Set / Dev Prioritization -- Split from PLA Announcement Thread

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Long-Time Veterans - Player Level Adjustment (4/22/19).

Gabrosin

New sets are important to the game remaining healthy and profitable enough to exist.  And I'm sure they take up a lot of time and effort, and understandably so.

We're just getting a lot of controversial stuff, like Duel Decks and the LPS and Player Levels, that don't necessarily match what players are asking for.  All three of these things could have value but have turned into detriments instead.  Duel Decks was a great swing at a new event type and I applaud them for doing it; it just wasn't very balanced, leading people to feel like their contributions to the team effort were so small that they couldn't be noticed, with the same side coming out on top every time.  They promised some tweaks and hopefully they can get it right with more refinement; we sorely need more, and more interesting, events to play!

The LPS was an attempt to solve a minor problem that nearly escalated into a major problem.  Being able to cast a spell and have its effects stop somewhere in the middle (like after you've discarded your hand but before you've drawn a new one) is a disaster; my sympathies go out to people who have had wins turn to losses because the LPS popup caused their game to freeze.  The timer was going to be eighteen seconds until we BEGGED the devs not to do it!  If it's frustrating to deal with at 90 seconds, it would have been impossible at 18.  To its credit, I have had a couple of Naru Meha + Quasiduplicate loops broken by it (with a 250/250 Naru Meha to deal with rather than just an outright loss because the loop never stops).  That's a bad situation to be in, and a fine one to try fixing, but this fix was like taking a sledgehammer to a flea.

The XP system could portend an interesting new avenue of friendly competition and encouragement to diversify your play and make use of a broader range of cards, just like event secondaries are supposed to do.  I think it's a good idea overall... if users had any trust that the system was implemented fairly.  Through two passes, it's been done unfairly, and there's no commitment to going back and trying again, even with many simple solutions being offered.

Tremayne

@Gabrosin - thank you for a well written response. I will only focus on the first two lines since the remaining response is correct as far as I see things at this time.

1. Do you think a new set is a good thing, if there is no PVP, PVE or story to use the cards for?
2. Do the released sets in MTGPQ need to be synchronised with MTG release plan?
3. Could MTGPQ release cards from two or three MTG sets twice a year and still be playable?
4. Would you loose interest in MTGPQ, if there were a release with only new events e.g. old cards for new events, examples of events could be a PVE or a Duel deck titled Dwarves vs. elves or Black knights vs. White knights?
5. Could MTGPQ sets include a card that had a radically different mechanism/functionality from the paper card in MTG?

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I say D3 needs to think outside the box, but the question is; are they allowed to do so?

bobby_2613

Starfall said:

  People don't like me here, I get accused of whining all the time just because I want the games' systems to be fair and balanced for everyone, you probably don't like having to deal with me either.

Hours of development time have been wasted achieving nothing except annoying more players than were annoyed by the first update, as a result of the second update. You must feel ready to cut your losses now. No need to be beholden to the sunk cost fallacy.

You still don't have to say you've done anything wrong, just release a statement that says "We've listened to everybody's great feedback and I'm 100% confident now that this is the best system we could possibly come up with, so there will be no further adjustments to player's levels, XP, or the XP ladder"

That way I'll know you consider the loss of me and the players who think like me an acceptable one, and I can go start playing through my Steam library instead.

I'd like to say that even if we're not always on the same side of the fence, I don't wish for you to quit. Hopefully, I'm hoping they'll get to their senses and fix it once and for all.

Gabrosin

Tremayne said:

@Gabrosin - thank you for a well written response. I will only focus on the first two lines since the remaining response is correct as far as I see things at this time.

1. Do you think a new set is a good thing, if there is no PVP, PVE or story to use the cards for?
2. Do the released sets in MTGPQ need to be synchronised with MTG release plan?
3. Could MTGPQ release cards from two or three MTG sets twice a year and still be playable?
4. Would you loose interest in MTGPQ, if there were a release with only new events e.g. old cards for new events, examples of events could be a PVE or a Duel deck titled Dwarves vs. elves or Black knights vs. White knights?
5. Could MTGPQ sets include a card that had a radically different mechanism/functionality from the paper card in MTG?

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I say D3 needs to think outside the box, but the question is; are they allowed to do so?

I do think keeping the new sets flowing has to be the top priority in the game.  I'm excited by the influx of new cards every few months, looking for ones that will be fun to play with.  Getting new planeswalkers is also exciting, even if the most recent ones have been mostly lackluster.

I'm completely baffled by how infrequently we get new events.  I don't have any insider knowledge of the PQ codebase, but it sure seems like event creation should be one of the easier parts of the job.  For PvP, all you're doing is assigning secondary objectives to each node, and perhaps applying a unique theme (e.g. It's Boros day so every creature has mentor).  You select some artwork, pick a name, etc. etc... these pieces should all fit within the existing event template.  For PvE it's a bit harder, especially if you're creating a unique PW ability that's never been done before, but even then it can't be a huge burden to come up with something like Rising Tensions or Journey Through Time.

Now, are these events enough?  Would we prefer new and innovative things?  Yeah, of course we would.  My favorite event is The Dragon War... each node has a truly unique identity, and the fact that each PW ability gets an added effect based on which node you're on makes each game a fun challenge.  We could stand for more of that innovation in the future.

Now for the problem underlying all of this.  MTGPQ's base design has a lot of limitations.  Each deck you make is only ten cards.  Some cards are naturally better than others, and balancing cards against each other and their environment is HARD.  Wizards of the Coast has entire teams of people focusing on just this one job... not people whose main job it is to translate cards into code for an app, for whom game balance is secondary.  And we all know that faithful representations of Magic cards in PQ can produce WILDLY different card values.  I've never once cast a Starfield of Nyx in paper but it's incredibly powerful in PQ, whereas staples like Goblin Chainwhirler and Aether Vial are PQ afterthoughts.

Since we only need to pick ten and don't have to worry about things like a mana curve, the number of cards that truly matter becomes vanishingly small.  I own 2200+ cards but could get by with just 100 of them.  There are so many cards that I've played to mastery and then wished I could filter out and never look at again.  The devs are trying to fix this with the XP system but it seems unlikely to work.  Secondary objectives help; "okay, for this node I'll bust out those Pirates I never play elsewhere".  But that all runs into the bigger problem: once you've solved a node or an event, it stays solved.  Write down the decklist, maybe update it to make it a little more consistent as new cards come in, and you won't need to give that node another thought until rotation, or more likely ever, since even the Standard events are likely to become Legacy events at the same time.

So the player base is ALWAYS going to be hungry for new content, because old content grows stale quickly.  There's no metagame to keep up with, not really; your opponent is always Greg, who behaves in predictable and often underwhelming ways.  Every PvE event is reduced to a grind and most PvP events are too.  The dominant strategy becomes to land a punch so overpowering that it can keep Greg from accidentally landing one back.  Secondaries like "take 10 or less damage" or "win within 7 turns" only encourage this further.  Sooner or later you look around and realize you've been giving two hours a night to this game but you're not having fun with it any more.

Gabrosin

So what's the answer?  There are no easy ones, but here's a few things that I think will help.

1. Get rid of annual rotations and go back to rotating every four sets.  Each set rotation forces players to re-examine their Standard decks and re-design them for new events.  And it further limits the amount of time a broken card like Blue Sun's Zenith can warp the Standard environment.  If they released another card of that power level in GRN, or next fall's set, the game would be built around it for almost two whole years.  Enforcing a shorter rotation will encourage players to be proactive about seeking the newest cards, which is probably good for the company's bottom line.

2. Rotate planeswalkers to legacy.  Part of the reason new planeswalkers like Vraska and Domri and Kaya went unloved is because they were competing with previous powerhouses in those color combinations.  In an environment where planeswalkers like Kiora and Teferi are available forever, the only way to get people wanting new planeswalkers is to make them even more powerful than the old ones, like Ral and Sarkhan.  This is tremendously bad for the game long-term.  We already have a bunch of planeswalkers that can win with almost any cards simply on the strength of their abilities, like Bolas 2 locking out the opponent's ability to draw cards or Huatli 2 being able to generate six new cards and 24 mana nearly every turn.  Having to eclipse those in power to make new planeswalkers appealing will quickly get out of hand; failing to do it will hamstring the ability to keep the company afloat, as I'm sure cash sales of new planeswalkers are one of their most profitable areas.  Rotation helps solve this.

3. Vary the PvE decklists every time an event is run.  Even better, set them up to vary themselves.  Facing down Avacyn or Bolas would be a much more terrifying prospect if you didn't know what cards were coming at you!  I don't see any reason why a process couldn't select ten random cards from a pregenerated collection of 50 before each event, or even before each match in an event (though this is more random than I'd prefer).  They don't even have to be the same for each player.  Add some sensible rules about random distribution by rarity/card type/power level and boom, you've made an interesting new challenge with hopefully a minimum of effort.

4. Come up with a wider range of secondaries.  These will require a little work, because novel secondaries can and should be tested before going live.  But they're the best way to ensure creativity is required for each event.  I'd lean heavier into the requirements to play a bunch of a specific type of card; I know these can be polarizing because players with newer collections might not even have cards of those types.  Perhaps some sort of "you can always add these three Pirates to your deck for this event, even if you don't own them" could help with that.

There are lots of other small and large ways that I think the game might be improved, but if the devs don't figure out a way to keep adding variety and interesting new challenges soon, I suspect the exodus of longtime players who have grown bored and frustrated with the game will continue to grow, and at some point the game will collapse.  I don't want to see that happen.

Unknown

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Tremayne

starfall said:

I like the conversation that's happening in this thread but I do think we've gone wildly off topic.

@Brigby please could you split this off into it's own topic. And also address the XP issue while you're here.

Ahm, What was the subject again? 🤪 

@starfall - but I concur, we have strayed of topic. 🙄

Tremayne

@Gabrosin - I will not have time to answer you tonight, but very well written reply. I’ll be back!

Gabrosin

starfall said:

I like the conversation that's happening in this thread but I do think we've gone wildly off topic.

@Brigby please could you split this off into it's own topic. And also address the XP issue while you're here.

Yeah we have, sorry about that

bk1234

[MOD MIC ON] Split from following thread: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/78142/long-time-veterans-player-level-adjustment-4-22-19/p1

[MOD MIC OFF]

Brigby

@Gabrosin Just wanted to touch upon a few of your original points.

Duel Decks: There will be some adjustments in 3.4 to Duel Decks to alleviate the notion of imbalance between the two decks.

LPS: We're also making some adjustments to this as well, and our team is putting together a blog post explaining how it'll function. We'll be able to confirm when these adjustments go live once we're able to share the blog post.

Brakkis

Brigby said:

Duel Decks: There will be some adjustments in 3.4 to Duel Decks to alleviate the notion of imbalance between the two decks.

Does the development team doing this realize the following?

1. The pre-created decks for walkers isn't the issue. In fact, in terms of the decks each of them must use in the first phase, Nissa's deck is superior. Nissa is superior all around. Her gains and her abilities easily outclass TED.
2. That the issue is the color disparity in the second and third phases when you can create a custom deck? When the player base is given 4 colors vs 1 color to build a deck for, the majority will choose the 4 color option just for the versatility alone.

The only reason Nissa won the first beta is because the majority of it's players were in communication with each other, we voted to play as Nissa, and that was just barely enough. 

The only way to balance the Zendikar duel decks is to either give Nissa access to more colors, reduce the access to colors TED has, or prevent custom decks from being run in the later phases. Otherwise, it'll keep boiling down to 4 vs 1.

Brigby said:

LPS: We're also making some adjustments to this as well, and our team is putting together a blog post explaining how it'll function. We'll be able to confirm when these adjustments go live once we're able to share the blog post.

Is the adjustment to remove it? Best option right there.

Otherwise, will it stop having the overlay pop up every time it triggers? Will it allow cards that are in the middle of a cast action to finish that action?

Brigby

@Brakkis
Duel Decks: Reducing the number of colors available for the Eldrazi Desolation is in fact one of the balance adjustments.

LPS: When you say "the overlay" are you referencing the tutorial prompt that appears more than once? If so, that is a bug that the team is aware of and working on a fix for.

As for the exact details of how the system operates after the changes, they will all be available in the blog post once it's ready to be posted.

bobby_2613

Brigby said:

LPS: We're also making some adjustments to this as well, and our team is putting together a blog post explaining how it'll function. We'll be able to confirm when these adjustments go live once we're able to share the blog post.

Let's hope LPS v2 won't be another fiasco à la XP v2.  I'm usually optimistic by nature but seems to me you guys have striked a lot lately.  Doing your thing like we understand nothing.  IMHO the only way LPS would be fine for me would be if it was applied to Greg only.  Other than that having your turn stopping in the middle sucks hard.

Gabrosin

Thanks @Brigby.  Could we get a little concrete information on how Duel Decks determines its overall winner?  Does it measure the total number of victories for players on each side, or does it take into effect the total number of participants as well?  Meaning if there are 1000 TED players who collect 3000 victories total and there are 500 Nissa players who collect 2500 victories total, who wins?

Also, do secondaries have any impact on the team scoring?  Will I score more points for my team if I keep completing the secondaries over and over again, or are wins the only thing that matters?

If there are fundamental changes coming that will be detailed in a post, these are questions I hope the devs are willing to answer.  Part of the bad feel about this event is not knowing whether you're doing the most you can to help your team win, or being able to tell just how far apart the teams are at any given moment without seeing raw point totals.

bobby_2613

Gabrosin said:

So what's the answer?  There are no easy ones, but here's a few things that I think will help.

2. Rotate planeswalkers to legacy.  Part of the reason new planeswalkers like Vraska and Domri and Kaya went unloved is because they were competing with previous powerhouses in those color combinations.  In an environment where planeswalkers like Kiora and Teferi are available forever, the only way to get people wanting new planeswalkers is to make them even more powerful than the old ones, like Ral and Sarkhan.  This is tremendously bad for the game long-term.  We already have a bunch of planeswalkers that can win with almost any cards simply on the strength of their abilities, like Bolas 2 locking out the opponent's ability to draw cards or Huatli 2 being able to generate six new cards and 24 mana nearly every turn.  Having to eclipse those in power to make new planeswalkers appealing will quickly get out of hand; failing to do it will hamstring the ability to keep the company afloat, as I'm sure cash sales of new planeswalkers are one of their most profitable areas.  Rotation helps solve this.

As much as I understand why you say this, that alone would make me leave this game in a snap.   

When you start this game, you have so much to buy with gold: PWs (there's 52 total) and card packs.  This would suck for any new player IMO: "Hey look I've just finished leveling this PW!!! Wait what!? I can't play with it??? WTTK!!"

Gabrosin

bobby_2613 said:

Gabrosin said:

So what's the answer?  There are no easy ones, but here's a few things that I think will help.

2. Rotate planeswalkers to legacy.  Part of the reason new planeswalkers like Vraska and Domri and Kaya went unloved is because they were competing with previous powerhouses in those color combinations.  In an environment where planeswalkers like Kiora and Teferi are available forever, the only way to get people wanting new planeswalkers is to make them even more powerful than the old ones, like Ral and Sarkhan.  This is tremendously bad for the game long-term.  We already have a bunch of planeswalkers that can win with almost any cards simply on the strength of their abilities, like Bolas 2 locking out the opponent's ability to draw cards or Huatli 2 being able to generate six new cards and 24 mana nearly every turn.  Having to eclipse those in power to make new planeswalkers appealing will quickly get out of hand; failing to do it will hamstring the ability to keep the company afloat, as I'm sure cash sales of new planeswalkers are one of their most profitable areas.  Rotation helps solve this.

As much as I understand why you say this, that alone would make me leave this game in a snap.   

When you start this game, you have so much to buy with gold: PWs (there's 52 total) and card packs.  This would suck for any new player IMO: "Hey look I've just finished leveling this PW!!! Wait what!? I can't play with it??? WTTK!!"

The Origins PWs should never rotate, of course.  And it should be clear to players exactly when PWs would go out.  I think longer than every four sets would be appropriate for those... perhaps every six or eight.

bobby_2613

Gabrosin said:

bobby_2613 said:

Gabrosin said:

So what's the answer?  There are no easy ones, but here's a few things that I think will help.

2. Rotate planeswalkers to legacy.  Part of the reason new planeswalkers like Vraska and Domri and Kaya went unloved is because they were competing with previous powerhouses in those color combinations.  In an environment where planeswalkers like Kiora and Teferi are available forever, the only way to get people wanting new planeswalkers is to make them even more powerful than the old ones, like Ral and Sarkhan.  This is tremendously bad for the game long-term.  We already have a bunch of planeswalkers that can win with almost any cards simply on the strength of their abilities, like Bolas 2 locking out the opponent's ability to draw cards or Huatli 2 being able to generate six new cards and 24 mana nearly every turn.  Having to eclipse those in power to make new planeswalkers appealing will quickly get out of hand; failing to do it will hamstring the ability to keep the company afloat, as I'm sure cash sales of new planeswalkers are one of their most profitable areas.  Rotation helps solve this.

As much as I understand why you say this, that alone would make me leave this game in a snap.   

When you start this game, you have so much to buy with gold: PWs (there's 52 total) and card packs.  This would suck for any new player IMO: "Hey look I've just finished leveling this PW!!! Wait what!? I can't play with it??? WTTK!!"

The Origins PWs should never rotate, of course.  And it should be clear to players exactly when PWs would go out.  I think longer than every four sets would be appropriate for those... perhaps every six or eight.

True, I guess that could work for new players.  I never played bronze or silver so I don't know how it works down there.  I'd still quit being forced to play with Kaya or any other underwelming PW. It would give me a lot of time for something else I guess... 

EnochRoot

I like the idea of a PW rotation. Just as I enjoy my BSZ/expansion first turn wins now, I don't want to be all I do in this game from now on. But I have to do this as long as that's the level other players are playing at. 

Similarly, if I am expected to always and forever be able to counter a Sarkhan 3 or Bolas, then I'll always have to have my own Sarkhan and Bolas on hand and use them. And never invest in comparably weaker PWs who might add a little fun to my matches. 

Tremayne

@Gabrosin - finally RL let me answer your posts.

Events - I do not know how easy it is to create an event, but however much I like The Dragon War, my opinion is that not all event have to be as intricate as TDW. I think that there should be more puzzles in MTGPQ. So small levels, like story mode levels and small events without special support effects, is desired. BUT these should be sprinkled with highly intricate events similar to TDW.

XP and card usage - since I have no clue how the XP-system is going to work I am hesitant to speculate, but I fail to see how that will have any impact on card usage. But I’ll get back to card usage.

solution 1 shorter set rotation - when I read this, I thought you are on to something! However on second thought I’m not sure. Because with faster rotation I expect it will result in sloppiness in regard to card balance. If you release a poorly balanced card, similar to BSZ, the developers can just shrug their shoulders and say the card will rotate out in a year. With a 2+ year they have to have a bigger focus on card balance.

solution 2 Planeswalker rotation - I strongly dislike this idea! I hope this never get implemented. It promotes laziness, if the PW is to strong then the devs. just shrug their shoulders and wait for it to rotate out.
I think that what should be considered instead is to make more events that are couple to specific PW or to mono-coloured PW. So when an PW-event is run, D3 could have a bundle in the vault with the necessary PW plus card bundles which are matching the PW to get players started. Players can choose not to pay, but then compete at a disadvantage.

Solution 3 varied deck lists - intriguing idea, which I think will be very difficult to develop so the generated decks are interesting to play against. I think that rotating the creatures could be a middle way that would be easy to start with, but maybe not.

solution 4 varied secondaries - great idea. This might be able to help the developers make new events quicker, but I do not know how much development that would require. Just make a list of all the secondaries and roll a die to decide which secondaries are in the level.