Q&A w/ Oktagon - July + August Edition (8/31/18)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for being patient, as we worked through the process of compiling and answering the questions from both July and August's Q&A Submission threads. We've put together a list of the most frequently asked questions, and here is what the team had to say:
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How do you plan on speeding up / removing animations?
The plan is to allow players the choice between the following options:

• Current Animations - Cards pop up and automatically close.
• No Animations - Cards don't pop up
• Reader Mode - Cards pop up and close only on tap

Hopefully this will allow experienced players the ability to play faster, while also allowing newer players the opportunity to get familiar with cards and effects as they encounter them.

Will there be any improvements or changes to the Story mode side of the game?
Not any time soon. There is, however, a very exciting idea that is moving along through design at the moment!

Is there any way to give us more time at the end of events to complete a final refresh? 6 hours (or less) is not too player friendly across the world.
We are currently looking at this and other options, in order to allow players in different regions the chance to participate equally in events.

Can we get a standardized vocabulary / grammar for card actions?
Inconsistencies will appear every now and then, especially for new card actions. Some of them even come from changes made, due to feedback on ambiguity and/or lack of clarity. We'd like, at some point, to revise the text of older cards to match the standard we now follow, although this is not up there in our priority list at the moment.

Have you considered giving players an option to choose which version of Training Grounds we enter, as opposed to rotating between Standard and Legacy?
That, along with allowing players to play both during the weekend (Friday - Sunday) and Standard during weekdays, are our current leading options for allowing some flexibility in how players can enjoy the game.

The lack of communication, be it new content or no updates of event schedule or such, is the biggest gripe. How would you improve this in the future?
We'd like to go back to consistently answering the Q&As on time. Also, we plan to continue to release articles, such as Mechanic Spotlights or Event Spotlights. We also intend to do a better job communicating to players when new Planeswalkers / Events / Bundles will be added to the game.

What is the plan for Mana Runes acquisition? As of right now, it is difficult for players to acquire the necessary amount of runes needed to level up all the Planeswalkers, which is quite frustrating.
There are currently some features and changes we plan on implementing that should solve this problem. In the meantime, we've been increasing the amount of Mana Runes earnable from newer Events. We've also recently increased the amount earnable through the Training Grounds. These measures should help in the meantime, while a more long term solution is being developed.

Will there be more new events? We used to get both a new PvP and PvE with each set, but now it has been only one or the other.
Not necessarily with set releases, however there will be new events being added regularly to the game. For the most part, if a set release had only one event, rest assured there will be some new and exciting event or feature following it.

Can we have something other than 3,000 player brackets as a PvP option?
Sooner than you might think...

Have you ever thought of running a double Mana Runes event?
This is something we are currently planning, however we'd like to do this in a way that allows us to run special instances of events with ease, so it will take some time. Rest assured though that this is something we want to bring to the game.

What were the easiest, most difficult, funniest, and most interesting aspects of designing Dominaria and M19? How do those compare to previous sets, and what lessons has your team learned?
M19 was a fairly simply set coming in from tabletop MTG, as most core sets tend to be, so we took that opportunity to add some set-independent mechanics, like Stored Mana and Flash. Dominaria, however, was a massively important (and nostalgic) set with multiple problems to solve.

The most difficult part of it was definitely identifying what to do with the Legendary status of cards. Eventually (and with some help from the community) we settled on simply creating an evergreen for Legendary cards, but it was pretty complex for a while there. This was mostly because we wanted something flashy and important to really make the set standout. We eventually moved that around to the Leader mechanic, which led to some very funny conversations about how certain leaders could have their flavor and mechanics represented.
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Thanks everyone for tuning into this July + August Q&A Session with Oktagon!