What did you think of BoFT Part 1?

Mburn7

I'm bored.  When I'm bored I make polls.  So, what did everyone think of the new first half of BoFT?

Feden

Hmm, tough question.  If I were strictly comparing this event to the first three nodes of old BoFT, I definitely like it better.  Being able to actually cast spells on 3.3 was a huge improvement and I was probably happier than I should have been when I saw that.

However, (as a veteran now I guess) I have to say the event was quite lacking overall and I do not like the direction this seems to imply.  I spent the vast majority of in game time this weekend leveling up on Across Ixalan (475 points there...) and would have been very unhappy if this was the only thing to do.  Without the hard nodes, there's close to zero thought or effort required on this and it doesn't come close to filling a weekend on it's own.

Just to get the discussion going, I'll end on saying that this sure seems like a great mid-week coalition event now...

wereotter

Pros: I liked the reduced number of notes and change up on secondary objectives (even if some of them felt like **** compared to what your opponent is doing. Blood Sun especially felt troll-y for its secondary objectives)

Cons: Matches crashed for froze on me multiple times, and having that happen even once meant it was impossible to meet full progression. Ditto that for if you didn't meet even just a couple secondary objectives. Events don't need to have massive numbers of additional charges to meet full progress, but it shouldn't really be this tight.

So.... mixed reviews.

Brakkis

Neutral

The previous BoFT didn't bother me, at least not in terms of the number of nodes. Avacyn's Madness is 5 nodes and no one goes flipping their **** when that comes up. I never viewed the number of nodes as the problem with BoFT; I viewed the vampire node (grindy as ****) and parts of the final node (turn 3 city's blessing in 5.2, Azor's unique ability that really only functioned as a slow down mechanic) as the problem with BoFT.

We've still got those nodes coming up so we'll see how things are there but the issue was with them. Now it's just them for part 2 and I'm probably going to hate it.

Mburn7

Pretty Good! I liked it better than before

Brakkis said:

The previous BoFT didn't bother me, at least not in terms of the number of nodes. Avacyn's Madness is 5 nodes and no one goes flipping their tinykitty when that comes up. I never viewed the number of nodes as the problem with BoFT; I viewed the vampire node (grindy as tinykitty) and parts of the final node (turn 3 city's blessing in 5.2, Azor's unique ability that really only functioned as a slow down mechanic) as the problem with BoFT.

We've still got those nodes coming up so we'll see how things are there but the issue was with them. Now it's just them for part 2 and I'm probably going to hate it.

I both agree and disagree for how Part 2 is going to be.

Yes the last 2 nodes are the grindiest and most un-fun battles that exist in the game.
BUT I have to believe that if it is just them, it won't seem as bad.  It sucks to spend 2 hours clearing 1 round of charges (with 1.25 hours spent on 2 fights), but it sucks less to just spend an hour fifteen clearing 1 round of nodes (still a bit high, but not absurdly so).

Also, as long as 4.1 and 5.1 don't have pauper objectives, I find it hard to believe that the objectives would get any worse than they already were.  So that should be a nice change too.

Unknown

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fiirst

Neutral

Max pregression should be reduced from 95% to be 80%.

The duration of the event is not so grindy.

Machine

Great! I loved it

I like that there were only three nodes now, so it was way easier to actually play all the charges. I like that the event ends on Sunday and I like that the last progression reward is very close to max.

However, no player should be denied the last reward because of game freezes or bugs. They should be given these rewards if they fell victim to one of the many bugs in the game.

Edit: one point of criticism; I still feel that only six hours between the final recharge and the event end should be taken care of by the devs. There must be many players that weren't able to complete the last recharge (and thus having no chance at the last reward) because of this bad design decision. Give all the charges up front or extend the event end by 6 hours, so there's a 12 hour window between the final recharge and event end.

Tilwin90

Neutral

Difficult to answer. I don't want it back to the old structure of having 5 nodes, but looking at the individual objectives it is much grindier than I would like. But let's take it step by step:

1) The rewards - they are good, considering that the event is shorter now, 55 purples is no joke. Even the coalition 3x packs are not something to scoff at. All in all, I think this is nice for a PVE event.

2) The length of the event is much more humane now. I like that the boss health got removed and it is much more predictable. 2 days with 8 hours recharges seems fair. Having only three nodes also makes it much more manageable.

3) The progression is very tight. Do I like this? In all honesty yes, I do!
Before, it felt very annoying that you had to continue grinding 3x or 4x progression just for the coalition. One reason why I enjoyed taking a break from Avacyn's Madness was being able to finish the event by only playing 4.x and 5.x nodes. And it went very fast, didn't feel grindy or annoying! This is the kind of gameplay I want.

4) The objectives - this is where I will focus the most.
- Pauper: I think this was overused. I don't necessarily dislike the challenge, but some of the opponents already had super annoying decks (I'm looking here at both 2.1 and 3.1... don't even want to think about 4.1. or 5.1. if you guys decide to go on with the pauper theme). Playing with sticks and stones against a deck filled with rares and mythics that also has quite some relevant abilities is rather eye rolling.

Was it more challenging than playing with full mythics decks? Eh... not for me since I have access to level 60 walkers and every common and uncommon in the game. I sure bet it was horrible for newer players whose collections are not filled to the brim with relevant uncommons or very powerful walkers (though then again, it was only a side objective).

But what I know is that it made the challenges much more grindy. Had you pulled this off in the original B4T event I would've quit after the first round. It's MUCH grindier than it was before! And as I already mentioned, I dislike grindy.

- Cast X or more creatures: We've gone a bit overboard on this department, haven't we? Not like they are difficult to pull off, Sarkhan3 and Saheeli (thank you Pirate ship) make sure of that. But once again it looks tailored to owning very specific walkers or cards. I have a problem with numbers that look simply thrown in to give a challenge but don't necessarily feel tested in terms of gameplay and fun. Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean it's going to be fun and challenging.

- I appreciate the restraint of using "Take X or less damage" objectives. Zacama was way too random before, now it's highly do-able. The burst damage objectives require specific timing which is fun, and ironically enough goes in tandem with casting many creatures. (once again, I don't think this was planned, just thrown in)

- 1.1. is super random! It was before and still is now, but at least previously you didn't have to smash your opponent in 6 turns with commons and uncommons. Note that I did get a perfect score, but I am perfectly aware that I was also lucky. It was easy in the past to run into an unlucky hand and miss the 6 turns objective, but only with pauper cards is only that much more random. I have decks that can pull off a turn 6 win almost every time, but none of them can do this with high certainty in pauper builds that also have to account for possible bad starting hands or bad board states.

- 2.1. is very trollish as it was mentioned before. You want me to cast lands directly into a Blood Sun deck? Seriously?! And you want all that with pauper? Again, it wasn't challenging as pauper matches take a lot of time anyway, especially given the opponent's HP for 2.1. and 3.1., but having to put bad cards in the deck just to meet the objectives felt mean.


Overall feel: better than before because it's shorter and has fewer nodes, but some of the nodes take a lot more time due to the abuse of pauper.

Falizar

Would have liked to have seen shorter refresh times - event was short and I feel 6 hour recharges would have made it better. 

fiirst

Neutral

Falizar said:

Would have liked to have seen shorter refresh times - event was short and I feel 6 hour recharges would have made it better. 

prefer longer event lifetime than a shorter recharge rate, like additional 8 or 16 hrs longer.

Bil

Pretty Good! I liked it better than before

Hell ... that felt good to wake up on a monday without any coalition node to grind! 

arNero

Pretty Good! I liked it better than before

The objectives are on average more agreeable than the last one, though the sheer number of paupers were really annoying. And fewer games to play is a plus, generally, especially since now we have to deal with double TG.

Still, some people are right in saying that the progression completion required is just too unforgiving, though at the same time I didn't pay enough attention to that, only that I was sure I missed the final progression reward.

Sorin81

Pretty Good! I liked it better than before

Bil said:

Hell ... that felt good to wake up on a monday without any coalition node to grind! 

I'm the opposite. I have little time on Sunday to clear so I rely on the event going into Monday morning to catch up on what I couldn't get to the day before.

Elektrophorus

Pretty Good! I liked it better than before

Sorin81 said:

Bil said:

Hell ... that felt good to wake up on a monday without any coalition node to grind! 

I'm the opposite. I have little time on Sunday to clear so I rely on the event going into Monday morning to catch up on what I couldn't get to the day before.

A solution that has always been thrown around is just frontloading the charges and stopping accrual after a certain time. However, it’s clear the framework just isn’t there yet.

Brakkis

Neutral

Tilwin90 said:

2) The length of the event is much more humane now. I like that the boss health got removed and it is much more predictable. 2 days with 8 hours recharges seems fair. Having only three nodes also makes it much more manageable.

3) The progression is very tight. Do I like this? In all honesty yes, I do!
Before, it felt very annoying that you had to continue grinding 3x or 4x progression just for the coalition. One reason why I enjoyed taking a break from Avacyn's Madness was being able to finish the event by only playing 4.x and 5.x nodes. And it went very fast, didn't feel grindy or annoying! This is the kind of gameplay I want.

There wasn't any boss health in the original BoFT. Just the timer.

The Dragon War is the one that has full points being more than 4 times the progression. BoFT max points were around 1000 and max progression was 700. We didn't have to play much beyond the point of progression. You could come close to reaching progression doing the same thing here as AM; however, unlike AM, 4.x was the grindiest **** ever and 5.2 wasn't very well balanced. We have yet to see if they fixed those issues in the upcoming BoFT part 2.


Tilwin90 said:

- 2.1. is very trollish as it was mentioned before. You want me to cast lands directly into a Blood Sun deck? Seriously?! And you want all that with pauper? Again, it wasn't challenging as pauper matches take a lot of time anyway, especially given the opponent's HP for 2.1. and 3.1., but having to put bad cards in the deck just to meet the objectives felt mean.

Karn gate deck blows through 2.1 with ease.

• All 5 Guildgates 
• Glaive of the Guildpact or Guild Summit 
• Gatekeeper Gargoyle or Awakened Amalgam
• District Guide
• Tatyova, Benthic Druid or Garrison Sergeant 
• Sylvan Awakening 

IM_CARLOS

Neutral

It was grinding before and now only 60% grinding.

It's not really new. Not like an PvE with Eavnica Opponents and cards. 

Max. Progression are a little to close to max. pts. 

It suffer on same old bug like before. 


Okay it's better than HOD or RotGP over and over again, but...

TomB

Good! I liked it before and I still like it now

I didn't think it was great before, but this was better. I would echo the sentiments related previously about progression being too close to max points, and it seemed like there was only a couple hours available to do the last node refresh before it ended. The Pauper objectives were OK I thought. I'll reserve total judgement until we see what Pt. 2 looks like, since those nodes were the worst part of the original incarnation.

It IS better than another running of the HOU events though...

rafalele

Pretty Good! I liked it better than before

I prefer this version though the max progression is too close to total available points. And in the second part is the same but with harder enemies.

James13

Good! I liked it before and I still like it now

What makes one think that part 2 points per node would be revised downward when part 1 points matched the original run points per node?  I'm expecting 20/25/30 (50 Azor) point nodes which would make the margins comparatively huge for part 2.

Unknown

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