What gives with the mana cost of this set?

Firinmahlazer

Seriously everything is so expensive to cast and we are on the last set before we lose our best converter. I feel like they reverted back to XLN thinking when they designed this set. Is anyone else struggling with casting costs?

Ampersand

The meta is shifting. They seem to be hinting that they want lands to be more prominent, so I expect to see a lot of decks with a Gate-based "shell" popping up to work around losing gem converter spells and cards like StV etc.

Firinmahlazer

Ampersand said:

The meta is shifting. They seem to be hinting that they want lands to be more prominent, so I expect to see a lot of decks with a Gate-based "shell" popping up to work around losing gem converter spells and cards like StV etc.

Interesting theory. I suppose Core 20 could bring us some more ramp. Right now we have the GRN/RNA rare converters. I just keep having flashbacks to the XLN increased mana costs for "balancing" and then the subsequent walk back. I really feel like this is in the same vein.

Ampersand

Firinmahlazer said:

 I really feel like this is in the same vein.

I agree, but I think this is a better implementation than when XLN came out. Here, the three Ravnica themed sets will still be in Standard after rotation, and they give a good, accessible foundation the the land focus.

Dropspot

I played gate decks in all nodes this event. It takes some time to get going but after setting the board you get a quite consistent Mana flow. I agree that it takes a lot more time to build that and a lot more slots in your deck. But I had no problems to cast my hand.

mrixl2520

Also it seems like there are quite a few ways now to augment your mana bonuses. Still though, I think a lot of the cards in this new set are a little underwhelming regardless of their price tag.

Thésée

Using 3 gates with a 3 colours PWs gives good mana  Of course not efficient as Storm the Vault but in Ravnica at War I used the UBR gates with Bolas 2 on left node and it was worth the 3 cards slots. 

madwren

I think they've deliberately moved away from large-scale converters.

Ramp spells have always been a conundrum.  As ramp power increases, card balance effectively decreases. What matter is it if a card costs 14 or 19 when I can just Rx or HoP myself into cascades of mana at will? Games are faster, more dangerous, more able to be looped and combo’d.

Thus, if they want to slow the environment down, the best way to do it is to limit ramp spells. However, when that occurs, the power shifts from the player to Greg, because limited ramp drastically inhibits player ability to dig themselves out of a hole. When Greg explodes for 70 mana into a board full of creatures, and all you have in hand are a couple of gates, how do you make up the difference?

This is a problem endemic to their base concept: They took a game based on linear mana progression and converted it to one with randomly imbalanced mana gains.

andrewvanmarle

madwren said:

I think they've deliberately moved away from large-scale converters.

Ramp spells have always been a conundrum.  As ramp power increases, card balance effectively decreases. What matter is it if a card costs 14 or 19 when I can just Rx or HoP myself into cascades of mana at will? Games are faster, more dangerous, more able to be looped and combo’d.

Thus, if they want to slow the environment down, the best way to do it is to limit ramp spells. However, when that occurs, the power shifts from the player to Greg, because limited ramp drastically inhibits player ability to dig themselves out of a hole. When Greg explodes for 70 mana into a board full of creatures, and all you have in hand are a couple of gates, how do you make up the difference?

This is a problem endemic to their base concept: They took a game based on linear mana progression and converted it to one with randomly imbalanced mana gains.

I do agree that the really big converters like rishex do skew the game a bit, but at the same time i really hope that they don't deliberatly try to slow down the game...
Balance and speed do no need to exclude each other.

I really dont want to go back to the origins era where you  took 30+ turns to whittle down your opponent.

What about ramp that converts an many gems as are shields and add a shield per turn? that gives time to answer it while being lucky enough to keep it means you get big rewards.

stikxs

Firinmahlazer said:

Seriously everything is so expensive to cast and we are on the last set before we lose our best converter. I feel like they reverted back to XLN thinking when they designed this set. Is anyone else struggling with casting costs?

The rotation is not next set, it is the set after, btw.

madwren

andrewvanmarle said:

madwren said:

I think they've deliberately moved away from large-scale converters.

Ramp spells have always been a conundrum.  As ramp power increases, card balance effectively decreases. What matter is it if a card costs 14 or 19 when I can just Rx or HoP myself into cascades of mana at will? Games are faster, more dangerous, more able to be looped and combo’d.

Thus, if they want to slow the environment down, the best way to do it is to limit ramp spells. However, when that occurs, the power shifts from the player to Greg, because limited ramp drastically inhibits player ability to dig themselves out of a hole. When Greg explodes for 70 mana into a board full of creatures, and all you have in hand are a couple of gates, how do you make up the difference?

This is a problem endemic to their base concept: They took a game based on linear mana progression and converted it to one with randomly imbalanced mana gains.

I do agree that the really big converters like rishex do skew the game a bit, but at the same time i really hope that they don't deliberatly try to slow down the game...
Balance and speed do no need to exclude each other.

I really dont want to go back to the origins era where you  took 30+ turns to whittle down your opponent.

What about ramp that converts an many gems as are shields and add a shield per turn? that gives time to answer it while being lucky enough to keep it means you get big rewards.

I also feel the competing urges. I hate when my games take a long time, but I also dislike when everyone's just casting their entire hand at will. I certainly don't have an answer to that problem; I was just commenting on why I think they are trying to get away from converters and forcing us to build mana ramp using lands, which presumably in their mind is closer to the actual spirit of MtG.  /shrug

Firinmahlazer

madwren said

I also feel the competing urges. I hate when my games take a long time, but I also dislike when everyone's just casting their entire hand at will. I certainly don't have an answer to that problem; I was just commenting on why I think they are trying to get away from converters and forcing us to build mana ramp using lands, which presumably in their mind is closer to the actual spirit of MtG.  /shrug

That actually makes a lot of sense. Wether it will work or not I suppose time will tell. To me the set feels watered down with a combination of (in my opinion) weaker cards and increased mana costs. But if getting closer to paper is the goal or just an overall curb of power creep I suppose this would be a step in the right direction. Just going to be some growing pains.

nerdstrap

I’m going to base my response on the most responsive design I’ve seen from Dragalia Lost. They don’t nerf things that are broken, they make harder challenges so that broken things don’t matter.

A well designed game will adapt and evolve. Players will love it. Players will spend money on it. I transferred my $75 month entertainment budget to DL and I’ve never been happier!

I still have every mtgpq asset, but it’s a hollow feeling to play the **** experience and not be valued as a consumer. 

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rafalele

This is a mobile game it is nonsense that the battles longs so much.

And what about finishing in 4/5 turns objectives against 130 hp opponents? Are them fair when they increase the mana cost?

Tremayne

@rafalele - I think that you touch upon a fundamental contradiction in MTGPQ.

A single MTGPQ game is designed to be a fight between two planeswalker(PW) of similar level, be that a 60/60 match or a 10/20. However, a lvl 20 PW has approximately 50 HP while lvl60 Bolas1 has 132 HP. Any goal that revolves around PW will be unfair at some levels.

This problem is further aggravated when taking mana generation, mana cost and card effects into the equation. Since hard hitting cards are typically way more mana demanding you need bigger mana generation, which requires higher PW level or wilder and wilder mana converters.

D3/Octagon (or Hibernium for that sake) have never been close to fixing this problem (perhaps because they don’t care) but they sure have created cards that combatted the issues arising from the fundamental contradiction. The result from these attempts have so far been more unbalanced cards which requires more “fixes” that creates new and differently unbalanced cards.

what is the solution? Well, my best suggestion is to change the events design so they revolved around PW level (and colour), if they do not want to make bigger changes, like matching opponents after their decks rarity composition. 

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WiLDRAGE

There are currently a lot of cards that create card copies or draw cards that also grant them half their mana cost immediately that I don't see this as much of an issue.

Theater of Horrors, Senate Guildmage, Isperia, Sphinx of Foresight, Thief of Sanity, Lazav, Finale of Revelation, God-Eternal Kefnet among the better ones.