Q&A with Oktagon - April Edition (4/27/18)

Brigby
Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
in MtGPQ General Discussion
Hi Everyone,

With the return to Dominaria coming soon, and players having gotten the chance to catch a glimpse of it in the recent update, the team took some time to answer a few questions players asked in the past question submission thread.
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How will Legendary cards be handled in Dominaria?
For now, Legendary will simply be an Ability Icon that Legendary cards have. There will be other cards that work with Legendary cards, however if Wizards of the Coast decides to expand on the Legendary sub-theme in future sets, that might change.

Will Standard format be affected when Dominaria arrives?
Yes. The Amonkhet set will be leaving Standard when Dominaria arrives. Hour of Devastation, however, will remain in Standard for now

Will there ever be both a Standard and Legacy version of Training Grounds?
While this won’t be coupled with Dominaria’s release, we can confirm that there will be a Standard/Legacy version of the Training Grounds event within the relatively near future.

Are Rare cards permanently removed from rewards moving forward? Why are some event rewards going down?
No. Moving forward you will continue to see Rare boosters as rewards for events, as well as an increase in the Mana Runes gained.

Will fixing the bugs from Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan be a priority before Dominaria arrives?
You can expect some fixes to come along with the Dominaria Set Release. Be sure to check out its Release Notes once it’s out.
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Thanks Oktagon! While the team unfortunately didn't have the time to go in depth with the next question, I personally wanted to talk a bit about event scheduling, and what goes on behind the scenes. 

How is the event schedule determined, and are there any plans to adjust it?
Both the teams here at D3 Go! and Oktagon have been discussing this to try and solve the challenge of creating a balanced schedule; one that ensures there is enough available content, while not burning out players with too much of it.

This can be tough though, as not everyone shares the same work/personal schedule, the same event interests, nor the same level of competitive drive. We try to gather as much information and perspectives as we can, which is why drastic changes don’t occur very frequently, before deciding to make any adjustments to the schedule.

In order to get as large of a sample size as possible, we plan on putting out a survey sometime in the near future that will ask the player base what their ideal schedule would look like. As always though, we do review player feedback and sentiment, so please continue to share your thoughts and opinions in the forum. 

Thank you!

Comments

  • Aeroplane
    Aeroplane Posts: 314 Mover and Shaker
    edited April 2018
    Sounds great and fair enough , but I believe simple to challenging 5-10 daily objectives in Story mode would solve the gap of people wanting more challenges without putting out too many events.
  • Brakkis
    Brakkis Posts: 777 Critical Contributor
    I've been meaning to put together a thread regarding a comprehensive event schedule that should work for the majority of people and not create much burnout in regards to coalition events like we had with AMK/HOU for a while there.

    Unfortunately, I'm been too lazy to actually write it up when I have free time and working at a hospital/attending med school does not afford me much free time.
  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2018
    Ohhhh how badly I want for-fun intracoalition and pauper events. 
  • Laeuftbeidir
    Laeuftbeidir Posts: 1,841 Chairperson of the Boards
    That's actually way better than the last one, thanks!
    Legendary : IMO the right way to implement it. I'm sure anything else would have led to a new record in game breaking bugs.:smile:
    Standard : not looking forward to it, honestly, depending on when dom will be released and if we'll get more possibilities to collect RIX boosters.. (but I've had remarkable bad luck with the two latest sets, so I'm totally biased)

    Standard /legacy TG : translates to: We work on DOM, ask again after the release. Understandable, will do.

    Rewards : can be interpreted either very positively or negatively, no opinion here. If it's gone, how can it continue? We'll see.

    Bug Fixes : the only answer I'm quite disappointed with, but no surprise. I really hope they took the time and everything will be rolled out smoothly.
  • DBJones
    DBJones Posts: 803 Critical Contributor
    I like boopers idea. The only issue is the way brackets group people, which could be fixed by tweaking the way brackets work. Instead of setting how big brackets are for an event, set how many there will be, and assign people to the brackets in the order they enter, i.e. first person in the first bracket, nth person in the nth bracket (for n total brackets), and the next person (n+1) goes into the first bracket again. Of course, that might or might not be feasible depending on the way brackets are coded now. An alternate method would be to stick everyone in one bracket and change the reward levels, i.e. 1-5 becomes 1-50 or something.
  • gogol666
    gogol666 Posts: 316 Mover and Shaker
    boopers said:
    Suggestion on how to resolve event schedule issues:  Make each event no more than 36 hours, and remove recharges. 

    For example: in RotGP, make the event 32 hours long, and each of the three nodes has exactly 3 charges.  36 hours allows for every player to find time to play (accounting for 8-12 hours of time for people to sleep in all time zones, and they can complete the event in one sitting, at their OWN pace.

    I'll give you and example of when this worked really well.  A few months ago, there was what appeared to be an accidental NoP event that lasted exactly 6 hours.  Because it was only 6 hours, there were no refreshes... players got one shot at each of the five nodes, and that was it!  I never play NoP, but I played that one because I had a couple hours to spare that day during that window.  And I got some nice rewards for playing well.  Everyone I talked to about that event thought it was the greatest thing ever to happen to the event schedule.  i.e. - players were HAPPY.

    In the bigger picture, this means that you could run 2 coalition events per week, and 2 non-coalition events.  So players in active coalitions are only obligated to play twice a week, for MUCH more limited non-grindy periods, and highly active players can play 4 events per week if they have the time.  I'd propose something like this:

    Monday (12:00 UTC) to Tuesday (20:00 UTC): Non-coalition PVP
    Wednesday (0:00 UTC) to Thursday (8:00 UTC): Coalition PVP
    Thursday (12:00 UTC) to Friday (20:00 UTC): Non-Coalition PVP
    Saturday (0:00 UTC) to Sunday (8:00 UTC): Coalition PVE
    Sunday (12:00 UTC) to Sunday (0:00 UTC): Non-Coalition PVE
    Maintain AI and TotP events as currently scheduled.

    This schedule (combined with fewer matches to play) only obligates players to play twice a week with two day breaks, and for much more limited periods of time.  It also provides 4 non-overlapping tournament style events per week for highly active players.  And it provides non tournament event style variety all week.

    The biggest reason I see players leaving right now is that they feel obligated to play coalition events, and do not have the necessary amount of time to play those events.  I think a schedule of events like this provides a solution for those players that is manageable. 

    And, it's positive for D3 as well - player engagement should be much more predictable and provide better participation metrics, as well as improve the current attrition rate.  
    Very nice idea which I completely support. I really prefer applications that let me choose my pace instead of forcing me to play periodically. Engagement is a bad metric and it should be banned

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