How Do You Define Skillful Play?

Laeuftbeidir

Counter question :

How important are skills in the current meta?

I think it's rather important at lower levels and at the absolute top. But in the "normal" gameplay.. Aren't cards like BSZ (a masterpiece so broken nearly everyone chased it successfully), in bolas clutches,  RishkarsEx, and so on and pws like Brokhan all no brainers leading to high win rates with no skills required?

It took some skill to develop the sunbird/bsz shell. Since it's known, there's little to no skill involved.

khurram

Matthew said:

Mburn7 said:

Volrak said:

I haven't quantified the difficulty or compared the importance of the various skills, but have instead tried to classify the most relevant skills.  So I'm listing skills even if mastering them may seem subjectively easy, or if they can have only a minor influence on outcomes.

I've put skills into three categories, from the lowest level of the game to the highest level.  One area nobody's brought up yet is the highest level category, which is long term resource management.

1. In-game strategy

  1.a Hand management
    * Choosing card order
    * When to cast vs hold vs discard cards
    * When to spend vs hold loyalty

    * When to stick to objectives vs giving them up to reduce risk of losing
    * Bug avoidance

    * Predicting the opponent's deck and the bot's play choices, as an input to all of the above
  1.b Gem matching

    * Which strategy to choose (or, how to weight competing objectives).  E.g.
      - Maximising expected gains
      - Maximising worst-case gains
      - Minimising expected opponent gains
      - Maximising loyalty vs mana
      - Whether to prioritise special gems, and which ones (activations, supports, etc)

    * Picking the optimal match given the chosen strategy and a board state
    * (Gem matching skills are highly probabilistic, i.e. any single choice may or may not pan out well, but in the long run, these skills improve game outcomes)

2. Event/match preparation

  2.a Choice of planeswalker

  2.b Choice of deck

    * (Much has been said about this already, I won't repeat it)

3. Long term resource management

  3.a Managing basic in-game resources

    * What to spend jewels, crystals, runes, and orbs on, and what to avoid

    * When to spend resources immediately to boost your short-term options (in Event/match preparation), and when to save resources to get more efficient use out of them
  3.b Other long-term in-game choices

    * Whether/when to master cards
    * Whether/when to level PWs
    * Whether/when to hoard packs
    * For the above and others, being able to apply the devs' stated future intent to the choice
  3.c Managing time

    * For players not playing 100% of events, which events to play competitively vs play casually vs skip

    * When to use a speed deck vs a safer but slower deck

  3.d Managing money

    * For paying players, which packages to spend money on

This is much less rambly than my post, but covers pretty much the same ideas.  Thanks for summarizing!

You know there’s a “Like” button for comments like this, right?

This is much less rambly than my post would have been, but covers pretty much the same idea.  Thanks for summarizing!

OmegaLolrus

Laeuftbeidir said:

Counter question :

How important are skills in the current meta?

I think it's rather important at lower levels and at the absolute top. But in the "normal" gameplay.. Aren't cards like BSZ (a masterpiece so broken nearly everyone chased it successfully), in bolas clutches,  RishkarsEx, and so on and pws like Brokhan all no brainers leading to high win rates with no skills required?

It took some skill to develop the sunbird/bsz shell. Since it's known, there's little to no skill involved.

Basically, net-decking.

Brigby

Tremayne said:

-snip-

so Brigby is this definition of skillful play intended to be used for matchmaking, sometime down the road?

Just to clarify, this thread that I created was not to infer that it's going to be directly used in the development of a specific feature or not. It was more-so my personal curiosity and desire to foster some interesting conversation topics, which was spurred from a comment in another thread referencing Skill vs Casual

That's all  

Kinesia

Laeuftbeidir said:

Counter question :

How important are skills in the current meta?

I think it's rather important at lower levels and at the absolute top. But in the "normal" gameplay.. Aren't cards like BSZ (a masterpiece so broken nearly everyone chased it successfully), in bolas clutches,  RishkarsEx, and so on and pws like Brokhan all no brainers leading to high win rates with no skills required?

It took some skill to develop the sunbird/bsz shell. Since it's known, there's little to no skill involved.

This.

The people copying the deck are showing no skill.

The people who first tinkered with it and perfected it showed a lot of skill but now it has become autopilot.

This thread helps clarify things for me...


It goes back a bit to the "cycling" arguments. Winning with cycling was not skill. Winning with Sunbird/BsZ is not skill either anymore (there's a bit of skill in ways to get new objectives with it still!)

I _want_ back and forth games and remember saying so in the distant past. A game with no interaction is no game. I don't want autopilot.  I often get combo decks working, play them twice and then dismantle them after proof of concept because they are then boring.

Winning is not proof of skill. (Though I'm obviously not a Spike! Grin. There are multiple opinions on this topic, all valid. And Magic has to appeal to ALL of them.)


So maybe the game has moved too much to Spike combo decks and Oktagon are trying to give Tim and Johnny a chance?


For me the ultimate skill is using what would otherwise be called a useless ability to save myself from certain death and come back to win (or just get close even. Sometimes Surviving for 1 more turn is an internal victory!)

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Tremayne

Brigby said:

Tremayne said:

-snip-

so Brigby is this definition of skillful play intended to be used for matchmaking, sometime down the road?

Just to clarify, this thread that I created was not to infer that it's going to be directly used in the development of a specific feature or not. It was more-so my personal curiosity and desire to foster some interesting conversation topics, which was spurred from a comment in another thread referencing Skill vs Casual

That's all  

Not a problem. As noted earlier this is a good initiative.

madwren

starfall said:

Kinesia said:

So maybe the game has moved too much to Spike combo decks and Oktagon are trying to give Tim and Johnny a chance?

This is a card design/balance issue.

As I alluded in my earlier post, the game moved towards combo because of numerous intrinsic gameplay features with Puzzle Quest. I say features, and not flaws, because the game is what it is, and if they can't design cards that make it into a proper game, that's on the designers.

Consider these aspects of PQ design:

1. inflated life totals and failure to scale cards properly
2. the three-creature limit
3. inability to have interactive creature combat (such as assigning blockers)
4. random and inequitable mana generation
5. 10-card limit when creating decks, yet the deck infinitely repeats
6. inability to target supports

Each of those aspects could be the subject of its own post, so I won't delve into them here, but they have all contributed to the current game state: minimizing the role and relevancy of most creatures while maximizing the abuse of spells and supports. 

"We need to stop combo", they say, as they design the umpteenth overcosted creature with Activate 1: Gain +1/+1.

And, honestly, there's skill in recognizing the game for what it is, rather than what we want it to be, and playing successful decks that leverage that.

wereotter

To me, when it comes to gauging other players, there's only one thing I can assess them on, and that's deckbuilding.

To me, I make judgment based off of "is this player doing something interesting, different, or unique? Or, is this player just following the crowd and stuffing a deck full of power cards to force a win?"

I often find I have a greater interest when I see what a deck is trying to do, even if the AI doesn't know how to pilot the deck, than I do when I just see a Kiora deck looping green gem converters into oblivion or, when I look at my coalitions decks, seeing every deck with Deploy the Gatewatch or some other similar card.

Basically I view relying on power cards as a crutch as less interesting or skillful, and value more highly decks that have good synergy and interesting strategies.

madwren

Kinesia said:

Laeuftbeidir said:

Counter question :

How important are skills in the current meta?

I think it's rather important at lower levels and at the absolute top. But in the "normal" gameplay.. Aren't cards like BSZ (a masterpiece so broken nearly everyone chased it successfully), in bolas clutches,  RishkarsEx, and so on and pws like Brokhan all no brainers leading to high win rates with no skills required?

It took some skill to develop the sunbird/bsz shell. Since it's known, there's little to no skill involved.

This.

The people copying the deck are showing no skill.

The people who first tinkered with it and perfected it showed a lot of skill but now it has become autopilot.

Skill doesn't begin and end with creating something. It also includes being able to successfully implement something yourself that has been shown to work previously. In any competitive arena, there will be people who think of things first, and there will then be imitators.  This is true in Magic, in chess, in the NFL.

It's incorrect to assume that the originator of a deck concept also perfected it. Speaking from experience in Goblinpile, oftentimes one of us comes up with a deck idea, then the others refine and improve upon it (or even pivot in a direction not originally anticipated).

In PQ, having only 10 slots for cards means that deck building is skewed towards the best cards available--i.e., the no-brainers that Laeuftbedir mentions above.  Many cards are rendered immediately irrelevant upon release because something strictly superior exists. Similarly, I'd posit there are a lot of cases of simultaneous invention.

Laeuftbeidir

Kinesia said:

Laeuftbeidir said:

Counter question :

How important are skills in the current meta?

I think it's rather important at lower levels and at the absolute top. But in the "normal" gameplay.. Aren't cards like BSZ (a masterpiece so broken nearly everyone chased it successfully), in bolas clutches,  RishkarsEx, and so on and pws like Brokhan all no brainers leading to high win rates with no skills required?

It took some skill to develop the sunbird/bsz shell. Since it's known, there's little to no skill involved.

This.

The people copying the deck are showing no skill.

The people who first tinkered with it and perfected it showed a lot of skill but now it has become autopilot.

This thread helps clarify things for me...


It goes back a bit to the "cycling" arguments. Winning with cycling was not skill. Winning with Sunbird/BsZ is not skill either anymore (there's a bit of skill in ways to get new objectives with it still!)

You can "thank" @Nyarlathothep and me for the shell (we decided on sharing the blame 50/50). It spread from our Slack to other groups and into the game (still possible that other players came up with it individually).

I disagree a bit with you here. Whenever I see a deck with an interesting concept, I take the idea and play around with it myself to see how it's going for me. Like creatureless tez 2, a highly effective deck even in the hands of Greg whose idea I took over when it wrecked me. Enemys are just a source of inspiration, taking over idea doesn't make you a bad deck designer

Unknown

This content has been removed.

madwren

starfall said:

madwren said:

starfall said:

Kinesia said:

So maybe the game has moved too much to Spike combo decks and Oktagon are trying to give Tim and Johnny a chance?

This is a card design/balance issue.

As I alluded in my earlier post, the game moved towards combo because of numerous intrinsic gameplay features with Puzzle Quest. I say features, and not flaws, because the game is what it is, and if they can't design cards that make it into a proper game, that's on the designers.

Consider these aspects of PQ design:

1. inflated life totals and failure to scale cards properly
2. the three-creature limit
3. inability to have interactive creature combat (such as assigning blockers)
4. random and inequitable mana generation
5. 10-card limit when creating decks, yet the deck infinitely repeats
6. inability to target supports

Each of those aspects could be the subject of its own post, so I won't delve into them here, but they have all contributed to the current game state: minimizing the role and relevancy of most creatures while maximizing the abuse of spells and supports.  

You're conflating early design choices baked into the structure of the game (e.g. the three card limit) with choices made on a daily basis by the designers of the objects within the game (e.g. 'failure to scale cards properly').

I believe that the dominance of spells in the current meta is as a result of the specific spells and creatures (and other objects) being designed, not intrinsic features of game structure itself.

In paper MTG, if you want to kill your opponent by attacking, you have 2 choices; go big (few creatures of great size) or go wide (many creatures of small size). Clearly, the three creature limit in MTGPQ means that going wide is never an option. But MTGPQ also contains features which should favour beatdown decks, such as the inability to block.

Why is going big in MTGPQ not favorable? One reason is the specific creature control spells and effects available to players. As a player facing a beatdown deck, I have some ludicrously cheap options to shutdown large creatures; e.g. Perilous Voyage and Plague Wind. As a player hoping to play a beatdown deck myself, I'm less likely to run into these spells, as Greg does not rank them highly in it's play order, but it can still happen, and I *am* likely to run into the most played PW in the game, Nicol Bolas, and his first ability which kills creatures.

Further to this, PW life totals are increasing. In the early days of the game, Ob Nixilis' 119 life seemed extraordinarily high; nowadays it's pretty unspectacular, and quite a few PWs have around 135.

None of these features is baked into the fabric of the game, Oktagon have decided to make spells and effects which make playing creatures unfavorable.

I think I might have been unclear (or maybe you are), but it sounds like we're actually in agreement here: That we've arrived at this point because of a failure to design cards that reflect/match/facilitate the underlying game structure.

For example, scaling.  Designing cards with "Activate 1: Your creature gets +1/+1 and target opponent creature gets -1/-1" type effects is a failure because it fails to reflect the reality of the inflated life totals.  

Similarly, designing creatures with low power/high cost, while designing spells with high power/low cost, is a failure because the three-creature limit makes it fairly trivial to keep the board clear.

Thus, spells and supports rise to dominance because, as stated, playing creatures has become more and more unfavorable.

Gilesclone

Red damage spells are largely trivialized by their conversion from paper to PQ.  A spell that does 4 damage in paper has done 20% of the opponent’s health.  This card is then translated to 6 damage in PQ which is less than 6%.  A whole category of cards marginalized by sloppy thinking.

[Deleted User]

madwren said:

starfall said:

madwren said:

starfall said:

Kinesia said:

So maybe the game has moved too much to Spike combo decks and Oktagon are trying to give Tim and Johnny a chance?

This is a card design/balance issue.

As I alluded in my earlier post, the game moved towards combo because of numerous intrinsic gameplay features with Puzzle Quest. I say features, and not flaws, because the game is what it is, and if they can't design cards that make it into a proper game, that's on the designers.

Consider these aspects of PQ design:

1. inflated life totals and failure to scale cards properly
2. the three-creature limit
3. inability to have interactive creature combat (such as assigning blockers)
4. random and inequitable mana generation
5. 10-card limit when creating decks, yet the deck infinitely repeats
6. inability to target supports

Each of those aspects could be the subject of its own post, so I won't delve into them here, but they have all contributed to the current game state: minimizing the role and relevancy of most creatures while maximizing the abuse of spells and supports.  

You're conflating early design choices baked into the structure of the game (e.g. the three card limit) with choices made on a daily basis by the designers of the objects within the game (e.g. 'failure to scale cards properly').

I believe that the dominance of spells in the current meta is as a result of the specific spells and creatures (and other objects) being designed, not intrinsic features of game structure itself.

In paper MTG, if you want to kill your opponent by attacking, you have 2 choices; go big (few creatures of great size) or go wide (many creatures of small size). Clearly, the three creature limit in MTGPQ means that going wide is never an option. But MTGPQ also contains features which should favour beatdown decks, such as the inability to block.

Why is going big in MTGPQ not favorable? One reason is the specific creature control spells and effects available to players. As a player facing a beatdown deck, I have some ludicrously cheap options to shutdown large creatures; e.g. Perilous Voyage and Plague Wind. As a player hoping to play a beatdown deck myself, I'm less likely to run into these spells, as Greg does not rank them highly in it's play order, but it can still happen, and I *am* likely to run into the most played PW in the game, Nicol Bolas, and his first ability which kills creatures.

Further to this, PW life totals are increasing. In the early days of the game, Ob Nixilis' 119 life seemed extraordinarily high; nowadays it's pretty unspectacular, and quite a few PWs have around 135.

None of these features is baked into the fabric of the game, Oktagon have decided to make spells and effects which make playing creatures unfavorable.

I think I might have been unclear (or maybe you are), but it sounds like we're actually in agreement here: That we've arrived at this point because of a failure to design cards that reflect/match/facilitate the underlying game structure.

For example, scaling.  Designing cards with "Activate 1: Your creature gets +1/+1 and target opponent creature gets -1/-1" type effects is a failure because it fails to reflect the reality of the inflated life totals.  

Similarly, designing creatures with low power/high cost, while designing spells with high power/low cost, is a failure because the three-creature limit makes it fairly trivial to keep the board clear.

Thus, spells and supports rise to dominance because, as stated, playing creatures has become more and more unfavorable.

I agree w this so much. Mentor - trash. This new ability - trash. Its so weaksauce.

And i dont get what starfall is really trying to get at... 

[Deleted User]

Gilesclone said:

Red damage spells are largely trivialized by their conversion from paper to PQ.  A spell that does 4 damage in paper has done 20% of the opponent’s health.  This card is then translated to 6 damage in PQ which is less than 6%.  A whole category of cards marginalized by sloppy thinking.

This too. Agree. Red is just crippled.

FindingHeart8

Close battles. Adrenaline rushing. A player giving it their all.  These are the fundamentals for building a skillful player.

madwren

Gilesclone said:

Red damage spells are largely trivialized by their conversion from paper to PQ.  A spell that does 4 damage in paper has done 20% of the opponent’s health.  This card is then translated to 6 damage in PQ which is less than 6%.  A whole category of cards marginalized by sloppy thinking.

Another great example.

Tying this back to the original topic: Skill is realizing that the best use for most red burn is killing your weenie creatures so you don't have to wait 30 turns for Greg to hopefully kill your creatures and fulfill a "lose X units" objective. =p

Outersider

To me skillful play is playing with the cards you have and winning.   Creative play is seeing a deck that I've never seen before.. Boring play is seeing a deck 5 times in a row.. Frustrating play is playing and facing infinite loops and bugs....