April Q&A Session - Question Submission (4/6/18)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

It's that time again, where we ask the community for questions you'd like to ask Oktagon!

As per usual, in order to make it easy to collate and compile all questions, please keep them clear and concise. (Brief explanations are fine, but please no novels)

We will be closing the submission thread next week on 4/10 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm UTC. We will then compile the questions, and send it over to Oktagon the following day, for review and answering. Once they have done that, we will format it and prepare it for posting in the forum.

Laeuftbeidir

- how do your plans ( time-frame) for dominaria look like? It would be great to know it in advance to prepare ourselves.

- rare rewards. Are there plans to return coalition /progression rare rewards to the player base? Generally the latest set is not very accessible, this point hurts the most players

- bugs. Bugs, bugs. There are literally dozens of bugs preventing us from enjoying the toys we are able to collect. Will you be focusing on fixing those bugs before Dom drops? A lot of the players I know are concerned a new set might make the game nearly unplayable


Thanks for listening!

bk1234

1. Runes-- any plans to make them more obtainable?
The 5 PW released since Ixalan alone are 722, 800 to level (on top of 300K + for Bolas) -- the most competitive players (who don't have a stash from QB) are struggling -- how is everyone else supposed to keep up?

2. What are your plans for MTG Core 2019? Will it tie in with Origins? What is the future of Origins?

3. We all seemed to like the $1.99 deal in the vault recently and the lower cost Dryad with RIX -- is this the future of transactions in MTGPQ?

4. B4T is probably the best PvE we have ever seen! I love the merforlk node What are your favorite levels to play?

Also -- general comment -- the design of B4T is interesting and engaging -- more like this please (and thanks!!!).

DBJones

A number of tweaks have been suggested with regards to event timing, could you explain what policy and/or technical restraints you have for event timing so we can make better suggestions?

Also, what's up with reducing the crystal rewards in Revolt Against the Consulate? It didn't give very many before, and now it gives 20 or less.

Edit: I forgot, any chance of getting an event with good crystal rewards during the week? We used to have two coalition events per week, cutting it to one is good for player fairness, but the non-coalition PvE events and legacy events give few to no crystals.

Mburn7

Here we go.  In no particular order...

1)  How will you be testing future sets to avoid the rampant bugginess we saw in XLN and RIX?

2)  Whats the deal with drop rates in XLN packs?

3)  Will we get RIX packs from events?

4)  How will Legendary Cards be addressed in Dominaria?

5)  When will Dominaria come out?  (Ballpark estimate is fine)

6)  Will you be fixing the wording and translation bugs in future sets?

7)  How will Standard Format change when Dominaria comes out?

8)  Will you be fixing the event schedule and/or node refresh issues?

9)  Is there a timeline on when the remaining IXL and RIX bugs will be fixed?

10)  Will you be creating unique objectives for future events?  Or just staying with the same few ones we all hate?

Aeroplane

Could pink gems become available for purchase after completing the set of rares to commons? It could be a next step reward for people who splurged a bit on the game as mythic and masterpieces are so hard to get. It would be a win win for company and customer. Incentive to buy premium packs drops drastically after only seeing mythics left to go. 

Krishna

Tell us more about your ideas for working in legendary cards. Have you decided on A, B, C, or something else?

joerginger

When will you stop the permanent cascades by the AI?

timthes

Just one question , and it’s been asked before, could it be implemented that we can choose in Training Grounds to fight against legacy or standard decks? Across Ixalan has a great number of matches already , but it’s color bound most of the time. 

Ejmoose

What are the plans to deal with Mastering cards/ Mastery Tiered Ranked match making? 

Is there going to be a new new type of matchmaking introduced? 

Platinum players have no drive to master cards cards other than bragging rights. If nothing is done to change to a new matchmaking system, can we get some sort of a bonus for having done all this excess mastering of cards? 

hueyTW

1. Any idea for prerelease event
2. Is it possible to provide a trial deck or event for special offer card?
3. Booster-draft mode?
4. Function to assign next coalitions leader

MTG_Mage

- legacy card balances?

-new event formats such as: Planechase, Commander, sealed/draft and release events, weighted events (limit rares/mythics)

- will we ever be able to play against our own decks?

- is cycling going to be adjusted? (simply adding the self destruct mechanic to New Perspectives, Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted is an easy fix)

- you mentioned more story mode, but what about heroic encounters for each PW?

- what is the future of the tier/mastery system? 

- More than 2 secondary objectives but only allow for scoring on a max of 2 would add options and variety to events.

- reprints/core sets? https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/788235#Comment_788235

- There NEEDS to be a daily training grounds for legacy and standard. Why has this not been implemented yet considering it would be very easy to do?

Additionally it should go from 'first 4 wins gets you rewards' to being 5 nodes (one of each color) and first win in each node gets you prizing.

Planeswalker balances

By far the most important thing with PWs is their mana gains:

- All mono colored PWs need to have a total mana bonus of +9, with +5 in their color (if you want to keep the original 5 weaker, then they at least require an additional +2 to their color [totaling +5, +7 overall])

- Dual colored PWs need to have a total mana bonus of +8 (optimally with +4 in each of their colors)

- The only tricolored PW is perfectly balanced at +7 total, with +3 in each of its colors. 

All HP needs to be closer to 110, which is the average (a 53 HP spread between lowest and highest HP is very unbalanced): 

- All below 100 HP should get +10 or +15 HP

- All above 120 should get -10 HP

- All between 100-120 should be given +/-5 to get closer to 110.

Bullvinne

Is there any way the Mana Jewel (aka Pinks) packs from the vault can be a guaranteed new card (unless you have all the cards being offered)?

for me (I'm in Gold tier atm) it takes about a month (3-4 weeks) to save up 400 jewels for a card. And the last 2 cards have been dupes... 

For a resource as sparse as Mana Jewels, it should be like Booster Crafting and net you a guaranteed new card. 

Froggy

1. When will we get Standard Training Grounds?

2. Can you increase the runes per match in TG? Quick Battle used to be 300 runes. Now its only 100. With all the new PWs available, we need a better way of earning a consistent amount of runes so we can properly level them if we want to.

3. Can you set up guaranteed masterpieces? Even if that means 1000 mana jewels a pop?

Mainloop25

Can you finally fix the event scoreboards so that when you look at your coalition ranking during events, it's in order from highest to lowest score instead of the hodgepodge it is now? 

Enygma6

Are there plans to offer crafting orbs as a direct prize for an event or story mode match?

Thésée

bken1234 said:

2. What are your plans for MTG Core 2019? Will it tie in with Origins? What is the future of Origins?

This is a really important point. The general idea here among forum users is that Origins is going to stay "forever" in Standard.

This comes from the informations we have, dating from the booster crafting anouncement

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/69222/booster-crafting-details-updated-12-8-17

"

Origins Set 

Since Origins is the basic set of the game and also a classic one, it will remain in Standard and craftable as an individual set. In light of this and its popularity, we decided to make Origins the cheapest Standard set: it is priced as a Legacy Set! Check out the updated price table above.

"

But is there a planned change to this with the perspective of the release of the Core Set ? It would be important to know the plans in advance since for now we are advising every player who asks to craft Origins. If the cards become Legacy in 3 months some are going to be disappointed.....

Also, thanks for this game

Volrak

Can you provide any insight into how the drop rates for different pack types are decided?  For example:

• Who decides (D3/Oktagon/combined) and what's the process for choosing the mythic or rare rate from normal packs of different sets (some of which have very different published drop rates)?

• Who decides and what's the process for deciding which pack types include a non-zero chance of masterpiece cards, and which pack types have 0% chance (even though MP cards may exist in the set)?

UweTellkampf

We have talked very, very often about Training Grounds, and that this concept needs to be reworked. Recently it has sometimes even been the sole event that could be played, and as such, it is just not fun enough, nor rewarding enough. The abandoned story mode doesnt help either to the sensation, that at some points you have a game in which there is no actual content to be played, that is not repetitive and dull. 

My questions: Is there anything going to be done about Training Ground?

Here are some ideas that have been introduced often in the community:

- Give us a "switch" to be able to choose whether we want to play standard or legacy
- Give us more motivation to play after the fourth match
- Give us the ability (as kind of a reward) to choose the color or the PW that we wanna go next after the fourth match
- Give us the ability to play against our own coalition mates after the fourth match (or as a separate event) 

babar3355

Is expanding the brackets beyond platinum or reworking the tier system all together a high priority item?  

Brigby

Thanks for the questions everyone! We'll be sure to pass this along to the team for reviewing and answering.