Beyond Band-aids -- How to REALLY fix RtO

bk1234

We've had a couple days to get our anger, disbelief, let down and annoyances out of our systems . Most of us have reached progression (luckily that came VERY quickly) and have walked away from this disappointing event for the weekend -- so I propose that with fresh minds we brainstorm how to make this event amazing. 

Rules of thread:

1. Identify a problem and / or a solution. 
       --If you have a problem and you would like to hear the community's solution, indicate so with a ?
2. There are no bad ideas, and two minds are better than one, feel free to build on ideas from other players or offer suggestions to improve them. 
3. Stay on topic -- we already have an "I hate RtO" thread -- it's linked above, please use this thread to describe what you expected or what you thought it could be. 



Problem: Five nodes is way too many. 

Solution: Shorten it to 3 nodes, and have the colors rotate (we've never had this before and it would be amazing -- it would give us different objectives to play on one node every week). Week 1: U, B, R Week 2: B, R, G Week 3: R, G, W Week 4, G, W, U.....



Problem: The event contains objectives that are boring and unattainable and hard for any players other than the top tier to attain. Example: an objective (Kill x or more creatures) that is conditional on your opponent actually having certain (top tier) cards in a deck -- if they don't, it's conditional on the player having top level cards to achieve. 

Solution: Either or objectives with slightly differentiated weight based on difficulty. (Example is objectives in AM)



Problem: We wanted to use our Ixalan cards.

Solution: ?

Firinmahlazer

The solution to the last problem would be to make objectives that actually pertain to the buffs of the event and the cards in the current set rather than just recycle the same tired objectives from every other event.

 I'm really really disappointed with RtO and it's because I had such high hopes that they were going to take things in a new direction. They did to an extent with the bonuses and such but it seems like thats where the innovation ended and they just filled in the gaps after that.

deletedgone

Problem: Five nodes is way too many. 

Solution: Shorten it to 3 nodes, and have the colors rotate (we've never had this before and it would be amazing -- it would give us different objectives to play on one node every week). Week 1: U, B, R Week 2: B, R, G Week 3: R, G, W Week 4, G, W, U.....

—Agree 100%



Problem: The event contains objectives that are boring and unattainable and hard for any players other than the top tier to attain. Example: an objective (Kill x or more creatures) that is conditional on your opponent actually having certain (top tier) cards in a deck -- if they don't, it's conditional on the player having top level cards to achieve. 

Solution: Either or objectives with slightly differentiated weight based on difficulty. (Example is objectives in AM)

—Sure, but also completely avoid objectives that rely on the other person’s deck to do things, including: take x or more damage, finish with x or less life, and (to a lesser extent) kill x or more creatures.  These are the most tedious, slow objectives because you have to wait for things to happen that are out of your control.


Problem: We wanted to use our Ixalan cards.

Solution: ?

— Include tribal objectives on every node (still will end up with cycle decks to achieve high scores bc the new set is so over costed and weak), so: rebalance XLN - or everything else (please not everything else).

wereotter

bken1234 said:

Problem: We wanted to use our Ixalan cards.

Solution: ?

In my playing of the event, I found the tribal bonuses were good enough to be able to play Ixalan cards and win matches, but the objectives were counterproductive to playing those tribes, and some were directly opposed to the mechanics of the node. So a solution might involve two goals that reflect each of the tribes.

So for example the white node might include:
   • Reinforce a single non-token creature two or more times
   • <something regarding the enrage mechanic>

Also the objective of lose 30 or less life feels like such a troll objective on a node that damages you at the start of every turn, and should be changed. Maybe figure out a mechanic for each of the four tribes and put them on the appropriate nodes at one of two objectives. Creative deckbuilding might get you both extra ribbons, but the idea would be that playing one of the tribes is likely to get you at least the one. 

adman149

Complete overhaul. All tribe objectives. Does it suck for people who don’t have the new cards? Yes, but they did this with embalm, etc and people survived. I’ve never seen such negative backlash on an inaugural run of an event and has literally nothing to do with the bugs. They hit a home run with Across Ixalan and completely failed with RTO. There’s time to save face and that’s with tribal objectives and I agree, no need for such a long event with all 5 colors, rotate them. 

Thuran

Suggestions for IXL related objectives;

- Create 10 or more treasures

- Deal 20 or more damage to creatures (your or your opponent)

-reinforce 3 times

- buff creatures 5 times

-attack 5 times

- explore 5 times (thinking the explore node

Just off the top of my heaf

bk1234

Problem: Length of event

Solution: Weekend events should end on Sunday-- same duration as NOP and HOR. We didn't like the duration with Inventor's Fair / Breaking Points / Trial of Something / Hour of Devastation / Whatever else that recycled event was called, we definitely don't like with with a 5 node coalition event. 



Problem: We wanted to use our Ixalan cards. 

Solution: Creature objectives that encourage us to take advantage of the built in bonuses. I'm not talking original EC with 6 and 8 creatures, but new EC and Terrors have a nice balance and when I wasn't such a strong player, I was forced to step out of my comfort zone and play with a lot of cards I wouldn't have touched because of creature objectives-- but TBH, I'd play original EC over playing this event ever again. 

speakupaskanswer

I don't know if anyone else sees that as a problem too, but:
I really like the idea of the special supports but overall just too much was going on. Every node had different effects that were hard to keep track of (especially considering the opposed objectives). If the objectives would force us more to use the actual tribes, we could focus probably more on it. I really like the idea of having these effects but the way it was implemented here made the games just even more annoying then they were already.

I would almost have enjoyed the white node because vampires are really good to play here with the objectives but because all my vampires get stupid vigilance it makes you not to play them.

Anyway, it's just too much, I think. If both tribal types (or all three if humans are involved) are present, it's hard to keep track of everything.

Solution: Less is better.

deletedgone

speakupaskanswer said:

I don't know if anyone else sees that as a problem too, but:
I really like the idea of the special supports but overall just too much was going on. Every node had different effects that were hard to keep track of (especially considering the opposed objectives). If the objectives would force us more to use the actual tribes, we could focus probably more on it. I really like the idea of having these effects but the way it was implemented here made the games just even more annoying then they were already.

I would almost have enjoyed the white node because vampires are really good to play here with the objectives but because all my vampires get stupid vigilance it makes you not to play them.

Anyway, it's just too much, I think. If both tribal types (or all three if humans are involved) are present, it's hard to keep track of everything.

Solution: Less is better.

Another comment about the special supports: making them indestructible was probably a bad call. When they cluster together near a heavily reinforced support, it means someone is about to cast their whole hand.  Better would be to give them one shield, but come back every round, if popped.  If this means they don’t trigger that round, then great - some amount room for strategy is added.

asm0deus

We got pirates, merfolk, vampires, dinosaurs and humans. Use it for red, blue, black, green and white. Summon 3 or more of each type as the first objective. For the second objective, win in 10(red), cast 5 or more spells(blue), kill 3 or more(black), cast 5 or more creatures(green), summon 3 or more supports(white). Plays with the strengths of each color. Getting ribbons with the objectives is still great, to avoid creatureless troll decks just to get wins(always a creature to kill for black node). We get to use ixalan cards even if it is just the creatures. Just one fix i can think of the would work with the permanent supports on the board.

bk1234

asm0deus said:

We got pirates, merfolk, vampires, dinosaurs and humans. Use it for red, blue, black, green and white. Summon 3 or more of each type as the first objective. For the second objective, win in 10(red), cast 5 or more spells(blue), kill 3 or more(black), cast 5 or more creatures(green), summon 3 or more supports(white). Plays with the strengths of each color. Getting ribbons with the objectives is still great, to avoid creatureless troll decks just to get wins(always a creature to kill for black node). We get to use ixalan cards even if it is just the creatures. Just one fix i can think of the would work with the permanent supports on the board.

I like the idea of having creature objectives, however I think the other secondaries just make it easy. They should be a challenge. I want to think a bit outside of the box when I play PvP events. 

gogol666

What about objectives against cycling? Cycle less then X for instance

ElfNeedsFood

gogol666 said:

What about objectives against cycling? Cycle less then X for instance

Just add the solemnity effect to the permanent support of never ending text. 

asm0deus

bken1234 said:

asm0deus said:

We got pirates, merfolk, vampires, dinosaurs and humans. Use it for red, blue, black, green and white. Summon 3 or more of each type as the first objective. For the second objective, win in 10(red), cast 5 or more spells(blue), kill 3 or more(black), cast 5 or more creatures(green), summon 3 or more supports(white). Plays with the strengths of each color. Getting ribbons with the objectives is still great, to avoid creatureless troll decks just to get wins(always a creature to kill for black node). We get to use ixalan cards even if it is just the creatures. Just one fix i can think of the would work with the permanent supports on the board.

I like the idea of having creature objectives, however I think the other secondaries just make it easy. They should be a challenge. I want to think a bit outside of the box when I play PvP events. 

What if we use the mechanics as other objectives? Reinforce/enrage/explore/treasure/exile,etc?

Skiglass6

I actually like having all 5 color nodes but agree it has been too much. This might be difficult to program but how about all 5 charge initially. Then 3 nodes regen around the color wheel every 6 hours. I would say every 8 hours but I do not want to get into that again. 

Phillmoore

Why. It make it just ixalan cards to play.  That way you have to create ixalan decks and everybody will be using them also. Level playing field.  At the moment.... you put out an ixalan deck and the AI doesn’t so disadvantaged straight away 

Bil

  I agree on every part of this thread, event is too long, secundaries are boring and the event should invite players to use XLN cards. 
    But i really think tribal bonuses + tribal secundaries would give an indecent advantage to those who pulled the few good tribal cards among the lot of bad ones ... 
   Things would have been different if the set was more balanced but lets be honest ... Most of the tribal cards are really bad (even some rares and mythics are almost ridiculous) ... On the other side some are extremely powerful.
  Besides, many players did not save tons of crystals or just pulled a bunch of very bad tribal cards from ixalan packs. 

   Another option could lead players to use cards from XLN regardless of tribes :
    - what if instead of gaining no ribbons for a basic win you could win some but ONLY IF you play ... Let's say at least 5 XLN cards (or more?)
  That would force players to use XLN cards for top scores while allowing some flexibility in the choice of cards in order to build decent decks for the secondaries.

Mburn7

Fun fact:  The original **** event had rotating colors.  The zombie and spirit node and the vampire node both changed color (the werewolf node was always green, I believe).  Therefore the code must exist somewhere for this, so @bken1234 's first point is definitely possible (and a good idea).

I think the objectives definitely need to be tribal and mechanics-based of some kind (again, like the original ****)

Length-wise I don't think its an issue (since this is basically the new Hour of Devastation), but the progressions should go up much higher (or there should be less ribbons per secondary)

Laeuftbeidir

Problem : no more rare as reward
Solution : obvious

Generally, I like having 5 nodes, but 3 initial charges and the length of the event.. It's way too much.

wereotter

asm0deus said:

We got pirates, merfolk, vampires, dinosaurs and humans. Use it for red, blue, black, green and white. Summon 3 or more of each type as the first objective. For the second objective, win in 10(red), cast 5 or more spells(blue), kill 3 or more(black), cast 5 or more creatures(green), summon 3 or more supports(white). Plays with the strengths of each color. Getting ribbons with the objectives is still great, to avoid creatureless troll decks just to get wins(always a creature to kill for black node). We get to use ixalan cards even if it is just the creatures. Just one fix i can think of the would work with the permanent supports on the board.

The tribes aren't quite so nicely split like that. There are four factions:

The Legion of Dusk (white/black vampires)

The River Heralds (blue/green merfolk)

The Brazen Coalition (black/red/blue pirates, and pirates are human, sirens, orcs, goblins...)

The Sun Empire (white/red/green humans and dinosaurs)

So humans cross two of the coalitions. I don't think we need objectives that are so bland and basic as "cast 5 <creature type> creatures" as a creative objective would be better in order to both allow players to use old cards while building an Ixalan collection and then to get more value from playing a tribe.

As I mentioned earlier, reinforcing your creatures a certain number of times would be good for the vampire tribal mechanic, but doesn't have to be used for vampires specifically. You can also have an objective where your creatures have to take a certain amount of damage, which would be good for triggering enrage on dinos, but also could be accomplished simply by running creatures that have a defensive ability or berserker. Running the suggested objective to buff your creatures a certain number of times works well for merfolk, but before then there are lots of cards that just do things like give your creature a buff and reach that could be used to meet the objective.

The only one I see as being tricky would be pirates, but even then that could possibly be met by an objective of something like creating a certain number of token supports, which would work easily with fabricate from the Kaladesh block and then play into treasures later.

hawkyh1

my idea is they could have turned it into a treasure hunt
event. 3rd objective could be a tally of the treasure gems
that you matched. each could grant the player a bonus,
maybe 1 crystal per treasure gem matched. coalition
scoreboards will have normal ribbon scores. in the event
of a tie, ranking for those tied will be based on total
treasure count for each coalition.
this should allow players to play as much or as little as
they want. on average more time spent will yield more
crystals for themselves and maybe a better chance in the
rankings for their coalition.

HH