Duel Decks: Zendikar vs Eldrazi - Feedback

bk1234

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Laeuftbeidir

I have no problem whether my side wins or loses. It's a nice feeling to be on the winning side, it's okay to be on the other side.

I'm liking the flavor and the runes.. I mean, I would like it if the charges were fast again

[Deleted User]

I am guessing they did NOT read the feedback comments. Perhaps language barrier, lots of work, etc.

And the multiple choice wasnt polarizing enough of a result to instigate changes perhaps. As many people are known to not select the extremes of the choices but rather the "kinda bad" or "kinda good" choices. And when you add those up, it doesnt create a huge impact. However clearly everyone selected that the rewards are VERY GOOD in the multiple choice so they decided to nerf it - cant have customer be happy now, can we? (I understood the nerf but it was far too severe)

wereotter

IM_CARLOS said:

Last and major problem: bugs.
In both beta I haven't any crash in hundred matches. On third run I had 2 out of 7 yet. Was I lucky the first two iterations. 

I have had the game crash in all three runs of the event, with a common theme. If the game attempts to match me against my same side, it will attempt to load the match, then freeze and crash. Thats been my only technical bug though.

I do feel that when it comes to the prebuilt decks, Nissa is hands down stronger than the Eldrazi. I won every first phase fight with her first time for every increment of objectibes. The Eldrazi took a lot more effort to win and to meet objectives, partially because of the loyalty abilities. I think needing a creature in play to use the eldrazi first ability really hurts that deck as well
as making a creature that dies to Nissa’s first ability creature without killing it. I would think it should be altered to not give the -3/-3 and just make 4 eldrazi scions. 

IM_CARLOS

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

Eye of Ugin is crazy good.

Great with rex (not this event), StV and all the other gemchange and just a warpig. Made it in some decks. 

IM_CARLOS

Mburn7 said:

This entire process has just been super insulting to me.

We have been asking for Beta testing to be run on new stuff for years, since every single thing is released with bugs.  I can't help but feel like they decided to roll out this event as a "Beta Test" in order to get us to shut up, not to actually test the event. 

I mean think about it:

None of the premade decks changed at all between any of the 3 event runs.
None of the objectives changed besides minor numbers tweaking between any of the 3 event runs
None of the planeswalker abilities changed at all between any of the 3 event runs
None of the bugs were fixed between any of the 3 event runs
Nothing new was added to or taken away from the event between any of the 3 event runs

What did change between the events?

The cost of the boosters was increased by 50%
The event rewards were decreased by 90% (admittedly this one makes sense a little, but was probably excessive)
The phase 2 and 3 recharge timers were increased by ~6600%

So if nothing was changed or fixed besides the rewards and recharge times (both of which went directly against the opinions in the survey), why did they bother running a Beta test?  What exactly were we testing?

I think they just test game stability in first run (10 min recharge). Rewards are stil rather high for efforts.

But the need some new game designer. There a too many blind spots that were revealed by players and they are still there. 

Well, for the next run the probable recharge to 5hours ... and cut the Rewards by half. 'Look, we received your feedback.' 

GigaGuess

I can understand stress test, but at the same time, I found the first "true" run rather frustrating.  Taking the initial charges from 6 to 3 was just...brutal.  There were 8 total duel matches, and I lost 2 to the Mirror Match Glitch.  That's 25% of my matches, just...gone.  Hell, I'll take a loss, at least I get runes for that, too.  It just left a feel bad experience to me.

Honestly, I can get the rest (Though I feel card purchases can go back down, to my personal opinion.  It's one card per pack, and implicitly legacy...that said, this is just personal opinion.) but one thing just left a very sour taste in my mouth.

Brakkis

Now that the Q&A answers have been released, I suppose we can feedback their feedback and their rationale.

Let's talk about Duel Decks. Why the dramatic change in secondary objectives and recharge times for both sides?

We had a critical issue relating to the recharge time during the first Beta. The recharge time was supposed to be about 5 hours with 2 initial charges, but a bug occurred and the cooldown was only set to 10 minutes. This seemed great for a lot of players, due to the reward accessibility. In some cases, 10 minutes isn't even enough for someone to play a whole match, so this created an "infinite" amount of charged for everyone.

Since the Zendikar vs Eldrazi was in a Beta test environment, and Duel Decks was a whole new event format, we had different elements to validate and test (most importantly, its structure and system) The PvP objectives changed, because we wanted to give players a chance to build different strategies to beat the other side without being restricted to a single card type or creature sub-type, (players were supposed to play with Eldrazi anyways for synergistic reasons) and we wanted to challenge players to build Pauper decks in a competitive event. The PvE objectives from the first Beta, on the other hand, were considered to be too easy to achieve by both the players and the internal team. So in order to increase its replayability, we changed those to something more challenging.

The rune rewards, on the other hand, were directly affected by the recharge timer, and "suffered" a significant impact when the recharge time was corrected. The crystals and jewels given at the Beta environment were supposed to be the same as the live version of the event, but we decided to reward our beta testers with a lot more, as a way to thank them for their assistance. In our haste to fix the recharge timer though, we neglected to communicate the nature of the issue which led to the misunderstanding regarding the "nerf" to the rewards. For that, we take full responsibility.

Our intention with the Duel Decks event is to turn it into the go-to method of exploring the game's previous collections that would otherwise never be in MTGPQ. So, to make it a regular format, we must closely and carefully evaluate its rewards and pacing - that's the reason we decided to make it our first Beta test.

A lot of players expressed their concerns in the forum that they had the feeling that the Oktagon team was not listening or taking their feedback and opinions seriously. This was a misunderstanding. We want to assure everyone that we're keeping an eye on player feedback, but sometimes, due to production reasons, it is difficult to immediately implement all the changes the community wants.
 
Now that a Beta process has been established, how do you see it benefiting the game in the future?
The Beta process is a great tool that helps evaluate new features, rewards, Planeswalkers, objectives, cards, and original content. We plan to make use of this tool whenever needed, as a way to interact with those who can provide us valuable feedback, and to test new features and/or game modes in a live but controlled environment.

What was your experience like running a Beta, and what would you change if you were to run another one in the future?
The main point we will change from this first Beta test is the communication side of things. Most Beta tests, including some famous collectible games, employ some sort of content wipe after its completion. This is done in order to avoid balance problems with the live environment.

We are not sure if this reward wipe will be applied for the next Betas, or if we will implement No-Reward Beta policy. We'd like to avoid that, as it is a way to show gratitude for those who help us in testing new features and events, but some changes will probably occur. When they do, we will be very clear about it.

So, let's get to it.

1) The next time you run a beta, do not release the event for the live game so shortly after the beta tests. There was (and still is) a critical bug in the event that forces the player to close the game due to getting matched against a player of the same side, thus losing a charge. This was present and reported on during the first beta test and the whole event was put out to the live game without having this issue fixed.

• This bug was not such a sever issue during the first test due to the extreme number of charges we had. In that scenario, the event was a glorified rune grind (which we all liked). Losing a charge was losing just a drop in the bucket of runes.
  
• In the second beta and the live version, this takes away from the already pitiful number of charges we get throughout the event. Speaking of which...

2) The recharge rate for the first beta may have been a "bug" but the recharge time of the second beta and on is horrendous. You don't feel like you're dueling when you only get to play 9 matches through the entirety of the event.

• When there's also the aforementioned critical bug in the event, it reduces those already pitiful 9 matches.
• The extremely low number of matches does not warrant this "event" being run at the expense of a coinciding Coalition event.
• 10 minute refreshes may have been too much, and for some people it certainly was, but 5 and a half hours is nonsense. 30 minute refreshes seems to have been the general consensus on a good time period.
• We even opted for a lower rune reward after the initial win in order to accommodate the increased number of fights.

3) The secondary objectives of the first beta in the PvE setting were not easy. They were low. Actually achieving them involved luck because the default decks are garbage. It didn't require much luck because they were low numbers. Jacking the numbers up didn't make the decks not garbage. It just made it a higher level of luck necessary to reach those numbers before you killed the opponent.

4) The pauper objective in the PvP setting from the second beta on is **** for a very important reason. The secondary objectives only matter once (At least so far as we can tell given that there has been no definitive response on this matter from your end). After each player gets them, they are going to drop in their nastiest Legacy decks possible and steamroll through the opponent. Facing those decks with pauper is like trying to stop a tsunami with a blanket.

• Pauper, as an objective, does not belong in PvP. While you hope to achieve some form of creative strategy meeting among players to see what they can theory craft, the players that don't a damn and are in it to win it are going to hit you with their best decks and keep moving. Even the ones not going for perfect scores but simply victories to reach progression are going to ignore such an objective.
  
• It's a fine objective in PvE. It accomplishes that spark of theory crafting. You know what you're facing and can build to work around it or through it. It inspires players to be creative.
  
• Victory > Creativity for many.

Laeuftbeidir

+1 to the above.

Well, I don't think there's any reason to lower the rune outcome..Anyway, the last duel deck events just felt boring. Sloggy. Why should I build decks for such fights.

Plus, one way to fix a lot of flavor would be a set restriction. You're going to see rashmi loops all day long for nissa, and similar broken combos for Ted (that likely have nothing to do with the theme).

.

Please restrict the sets! This is the perfect opportunity.

arNero

All right, so this is the second time we've seen this event, and I have chosen both sides. Here's my (generally negative) feedback:

1) The objectives.
I still remember people complained the last time that during the real duel, having the same exact set of objectives for both Nissa and Eldrazi is completely unfair simply due to the fact that the Eldrazi has far better card pool (a.k.a., everything). And you completely ignored that complaint. Bad, bad decision, Oktagon, bad, terrible decision. (I did win all my matches by completing the "use 11-mana cost and up only", but my victories were in part that the Eldrazi players somehow strangely were kind enough to build noticeably bad decks; Clutch and Eldest would have completely ruined my day.

2) Win/Loss reward.
In what I believe correlates to the above point, I think it's no surprise that more people chose the Eldrazi for whatever reasons, and also that they would perform better, leading to the Eldrazi side winning again. If you keep this up, Mana Confluence can NEVER be obtained because no one will ever support Nissa. So I suggest: Give the exclusive card (Mana Confluence and Eye of Ugin) as a reward of choosing side. After that, let the winning side get better deal (like, mythic packs, more crystals than the losing side etc) so that in case nobody picks Nissa again because she's by default disadvantaged, at least the main prize (Mana Confluence) can still be obtained.

I mean, look, your Dragon's War event gives the exclusive card Dragon's Hoard as a progression reward, meaning that as long as a player is not too lazy and/or too unlucky, they should be able to get the Hoard without being in the top 5.

All in all, I only repeat what I said before, mostly: The idea for this duel decks is fine, but do please make it more balanced and enjoyable.

Mburn7

The funniest thing about this event is how the indestructible support that appears in the Duel Phase (but is not mentioned anywhere else in the event) makes it significantly harder to play with the type of deck your side wants to.

I ended up making an Eldrazi deck with Nissa, and I gotta say it was significantly better than any landfall deck I could put together because of that support.  I get that they want to add an extra challenge, but I feel like Nissa's best option should not be to play Eldrazi.

rafalele

Mburn7 said:

The funniest thing about this event is how the indestructible support that appears in the Duel Phase (but is not mentioned anywhere else in the event) makes it significantly harder to play with the type of deck your side wants to.

I ended up making an Eldrazi deck with Nissa, and I gotta say it was significantly better than any landfall deck I could put together because of that support.  I get that they want to add an extra challenge, but I feel like Nissa's best option should not be to play Eldrazi.

That support in Nissa side is a bug I have already reported the last time we played this event. The Zendikar indestructible support should be other (do not remember it) that fits better with it's side.

Mburn7

rafalele said:

Mburn7 said:

The funniest thing about this event is how the indestructible support that appears in the Duel Phase (but is not mentioned anywhere else in the event) makes it significantly harder to play with the type of deck your side wants to.

I ended up making an Eldrazi deck with Nissa, and I gotta say it was significantly better than any landfall deck I could put together because of that support.  I get that they want to add an extra challenge, but I feel like Nissa's best option should not be to play Eldrazi.

That support in Nissa side is a bug I have already reported the last time we played this event. The Zendikar indestructible support should be other (do not remember it) that fits better with it's side.

I don't think its a bug, since if you pick Eldrazi the support favors Nissa

I believe the purpose is to add an extra challenge, which is totally fine in theory.  In practice its just odd and annoying

EvilDead

Ditto what Brakkis posted above.

For peets sake, fix the bugs first so we can enjoy the event.

Laeuftbeidir

My feedback.. Boring.

What do I want with a multiple day event offering 6+4 fights? I hoped for something to help with runes. This event.. Nope.i hoped for flavor. This event.. Nope. More fights and set restrictions!

madwren

I played one game in round 2 and then didn't login for the rest of it.   I'm not sure this event will survive beyond initial iterations unless they evolve it.

TheDude1

I was so hopeful for this event when it was in Beta.  It was refreshing to get not just new content, but a unique gameplay structure, especially since it really seemed like this was a chance to give active feedback that would be used to everyone's benefit.  My feelings have since soured.

--Completely agree with the idea that this event is wholly unbalanced.  Everyone is thrown in together using a Level 60 planeswalker, so you're going to have ridiculous mismatches because things that might correlate to deck strength (tier, planeswalker level) are by definition ignored.  Perhaps this will change with the note in the Q&A about adjusting color mastery/matchmaking?  If the intention really is to explore previous collections/mechanics, a set restriction would be completely appropriate here, both for theme purposes and for competitive balancing.  Using a Pauper objective to "force" lower-level deck builds does nothing, as mentioned above.

--The change made to have your second phase ("Duel") be the same as the third phase ("Final Duel"), including sharing the pool of charges, makes most of the event repetitive and boring.  There's no reason to distinguish the two phases because there's no substantive difference at all, may as well just call the first the "pre-built" phase and the second/third the "open" phase.  I got my objectives settled in the second phase and didn't even bother playing the third because there was no reason to and I had nothing else to play for.  At that point it's just a glorified Legacy Training Grounds, except you have a time restriction, you face the same Planeswalker over and over again, and non-Platinums have the added probability of getting your face smashed by a broken Platinum deck.

--Why allow Planeswalkers to fully regenerate instantly after each match if you have to wait 5 hours for the next match anyway?

--I'm willing to concede that TED beating Nissa repeatedly is an artifact of the colorless vs mono-color setup, where people are given far more flexibility in deck-building on one planeswalker than the other.  I'm cautiously hopeful that it will be rectified in future duels - perhaps because we'll include some multi-colors or even a mono-vs-mono.  But that doesn't make this version any better.

There really is a lot of potential in this concept, it's just incredibly frustrating that there are so many conceptual flaws that remain open.  I understand that the forums are just a subset of all players, and that feedback isn't confined only to what is posted here.  But it can't be good to have this many engaged users be so disillusioned, when there are fixes available that would presumably alleviate the concerns raised here without disrupting the experience of the more casual player...

Gabrosin

Having run this event a few times now, it's quickly become one of my least favorite things in the game.

I don't like having to run long, grindy matches with premade decks, especially when I'm trying to meet somewhat challenging secondaries... often I have accidentally won the match before meeting them, which means my entire effort was wasted and I have to start over.  I've taken to auto-conceding and restarting matches until I've got an ideal token-producing or large-creature hand, which can't be what the developers wanted to happen.

Once I've hit my individual marks and the dueling phase begins, I have little incentive to play.  Sure, I want to jump in and get the secondary rewards, but my individual contribution to the success of my side is minuscule at best.  Aside from a decent chunk of runes, I'm not getting much for tossing my time into the void, knowing my wins likely won't produce a victory for my side.  Worst of all I can just hold off, jump in on the winning side at the last minute, and reap the benefits.

Here's how I would improve this.  Instead of giving us a fixed 10-card deck, give us a constrained subset of cards to choose from for each side... let's say 100.  This can be a mix of newly-created cards for the event and existing cards.  Let every player use every card whether they own it or not for the duration of the event.  Give us three nodes, each with different secondaries, on which we'll battle other players, and a decent amount of charges for each one.  Then award us a point for each unique card we use in a winning deck.

Now we're forced to build creatively (making use of the weaker cards to maximize our score), and to participate fully.  Our individual scores can have more influence on our team's outcome than a simple tally of wins and losses.  Perhaps the rewards for participating can include a mix of earning new cards and collecting existing cards from the provided sets; as it stands, we'll run out of "reward" rares pretty soon in this event.

As it stands, this event has potential but needs some improvement to its execution.

Tilwin90

arNero said:

but my victories were in part that the Eldrazi players somehow strangely were kind enough to build noticeably bad decks; Clutch and Eldest would have completely ruined my day.

That's probably because some of us were so lazy that they only did two matches to grab the two objectives for the crystals and the last objective deck remained. It's a good observation, I actually did the pauper first and the 11+ cost second, I suppose if I switched them around it would make more people happy. As I don't care about this event (and there's no risk in just getting the two objectives in 9 charges) I'll be more than happy to give other players an easier time.

Aeroplane

Mono Green vs All your legacy cards you have! Bugs and Freezes...Game is in its worst state since I started playing.