A Journey through History: Add it to Story Mode

FindingHeart8

I'll cut to the chase: this entire event needs to be an addition to Story Mode.

This is the history of the game that this app is based off of, and story mode has been drastically neglected for years.

We're almost done with this nostalgic ride (I'm guessing there's one more cycle before it's over and as we pass through the Odyssey block.  (Judgement through Legions?).  And then we're planet-jumping to Mirrodin, not to see Dominaria again until now (Time-shift was a weird set and I doubt they'll touch that).

Having spent a good portion of my childhood growing up through these MTG chapters, I got nostalgic seeing some old faces in the battles.  It would be sad to see such an important piece of mtg lore, already designed, sink to the depths with all the other nameless events we hardly remember.

@Brigby please pass this idea onto the team, this addition wouldn't require a lot of work but would go far to satisfying a certain sector of the player-base who'd like to see some form of continuation to story mode.

Laeuftbeidir

I like this idea a lot.

Actually, the whole concept sounds like the perfect integration of story into this game for me :

Introduce the story chapter by chapter as an event to make sure everybody can enjoy it (and I do enjoy it, a lot! the current iteration has one of the best boss fights ever), and then add it to the story mode.

Mburn7

Putting my vote in here as well.  @Brigby please pass it along (Someone can do a forum poll on it if you want, just say the word)

rafalele

I prefer having them as regular events while Dominaria is in Standard, and once Domina leaves would be nice to have them in History. Could be a nice add to the game.

BigSwifty

Love this idea!

There should be new content in story mode in general though, even if this idea (which is a good one) isn't adopted.

Rhasget

What story does it tell to those who aren't already initiated?

I started reading the stories on the Magic homepage after playing this for a while. And the connections were there but the story is lost to me by just playing and reading the bits and bobs you get on the loadscreens. And some of those you don't get to read fully without replaying a fight multiple times to see the screen again.

I'm mildly interested but the game doesn't really show much to deepen that interest.

Bil

I like the idea very much ... In fact, i think this could become an interesting pattern to apply to the sets to come too.

FindingHeart8

Rhasget said:

What story does it tell to those who aren't already initiated?

I started reading the stories on the Magic homepage after playing this for a while. And the connections were there but the story is lost to me by just playing and reading the bits and bobs you get on the loadscreens. And some of those you don't get to read fully without replaying a fight multiple times to see the screen again.

I'm mildly interested but the game doesn't really show much to deepen that interest.

One of the (few) additions I'd recommend Octagon makes if they add it to story mode, is to add a brief summary of Dominaria's storyline progression in the loading screen before each event.  So new players can get the rough basics and it would make each battle make a bit more sense.

To clarify: I don't mean what we currently have summary-wise, which is just a very vague overall summary of the entire thing that doesn't change as you progress through each event-battle; I mean a different piece per battle, giving a short explanation of what's happened since the previous in regards to the story

example (hopefully Octagon adds more detail than these short pieces):

The brothers war: Urza and Volrath don't like each other

Ice Age: Lim-Dul gets necromactic powers and tries to conquer the world.  Zombie snowmen wampa stuff

Phyrexian Invasion: Yawgmoth tries to turn Dominaria into Mirrodin (though Mirrodin doesn't exist yet).  Weatherlight funsies

Mirari: Everybody wanted it, Cabal had it.  Did funky things

False God: Yeah she's mean

Rhasget

OT but story related.

Who is the woman in the picture with Teferi and Karn. The picture is used in ''One Final Effort' and as one of the login arts.

Mburn7

Rhasget said:

OT but story related.

Who is the woman in the picture with Teferi and Karn. The picture is used in ''One Final Effort' and as one of the login arts.

Jhoira.  Apparently they are all Immortally old friends.  

Laeuftbeidir

Mburn7 said:

Rhasget said:

OT but story related.

Who is the woman in the picture with Teferi and Karn. The picture is used in ''One Final Effort' and as one of the login arts.

Jhoira.  Apparently they are all Immortally old friends.  

  Due to a "A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff", as the leading expert in the field of time anomalies explained, several dom characters are at various levels between dead and immortal.

Gabrosin

I would love the opportunity to play some of these matches more frequently, they are significantly more interesting than the existing Heroic battles.  Perhaps instead of the traditional story mode benefits (complete the match, then complete it with all colors and meet two other secondaries and you're done), we can have something where playing these matches in Story Mode gives you a fixed reward the first time you beat them, but you can earn bonus runes (and maybe even a trickle of orbs?) by winning the secondaries multiple times.  Right now players can get 250 runes for grinding through a Heroic Encounter over and over.  Doing something like 250 runes for winning, another 250 runes for meeting a relatively easy secondary, and 5 crafting orbs for meeting a more challenging secondary would give players something interesting to do when they're out of events to play, and let those of us who are relatively new to the game start making a bigger dent in the overwhelming number of runes and orbs required to max out the nearly 40 planeswalkers the game has produced, and work down the number of Legacy cards which we may never get access to (but will always be at the mercy of in TG and other Legacy events).

Mark_Tedin

Dominaria is important part of the game story and should be immortalized in story mode. 

In fact, the old events (kaladesh, amonket...) should be in the story mode, so that the lore is not lost.

gogol666

The best part of the journey is the rewards. If you add them to story mode you lose all of them unless you change the structure of story mode. Liko OP I believe story mode needs done love, but not by losing some rewards in the process

FindingHeart8

gogol666 said:

The best part of the journey is the rewards. If you add them to story mode you lose all of them unless you change the structure of story mode. Liko OP I believe story mode needs done love, but not by losing some rewards in the process

My suggestion isn't a replacement to the events.  I'm not sure theyll do this runthrough again but I wouldn't be opposed to it.  Story mode would be an addition to running this as an event, for the generous rewards I wouldn't mind the redundancy 

Kinesia

Doing it with this type of reward as an event and then later introducing it into story with more "storylike" rewards is totally fine.


I had an idea for the event that would work both this way and in story potentially.

Have the 4 fights as is, but after you've unlocked them you have the exact same 4 fights but with brainy Greg (Announced on the screen as clearly "Hard Mode" or something of course). If people can't handle it they can just redo the easier ones, like now, but those who want a challenge might get one.

FindingHeart8

Kinesia said:

Doing it with this type of reward as an event and then later introducing it into story with more "storylike" rewards is totally fine.


I had an idea for the event that would work both this way and in story potentially.

Have the 4 fights as is, but after you've unlocked them you have the exact same 4 fights but with brainy Greg (Announced on the screen as clearly "Hard Mode" or something of course). If people can't handle it they can just redo the easier ones, like now, but those who want a challenge might get one.

yeah an unlockable "hard mode" Greg would definitely add some fun new challenges

EDHdad

Adding anything to Story Mode is useless, unless there's some way to reset Story Mode, or unless there's some way to set Story Mode to spit out anything other than runes.

If I could toggle a switch which allowed me to indicate if I want runes, gems, orbs, cards from Story Mode, then I'd be playing Story Mode all day long.

If I could pay some price like $5 or $10 cash to reset story mode (possibly at a higher power level), so that I can farm gems, I'd probably consider it.  If they charge some Puzzle Quest price to do this like $59.99, then I'll probably skip it, but others might pay it.

Mburn7

EDHdad said:

Adding anything to Story Mode is useless, unless there's some way to reset Story Mode, or unless there's some way to set Story Mode to spit out anything other than runes.

I'm sorry, but you are just wrong with that.  I don't like being this blunt usually, but you are very very wrong.

Adding to Story Mode will:

1.  Give new non-event ways of getting gems and runes, and allow you to get runes at a much faster rate (vital for all but the top of the top players)

2.  Give additional content (vital in today's event-starved landscape)

3.  Be lots of fun with new fights to plan and deckbuild for.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

FindingHeart8

EDHdad said:

Adding anything to Story Mode is useless, unless there's some way to reset Story Mode, or unless there's some way to set Story Mode to spit out anything other than runes.

If I could toggle a switch which allowed me to indicate if I want runes, gems, orbs, cards from Story Mode, then I'd be playing Story Mode all day long.

If I could pay some price like $5 or $10 cash to reset story mode (possibly at a higher power level), so that I can farm gems, I'd probably consider it.  If they charge some Puzzle Quest price to do this like $59.99, then I'll probably skip it, but others might pay it.

The point here isn't another avenue to make this a pay-to-play game, or a continuous source for tons of whatever resource you're craving, but to actually add more options and content to this game.

Fact is, this game is more of a grindfest than a reflection of Magic the Gathering.  We need more content.  I want to feel like I'm fighting off hordes of the undead in collapsing Amonkhet, or exploring dino-infested jungles seeking the legendary treasure of Ixalan, or peering into the vast and ever-changing mtg homeland of Dominaria.

Right now all I feel like is that I have to beat a bunch of other players in this event because "ooh! I might get 30 pink crystals instead of 20, which I could eventually turn in for a 10% shot at maybe getting a card I want, so I'll have a better chance next event at getting 30 more pink crystals instead of 20.  Woopeee !!"

Players are already unhappy about not having a place to test out their decks.  Further storymode would give players extra options for trying new ideas with their decks that aren't just against a generic Eldrazi or lvl 3 Farmboy-Origins-dude-who-may-cast-a-2/2 Akroan Sergeant-turn 9.

Also, it would make this game look more complete, and less like what really happened, that the original developers gave up on this game.