How do you feel about B4T?

bk1234

I wish the code for this event would melt in a firey server explosion. 

It’s actually fun the first time through. Building new decks because Standard has swapped and seeing them do well, that was cool. 

Now we start the second time through and I’ve realized I will be doing this all weekend over and over. 

It’s not that it’s 5 nodes. Avacyn’s madness was 5 nodes and I love it. It’s that it’s 5 nodes with the last 2 being grindy and the other 3 having objectives that are not fun to play.

It’s that at least one node (4.1) requires luck, one specific MP or a Kaladesh card to beat. 

The event needs some serious rebalancing. 

Are you enjoying it? 

How would you rebalance it? 

Laeuftbeidir

How to change it? Add a node, make two events out of it, debug it.

Regarding your problems with 4.1..i don't know which mp you mean, I probably don't have it, but my control deck never had problems with it, maybe I don't understand the problem?

Brakkis

I still dislike 3.2, all of 4.x, 5.1 and 5.2

With 3.2 I've never even bothered with the "Take 15 or less damage" objective. The AI can deal that after dropping a single creature the next turn. The entirety of 4.x is just too much of a grind with each of the 3 nodes there feeling like a Bolas slog-fest. As for 5.1, I will never try for the "Win with 20 or less HP remaining" objective either.

As for 5.2 ... I've never liked it. Even with the Immortal Sun or just straight Samut nuking it, it's never been an enjoyable node and I've always felt that its ability to one shot you after cascading out a couple of treasure coves in a row was an asinine ability.

Stalker

Meh objective of gaming is to have fun and challenge. If it isn’t fun its not worth ones time. Half the nodes feel like work. And being killed instantly with an ability is ****.

khurram

I actually find it tedious to have to build decks each time the event is run. After I have settled on the decks though it gets easier from there.

I blame lack of decks slots.

Mburn7

I don't mind it, except for the boss fights and the last node.  The boss fights are all way too grindy and luck-based to get the objectives, and the last node is just stupid.  I like challenging fights, but I like them to be consistently possible too.

HJ16

I'm already tired of it this edition, and I haven't even done all the matches once. New stuff please. Agreed with OP.

SinisterOne

I try to personally evaluate each event with the following system..  of course 10 being pretty much perfect and 1 being garbage beyond anything anyone even my enemies should endure.

I use the following categories:

Flavor: How well do the objectives and mechanics overall mesh together for the fights.

Enjoyability: Are the fights set up in a way that although challenging at higher levels is it fun.

Grindiness: Do the fights feel grindy and unneedingly tedious or do they seem well rounded.

Longevity: How well do the fights scale into different formats. This can be an issue that will effect the others at times.

Now as for B4T:

Flavor - (9) Overall the matches and objectives mesh nicely. There is a few that seem out of place, but overall they did a nice job of pairing things up.

Enjoyability - (6) The Azor's Gateway match up (5.2) which is flavorful and interesting is such a leech on fun that it literally pulls a good 2 points off of this. I have never managed to beat it and this inheritant luckfest sucks a lot of the fun from other matches because I know it is there.

Grindiness - (8) I haven't felt that this event is grindy, however, a few of the fights do feel slightly grindy at times. Then again (5.2) has seriously started feeling grindy as no matter what deck or strategy I use it just always goes mega cascade a bazillion supports you lose by turn 4-5. 

Longevity - (6) With the lost of Amonkhet and Hours available many strategies that could easily handle this event were lost and key components that easily handled certain fights are gone. For instance the damage prevention support in white (I forget the name) can no longer be used against (5.2) and that is a great loss but I guess other strategies exist to deal with that match up. This score could improve in time but right now it feels just average but with the sets for this event nearing their legacy days some objectives may become difficult or impossible to achieve (play 4 dinosaurs for instance).

Overall (29/4=7.25) Slightly above average. So, a decent event and that is a good thing. 

I'll have to sit down and make a thread that evaluates all events to really see how this one stacks up but can say that the biggest detriment to B4T is (5.2).

IM_CARLOS

4.1 never be a problem. Did it with diverent pw and diverent cards. 

5.2 (azors gate) is more of problem now without ID. At least to beat both objectives is a problem.

The point I hate most are bugs. In this event it is very risky to hit pause menu (accidentally or not) when something happen ingame (e.g. enemy moves). 

Buizel

I had to quit a game in 5.2 because it would never end. I was running Bolas1 and trying to flip my Storm the Vault, and there was nothing I could do to get it to flip. I did not run enough natural treasure/support flood. The moment I finally had enough mana to play a creature, the AI would play 1 of its 6 cards waiting with full mana and kill my creature immediately. I didn't think to pack hexproof or a ton of haste stuff (the AI heals anyway).

The AI filled the entire board with Loyalty gems so I could never get any mana. I had a lock down of Lich &  Immortal Sun, so PW abilities were offline. I simply couldn't get any damage in whatsoever. I spent 30 minutes hoping for a great cascade, but never got more than <10 mana in a turn because of the disaster that the board was. I ran plenty of Support destruction, but could never cast more than 1 a turn.

Pretty frustrating ;(

bk1234

Laeuftbeidir said:

How to change it? Add a node, make two events out of it, debug it.

Regarding your problems with 4.1..i don't know which mp you mean, I probably don't have it, but my control deck never had problems with it, maybe I don't understand the problem?

I love the idea of adding a node and making 2 events out of it. I also like the idea of taking a node away and making 2 events out of it. Maybe make one more encounter for node 5 and split it over the two events. 

The issue I have with 4.1 is "Slaughter the Strong" I will lose the entire objective for you and the only way to guarantee preventing it is to have Sphinx's Decree out with the mythic Nyx (I was wrong about the MP earlier). 

Yes, you can run a discard deck, but unless you can flash Discard, AI, still draws the heck out of this card and casts it on the same turn. 

The fair thing to do would be to change it to kill 3 or less creatures. One Slaughter the Strong would not prevent you from getting the objective, but it's still an objective that is difficult to achieve. 

My other issue with this event is that it ends on Monday -- a work day -- and I believe strongly that 5 node events should never end on work days. I will never change my mind on this. 

I quite like playing it in new standard, however I have 1983 cards. I am not having nearly as much fun with my alt (more than 1400 cards -- mostly legacy)-- even in the early nodes which take a very long time with a less than elite collection.

My review -- tweak 4.1, shorten the event, and in the future, test your events with budget decks. 

Laeuftbeidir

bken1234 said:

Laeuftbeidir said:

How to change it? Add a node, make two events out of it, debug it.

Regarding your problems with 4.1..i don't know which mp you mean, I probably don't have it, but my control deck never had problems with it, maybe I don't understand the problem?

I love the idea of adding a node and making 2 events out of it. I also like the idea of taking a node away and making 2 events out of it. Maybe make one more encounter for node 5 and split it over the two events. 

The issue I have with 4.1 is "Slaughter the Strong" I will lose the entire objective for you and the only way to guarantee preventing it is to have Sphinx's Decree out with the mythic Nyx (I was wrong about the MP earlier). 

Yes, you can run a discard deck, but unless you can flash Discard, AI, still draws the heck out of this card and casts it on the same turn. 

The fair thing to do would be to change it to kill 3 or less creatures. One Slaughter the Strong would not prevent you from getting the objective, but it's still an objective that is difficult to achieve. 

My other issue with this event is that it ends on Monday -- a work day -- and I believe strongly that 5 node events should never end on work days. I will never change my mind on this. 

I quite like playing it in new standard, however I have 1983 cards. I am not having nearly as much fun with my alt (more than 1400 cards -- mostly legacy)-- even in the early nodes which take a very long time with a less than elite collection.

My review -- tweak 4.1, shorten the event, and in the future, test your events with budget decks. 

Currently, I just use terefi with the new, nice uncommon support that increases the cost of the first two cards whenever you draw a card.. Add his ultimate to it. Even if he cascades, after some turns he can't fill up more than one card (of at all). Takes some turns to set it up, but for the damage I want him to have something on the board anyway.

Agree with the rest. The only way to make it comfortable is to rip it apart somehow. It wasn't designed as a fun event in the first place. They even announced it that way ("we know you don't like five nodes. Here's our first event! It has five nodes! And you'll get more of those regularly, that's why we only make one event per set")

HarryMason

This event is just poorly designed from a game play standpoint. It's got flavor , but that doesn't really matter when I'm slogging through vampire fest , objectives intact, then Greg casts slaughter the strong, only killing his 3 creatures . Only happened once , but that was enough. I don't think the objectives were very well thought out. I basically hate it 

joerginger

This event was the last straw. After its end I will delete this "game" from my phone and try to forget I ever wasted time and many hundreds of Euros on this utterly horrible thing, Good bye and good riddance.

Aeroplane

This event is horrible for beginners. After the first level , my son is in Bronze just got mana ramped and utterly destroyed in 4 rounds in Blood Sun. I've never seen molten vortex do so much damage with red sky fall in one round. Basically, non-magic beginners will not have any fun in this game. Well, he tried again and died in 7 rounds with another crazy sky fall pulling out 3 dragons.

bk1234

Aeroplane said:

This event is horrible for beginners. After the first level , my son is in Bronze just got mana ramped and utterly destroyed in 4 rounds in Blood Sun. I've never seen molten vortex do so much damage with red sky fall in one round. Basically, non-magic beginners will not have any fun in this game. Well, he tried again and died in 7 rounds with another crazy sky fall pulling out 3 dragons.

I agree with this completely. AWR is too easy, B4T is too hard — don’t understand why they can’t find a balance. I find this event to be extremely discriminatory against newer players. Our alliance historically has more players 3 months or less quit the game during B4T than in any other event. 

Buizel

Playing on a node objective that is to do X or Y amount of stuff, only to have the enemy ruin your objective for me (slaughter the strong), feels absolutely awful.

nerdstrap

This event defeats the entire purpose of a mobile game! All the stupid little 1/1 tokens and 2/2 creatures are LAME. All the tedious animations for stupid reinforcements and loyalty gain are LAME. It should be fun and splashy! It should make me WANT TO PLAY! Instead it takes me 10 minutes to beat each node even with an elite collection of cards. The vampire battles are all DUMB. Nobody wants to face Bolas and a deck full of kill spells when there aren’t any creatureless strategies anymore!!! YOU JUST ARENT GETTING IT

wereotter

IM_CARLOS said:

4.1 never be a problem. Did it with diverent pw and diverent cards. 

5.2 (azors gate) is more of problem now without ID. At least to beat both objectives is a problem.

The point I hate most are bugs. In this event it is very risky to hit pause menu (accidentally or not) when something happen ingame (e.g. enemy moves). 

5.2 is absolutely more of an issue now than it was before, though for me it's not the loss of imminent doom that's the problem, but losing Manglehorn and By Force (since I basically decided wining quickly wasn't an objective worth trying to get on that node and instead decided I just wanted to keep it in check long enough to win)

5.3 has been a but more obnoxious too now that I can't use Drake Haven, though I'll admit that was my own use of a crutch to get through a tougher fight.

I don't mind working again to solve the nodes, but I do think that some of them were built with the expectation we'd be using certain cards to get through it, and if those cards are invalid, it can be frustrating. I almost would prefer events like this are run with the cards that were valid for standard when the event came out.

Aeroplane

bken1234 said:

Aeroplane said:

This event is horrible for beginners. After the first level , my son is in Bronze just got mana ramped and utterly destroyed in 4 rounds in Blood Sun. I've never seen molten vortex do so much damage with red sky fall in one round. Basically, non-magic beginners will not have any fun in this game. Well, he tried again and died in 7 rounds with another crazy sky fall pulling out 3 dragons.

I agree with this completely. AWR is too easy, B4T is too hard — don’t understand why they can’t find a balance. I find this event to be extremely discriminatory against newer players. Our alliance historically has more players 3 months or less quit the game during B4T than in any other event. 

So much potential , but the lack of vision is mind boggling.

NickBKK

The Dev is shooting themselves in the foot. This event sucks fun and energy out of players experience. It’s grindy, long, tedious, buggy, frustrating, ... the list goes on.
We have given them so many valuable and constructive feedbacks about what we like and dislike. Recently there were some events that people responded very well to them. It’s a shame they don’t try to think through and instead are doing this to the players. 
Game is meant to be fun, not feeling like work. It’s weekend and believe it or not, people have lives to live too.