Hopes for the future of the game

Laeuftbeidir

Let's start something productive.. What are you guys hoping for? No ranting here, keep it positive! For that reason I won't talk about bugs or communication here.

I'll start..

I hope for coalitions returning to be more relevant for the devs. They're the backbone of the game. Starting to delete inactive ones was already a good move in the right direction, but the lack of new coalition events is demotivating.

I'd like to see events with set restrictions in the future. Not every event, but every once in a while. Give the vets an incentive to not play the same decks everywhere. Duel decks would be the perfect environment for that, since every player receives a starting pack with some cards from the right set. A booster after the first win could ensure that they have some toys to play around with as well.

I hope the devs are careful what toys they give blue. Standard will be much more healthy after BSZ and STV rotate out.. And Ghalta. I guess beacon bolt will be a thing for a while..This standard is broken as legacy.

I'll mention the mana loading wheel so @Mburn7 has to think about something different to speak about

Mburn7

Laeuftbeidir said:

I'll mention the mana loading wheel so @Mburn7 has to think about something different to speak about

Hey, this is a very important issue that needs to be addressed.  Arguably more important than the dozens of bugs, lack of events, dozens more bugs, poor start/end/refresh timing, and bugs.

In all seriousness, though, I completely agree with this.  Its not just the big things, its the little things too.

Drogo

BSZ is really a significant problem, they shouldn't wait for it to rotate out.   The power disparity between BSZ and every other card is just hilariously, ludicrously, absurdly large (I have BSZ, this isn't sour grapes).   Really should be fixed right now.   StV is the same to a lesser degree.    Those two cards put blue literally orders of magnitude ahead of the other colours.  I don't expect perfection when balancing but this degree of imbalance is idiotic.

EvilDead

The only bad thing about BSZ is the fact that I still don't own it...........

Overall, I rarely lose to it because the AI is stupid and I'm okay with that way. 

Still it sucks cuz......I don't have it 


Edit:

New content would be nice. The same events over and over is becoming a little stale.

UweTellkampf

1. More: stuff to do. Events. Coalition interactions. Story mode. 
2. Less: bugs. 

TheDude1

I'll second the set restrictions on events.

I'm cautiously hopeful for the announced changes to color mastery.  I'm hoping this balances the need to keep similar players competitive with the fact that the Legacy card pool creates a massive disparity between skill/strength and tier.  I'm willing to bet there are a lot of people stuck in Platinum that have no real business being there, and the vast scope of decks available for Legacy play means that you could "barely" be Platinum and be in way over your head.

I'm intrigued about the new Player Level system.  It would give more incentive to master cards and the rewards are a nice perk, but it will hopefully be appropriately balanced by the color mastery changes.

I'm also hopeful/grateful that the rewards have been loosened quite a bit, even after the Holiday structure.  They're not so insane, but compared to some of the older events (Nodes of Power, Fate is Rarely Fair) you can really see the difference.

Lastly, I'm hopeful that a lot of the dissatisfaction on the known/visible bugs is a product of the fact that resources are being used to update the behind-the-scenes coding that makes things run smoother in general.  It may be Pollyannish of me, but I am seeing improvements in the implementation structure (not needing full patches for some data releases) and layering on major updates (visible graveyards, five new mechanics in both GRN and the upcoming RNA) means there had to be some major prioritization decisions to keep this game running.  It's almost as if the devs had to take one step back before taking two steps forward, and the step back was far more visible than the forward ones.  That's the only explanation I can think of that some old bugs keep popping back up after new updates, that the devs are removing the manual patches that propped up the old code as they unwind and restore the structure.

OmegaLolrus

I would love to see more story mode. I've found working on getting 100% for that to be quite entertaining.

I am excited to see where they're going with the social stuff. I'm hoping it means that the end game will be more... I don't know... social, I guess.

Thésée

I hope to see Hurloon Minotaur as one of the avatars available in the new player profile feature.

Aside from this, we really need new coalition events... Badly. I hope we'll get some.

They have completely stopped making set-related objectives. Having a secondary objective with "cast 4 cards with Surveil" could be cool.

The new version of Fate is Rarely Fair is quite fun. There are Energy and Vehicles objectives but they are not tedious like the infamous "cast 5 vehicles" was.

Just a suggestion to renew PvP

Tilwin90

I am all for story mode. It used to be seriously fun to have something to grind outside events and while some of the matches were super challenging, the fact that you could indefinitely try again without any penalty was just great.

The legacy problem can also be addressed by having events restricted to specific sets (non-standard) that bring back the love of the old sets that worked really nice in a vacuum too.
- PVP: I realize that this will be difficult to implement until it is possible to calculate tier from a group of sets instead of taking all of them into account, but hopefully this is something we can expect in the future too. 
- PVE: I think this could be implemented much safer as the PVE decks do not care about tier (that's a different issue I am not going to address here). 
I am not saying to eliminate legacy events - being able to play with broken combos has its own fun, and yes, I do enjoy them too.

I also miss planeswalker duels events. I realize they force players to purchase specific planeswalkers, and I also realize ZvE brought some of that back, but this probably would be the kind of event that's easy to implement.

I am also still dreaming that one day they will have some daily event that (semi) randomly generates objectives and restricts color nodes. I realize how some people might get pissed at the randomness of this, but hey, I want creative ways to tackle the system. Heck, if set-restricted events are possible (outside legacy/standard) that could get plugged in into the madness too.

Other ideas of formats that come to mind are
- pauper (commons & uncommons decks only in the entire event)
- budget (less restrictive pauper allowing up to 1 masterpiece (or less), 1 mythic (or less) and 2 rares (or less) in the deck) - sounds like quite some work for the devs though
- baby walkers (pick only planeswalkers from your collection but be forced to play with them at a low level) - sounds like more work for the devs
- origins walkers (play only with the origins planeswalkers)
- reverted collection (swap the players' decks at the beginning of the match) etc. - once again, sounds like some work here too

Basically this game has SO MUCH potential I am very excited to see it being developed in creative directions, as it's more than only new sets, cards and mechanics. 

wereotter

To me, the game really suffers from the lack of PvE content, especially PvE coalition content. I've not even really been playing the game much for weeks now because Rising Tensions has gotten boring. You play the same 5 decks every weekday for weeks, and the recycling of PvP legacy events might be fine for some, but not something I've ever been interested in as legacy is a broken, degenerate mess.

I feel like they've been trying to make the PvP events more interested with event effects reflected with permanent supports, but honestly those just feel like something you either ignore or use as a "win more" button since Greg rarely uses those supports to its advantage.

Mburn7

wereotter said:

To me, the game really suffers from the lack of PvE content, especially PvE coalition content. I've not even really been playing the game much for weeks now because Rising Tensions has gotten boring. You play the same 5 decks every weekday for weeks, and the recycling of PvP legacy events might be fine for some, but not something I've ever been interested in as legacy is a broken, degenerate mess.

I feel like they've been trying to make the PvP events more interested with event effects reflected with permanent supports, but honestly those just feel like something you either ignore or use as a "win more" button since Greg rarely uses those supports to its advantage.

I agree we need more content, but I don't get the "same 5 decks" thing.  You have absolutely 0 pressure to meet the secondaries or use overpowered decks.  Just fiddle with new stuff and see what happens.

But yeah, we need more new events, especially coalition ones.

wereotter

Mburn7 said:

wereotter said:

To me, the game really suffers from the lack of PvE content, especially PvE coalition content. I've not even really been playing the game much for weeks now because Rising Tensions has gotten boring. You play the same 5 decks every weekday for weeks, and the recycling of PvP legacy events might be fine for some, but not something I've ever been interested in as legacy is a broken, degenerate mess.

I feel like they've been trying to make the PvP events more interested with event effects reflected with permanent supports, but honestly those just feel like something you either ignore or use as a "win more" button since Greg rarely uses those supports to its advantage.

I agree we need more content, but I don't get the "same 5 decks" thing.  You have absolutely 0 pressure to meet the secondaries or use overpowered decks.  Just fiddle with new stuff and see what happens.

But yeah, we need more new events, especially coalition ones.

For me, personally, it's a matter of how the nodes for Rising Tensions are handled. The event doesn't start for me until later in the evening, so unless I log into the event and start fights immediately, I'm disadvantaged the next morning when I try to play on the train ride into work because the other nodes don't add charges until they unlock (unlike Across Ixalan where all nodes started banking charges as soon as the event started)

So I find just to recoup my entry fee, I'm forced to use the same few decks that I know will win and meet the secondary objectives rather than do something new or interesting, else I am more likely to either lose a match, locking me out of later nodes entirely, or not meet enough secondary objectives to make back the crystals I spend entering the event. It's a two-fold problem where there aren't enough other ways to make back those crystals if you fail, and no real way to try again if you're not starting the event as soon as it starts.

Mburn7

wereotter said:

Mburn7 said:

wereotter said:

To me, the game really suffers from the lack of PvE content, especially PvE coalition content. I've not even really been playing the game much for weeks now because Rising Tensions has gotten boring. You play the same 5 decks every weekday for weeks, and the recycling of PvP legacy events might be fine for some, but not something I've ever been interested in as legacy is a broken, degenerate mess.

I feel like they've been trying to make the PvP events more interested with event effects reflected with permanent supports, but honestly those just feel like something you either ignore or use as a "win more" button since Greg rarely uses those supports to its advantage.

I agree we need more content, but I don't get the "same 5 decks" thing.  You have absolutely 0 pressure to meet the secondaries or use overpowered decks.  Just fiddle with new stuff and see what happens.

But yeah, we need more new events, especially coalition ones.

For me, personally, it's a matter of how the nodes for Rising Tensions are handled. The event doesn't start for me until later in the evening, so unless I log into the event and start fights immediately, I'm disadvantaged the next morning when I try to play on the train ride into work because the other nodes don't add charges until they unlock (unlike Across Ixalan where all nodes started banking charges as soon as the event started)

So I find just to recoup my entry fee, I'm forced to use the same few decks that I know will win and meet the secondary objectives rather than do something new or interesting, else I am more likely to either lose a match, locking me out of later nodes entirely, or not meet enough secondary objectives to make back the crystals I spend entering the event. It's a two-fold problem where there aren't enough other ways to make back those crystals if you fail, and no real way to try again if you're not starting the event as soon as it starts.

Hmm, that is definitely a problem.  For me the event starts late at night and runs all day the next day, so running a couple fights during my commute leaves me plenty of charges throughout the day if I need.

Luckily the solution to this is really easy:  Just add a few hours onto the event (maybe make it run 26 hours and then start the next day a couple hours later so no time zone is completely screwed every day).

Unluckily the devs have almost never listened to complaints about timing issues with events and they probably won't start now (and considering what happens when they do "listen" to us I'm starting to think its better this way)

Kinesia

I find doing even 1 game the night before so in the morning that 1 node will have 4 charges is enough to easily finish the rest in the 5 hours I have left.

Skiglass6

Kinesia said:

I find doing even 1 game the night before so in the morning that 1 node will have 4 charges is enough to easily finish the rest in the 5 hours I have left.

The first node charges even if you do not play it in the beginning. But when I do not have time to play once for each node I always start the first match of the next node and just quit.  Then that node will charge during the down time.  I really do not need the extra charges but this mitigates the chance that I lose the 1st match on the node as I am trying to progress through the nodes.