3.3 Release Notes *Updated (4/3/19)

Gabrosin

starfall said:

So much stuff that works with creatures at a time when creatures are weaker than they've ever been.

Sure, but that's not really on D3/Oktagon.  I think their mechanical adaptations of the five RNA abilities basically make sense; I would not have predicted the new adapt gems, that's neat to see.

Plus, swinging your creatures takes less than 25 seconds, so all hail a new era!

Brakkis

The Good
1. The new Planeswalkers all look solid. Can't wait to try them out.

2. I like how the new mechanics were all implemented.

3. Thank you for unlocking all the nodes in Rising Tensions!

The Bad
1. Still no new coalition events? We're really, truly, honestly, so very tired of running the same ones ad infinitum. They don't always need to be super complex. Just give us a basic coalition event along the lines of Trial of Ambition. Give us something!
 - The game is built on coalitions and community. You're leaving them with nothing to unite over except dissatisfaction at the lack of new stuff to do.
 - Duel Decks is not a substitute. Solo PvE events are not a substitute. RT is not a substitute.

2. The loop changes are not good. It will render a number of cards useless because they alone will eat up a large chunk of the allotted time. It also fails to account for animation times and multiple tokens being generated from a single card.

The Why
1. WIll Agrus Kos ever get his Legendary evergreen!?

2. Those are some fancy guild animations. They're also superfluous and probably can't be turned off just like the ones we already don't want to sit through. Like gem conversion with Path of Discovery. Especially with that new loop timer.

2. Will Alhammarret's Archive ever get fixed to trigger on Draw or shall it forever turn Draw in to Fetch?

Brigby

Hi Everyone. Quick heads up that I spoke with the team, and they mentioned that the first Match-5 in a player's turn will add an extra 10 seconds to the timer. Each additional Match-5 following this will yield diminishing returns on the amount of seconds added.

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ArielSira

What tfg76 said about the 25 seconds rule; it should only count for the AI. If that's the case it's great.

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Gabrosin

starfall said:

Gabrosin said:

starfall said:

So much stuff that works with creatures at a time when creatures are weaker than they've ever been.

Sure, but that's not really on D3/Oktagon.  I think their mechanical adaptations of the five RNA abilities basically make sense; I would not have predicted the new adapt gems, that's neat to see.

Plus, swinging your creatures takes less than 25 seconds, so all hail a new era!

Yeah, but I don't like all the +1/+1s. Adapt and Riot are only going to matter in Bronze Tier. They could have scaled those up so they matter to MTGPQ life totals instead of paper MTG ones.

Riot will just be haste, except when reinforcing your creature.  Domri giving out riot to any creature is going to have some nice synergies.  Still, it's true that +1/+1 is not a huge bump in PQ terms.

I'm more excited about spectacle.

Tremayne

@Brigby - I made a small test to see if the example with BtB above was valid.

testplatform IPad Pro, iOS 12.1.4
MTGPQ app
Client version 3.2.0.29247
Data version 3.2.0.29258

Settings
power saving on
card visual aid Auto

granted I made a deck with cards that did various things on entering the battlefield

Creatures
startled awake
Maverick Thopterist
Aviation Pioneer 

Spells
BtB
infinite oblivion 
Tezzerets ambition

Supports
Blightcaster
Throne of the god pharaoh 
Deadlock trap
Era of innovation 

Empty hand of cards ~3 sec
Draw 6 new cards and fill them with mana ~10 sec
effects of cards in hand 15-20 sec

In total it took 30 sec +/- 5 sec to complete.
Fastest test was 27 sec.
slowest test was 35 sec.

Update - ran a few more tests
lowest 24 sec.
highest 53 sec. I finally got the BtB and Startled Awake in the same draw and it ran for the longest time but the scenario is mute, since there is a confirmation box, so that resets the timer

I ran the test three times to get more accurate results. (I wanted to build a deck that could refill BtB multiple times through the use of Startled Awake, but I was unsuccessful in getting the desired draw)

So the test seems to verify that the example is accurate to illustrate an issue with a timer of 25 sec. Clarification the effect of BtB will finish within 15 sec, but if there are any additional effects with the cards drawn it will get close to the limit of 25 sec.

So will all cards after the 25 sec mark failed to resolve, even with full mana?
As far as I can tell there is not release any information that explains that situation.

Brigby

Gabrosin said:

starfall said:

Yeah, but I don't like all the +1/+1s. Adapt and Riot are only going to matter in Bronze Tier. They could have scaled those up so they matter to MTGPQ life totals instead of paper MTG ones.

Riot will just be haste, except when reinforcing your creature.  Domri giving out riot to any creature is going to have some nice synergies.  Still, it's true that +1/+1 is not a huge bump in PQ terms.

I'm more excited about spectacle.

I haven't looked through all the cards in RNA yet, but I hope that there's a card that passively grants Riot to creatures that enter the battlefield, because then that would be a huge boost to token generators. Combine that with Path of Discovery, and you've got a big creature fast! 

Brakkis

Brigby said:

Gabrosin said:

starfall said:

Yeah, but I don't like all the +1/+1s. Adapt and Riot are only going to matter in Bronze Tier. They could have scaled those up so they matter to MTGPQ life totals instead of paper MTG ones.

Riot will just be haste, except when reinforcing your creature.  Domri giving out riot to any creature is going to have some nice synergies.  Still, it's true that +1/+1 is not a huge bump in PQ terms.

I'm more excited about spectacle.

I haven't looked through all the cards in RNA yet, but I hope that there's a card that passively grants Riot to creatures that enter the battlefield, because then that would be a huge boost to token generators. Combine that with Path of Discovery, and you've got a big creature fast! 

Path of Discovery and fast do not go in the same sentence except when pointing out how not fast it is.

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Froggy

I’m looking forward to the release and the new cards.

I’ll wait it out on the 25 second timer. I think it’s too early to complain or agree with this point. I’ll just need to pray it works. I think we should all be patient on this one.

Thanks for the rest of it @Brigby. I appreciate the work put into the post.

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Brigby

Brakkis said:

Brigby said:

I haven't looked through all the cards in RNA yet, but I hope that there's a card that passively grants Riot to creatures that enter the battlefield, because then that would be a huge boost to token generators. Combine that with Path of Discovery, and you've got a big creature fast! 

Path of Discovery and fast do not go in the same sentence except when pointing out how not fast it is.

Well...in this case, my implication is that it'd be faster than casting the same creature multiple times to reinforce it to that level. I guess a more accurate description would be "...you've got a big creature in less turns!"

starfall said:

I'm not sure I fully understand the loop control system, but it does seem to be nothing like we've asked for.

Ending the loop too early on the opponent's turn just means we get autowins against decks like OmniHulk, which is not something we asked for. If Greg's looping deck is going off, then it's going to kill us. We shouldn't be allowed to curtail it and go on to win the game; we should only be allowed to forfeit the game ourselves without having to wait for the combo to end.

Similarly, we don't want any kind of time on our OWN turns when we are creating combo decks: All we want is a way to break out of the loop, should it become infinite, or, when we have lethal power on the table. Press a button, end our turn, and then, hopefully, go on to win the game.

Doing this with a timer is an awful way to implement it. Wasn't there a thread about this in the suggestions forum?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds to me like you do want infinite loops in the game, however you just want to be able to stop your own infinite loop once you are able to one-shot kill your opponent. Furthermore, you are okay with being forced to forfeit your game, because your opponent initiates an infinite loop. Would that be a correct analysis?

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Stormcrow

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. Quick heads up that I spoke with the team, and they mentioned that the first Match-5 in a player's turn will add an extra 10 seconds to the timer. Each additional Match-5 following this will yield diminishing returns on the amount of seconds added.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but to me this seems like it represents a fundamental philosophy change in terms of how the devs are indicating the game is "supposed" to be played. There's never before been anything that suggested long turns were bad, just that infinite loops (emphasis on the word infinite) were bad. But giving diminishing returns per extra match suggests that it's not just about going infinite, but that merely "taking long turns" is now considered a bad thing, which is a significant change (to the worse, IMO; it pushes simplicity and dumbing things down on us). Previously, cards which provided extra matches were rightly regarded as some of the most powerful and coveted chase cards around, but now it seems the devs think too many matches is bad? There's never been an infinite loop deck that relied on making extra matches AFAIK.

For an example, I've got a Tezz3 deck that runs Timestream Navigator and Stitch in Time and it's on rare occasions gotten me up to as many as 7 extra matches in a single turn (could go higher if I stuck Magistrate's Scepter in there). It also generates a lot of thopters and draws a lot cards, but it has absolutely zero capacity to go "infinite". It's definitely going to run into issues with this timer change though.

Kinesia

I suspect that some of the newer cards affect combos anyway given paper Azorius has lots of taxing effects especially Lavinia. So the entire metagame is going to change regardless.

Given that... Don't worry about the timer right now! Try it out and then argue for adjustments laters!

If you really want good evidence then video some things you like to do now and then refilm them the day of release and see how it's changed... That kind of direct comparison would carry weight.

Froggy

Stormcrow said:

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. Quick heads up that I spoke with the team, and they mentioned that the first Match-5 in a player's turn will add an extra 10 seconds to the timer. Each additional Match-5 following this will yield diminishing returns on the amount of seconds added.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but to me this seems like it represents a fundamental philosophy change in terms of how the devs are indicating the game is "supposed" to be played. There's never before been anything that suggested long turns were bad, just that infinite loops (emphasis on the word infinite) were bad. But giving diminishing returns per extra match suggests that it's not just about going infinite, but that merely "taking long turns" is now considered a bad thing, which is a significant change (to the worse, IMO; it pushes simplicity and dumbing things down on us). Previously, cards which provided extra matches were rightly regarded as some of the most powerful and coveted chase cards around, but now it seems the devs think too many matches is bad? There's never been an infinite loop deck that relied on making extra matches AFAIK.

For an example, I've got a Tezz3 deck that runs Timestream Navigator and Stitch in Time and it's on rare occasions gotten me up to as many as 7 extra matches in a single turn (could go higher if I stuck Magistrate's Scepter in there). It also generates a lot of thopters and draws a lot cards, but it has absolutely zero capacity to go "infinite". It's definitely going to run into issues with this timer change though.

How about 25+ extra swaps? The moment you get an extra swap, the counter stops and restarts.

But I guess we’ll need to wait and see what they’ve done implementing this loop-di-scoop-poop timer thing. Until then, it is left to speculation.

Thuran

Brigby said:

Gabrosin said:

starfall said:

Yeah, but I don't like all the +1/+1s. Adapt and Riot are only going to matter in Bronze Tier. They could have scaled those up so they matter to MTGPQ life totals instead of paper MTG ones.

Riot will just be haste, except when reinforcing your creature.  Domri giving out riot to any creature is going to have some nice synergies.  Still, it's true that +1/+1 is not a huge bump in PQ terms.

I'm more excited about spectacle.

I haven't looked through all the cards in RNA yet, but I hope that there's a card that passively grants Riot to creatures that enter the battlefield, because then that would be a huge boost to token generators. Combine that with Path of Discovery, and you've got a big creature fast! 

Path of discovery won't work with tokens, due to the 25 second timer....good example @Brigby