Catalog of Past Events and Comments on Use

James13

Events:

Oath of the Gatewatch 1 (PvE)

Oath of the Gatewatch 2 (PvE)

Nodes of Power

Saheeli Rai Challenge (PW)

Terrors in the Shadows

Emrakul's Corruption

Avacyn's Madness (PvE)

Fateful Showdown (PvE)

Inventor's Fair (PW)

Emergency Ordinances

Revolt against the Consulate (PvE)

Planeswalker Arena (PW)

Fate is Rarely Fair
Breaking Points (PW)

Trial of Ambition

Trial of Zeal (PvE)

Trial of Strength (PW)

Return of the God-Pharaoh (PvE)

Hour of Revelation
Hour of Devastation (PW)

Race to Orazca

Battle of the Four Tribes (PvE)

A World Reborn (PvE)

A Journey through History (x4) (PvE)

One node holiday specials:

Halloween Challenge

Holiday Challenge

Angel's Embrace/Valentines

PW challenges:

Dovin Baan

Nissa(2)

Chandra(2)

Key: (PW) = Locked Planeswalker node event.  (PvE) = Player versus Enemy set fight event.  Unmarked = Generic PvP format

Commentary/Discussion to follow

James13

From a quick overview of past events, what stands out to me is that the same few legacy events get repeated while a large number of them have been MIA.  I know it's a challenge to rerun events in the way they are set up, but I think a healthier rotation of the diverse past catalog would keep the game feeling less stagnant.

Hour of Devestation is a bit of an oddball.  Prior to it, locked planeswalker events were considered somewhat special one-off events.  These featured higher than normal rewards and never repeated.  I don't know why the change here was made to repeat it and only it.

I want to mention the planeswalker challenges that appeared for only the Kaladesh Block.  These were mini-events featuring the new planeswalkers where you faced 4 increasing difficulty encounters with the featured PW in PvE style.  I really enjoyed those.  It was a disappointment they didn't continue with those afterward.  It was a nice showcase, I thought.

Planeswalker Arena was an interesting case in itself.  It was a brief weekend event in which three semi-randomly selected PW were featured in a locked node PvP event with objectives loosely connected to respective abilities.  I imagine the reason it wasn't continued was that it was a challenge to create and bugtest each variant.  But I really, really liked the idea and implementation while it existed.



The purpose of posting this is to give a sense of the amount of unused content in the catalog and wonder aloud why some of it isn't used again in event rotation.

Sarahschmara

Thanks for compiling this. 

Planeswalker arena was super fun.,. Until the stopped updating the secondary objectives to match the required PWs. 

babar3355

The developers clearly think the "content" of this game is the cards.  They don't seem to understand that we won't use these cards if there is nothing to do with them...

FindingHeart8

babar3355 said:

The developers clearly think the "content" of this game is the cards.  They don't seem to understand that we won't use these cards if there is nothing to do with them...

more cards = more packs = more crystals being spent = higher likelihood of players paying cash for crystals instead of winning them in-game.  Their objectives seem to be more aligned with their profit margin.  Can't blame them because they need revenue, but if you let things pile up for too long...

UweTellkampf

Planeswalker Arena was really a blast. I wish they'd return the concept. Make us play that Chandra2.

Gunmix25

babar3355 said:

The developers clearly think the "content" of this game is the cards.  They don't seem to understand that we won't use these cards if there is nothing to do with them...

I suspect that much of the reasoning behind not rerunning these events is because they don't mesh well with Oktagon's cards... in short, bugs... lots and lots of bugs. I personally would rather that we laid these older events to rest and have them create new legacy events.

Brakkis

I made a post a couple months back about returning the Planeswalker Arena with a new spin on it.

I just want more content to play.

Gunmix25

Brakkis said:

I made a post a couple months back about returning the Planeswalker Arena with a new spin on it.

I just want more content to play.

I remember that post, you had some good ides in there. I had a lengthy response about that same topic in another thread round about the same time with ideas of mine own. New spin on things would be good, but I fear that if Oktagon starts messing with Hibernium events it would only create a mess despite the good intentions. If anything they should simply just recreate the Planeswalker arena from scratch and with some new spins on it so as to reduce any issues.

James13

One can feel free to use this as an opportunity to discuss event details from past events that one would like to see re-visited conceptually.

I think the Arena format was fairly popular (if buggy in implementation) with most.  Some did complain at the time regarding the ownership requirements with long (at the time) vault gaps in Planeswalker availability.

I think most of the holiday events were also well received.  It's an excellent min-event format.

I personally thought the planeswalker challenges as showcases/new release hype were fantastic.  But I don't have a sense of what others in the community thought of them at the time.  I would like to see such a format return for new upcoming walkers again, if not cycling through the roster, perhaps coinciding with vault availability (or purchase, regarding new walkers).

What I see as a major hurdle for the game is a sense of stagnation between major releases due to the event cycle.  It has improved somewhat in providing some versatility in content, but I do feel there's a lot left to ask.  You get the same sense of just a few of the same events being repeated a tad too much.  I think this leads to a bit of player disengagement between the shiny new things that require extended development time.

I'd like to address that in some manner if possible.  That's the impetus for opening this discussion regardless of where it goes.  We can either borrow wholesale from the past in terms of recycling old events (the starting point here, as that seems to be the least work and what has been classically done) or talk about weaving the things we liked back into a tapestry of content.