What would mtgpq look like in another reality?

nerdstrap

As the 3.3 patch of doom approaches, I go back to a thought I've always had. As a mobile software developer, I've always wanted to rewrite mtgpq from the ground up. The mechanics of the game are fun, and the IP is engaging. The current implementation hits it out of the park most of the time, wins too much in a few areas, and misses the ball completely in many more.

If you were to change any card in mtgpq from how it is currently working, what would it be?

I'll start:
Beacon Bolt in paper magic only targets creatures. In mtgpq it targets players too. This is a fundamental change that enables degenerate plays. I would fix it to only target creatures. This would remove it from 90% of the decks it is currently in.

mtgpq Beacon Bolt: Deal damage to any target equal to the total number of Spells in your graveyard.

paper Beacon Bolt: Beacon Bolt deals damage to target creature equal to the total number of instant and sorcery cards you own in exile and in your graveyard.

Mburn7

I actually don't have a problem with most of the cards' translations into PQ form.

My bigger issue is the rules coding (or lack thereof).

If I was making MTGPQ from scratch I would make sure basic effects and objective rules were clearly defined (probably as classes or something similar) that could be easily inserted into any event/card.  That would probably eliminate 75% of the issues with the game, and make it easier to do stuff like make new events and cards.

wereotter

I think Beacon Bolt, in your example, is a good deviation from paper magic.

In paper magic, espeically in formats like commander, you could put a beacon bolt into Eye of the Storm and kill everyone at the table in basically no time at all if it could target players as it would be easy to fill your graveyard and exile with enough instants and sorceries to have it deal lethal damage to any player in a single cast. In Puzzle Quest, however, inflated life totals make it a lot harder for Beacon Bolt to get to the point that a single cast of the spell is lethal, and likely that once the spell is actually dangerous, you've already been hit with at least a few other burn spells.

But (and I will admit to going on a tangent here) I think that red burn spells in general have been too underpowered. They were find when the game launched as they were mildly inflated while creatures, generally, were also mildly inflated, but red burn could still kill them, and life totals were mostly below 100, so the 6 points of damage from Exquisite Firecraft was extremely relevant. Now when you're looking at Ajani with 140 life, 6 points of damage is much less impactful. It's the same problem spells like Lightning Bolt have in the commander format. Inflated life totals and larger creatures make burn spells too weak to keep up.

tfg76

Agree with @Mburn7 . Clearly the developers aren't following tried-and-true practices of object-oriented programming. 

Laeuftbeidir

After reading the introduction, I kind of expected more, broader changes instead of micromanagement (I don't disagree with your point!).

If being able to change some things fundamentally...

The AI behavior should change between tiers. Win/loss ratio should more be in the 1/1 area. It's what you'd expect from real pvp, why not here? To not punish newer players, the AI should skale up, though.

That would make an Elo system more effective to have a better basis for matchmaking.

Also the event rewards should be distributed over the overall event progression differently : more rewards at lower scores in bronze, but fewer at higher scores, and an even distribution in platinum.

TheDude1

I had a lot of thoughts ready to go but then I realized:

• Like the reactions to the last couple update patches, this thread is likely going to yet again dredge up all the angst and hostility and negativity about why this game isn't what we want it to be; and
• Like the Suggestions forum, where all of these same ideas have been discussed in one shape or form, this thread is going to be more or less ignored (or at least de-prioritized)

So I deleted my post because why bother?  Yay Nihilism!

sjechua

Actual Player versus Player... mic drop

Tilwin90

I'd be able to chain 4 March off the multitudes in the same turn. #OhYesIDid

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Wafflesauce

The color pie would have been adhered to, and when it wasn't, those cards would have been tweaked in a later patch. 

The biggest example is that Blue should not have fast/free mana such as Startled Awake, Desert of the Mindful, and Blue Sun's Zenith.

Once (almost) all supports became artifacts, enchantments, and land subtypes, previous support destruction would have been adjusted. 
Red shouldn't be able to remove enchantments. White shouldn't be able to blow up (one) land.

Also, in my fantasy world, the frequency of how much cards get played would be closely watched. 
Cards that are excessively represented would get 10%-30% power nerfs/cost increase. Cards that are severely under represented would get 10%-30% buffs/cost decrease - leading to a healthy, varied, and diverse metagame. 

Wafflesauce

It may have been too complicated, but in the same vein as the color pie, I also wish that there was a cost increase if you are playing a multicolored card but it has a color outside of your Planeswalker's colors. 
Say a 50% "color tax".
Blue still gets direct damage with Beacon Bolt, but if you're not Ral, Saheeli, Bolas, or Sarkhan 3, it costs 13.
Green can still kill creatures with Assassin's Trophy, but if you're not Vraska, it costs 11.
Black can get Support removal from Anguished Unmaking but if you're not Sorin or Kaya, it costs 18.

Thuran

And blue should definetly not have waaaay more powerful and cheaper kill spells than black! Ever!

Black is all about killing and cheap draw in exchange for something else, but blue does both of those things better, with no caveat.

So, why is black even in the game?

madwren

Yeah, it's hard to pick out individual cards.  I think the biggest change I would make is stopping the blue train.  Both the fast mana and bounce = destruction aspects of blue are pretty egregious offenders.  I'm a big believer in the color pie and PQ decided that blue needed to eat the whole darn thing.

Red spells often being useless is also incredibly frustrating. 

This really mimics my post in one of the myriad other threads about the intrinsic flaws of the game, though. I'd make supports targetable. I'd make creature combat interactive and choice-driven. I'd properly scale cards to reflect the inflated life totals so that we never have to suffer through a "+1/+1" effect again. Etc.

TheDude1

Wafflesauce said:

Also, in my fantasy world, the frequency of how much cards get played would be closely watched. 
Cards that are excessively represented would get 10%-30% power nerfs/cost increase. Cards that are severely under represented would get 10%-30% buffs/cost decrease - leading to a healthy, varied, and diverse metagame. 

I know I said I wouldn't post my thoughts but I wanted to highlight this part specifically as a really key point.  TL;DR: Investigate the issue narrowly, and own the nerf.  
___

Independent of anything related to the color pie, the game mechanics, or anything really related to this or any other IP, D3/Oktagon has the data.  Every game has metrics on revenue, engagement, and any other relevant KPI that they choose to prioritize.  For some reason, using data for the gameplay elements seems to be given an incredibly low priority, especially as it relates to other dis-satisfying issues.

I don't think anyone truly expects D3/Oktagon to get it 100% perfect 100% of the time.  Even WOTC has times where they step back and admit they messed up a mechanic or a card's effects had unintended consequences.  The feedback that informs these changes comes from channels that aren't relevant to PQ (high-end tournament play, etc.), but D3/Oktagon have a massive leg up in that they have all the data from the gameplay that can be matched up to the other things they care about.

This isn't a QA question, with code that needs outright fixing (Divine Visitation/Murder Investigation).  It's a fundamental question of how gameplay data is used and how it will impact the user experience.  If you see that matches take a long time and that match length is causing complaints, investigate why that's happening down to the micro level and make precise adjustments.  We've seen plenty of updates that buff/nerf specific cards that it's almost expected.  That's the beauty of being a digital company rather than having printed material - you can make these modest changes without resorting to sweeping, game-altering changes like card bans.

If you said something like "we're making some rebalancing adjustments to the following items for the good of the game" you will likely get some complaints but it would be far better received if the changes were specific and targeted.  For example, if you found that turn length was an issue, and that the preliminary data showed heavy usage of Path of Discovery in matches where per-turn time was the longest, there's still a huge difference in the following solutions:

1. Path of Discovery now costs 14 instead of 8: because Path's mechanic is too widespread/common, and we should see less usage of it in general
2. Path of Discovery only works on non-token creatures: because the interaction of Path and tokens is the problem, but Path works fine on normal creatures
3. Token creatures no longer trigger enter the battlefield effects: because tokens in general are the problem, and they happen to include Path interactions
4. Casting cards now takes 18 seconds: because ???

It seems the recent approach has been to jump straight to option 4.  But options 1-3 were never tried to see if a more gentle change solved the problem, and my guess is that this level of analysis wasn't performed.  (You could argue the change to copied cards was closer to option 3, but my point still stands.)

Waffle's proposal warms my economics-trained heart: if a resource is too powerful to have it appear so often (quantity), make it more expensive to use (price) to reach a preferred equilibrium.  Keep the market-distorting changes (options 3 and 4) to a bare minimum, and use your data to know the difference.

arNero

For me personally, MTGPQ should have stuck with WotC and retire Masterpieces after Ixalan. There are several cases/reasons why I have come to despise these Masterpieces (even if I do enjoy playing with Summoner's Pact):

1) They bloat the game client.

This one is obvious. Oh sure, new expansions means more storage data, but then these masterpieces (which most players rarely will ever see half of them, forget actually owning all of them) just add things that are not exactly necessary for the game since the cards imported from Paper Magic already are plenty enough (especially since starting from HOU, they practically import EVERYTHING including worthless vanillas and not just the more relevant cards). in a game where we only use 10 cards per deck, having 200+ cards per set is just plain overkill especially since very few of them actually are playable.

2) Their power levels are just too swingy.

MTGPQ has been indulging in the very sin of RARER = BETTER (I mean, please, a single look of Sram, Seniro Edificer should tell you that NO common or uncommon or hell RARE comes anywhere close to his P/T-Cost ratio, and he's one of the WEAKER mythics), although at the same time plenty of their rarer cards are frankly dud compared to some commons and uncommons. That alone is bad enough. But then we have these Masterpieces which are extremely difficult to get, and the still have the gal to give player dud Masterpieces which they may pull in place of a good one. Very annoying; Frankly, even without masterpieces, I'd gladly sacrifice 400 jewels a pop to get mere mythics; that to me is good enough.

3) Masterpieces are immune to balance changes, and the stronger ones horribly warps the game.

Omniscience. Plague Wind. Summoner's Pact. Blue Sun's Zenith. Razia. I know my list may be flawed, but these guys are among the most absolutely busted cards in the entire game that are added just for the sake of fishing money from players. What the hell, really?

cmassive13

1) They bloat the game client.

This one is obvious. Oh sure, new expansions means more storage data, but then these masterpieces (which most players rarely will ever see half of them, forget actually owning all of them) just add things that are not exactly necessary for the game since the cards imported from Paper Magic already are plenty enough (especially since starting from HOU, they practically import EVERYTHING including worthless vanillas and not just the more relevant cards). in a game where we only use 10 cards per deck, having 200+ cards per set is just plain overkill especi since very few of them actually are playable.

I wanna reiterate this point. WOTC produces 150-200 card sets for standard, but usually only 10 or 20 are viable for standard constructed. The rest (eg vanilla commons) are for limited play. Your card pool is the same, but you only have standard and legacy events. Unless you FORCE us (through deckbuilding rules more stringent than existing standard), there’s little incentive to use low power cards

fresh faced recruit, for example (2/1 with conditional first strike) doesn’t need to exist except for LIMITED

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Gilesclone

I always turn off commons when searching thru creatures.  They just aren’t playable.