our disdain was over the difficulty level and they thought it would offer us a challenge? Because if so, the message got lost.

We don't hate the finish with x or less life objective because it's hard -- in fact, it's quite easy -- open a game in TG, lose, go into your event with a PW with low life from the loss and win fast -- we hate it because it's boring and dumb and we don't want to play it. 

We don't hate the kill x or more objective because it's hard -- we hate it because a lot of people play creatureless decks and a bonus should never be conditional on whether our opponent puts cards in their deck -- especially when 3 nodes of this event have objectives where creatureless decks are clearly the best choice for ensuring success of objectives. So to sum this up --- kill x or more -- but wait -- in 10 or less -- but don't hold your breath because those creatures are probably never coming. 

On top of it, having all objectives weigh the same is horrible for new players who just struggle to win, much less get one objective. Events should be engaging for all levels -- this one is clearly designed, with every single objective and the ribbon structure, to only target end game players -- once again the top will stay on top -- the rich get richer and all that stuff. 

There was so much opportunity with this set to do amazing, cool things -- to put out an event with interesting objectives that played off the tribal feature or new and exciting mechanics -- did we get any of that?

No. In fact, we waited 6 months for quite literally the worst event ever released -- worse than original EC --please take this away and give us back 8 Eldrazi with no tokens.

The most telling feedback I have heard on this event is "I've just given up and decided to play cycling decks -- there's no point."

Basically the player has been forced to forgo the new set and use old cards and old mechanics just to be successful. 

I think this event should be a huge red flag for both the devs and the game producers -- you clearly aren't listening to your player base or engaging in a way that will ensure the success and continuation of the game. 

Amen to that. On top of that, they also made sure that we can't do other stuff in the weekend. I mean... 5 color nodes with 3 charges at the start and 5 new charges every 8 hours. That requires a serious time investment. I know there are players that like to keep playing and playing, but that has been solved by running NoP concurrently. I suggest to start with 2 charges.

And yeah... this event could have been great by including tribal objectives and encourage us to actually use Ixalan cards. I use two. Nuff said...

joerginger

This event definitely takes up way too much time. Every match takes ages and there is a ridiculously large amount of them. If the intention is to drive people from the game and just shut it down, well, that goal was nearly achieved with me.

Bil

   I've also been shocked by the amount of games involved ... No rare, some pinks if you score well ... ok but what for? This awful elite collection? Its probably not worth the effort anyway.
   Overall the progression rewards are decent and you can get them without too much effort ... Sticking to them is actually a very  good time/reward ratio.
   If we are going to see this event every week (a sad perspective as far as i am concerned ) ... Even if i like to compete for the top tiers ... I'll probably end choosing the progression reward option.
   

Toodles

This event with these objectives WOULD have been amazing as a limited format. Buy an ‘event pack’ with 5 IXL boosters (and guaranteed mythic, maybe) for $19.99 and build your decks from just those cards. Allow access to all legacy commons in case you don’t open enough of a particular color. 

Skiglass6

ArielSira said:

Skiglass; you most likely gained life while being at full health; that usually messes it up.

Well I was going to post that I didn’t have any lifelink and was using Bolas but I looked at my deck again to be sure and found Vraskas contempt. So now I will just complain that this has been a known bug for so long now and I do not understand why we are still getting these types of secondarys that can be exploited or screw players over. 

hawkyh1

I really dislike the win with x life or less on the red node.
it is such a poorly thought out objective. it makes it very
difficult to play refreshes back to back. you either played
a complete lock down deck or used a potion if you wanted
to play the refreshes back to back. so inflexible that it's a
real pain to play. also annoying is that each node apart
from the black one drags the battle on for much longer
than necessary.
blue node: cast 5 creatures, keep on drawing cards.
red node: 20 or less life, keep on taking damage.
white node: take 60 damage, keep on taking damage.
green node: kill 5 creatures, come on greg, play creatures.
black node: the only decent node to play

with bad card draws you could be left with the prospect of
stalling the battle for...

HH

BUgsySA

Having the battle effects as unkillable supports is an interesting idea, but having the AI cascade a 10 shield support into the two battle supports instantly giving them 60 mana was not fun at all.  Is there some sort of way to keep the battle effects and make that not happen?

ElimGarak said:

Is anybody else experience numerous crashes on match start? I already had 3 of those and one crash while I was tipping one of those new minus-support ...

Yes.  Game takes forever to start and crashes a lot when starting matches.  Sometimes it eats a node sometimes it doesn't.  Very annoying.

Gilesclone

The unkillable supports killed off 12 shields of cast out in 3 turns against me yesterday, and of course the AI got a ton o mana.  Could they at least be made non-adjacent?

ILikePancakes

Lol, I've destroyed my own supports to get extra mana with the perma supports.

Theros

Is the extra games supposed to compensate for the possibility of winning  games but getting no point?
This even is very exhausting and we play more games for the same rewards. Once you get the completion rewards, there is no incentive to continue playing for 2 more days. 

gogol666

My main problem with the event is the duration. 3 days of five nodes starting with 3 charges is too much. In addition, the objectives makes the matches very long too. Frankly, the boosts to the tribes are silly compared to the power of previous sets. Finally, all the objectives makes it so that playing cycling deck is safer than any other strategy. Definitely not the way to go!

deletedgone

+1 to everything above.

This event is horrible.  Too many nodes.  Objectives take too long to achieve.  Boring.  With few exceptions, using XLN puts you at a disadvantage if you want to score well, so the new wrinkles are largely inconsequential.

I’m already contemplating leaving my competitive coalition because I don’t want to have to figure out how to fit an hour of grinding into Mondays at work.

Krishna

I love how they put the custom support thats supposed to incentivise running Pirates and Dinos. no. I do like playing AGAINST dino and vampire decks, its way better than facing HUF, Omni and Baral. 

I would like to say, IM REALLY PISSED that we dont get a rare for rewards anymore. Especially since the drop rates have been abysmal (for me and some others anyway). the last 5 Ixalan PP I bought, I got no rares/ mythics, 80% commons, and 3 of the bonus rares were dupes (i only have 8 rares). 

If I could change one thing, it would be this. All the events are usually boring, but its MTG so I play anyways. But after the RtO marathon we dont even get a complimentary rare..... sigh. 1st world problems

Krishna

hawkyh1 said:

I really dislike the win with x life or less on the red node.
it is such a poorly thought out objective. it makes it very
difficult to play refreshes back to back. 
blue node: cast 5 creatures, keep on drawing cards.
red node: 20 or less life, keep on taking damage.
white node: take 60 damage, keep on taking damage.
green node: kill 5 creatures, come on greg, play creatures.
black node: the only decent node to play

for Red Node, I have kept a low level PW. works well for NoP win in 5 rounds, and here as well. Definitely Counter Intuitive but gotta get ribbons by hook or crook

Kinesia

I'm playing pirates on blue, black and red, it's fun. I'm _mostly_ getting the objectives.
Cycling is too dull to bother with. I do use NP and the deserts but never for cycling, only for casting.

Putting yourself through pain to win more seems self-defeating. The point of winning is the enjoyment it gives, if you do it in a painful enough way you end up with -ve pleasure. You are better losing a bit and having more fun. (Which is my overall strategy for life!)

I'm glad some of the requirements contradict with each other but they should support the colour node and the bonuses for those nodes. NO requriements should reward creatureless here since people are meant to be playing creatures. And, yes, we have to leave space for people without much Ixalan but you can change "cast 5 creatures" to "cast 5 creatures of the same type" and let people decide what tribe they want.

The node rules and objectives need to be looked at more now they have evidence from playing, but they _can_ be adjusted and fixed.

The merfolk node needs to be able to cast spells, just change it to cast 5 or more spells instead.

Even the nodes where I have played the tribes there usually seems to be one that's clearly superior (regardless of the cards I have.)
As a testing exercise every node should be able to reach both objectives at once with _just_ the commons and uncommons of Ixalan, no Origins even. Oktagon needs to test that and change the objectives until that works. (Making it so noone can ever get _both_ objectives at once is also feasible, lean one objective to each tribe perhaps? And leaning doesn't mean 'cast 3 merfolk', it's like the 'cast 5 spells'  example which helps them more but is still doable by others)



A version of this with just Ixalan and Origins would fix the cycling problem, but maybe be a bit too restrictive.

Kinesia

I like the no rare rewards thing. I know people are annoyed right now, but I used to wish I could get a booster again instead because the rares eventually became almost guaranteed dupes, the boosters were more interesting to open. (And, yes, in a strict "how many orbs does this net" thing the rares might be better, but they _felt_ worse when they were dupes.)
Sure, early on the rares are great, but 60 crystals and a booster is actually more appealing to me overall. (Add 5 or 10 pink if you want though!)

ElfNeedsFood

Kinesia said:

I like the no rare rewards thing. I know people are annoyed right now, but I used to wish I could get a booster again instead because the rares eventually became almost guaranteed dupes, the boosters were more interesting to open. (And, yes, in a strict "how many orbs does this net" thing the rares might be better, but they _felt_ worse when they were dupes.)
Sure, early on the rares are great, but 60 crystals and a booster is actually more appealing to me overall. (Add 5 or 10 pink if you want though!)

I was suggesting the progression level rares stay in the mix, but the placement rares do perpetuate that the winners keep on winning problem that @bken1234 was eluding to.  The progression rare is a way to keep everyone advancing on a set.