New Player Guide (10/30/18)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

As part of our efforts to improve the experience for new players, we have decided to create a New Player Guide on our Helpshift FAQ page. This guide contains 7 different articles that explains the basics on how to navigate through the various sections of the game, the concepts behind building a deck, and what's going on during a fight.

• New Player Guide

As of right now, this is a rudimentary guide, however it is also a living one; constantly evolving as we add and tweak content bit by bit. We want new players to thrive and succeed in the game, so we'd love to hear any feedback from the community on how we can improve it.

Check it out, and let us know what you think!

fiirst

glad & good to have official guide for newbie.

check in first, additional feedback later.

Szamsziel

@Brigby i just scanned text and Im terrified. Example:

For example, if you chose Ob Nixilis as your Planeswalker, you might choose cards like Artificer's Epiphany or Chart a Course to take advantage of his 3rd ability, Forbidden Knowledge.
..... 
But... Both are blue!

Brigby

Szamsziel said:

Brigby i just scanned text and Im terrified. Example:

For example, if you chose Ob Nixilis as your Planeswalker, you might choose cards like Artificer's Epiphany or Chart a Course to take advantage of his 3rd ability, Forbidden Knowledge.
..... 
But... Both are blue!

Wait...you didn't know that we're re-designing Ob-Nixilis to be a Black-Blue Planeswalker? /joke

In all seriousness, thanks for catching that! We've gone ahead and fixed that oversight.

TheDude1

Thanks for creating this Brigby!  It's going to be a huge help for new players to get the hang of things.

A couple suggestions:

• The color mastery page has some older material: it references that the three tiers are Bronze, Silver and Gold, and that you may add more mastery levels at a later date; the mastery chart still references QuickBattle; etc.  That might cause some confusion from newer players.  
• The color mastery page also notes that tiers would be "moving targets", adjusted to account for new sets being added, but that hasn't been the case - the tier thresholds have stayed flat.
• In the Search Bar description of the Card Filter page, there is a note that the filter searches for the title of the card.  You may want to also add notes that the filter also searches the card text as well as the evergreen abilities (Legendary, Lifelink, etc.), and partial matches still pull back results (so searching "life" will pull back any card that references "Life" in its text and any card that has Lifelink as an ability).
• While you have details on deck-building concepts, could you add some notes on how to adjust the custom deck, and what those card selection screens look like?
  
• Would it be possible to mention that the blue banner on a deck means there are Legacy cards in the deck?  I know a lot of new players get confused on the Legacy vs Standard, and while there is a section explaining the difference, there's nothing that mentions there is a visual aid to help distinguish.

Thanks again Brigby!

Matthew

@Brigby

I like the idea here, but I also have to make a couple recommendations.

1. Permalink this somewhere within the app itself, to make it easily accessible to all newbies.
2. Make it one of the first things a new player sees, and while you're at it, throw in a link to the forum pages. Community involvement is one of the best aspects of this game, so it's a good way to bring people into the group and open them up to the possibilities.

Brakkis

Players can receive up to 6 Booster Packs and 1 Super Pack. (Origins and the 6 most recent card sets)

It's Origins and the 5 most recent sets. The Super Pack is the most recent set so it doesn't add a 6th recent set.

ElfNeedsFood

This is a good start.  I think the gem-matching (including mana bonuses) could use quite a bit of expansion, as that can be as important to grasp as deck construction.

Volrak

I think the guide is actually pretty good.  As others have said, it will only be valuable to the extent that new players know that it exists, so making it visible is really important.  (EDIT: I can already see a link to the guide in the Inbox, which is great)

One thing on the Card Filter page - the description of the Search Bar talks about searching for a card by title, but in fact it matches text anywhere on the card, not just the title.  E.g. if you need zombies for a summon 13 zombies objective, putting "zombie" in the search bar lets you find zombie cards even if they don't have "zombie" in their title.

Brigby

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I've gone ahead and added the majority of those suggestions, although some of the more complex ones require additional articles to be written. In due time!

Laeuftbeidir

Brigby said:

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I've gone ahead and added the majority of those suggestions, although some of the more complex ones require additional articles to be written. In due time!

Maybe @Gabrosin would be open to share his great work with you

Gabrosin

Laeuftbeidir said:

Brigby said:

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I've gone ahead and added the majority of those suggestions, although some of the more complex ones require additional articles to be written. In due time!

Maybe @Gabrosin would be open to share his great work with you

I wasn't sure whether posting the link to my intro guide would be appropriate here.  For one thing, it's still a work in progress; for another, it contains a lot of personal opinions about what players *should* do, rather than sticking to the facts of the game like an "official" player's guide should.

Regardless, anyone interested in taking a look can find it here.

Laeuftbeidir

Gabrosin said:

Laeuftbeidir said:

Brigby said:

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I've gone ahead and added the majority of those suggestions, although some of the more complex ones require additional articles to be written. In due time!

Maybe @Gabrosin would be open to share his great work with you

I wasn't sure whether posting the link to my intro guide would be appropriate here.  For one thing, it's still a work in progress; for another, it contains a lot of personal opinions about what players *should* do, rather than sticking to the facts of the game like an "official" player's guide should.

Regardless, anyone interested in taking a look can find it here.

Regardless of the personal opinions: the feedback process you used makes all topics relevant for a good guide.. They most likely won't use it directly, but the headlines alone are valuable IMO

Azerack

@Gabrosin - I was just starting to read your guide and I noticed you make this quote in the "Am I ready to move to the next Mastery level?"..
" Even if you are taking first place in every event and earning a couple bonus rares or packs each week for your success, it’s dwarfed by the chance to earn 180 extra crystals each week through Across Ixalan alone…"

You aren't actually earning 180 crystals (30 * 6), but only 60 (10 * 6) because of the cost to enter the event, which is 20 crystals, which, if the new player is starting out, they will need to save to enter their first one. 

That said, @Brigby 's guide could take a couple pages from this (and I mean inspiration, not copy and paste, of course.   )

Gabrosin

Azerack said:

@Gabrosin - I was just starting to read your guide and I noticed you make this quote in the "Am I ready to move to the next Mastery level?"..
" Even if you are taking first place in every event and earning a couple bonus rares or packs each week for your success, it’s dwarfed by the chance to earn 180 extra crystals each week through Across Ixalan alone…"

You aren't actually earning 180 crystals (30 * 6), but only 60 (10 * 6) because of the cost to enter the event, which is 20 crystals, which, if the new player is starting out, they will need to save to enter their first one. 

That said, @Brigby 's guide could take a couple pages from this (and I mean inspiration, not copy and paste, of course.   )

The 180 crystal difference is being measured by assuming that the player will want to compete in AXLN every day anyway, at any mastery level.  Getting a pack for just 20 crystals, needing only one win to do it, is going to be solid value anyway.  So those 120 crystals are a sunk cost... hence in platinum, your profit really is 180 crystals for consistently going the distance.

Laeuftbeidir

@Brigby

Shouldn't this be pinned at the appropriate subforum? I wanted to recommend this thread.. Didn't find it easily.