Time to get rid of secondary objectives?

tfg76

Hi,

Recently I've been noticing how secondary objectives rarely make the game more fun while actually playing.
Most of the time, these objectives require me to either:

- Hold off on winning so that I can do X things of whatever
- Do damage to myself (and again, hold off on winning while doing it)
- Wait until Greg has some creatures I can kill, or better yet, create some for him!

At the same time, playing without any restrictions quickly becomes boring and makes events way too easy to complete with full score. As an alternative, I think it would be much more fun to have more restrictions on deck building. So, rather than "Play only 3 supports", say "have max one support card in the deck". "Play 6 pirates" => "Have 5 Pirate Cards in your deck". And then, throw in something like "Play max 1 one mythic" for added difficulty.

Alternatively, the objectives could be worded as optional:

"+2 points if you win without any creatures in the deck"

These kinds of objectives would achieve:

- More fun, variety and creativity during deckbuilding
- More fun during the game (win despite your underwhelming deck!)

What do people think?

Quantius

I would love nothing more than to see secondary objectives extinguished. I really hate them.

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ElfNeedsFood

@Quantius B4T has made the secondaries into something with so little value that you can effectively choose to ignore them and still make progression if you just win consistently.  

I can see that the levels themselves can be made into something interesting enough without secondaries for PvE, but for PvP if there are not secondaries then everything is training grounds and that would get boring fast....  PvP is also where the secondaries become less optional if you want to make a high ranking. 

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Quantius

@ElfNeedsFood I know. I've aced all of Bo4T once, and usually get almost everything (however this go 'round has been a **** show with lots of shenanigans — I swear they've changed gem and draw algorithms or something. Just really weird stuff happening. I'm usually very close to or over 1000, but this time only 850. Doesn't mean I don't think secondaries aren't stupid.

I also hate them in PvP. This game doesn't need bandaids, they just need to balance broken cards, kill the AI cascade ****, kill the AI invincible support gem location ****, and flatten out the rewards more. It's beyond stupid to be in the top 1-5 and then the AI goes turn 1 infini-cascade into hand dump and you either fail an objective or lose the game and instantly drop out of the top spots due to a coin flip.

I'd rather just have smarter AI than a bunch of RNG that's horribly skewed in favor of the AI leading to bad beats.

FindingHeart8

I liked the objectives from Avacyn's Madness, where it was impossible to get both objectives, easy to get one, but 1 was more desirable as it was worth an additional point or two.  Example:

Objective 1: Lose 2 or less creatures (worth 2 points)

Objective 2: Lose 4 or more creatures (worth 1 point)

That way players can still feel like they got something besides the mere victory for the casual players, with still having a more challenging objective for our more competitive players

Mburn7

Secondary objectives in general are good, since they give you guidance as to how to play the node.  Helps diversify your decks.

As has been mentioned, though, some objectives are just garbage.  Win with X or less life is my personal least favorite.  Kill X or more creatures, take X or more damage, and kill X or less creatures are all also awful.

NinjaE

Although some of them are annoying, and I don't try to get them all, I feel they are overall good for the game. They encourage us to play different cards and try new things.

I do like your idea of making them deckbuilding challenges, though. That would be a nice variant.

bk1234

While we might not like all of them, secondary objectives are a necessary evil. If anything, to serve as tie breakers. (Remember the days when one loss would drop you out of the top 100 in NOP?)

No matter what your level of play is; you can generally get away with skipping a few and still get a phenomenal score (I never play the finish with x or less life objective for instance.)

When B4T was previewed, I was really hoping for either or objectives. Maybe 1 that counters the special ablity for 5 points and one that plays into it for 2. 

I think either / or provides newer players the opportunity to hone their deck building skills and established players the opportunity to enjoy a bit of variety. They level the playing field and allow us to decide how we can make the game fun. 

madwren

I don't mind a number of the objectives, but I do mind that the vast majority of them--and I admittedly don't see a way around this--involve forcing us to wait to draw specific cards to cast them. The very last thing the game needs is more ways to slow down matches.

Unfortunately, there are a limited number of things that can be counted and they're inevitably going to frustrate people. Turns, life total, card types, creature types, damage taken, creatures lost, creatures killed, etc.; all of these have the potential to be frustrating depending on what you're facing.

Quantius

Maybe a scaling bonus, for each creature you kill you get 1 pt, or if you win in less than 10 turns, you get 1 pt for each turn below 10.

I think this would actually open up competition to have more variety than did you ace the encounter 3/3? I

ElfNeedsFood

5.3 is a different and interesting match, but 5.2 is the most different that we’ve seen in a long time. My mentions were more that the encouragement to go tribal can be things like draw a card for each creature cast, vampires creating tokens when destroyed, etc and not necessarily using strictly optionals like “cast 5 Vampires”. 

Mark_Tedin

Quantius said:

I would love nothing more than to see secondary objectives extinguished. I really hate them.

Exactly. at most one secondary objective. 

FeralSkald

Dobby said:

There are secondary objectives I like... 'Win in <X turns' means you can play your games as fast and optimally as possible, as does 'Play <X supports/spells/creatures/cheap cards/blue cards/whatever', which additionally makes deckbuilding itself an interesting exercise.

Such a variety of players that it's impossible to please us all. I hate the win fast objectives and prefer the summon x or more objectives. Why? Because the prior has too much chance involved while the latter offers choice. I couldn't even guess at how many times I've loaded up a win in 5 or less match, with a deck built for speed and drawn 3 copies of a support card, or a board full of off color matches only. By the first draw and board lay I know I've lost the objective. At least in cast x of whatever, I can still work for it.

And then there's take x pr less. That's just plain frustrating most of the time. Pure defense build is still vulnerable at the start and can easily be failed on turn 1 to a cascade.

Ideal for me personally is objectives you can identifiably build for, not ones that require a healthy amount of luck.

Also, in pve, can we stop adding force objectives loss to the AI deck? Kill 2 or less, ai cascades 3 out, and kills them all the next round.. that's not fun, or challenging. 

Mostly I enjoy the added optional secondaries it makes the game more enjoyable because it requires thought instead of brute force deck builds.

Chocostove

I personally like the secondary objectives, except when they don't make any sense. I feel like the secondary objectives should be subtle guidance towards better deck building and synergy. Not crafting novelty decks that are otherwise wonky and disruptive. Maybe doing secondary objectives wouldn't be such a chore if side decks weren't a premium option.   

Kinesia

I really like the tribal ones (though sometimes the numbers are WAY too high, especially for bosses with low health, looking at you Beckett...) and creature, support or spell restrictions are ok EXCEPT they need to match the colours better.
(Don't play creatures on green is just mean, beginners with basic Nissa should have a chance but there is almost zero chance they can even attempt that. Also, the game doesn't _teach_ you that creatures summoned from spells or supports don't count, you need to find that out by yourself which is horrible for beginners.)

tfg76

@Kinesia I kind of like the tribal ones too. However, as you hint at, the numbers are so high that you have to intentionally slow down and hold back until you get enough pirates. A requirement of "play at least 5 pirates in your deck" would achieve the same "fun" - build different decks - while not having this "hold back" mentality.

Another point which I haven't mentioned  is that secondary objectives generally skew deckbuilding towards either control or combo decks. Aggressive decks really have no place in winning objectives, and are generally too slow to manage things like "win in 5 turns". That's why I almost never use my aggressive planeswalkers like Samut or Angrath.

Mburn7

tfg76 said:

Another point which I haven't mentioned  is that secondary objectives generally skew deckbuilding towards either control or combo decks. Aggressive decks really have no place in winning objectives, and are generally too slow to manage things like "win in 5 turns". That's why I almost never use my aggressive planeswalkers like Samut or Angrath.

Actually, I find my aggressive Samut decks do best with the garbage objectives.  They allow me to take a ton of damage and then drop a 1-2 turn win immediately after, making the "win with X or less health" much safer.  

For the late-node PvE events I find the aggressive decks are fast enough to win most of the time, but slow enough with the massive enemy health that the slower secondaries (cast supports or spells) still get hit most of the time.

It all depends on the event and objectives.