The Dragon War - Your Thoughts?

Brakkis

What is everyone's initial thoughts now that the event has ended? Did you enjoy it or was it one of those events you despised? Explain why.

For me, I'm sort of between Indifference and Dislike. I'd complain about it being another 5 node, 3 day long, PvP Event where the maximum possible score is more than quadruple the progression score but that seems as though such dissatisfaction and complaints fall on deaf ears.

I felt as though the increased color variation as well as the additional Planeswalker ability effects were too much. One or the other would have been fine but both together came across as too much. I think I spent the entire first charge just figuring out which PW to use, never mind building a deck from there.

I did like the objectives. I'm very glad to see us not going back to those terrible health based objectives, or the taking damage ones, or killing a given number of creatures. The objectives as they were weren't too troubling nor were they too simple for the most part.

Also, bracket sizes. Those really need to come back down to 1k. I got in an unforgiving bracket where 2 losses dropped me to the 1k-3k range. It was awesome.

Laeuftbeidir

Indifferent

Totally agree. More colors per node plus extra abilities (that where nowhere stated in-game!!) led to a complexity that felt really uncomfortable to build for, not only three but five times. And then you finish progression by Saturday and grind until Monday. The bracket was also too big for the rewards.

Also flavorwise - that wasn't a dragons war, that was.. Five dragons seeking their champions! It would've been cool to either really side with one of the dragons, or to fight others that would've come in with their own extra abilities.

I think I liked it  somehow because the objectives were nice and it is a fresh event. We'll probably dislike it in some weeks.

Mburn7

Liked It

I rather liked it.  The add-on planeswalker abilities fit with each node's theme very well, making it easy to build around using them to meet objectives.

The tri-color on each node was pretty fun too, since it allowed a lot of different ideas and diversity in decks.  No more infinite Kiora's on a green node, for example.  It also allowed me to actually use Karn in a PvP event, so that was fun.

I also like how they made the permanent supports rotate colors when matched, since it stopped them from sandwiching a big support and giving infinite mana.

The 3 day event with max score being triple progression is still pretty annoying, though, as is the 3000 bracket size.

Overall, I'd say 8/10

James13

Liked It

I dislike 3k bracket events in general.  But I'm not sure attempting to convince people to give up the heavy skew inflated rewards those give would be successful.

UweTellkampf

Like: Variety. The doubling of PW-abilities. No crashes (at least with me)

Dislike: No hard objectives. Length. Bracket size. 

babar3355

Loved It

These are the types of events that keep me coming back and spending money on this game.  Worthwhile top prizes.  Difficult objectives and battles. Deckbuilding challenges.  And FINALLY the AI was making some unpredictable choices in terms of their loyalty selection.

For anyone who struggled deckbuilding I shot a series of videos showing my last round of the event.  I won't create 5 seperate links but will instead just link to my channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupt2-08K2Bh2p-9IHxI92Q?view_as=subscriber

Top node has a great surprise ending!

I really wish they would bring back other worthwhile PvP events mid week even if they remove the coalition requirement.

DumasAG

Liked It

I enjoyed it, and I actually fully approved of the multitude of changes. More colors available meant I was seeing a pretty good diversity of walkers (Bolas was still over-represented) and tri-color nodes played well for Karn, who was my favorite walker this event. The objectives were good for the most part, I commented elsewhere about my trepidation with "cast X in one turn" objectives, because they increase your chances of getting blown out by a big AI cascade. As an aside, I think because of these objectives, Infinite Obliteration might be the best "defensive" card to play; if the AI catches you holding for the objective with one or more obliterations, you're in for a wrecking. I felt like the pace of nodes was fine, I never felt very rushed. I basically only opened the app when I knew I had time to play 5 nodes, so I was clearing a round each time I booted up. This kept me on top of the event and still allowed me to enjoy my weekend. I'm not sure why people feel like the progression rewards should be stretched out further. You can either play a little and get (very generous) progression rewards, or play a lot and go for a rank/coalition reward as well. Why take away the "little play" option from some players who don't have time over the weekend?

My big complaint was that information about the unique supports for each node weren't detailed anywhere. You had to enter the node blind and find out what was what. This gave players with knowledge through organized coalition communication a distinct advantage. This is pretty basic information that should have been available. For example, I entered with Bolas on the node with the first ability "deal damage equal to your first creature's power to your opponent's first creature". This was essentially useless unless my opponent had two creatures out, because Bolas would kill the creature before it dealt damage. I would instead have used Bolas for the top node, where I could use the first ability to kill a creature and draw a card, a back-breaking combination that I'm sure made that node significantly easier for informed players.

Regarding bracket size, I don't think I'd complain if they were made smaller. My experience appeared to be different than others, though. My general expectation with large weekend coalition events is that two or more losses knocks you out of contention for a decent placement, and I managed to place (barely) in top 100 of this event with two losses, so I was actually pleasantly surprised. I didn't join the event noticeably late, so I'm not sure what the deal was there. In general, however, I'd rather have points per game with a 5/2/2 split, as opposed to the asymmetrical 7/3/2 split they used for this event. Smaller point margins make you feel like you're in it, and aren't as depressing to see on the leaderboard.

Overall, I felt this was a worthy addition to the event roster and I would happily play it again. Dragon's Hoard is a pretty fun mythic as well, as soon as I won that in progression I started jamming dragons in every deck in any way I could, which became fairly amusing for me. Had the progression taken longer, I wouldn't have had that opportunity.

Brakkis

Indifferent

DumasAG said:

I'm not sure why people feel like the progression rewards should be stretched out further. You can either play a little and get (very generous) progression rewards, or play a lot and go for a rank/coalition reward as well. Why take away the "little play" option from some players who don't have time over the weekend?

Well, there's having the total score be a couple of charges above the maximum progression point, and then there was this. Maximum progression was 120. Total points possible was 540. That's four and a half times the progression amount.

I wouldn't want to stretch out the points necessary to reach the same rewards. I'd want them to add more levels of progression rewards if that's how high we can achieve. Push the rewards out to 300. 

Give us more of a personal reward reason to keep playing this slog than just boosting our Coalition. I could literally have stopped playing after progression and earned the exact same personal rank rewards because I lost twice getting to progression and was shuffled off to the bottom reward bracket.

DumasAG

Liked It

Brakkis said:

DumasAG said:

I'm not sure why people feel like the progression rewards should be stretched out further. You can either play a little and get (very generous) progression rewards, or play a lot and go for a rank/coalition reward as well. Why take away the "little play" option from some players who don't have time over the weekend?

Well, there's having the total score be a couple of charges above the maximum progression point, and then there was this. Maximum progression was 120. Total points possible was 540. That's four and a half times the progression amount.

I wouldn't want to stretch out the points necessary to reach the same rewards. I'd want them to add more levels of progression rewards if that's how high we can achieve. Push the rewards out to 300. 

Give us more of a personal reward reason to keep playing this slog than just boosting our Coalition. I could literally have stopped playing after progression and earned the exact same personal rank rewards because I lost twice getting to progression and was shuffled off to the bottom reward bracket.

I wonder, then... What if after the 120 threshold and the "big prize", every 12 points earned some amount of orbs? Would that satisfy a reason to continue playing for personal progression? That might be a happy medium between needing more incentive and not giving out too many rewards. Not sure how many orbs per 12 points would be satisfactory though. Would 25 be too much?

Mburn7

Liked It

DumasAG said:

Brakkis said:

DumasAG said:

I'm not sure why people feel like the progression rewards should be stretched out further. You can either play a little and get (very generous) progression rewards, or play a lot and go for a rank/coalition reward as well. Why take away the "little play" option from some players who don't have time over the weekend?

Well, there's having the total score be a couple of charges above the maximum progression point, and then there was this. Maximum progression was 120. Total points possible was 540. That's four and a half times the progression amount.

I wouldn't want to stretch out the points necessary to reach the same rewards. I'd want them to add more levels of progression rewards if that's how high we can achieve. Push the rewards out to 300. 

Give us more of a personal reward reason to keep playing this slog than just boosting our Coalition. I could literally have stopped playing after progression and earned the exact same personal rank rewards because I lost twice getting to progression and was shuffled off to the bottom reward bracket.

I wonder, then... What if after the 120 threshold and the "big prize", every 12 points earned some about of orbs? Would that satisfy a reason to continue playing for personal progression? That might be a happy medium between needing more incentive and not giving out too many rewards. Not sure how many orbs per 12 points would be satisfactory though. Would 25 be too much?

Nice idea!  I'd say not every 12 points (since that is basically every match), but 25-50 orbs every 50 points would be something that makes it slightly less annoying to keep playing.

Maybe start at 25 and increase it by 5 for every tier (so 25 at 50 over max, 30 at 100 over max, 35 at 150 over max...ect)

Gabrosin

Liked It

I enjoyed the event.  I thought the objectives and bonus PW abilities gave a solid sense of direction for each node while still providing flexibility to attack them via a host of strategies.  The main problem is just that there's too much of the event.  Five nodes is a lot to find time for; I saw a whole bunch of matches where I was paired against someone who had clearly stopped after hitting progression rather than grind away for maximum points.

FindingHeart8

Indifferent

extra dragon loyalty abilities were kinda cool

mostly useless

but kinda cool

IM_CARLOS

Indifferent

Pro: new event, new rewards, flat reward structure (not like 300 jewels to 40 for loosing 1match, multicolor nodes, new interesting indestructible supports, deckbuilding challenge 

Con: way long (why not only Friday to sunday for coalition events?), bracket to large, to easy objectives (a lot of player have max), dragon event only by name (why npt drawing some dragon from time to time like in Rix event? Would be interesting for every player who wants to buy) 

In the end another mediocre event and a lpt of potential wastet. I like PVE more, but please a new one. 

bk1234

Loved It

I loved this event. I didn’t do well (because we didn’t have objectives to build for until it started) but I loved it — the objectives are different and interesting. Solid 4 stars for PvP 

HarryMason

Loved It

I thoroughly enjoyed the event for a couple reasons. For one, I chose to just build for objectives and consider the extra abilities as a bonus . Most weren't terribly relevant. Why am I saying this? I didn't over think my decks. I spent roughly 20 minutes on my decks. Only lost points came from a misplay that cost me 2 objectives and a pause screen freeze because I have giant hands and hit the button swiping a match . The event was engaging . I was never quite on autopilot, but I also wasn't fighting through annoying extra effects and a million triggers. I would have preferred 3 nodes , but having 1 initial charge took care of the main reason I dislike 5 node events. I usually start after the second charge,  and starting with 15 games to play often kills my motivation . I also liked the prizes. Wish progression was about twice what it was, but that's a minor qualm . It felt fresh , I liked the color restrictions and it didn't have any objectives that could be blown because of a Greg cascade.  I'd love more events like this. I actually had fun playing, rather than talking tinykitty about everything wrong with the event .

Froggy

Hated It

I hated it as it had great and amazing potential. But then I got game crashes right off the bat (rarely happens to me). Then I hit 5 games in a row where the AI blew me out of existence within a couple turns and I couldn’t play a card. After the third refresh, those very same decks never lost a game.

Also, waaaay too long! I don’t think I’m the only one who works on Monday or who has a social life (a real social life, not one on social media alone).

Progression ends at 125, yet top points were 540. And now that I say it, they will just expand progression. No. Add rewards for further progression!

Quite a few in my coalition stopped trying after reaching progression.

I could go on, but that’s forbthebsafe rant thread.

Stormcrow

Liked It

I kinda dug it. I'm sure it helped a lot that I "guessed" well with my initial decks - they were chosen/crafted to meet the secondary objectives, which I could see, but happened to work well with the extra PW abilities as well. Only node I had trouble with was the one where your whole deck had to be high-cost, but I think that's mainly on me for not having mentally adjusted to the fact that Omniscience rotated out. Overall, I like deckbuilding restrictions as secondary objectives a lot better than secondary objectives that screw up the normal flow of the game because you're trying to play some arbitrary number of particular cards or jump through some arbitrary hoop, inevitably subject to atrocious RNG - instead you get to encounter other peoples' creative, interesting attempts at meeting the objectives, you can dust off some weird cards that you might not use otherwise, and you don't have to stress so much about the objectives once the match has begun.

However: 5 nodes is more nodes than I have the attention span or free time for. That ensured that I only went for progression, and since progression was really easy to hit, this, for me, ended up being a pretty short event. Whereas had I actually tried to use every charge it would've felt like a long grindy event I'm sure. There's gotta be a better middle ground in there.

ElfNeedsFood

Liked It

I liked it.  I don't see how we "picked sides", however.  It was new and fresh.  I didn't score perfectly, but the flattened rewards schedule was good too.  I also would prefer smaller brackets as others have mentioned.  

Full progression on the third out of ten charges was awkward and some of the objectives seemed bugged or oddly worded.

All in all, we didn't have the massive crashes we've seen with nearly every other new event, however, so Kudos to Oktagon on presenting something new and yet still somewhat familiar.

Azerack

Liked It

I think I would have enjoyed it more if certain buff spells hadn't been broken with this expansion and have yet to be fixed (*cough* Blessing of Belzenlok *cough*).
Overall, I liked the "approachable" secondaries and won't do an eye-roll when I see it, again, like I do with some of the other PvP events.

Fix those cards, please! 

Unknown

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DumasAG

Liked It

MarvinFine said:

Pretty good. Made me realise how much more fun PvP is than PvE; so much more deck building for 5 node PvEs, and yet so much less variety of gameplay.

I'd have liked to see the node color restrictions more strictly enforced. I felt very, very unrestricted in which planeswalkers I could play in which nodes. Perhaps, in the green/white/red node, you could be excluded from playing any planeswalker who was blue or black? Perhaps that's too much of a restriction. That aspect felt too open to me, anyway.

There were quite a few ties for first place, so perhaps it's time to start a thread about matchmaking again. In my last round of games, I was on a perfect score of about 500, and I played a couple of opponents with less than 100 points.

I think the idea about restricting to only the colors of the node is a good one. Could force some people out of their comfort zone.