September Q&A Session - Question Submission (9/7/18)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Here is where you can submit your questions to Oktagon for the September Q&A Session.

In order to make it easy to collate and compile all questions, we would like to kindly ask all players limit themselves to only one comment with just their top 3 questions they'd like to submit. (Brief explanations are fine, but please no novels) We will then compile a list of the top 10 questions asked by the community, and Oktagon will answer as many of them as they are able to.

We will be closing the submission thread next Monday 9/10 at 18:00 PT / 21:00 ET / Tuesday 9/11, 02:00 UTC. We will then compile the questions, and send it over to Oktagon for review and answering. Once they have done that, we will format it and prepare it for posting in the forum.

Thanks!

Mburn7

1)  Can you provide some insight as to how you take the paper card designs and bring them into MTGPQ?

2)  Will you be communicating with the player base more often, whether it is through the in-game inbox or the forums it would be nice to hear from you all more than once a month.

3)  How will you be addressing the many many bugs in the game going forward?  And how will you be preventing more bugs from appearing going forward in new sets?

FindingHeart8

^^^^^^ +1 to @Mburn7 post.  These are some good points that really need to be addressed.

also are you ever going to add anything to Story Mode?

bk1234

Hi Oktagon! 

September marks one year developing MtGPQ! Congrats! 

1 What do you feel were your biggest hits and misses in your first year? 

2. Was Hibernum’s code as bad as we all suspected when you took over? 

3. What do you look forward to most in your next year developing MtGPQ? (Spoilers welcome!) 

bk1234

FindingHeart8 said:

^^^^^^ +1 to @Mburn7 post.  These are some good points that really need to be addressed.

also are you ever going to add anything to Story Mode?

@FindingHeart8

In the July / August Q & A they confirmed they would not be adding to story mode “any time soon”. 

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/74913/q-a-w-oktagon-july-august-edition-8-31-18

"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!”

FindingHeart8

bken1234 said:

FindingHeart8 said:

^^^^^^ +1 to @Mburn7 post.  These are some good points that really need to be addressed.

also are you ever going to add anything to Story Mode?

@FindingHeart8

In the July / August Q & A they confirmed they would not be adding to story mode “any time soon”. 

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/74913/q-a-w-oktagon-july-august-edition-8-31-18

"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!”

thanks for the reminder @bken1234!  I guess I'm hoping on more insight to this very exciting idea then

SinisterOne

1) Are there plans to adjust the power level of red direct damage? 

2) With the ever-growing roster of Planeswalkers are there any plans to adjust the cost to purchase or level them?

3) With the holidays approaching are there plans to have holiday events and/or special holiday cards?

IM_CARLOS

1. Will (legacy) MP ever be craftable? It is very odd to wait for month to have a shot at an old set MP. 

2. What about some new Level for Story-Mode? You can implement some older PVE-Events. The legacy card pool in Story Mode is enough difference, so you can still use as events. 

3. Let's talk about Mastery. Are there any plans to extend the mastery level? Not only the small benefit from better rewards, come with the price way harder matches. So newer player will avoid level up until they have a solid card base. And Veterans master only for static reason. I am 2.800+ on every color and Mastery Meter still said Platinum goes to 2.500. So bronze is only one bad update away. Please change something here! 

Laeuftbeidir

1.

Why is HOU treated as if it was still standard? It is called a special offer, but priced like a standard set. We've got a HOU elite pack, and get lots of HOU prices for standard events.

2.

Could you speak about some design decisions that lead to the current dominance of blue?

3.

How did the "team member that doesn't like legacy events" became the team leader?

joerginger

Since only a tiny part of the first question of my August questions was somewhat addressed in your replies, I would like to ask:

1. Can you please change the way coalition events are run? There should never be a 5-node event, particularly not when the event is run over 70 hours and ends on Monday at the beginning of the working week - at least for players in Europe and the Americas. And in addition to this, could you please stop giving new charges on the third day of the event so we have more time to clear the last charges? So while an event might last 70 hours, only the first 46 should give charges. As an alternative approach: Could you give us all the charges right at the beginning of the event? This would make it easier to plan when we can clear them.

2. Could you please create the possibilty to set the language from within the game? Playing in any other language than English makes talking about cards in an international coalition rather difficult, so I along with several other fellow coalition members from non-English speaking countries would like to have the choice to set the game to English without having to change the language of the device we're using.

3. When will the many existing bugs begin to be fixed? And how will you make sure that the next set won't introduce yet more new bugs?

Brakkis

Is there any plans to standardize event rewards? For example, a standard event gives standard card packs while a legacy event gives legacy packs.

Theros

1) How about runes or alternatives to lvup zillions of PWs. Plz don't stay silent anymore for an issue that grieved us for so long

2) runes
3)runes

Brigby

Theros said:

1) How about runes or alternatives to lvup zillions of PWs. Plz don't stay silent anymore for an issue that grieved us for so long

2) runes
3)runes

They actually answered that question in the previous Q&A session. Here is their response:

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.

ManiiNames

Q:  Attention to detail is really suffering.  Any plans to improve?
Q:  Some forum lurkers have offered to help generate a list of cards which are broken and/or not working correctly or poorly worded and make that list available.  Any interest from Dev or would efforts be pointless due to a lack of resources?

MTG is a game of small, cool interactions between various cards.  The language and implementation is important.  This makes it extremely frustrating when there are so many bugs!!!  Some things are great (Crafting), but there are so many issues that never get fixed.

We see cards that are:
- Flat out broken, such as Tishana on release, and yes I paid $$$ for him.
- Behave completely differently from every other card with similar wording, such as the Rishadan Port.  Every other card with multiple activated gems will trigger multiple times if you match multiple gems.  This one does not.  Pointless masterpiece right now, any plans to fix it?
- Used to work and now do not, such as the Blightcaster.  This was an awesome niche card that worked amazingly well in certain decks.  It really promoted unique builds, and now it's tiny kitty.  Any plans to fix it?  
- Poorly designed.  The all time leader in this slot has to be the Glorifier of Dusk which gets Vigilance until the end of your turn.  And I lose life for the privilege?  Any plans to fix it?

khurram

In the olden times, whenever a new set was released the rewards and prizes would be upgraded to the newest set (dailies, QB, events etc) . But hibernum gradually shifted from that and octagon has taken it even further where you'd be lucky to get 1 or 2 five-card boosters (from the newest set) per week as rewards. You cant rely on events and competition to complete even the commons and uncommons from a new set before the next one is released. The new events with latest rewards, that come with each set are not run frequently enough. This is gradually putting the new sets behind a paywall; you have to spend enough crystals which you also can't get from the events like you used to, so you have to either spend money on packs or just make do with an incomplete collection. 

Can you guys shed some light  on your decision to go this way?

Are there any plans to make the boosters from newest sets more accessible through events and daily rewards? 

My other question is related to legacy, you guys said you'd focusing on new legacy events too but it has been months now. Are there any events currently in work for legacy? What are your plans?

Buizel

1. Are you guys attempting to fix some of these nonstop bug crashes? It's especially frustrating when the game still has animations, but you can't click anything. But, you can still click "Quit" and even get the warning "Are you SURE?!" And this is the only functional button. It feels almost troll.

2. Can we please see winrates for our decks ever? This is (kinda) supposed to be a competitive game, and we pay way too much money for how little features there are. It'd be cool to see even if it's only in Training Grounds. Even if our deck only has 5-20% winrate, we'll learn what plays well and what doesn't by the AI. Because this is a competitive game, it could totally change the meta and actually have it evolve nonstop. Because, well, you want the most points, which means other players having less points (cause your Greg kicked their booty).

3. Any plans to add a friend menu? Hopefully that would entail making the chat system (which only exists for coalitions) a bit smoother.

Opperstamper

1. How will you fix the bugs and errors that make us lose games or charges? The leaderboards should not be dictated by being lucky enough to not encounter bugs or errors.
2. When and how will you fix event end times in a way that everyone can finish all their charges (if they choose to do so), but won't be restricted by the timezone they live in?
3. How will you address the community feedback about the promised animations solutions? It seems very clear there is a difference between animations that are necessary to follow the flow of a match, and animations that are redundant. 

wereotter

Since I'm going to be asking this question till it's answered....

How are you planning on dealing with the ever increasing number of reprinted cards as it relates to the legality of those cards in this game? Can we get those cards recoded to be legal in the sets they're reprinted?

span_argoman

1) Is there any plan to introduce pity timers to help players who are statistically the unluckiest for card drop rates? And also to make purchasing Crystals for opening card packs more appealing?

2) Are there any plans to improve the new player experience? And what do you feel is the biggest deterrent to new players that stops them from continuing to play this game?

Rhasget

1. How many are working on this game on a daily basis?

2. How does a bugfix update work? Can you update at your own free will or is it regulated by someone or a fee/update?

ManiiNames

Rhasget said:

1. How many are working on this game on a daily basis?

LinkedIn appears to show a total of 22 employees.  An unknown number of them being people who actually work on games, as opposed to HR / Sales / Management etc.  Their website shows two games under development with MTG being one of them.  So the likely number is in the low teens, maybe?