How do you feel about B4T?

Volrak

There have been a few suggestions which would have the effect of turning B4T into an easy-mode version of itself.  I think that would be sad, because:

• Difficulty and challenge are drawcards to a subset of the player-base, and
• Difficulty is necessary to prevent large n-way ties at the top of the leaderboard, another perennial topic of complaint, whenever it occurs.
  

Ideally a way would be found to present a suitable level of difficulty while also providing engaging content for newer players.

Grind-wise, B4T is a bigger event than most, both because of number of nodes and the objectives.  I agree with those who've said splitting this amount of content across two events might work better.  Fewer starting charges and/or slower recharge rate for this kind of event could also help.

tfg76

I have to reiterate my point here I think.

This game is supposed to be a puzzle (therein the name), right? When you build a puzzle, you don't immediately turn around and dismantle it to build it again. At least that's not my kind of thing.

I'd like this kind of event to be hard. Hard opponents, hard objectives - tough puzzles! If you're a beginning player, don't expect to be able to solve all the puzzles right away. But be really happy when you make it to that point!
When you're an experienced player, and you're able to beat all the opponents with regularity, maybe there are some tough secondary objectives that you can try to defeat.

But: in all those cases, you don't really want to do the same thing again. So let's just let the maximum score be the process of managing to beat all the opponents and secondary objectives once with the charges you have available. Then the beginning players might be happy that they have many charges to try their luck, while the experienced players might not need to play all of the charges unless they really want to crack that difficult nut objective that they didn't have yet.

With this solution, the coalition race would also be more exciting - for lower level coalitions, competition is about getting many players to beat all the opponents. Interesting discussions should arise from trying to solve that. For high level coalitions, the discussions would turn to the objectives instead, especially near the end of the event.

There would be no discussions about "too many charges", since most players would welcome more charges to try their luck at whatever they hadn't managed yet.

This is a game, and it should be about fun, excitement and challenge, not simply touching the screen as much as possible.

Tilwin90

From what I hear, from my now former coalition group, five core members have left after this horrendous event. I myself am one of those players. I don't want to throw empty threats, give ultimatums and all that kind of nonsense. I know it will be to no avail.

I have to say that this last drop that filled my glass was actually eye-opening for me. I've immersed myself into this wonderful community way too deeply and kept putting up with whatever madness came with whatever crazy events, stress, impossible hours of waking up to finish nodes...

I know some might say this should be just a relaxing game, but when the competitive adrenaline kicks in, you simply get caught in the roil and start playing beyond what some would consider "healthy limit". And for me unfortunately it's one or the other. There are no half-involvements... I'm either in or out.

Unfortunately for my friends and I could say even family, it has reached the point where I need to start taking care of myself and my real life. So all in all, I think this last B4T has lead to be a beneficial outcome for me. Haven't had a break from this game for a very long time. So thanks for that.

It's still possible I might come back at some point... though the more time will pass, it will be less likely. At the rate this game goes, it's impossible after a break to come back and not expect to be back as a newbie. Rotations contribute greatly to this, as do the poor legacy events and rewards associated with them. Simple put, you're either in for the Standard and the long run, or you're going to be perpetually struggling.

Thanks everyone for the great discussions, fights, arguments and all. I had a blast!

rafalele

Tilwin90 said:

From what I hear, from my now former coalition group, five core members have left after this horrendous event. I myself am one of those players. I don't want to throw empty threats, give ultimatums and all that kind of nonsense. I know it will be to no avail.

I have to say that this last drop that filled my glass was actually eye-opening for me. I've immersed myself into this wonderful community way too deeply and kept putting up with whatever madness came with whatever crazy events, stress, impossible hours of waking up to finish nodes...

I know some might say this should be just a relaxing game, but when the competitive adrenaline kicks in, you simply get caught in the roil and start playing beyond what some would consider "healthy limit". And for me unfortunately it's one or the other. There are no half-involvements... I'm either in or out.

Unfortunately for my friends and I could say even family, it has reached the point where I need to start taking care of myself and my real life. So all in all, I think this last B4T has lead to be a beneficial outcome for me. Haven't had a break from this game for a very long time. So thanks for that.

It's still possible I might come back at some point... though the more time will pass, it will be less likely. At the rate this game goes, it's impossible after a break to come back and not expect to be back as a newbie. Rotations contribute greatly to this, as do the poor legacy events and rewards associated with them. Simple put, you're either in for the Standard and the long run, or you're going to be perpetually struggling.

Thanks everyone for the great discussions, fights, arguments and all. I had a blast!

I will miss your posts and points of view. They helped me.

Thank you very much and I hope to see you here again.

I play in a coalition that has been placed in coalition events between the 50 and 100 position since I joined it (december 2016).

We are always 20. No more, no substitutes, no internal ranking, just one coalition. The only rules are: If you can play, perfect, if not, write an advice in the ingame chat. If joined a coalition event play it and make points not just to get rewards. At least, play a coalition event in a month. Nobody is asked to get perfect scores or get % over the individual progression.

I think that a lot of people are making this game much more stressful than it really should be.

If sometime you want to come back, try it in a different way. I would be very glad to offer you a place in our coalition (if there is a free one when you return).

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Sarahschmara

Tilwin90 said:

From what I hear, from my now former coalition group, five core members have left after this horrendous event. I myself am one of those players. I don't want to throw empty threats, give ultimatums and all that kind of nonsense. I know it will be to no avail.

I have to say that this last drop that filled my glass was actually eye-opening for me. I've immersed myself into this wonderful community way too deeply and kept putting up with whatever madness came with whatever crazy events, stress, impossible hours of waking up to finish nodes...

I know some might say this should be just a relaxing game, but when the competitive adrenaline kicks in, you simply get caught in the roil and start playing beyond what some would consider "healthy limit". And for me unfortunately it's one or the other. There are no half-involvements... I'm either in or out.

Unfortunately for my friends and I could say even family, it has reached the point where I need to start taking care of myself and my real life. So all in all, I think this last B4T has lead to be a beneficial outcome for me. Haven't had a break from this game for a very long time. So thanks for that.

It's still possible I might come back at some point... though the more time will pass, it will be less likely. At the rate this game goes, it's impossible after a break to come back and not expect to be back as a newbie. Rotations contribute greatly to this, as do the poor legacy events and rewards associated with them. Simple put, you're either in for the Standard and the long run, or you're going to be perpetually struggling.

Thanks everyone for the great discussions, fights, arguments and all. I had a blast!

We’ll miss you!

You make an incredibly valid (and often overlooked) point about it being extremely difficult to pick up the game after an extended absence; you’d be playing highly-tuned platinum decks with just your Origins collection which is challenging to say the least. 

And I’m so very sympathetic with the lure of community as well as an “all or nothing” mindset. The siren song of winning with friends is hard to resist!

I do think it’s worth noting that high-level players forget how easy it is to place reasonably well. Heck, I placed 523rd in my coalition of one (and I’m not even that great of a player). The struggle for top 10 (and top 2!) is incredibly intense and takes a lot of effort and coordination but the fight for top 100 (top 50) is actually pretty achievable with very little stress. 

TheDude1

Sarahschmara said:

You make an incredibly valid (and often overlooked) point about it being extremely difficult to pick up the game after an extended absence; you’d be playing highly-tuned platinum decks with just your Origins collection which is challenging to say the least. 

This is precisely why set-specific mastery needs to be a thing.  Why should Tilwin be double-punished if he wants to come back?  (Once for not being able to use his old sets in new standard, and then again by being forced to face platinum-level accounts due to mastery of unusable sets.)

He's clearly exactly the kind of high-level, engaged player that this game would want to develop.  (I'm sure D3/Oktagon has all the stats on how much high-end players contribute to the bottom line...)  Why allow the gameplay element to make things so much harder to bring these kinds of players back?  It's hard enough to get new players acclimated to the game and moving up the ladder, why also alienate players who have already demonstrated long-term interest? 

Aeroplane

Teysa said:

Volrak said:

There have been a few suggestions which would have the effect of turning B4T into an easy-mode version of itself.  I think that would be sad, because:

• Difficulty and challenge are drawcards to a subset of the player-base, and
• Difficulty is necessary to prevent large n-way ties at the top of the leaderboard, another perennial topic of complaint, whenever it occurs.
  

Ideally a way would be found to present a suitable level of difficulty while also providing engaging content for newer players.

Grind-wise, B4T is a bigger event than most, both because of number of nodes and the objectives.  I agree with those who've said splitting this amount of content across two events might work better.  Fewer starting charges and/or slower recharge rate for this kind of event could also help.

I think it's very important to draw a distinct line between 'difficult' and 'grindy'. And by 'grindy', I take it we all mean long winded, and possibly tedious. Difficult and grindy are not the same thing - a level can be easy and grindy, or difficult and short.

Consider level 1.1. An objective here is 'win in <=5 turns', which, I imagine, is an objective that some beginner players find difficult. That's ok, though - they can *try* and get this objective, but if they fail, they can still complete the level, and their attempt at trying has pushed them forwards towards completing the level. I doubt anyone considers 1.1 to be 'grindy', do they?

This is how secondary objectives should be done. Maybe it's impossible, or at least extraordinarily difficult, for you to complete the objective without owning the correct cards - is that bad? Things like that give us a reason to expand our collections.

I find the challenging part is trying to remember what decks I used and what cards disappeared to legacy , but with Karn it has become much easier. His pool of exile cards to deal with the pesty Vampire node and Hapzard Bombardment and Alpine moon sprinkled in depending on the annoying support nodes neutralize the problems. Only, the first 3-4 rounds of 5.2 are a little stressful until Karn's first ability pulls up Hap or Alpine. The second go round turns into a grind, especially, 5.3. After that I stop going for objectives as I'm on the path for max rewards.

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IM_CARLOS

TheDude1 said:

Sarahschmara said:

You make an incredibly valid (and often overlooked) point about it being extremely difficult to pick up the game after an extended absence; you’d be playing highly-tuned platinum decks with just your Origins collection which is challenging to say the least. 

This is precisely why set-specific mastery needs to be a thing.  Why should Tilwin be double-punished if he wants to come back?  (Once for not being able to use his old sets in new standard, and then again by being forced to face platinum-level accounts due to mastery of unusable sets.)

He's clearly exactly the kind of high-level, engaged player that this game would want to develop.  (I'm sure D3/Oktagon has all the stats on how much high-end players contribute to the bottom line...)  Why allow the gameplay element to make things so much harder to bring these kinds of players back?  It's hard enough to get new players acclimated to the game and moving up the ladder, why also alienate players who have already demonstrated long-term interest? 

The point is D3 don't want you to hibernate for a while. It's like some other business: 'first is for free and have fun' but if you quit you have a hard time.

I think if I quit  I quit forever. 

Rhasget

Most businesses I have been involved with look for new players/customers instead of catering to the ones they have. An existing customer that has been onboard a while is less prone to spend than a new one according to most studies.

The thing with this game is that it does a poor job of making new players want to stay or even spend anything.

Unknown

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Kinesia

Rhasget said:

Most businesses I have been involved with look for new players/customers instead of catering to the ones they have. An existing customer that has been onboard a while is less prone to spend than a new one according to most studies.

The thing with this game is that it does a poor job of making new players want to stay or even spend anything.

Yes... In this particular case you want to turn new players into whales and then keep the whales. If the whales leave you _really_ want them to come back and rewhale. It's entirely possible because of the nature of the game that a player who has left might see a new magic set and get curious and poke their nose back in, but unless it's easier to pick back up at least _close_ to where they were they won't stay.

Hey, even a "Returning Player Pack" for people who've been gone for a while containing fat packs for all the new standard sets would be pretty cool...

nerdstrap

Kinesia said:

Rhasget said:

Most businesses I have been involved with look for new players/customers instead of catering to the ones they have. An existing customer that has been onboard a while is less prone to spend than a new one according to most studies.

The thing with this game is that it does a poor job of making new players want to stay or even spend anything.

Yes... In this particular case you want to turn new players into whales and then keep the whales. If the whales leave you _really_ want them to come back and rewhale. It's entirely possible because of the nature of the game that a player who has left might see a new magic set and get curious and poke their nose back in, but unless it's easier to pick back up at least _close_ to where they were they won't stay.

Hey, even a "Returning Player Pack" for people who've been gone for a while containing fat packs for all the new standard sets would be pretty cool...

Hearthstone used to send me those offers

arNero

My opinion for this is generally OK, not too fancy, not too unhappy about it, but some bosses are without a doubt beyond unfun:

Elenda - Her amount of removals is flat-out ridiculous (especially Vona's Hunger, which bypasses hexproof), and she's too aggressive on top of that.
Azor's Gateway - No, instant-kill ability is NOT fun. And not to mention like Elenda, it has way too many removals, including Vona's Hunger again.
Azor - Draggy as hell

Froggy

The event should be banned. Too long. Outdated objectives with set rotation. Terrible rewards. Poor RNG design (constant cascades, etc.).

Please send this event to the graveyard.

Now, to more important things - what’s for lunch?

span_argoman

Froggy said:

The event should be banned. Too long. Outdated objectives with set rotation. Terrible rewards. Poor RNG design (constant cascades, etc.).

Please send this event to the graveyard.

Now, to more important things - what’s for lunch?

Terrible rewards? As compared to?

Froggy

span_argoman said:

Froggy said:

The event should be banned. Too long. Outdated objectives with set rotation. Terrible rewards. Poor RNG design (constant cascades, etc.).

Please send this event to the graveyard.

Now, to more important things - what’s for lunch?

Terrible rewards? As compared to?

The effort put into it. It’s painful.

Kinesia

Wow, while the amount of work involved _is_ too much I really think some of the people are going overboard.

But, yeah, split it up a bit maybe? Binning it is a dumb idea because it's mostly REALLY good, just too long...

Have nodes 1-3 on the current thing, break nodes 4-5 off into a separate event or something.