The Elderspark

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  • Bil
    Bil Posts: 831 Critical Contributor
    edited July 2019
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    This is by far the worst gaming experience i had in my entire life ... 

     Job itself is much more fun than this ... 
  • madwren
    madwren Posts: 2,227 Chairperson of the Boards
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    The irony is that vanguards slow down the game so much I don't want to use them.
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
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    starfall said:
    madwren said:
    The irony is that vanguards slow down the game so much I don't want to use them.
    Luckily, most of them are rubbish.
    But we need to cast 6 of them against an opponent who specifically kills them.  An opponent who also has just soooo much health.  Really, really great design
  • Raistlin
    Raistlin Posts: 54 Match Maker
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    On 4.3 after the opponent went, it took 53 seconds for me to be able to start my turn.
    I timed it, and sometimes the LPS system kicked in before I was able to go.
    This was at the start of every one of my turns. The match took almost 45 minutes. 

  • Azerack
    Azerack Posts: 501 Critical Contributor
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    I wholeheartedly ignored the vanguard objective,  used Teferi and the matches went pretty quick. When I feel that's necessary,  I know the match wasn't well thought out... 
  • Shadowslayer
    Shadowslayer Posts: 35 Just Dropped In
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    This, in it's current state, is such a snooze fest. Awful rewards and being pigeonholed into having a full m20 collection isn't how you get people to purchase things. And throwing in non m20 packs is just a slap in the face for anyone trying to collect m20. 
  • Nyarlathotep
    Nyarlathotep Posts: 92 Match Maker
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    Just do what i did. 
    Tell you groups / multi group families that you wont play this event ever again.

    It is not like you lose out on anything, since we all agree that the rewards are a joke anyways. 
  • Nyarlathotep
    Nyarlathotep Posts: 92 Match Maker
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    Marvaddin said:
    It has been months since last time I came to this forum. But I wanted to say this, so I come:

    Congratz, The Elderspark is THE WORST EVENT EVER.

    Enemies with harsh skills? Check.
    Enemies with too much life? Check.
    Tokens being created at tons each Greg turn? Check.
    Greg "thinking" about how to use his vanguards? Check.
    Effects from supports / vanguards affecting you / your creatures all the time ? Check.
    Extremely long fights (including animation time, even at faster configuration)? Check.
    My creatures / mana / cards disappearing when I can't even guess why? Check.
    6 hours recharges? Check.

    As I'm part of a top coalition, I avoid going mad and kicking this. As a consequence, I now have the feeling I have WORKED during all the weekend. Congratz!

    But it's not everything. It's Sunday night, and the best part is to know that  we will still have 3 charges, because this TORTURE will end just Monday afternoon.

    Who designed this event, must be a genius.
    Lucky you. 

    I had to do this event and aside that i had 2 times 12 hours of actual work this weekend...

    Thats it, no eldershit for me anymore, never again. 
  • Bigbill
    Bigbill Posts: 1 Just Dropped In
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    Please break this event up like BOFT next time we have it....wayyyyy too much of a grind for one weekend 
  • Nyarlathotep
    Nyarlathotep Posts: 92 Match Maker
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    ArielSira said:
    This event is a headache. Some thoughts:

    - Node 4 shouldn't have existed at all.
    - 300+ hp opponents aren't fun in any way and is lazy design.
    - +5 in all color manabonus is not fun in any way and is lazy design.
    - the immortal supports and 'special rulings' are 90% of the time just annoying.

    These last 3 points only do one thing; drag the match (also in Bo4t for example). Nothing else. Which brings me to the next point:

    - 30+ minute matches, even when won, are not fun.

    Like a lot of other veterans here, people playing for the past 2-3 years in top coalitions; your event design is draining our time for hours a day and is sucking out all the fun we had in this game. If not for the MTG interface and my awesome coalition mates I would have been long gone but have reached a breaking point like tons of others.
    Just one addition to that:
    ONE opponent at 300+ HP would be fine. But nothing in this event is fine. 
  • Horadrim
    Horadrim Posts: 124 Tile Toppler
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    For ALL weekend events, I suggest event start time ALWAYS at 00:00 UTC Saturday with FULL CHARGES just like Trial of the Planes, and limit max number of matches to probably 18... with event ALWAYS ending at 00:00 UTC Monday.  This eliminates problem of time zones. No matter how easy or difficult the matches will be, as long as you give me the freedom of playing the game on my available time (and not force me to wait and log in to play it after a recharge), I will still log in and play it.
  • Ampersand
    Ampersand Posts: 206 Tile Toppler
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    Additionally, the new "Loop Control System" has caused crashes for me.

     I have lost about 5 matches, all on nodes 3 and 4, due to the game locking when it notifies me the Loop Prevention System is about to kick in. I have shared this with in game customer support, along with screenshots. 

    Note that in the game, it still calls itselfe "Loop Prevention System", not "Loop Control System."

    If it wasn't for these soft locks and the inconsistent registering of Partner cards, I'm pretty sure I'd have a perfect score. New event is buggy as hell.
  • Tremayne
    Tremayne Posts: 1,612 Chairperson of the Boards
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    @Ampersand - new events tends to have a few wrinkles so colour me surprised! 😱😱😱🙈🙊🙉
  • fiirst
    fiirst Posts: 438 Mover and Shaker
    edited July 2019
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    Elderspark should spilt into 4 part.
    1 part (one node) per week.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
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    *Merged same thread topics together
  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,064 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Mburn7 said:
    starfall said:
    madwren said:
    The irony is that vanguards slow down the game so much I don't want to use them.
    Luckily, most of them are rubbish.
    But we need to cast 6 of them against an opponent who specifically kills them.  An opponent who also has just soooo much health.  Really, really great design
    I mean plus that just reinforces the whole pay to win concept of "I hope you bought the VIP membership to have enough pinks to buy any vanguards that are usable, else you're gimping your score and letting your team down"
  • Gabrosin
    Gabrosin Posts: 259 Mover and Shaker
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    I very much enjoyed some of the nodes created for this event.  They were interesting and flavorful and they got me to examine my collection of WAR cards and find the best ways to use them.  Several nodes presented difficult challenges that required me to use the absolute best of what I had to compete.

    All that said, if you make me do this event again as is, I think I'm going to have to quit.

    I lost a ton of sleep this weekend trying to get all my charges in.  Several nodes, especially Dovin, Elderspell, and Bolas, were inevitably long, grindy affairs that took 15+ minutes.  This was partly from their abilities and partly from the fact that the game's already long load/processing times were slowed to an absolute crawl by the AI behind Vanguard supports and the general complexity behind the board states the games led to.  Combine that with the difficulty of assembling a true game-ending supernova payoff in standard, and the sometimes heavy requirements to play a bunch of mediocre WAR cards before starting the process of actually winning, made for a really poor gaming experience.

    And yet the charges came pouring in, four every six hours, and I felt obligated to run down every last one for the sake of my teammates.

    The dev team correctly recognized Battle of Four Tribes as a painful grind that was only sporadically fun or challenging.  This was much, much worse.  Please take some or all of the following steps to adjust this event immediately:

    1. Reduce the recharge rate.  One every twelve hours would be a start.

    2. Bring down boss HP totals.  I'm fine with giving them powerful cards and abilities, and juicing up their mana gains, but all the high HP totals force us to do is play control-heavy strategies (or instant-win combos, which have largely been purged from Standard play).  Being forced to lean on Lich's Mastery, Starfield of Nyx, or heavy lifegain for almost every node is the opposite of encouraging creativity.

    3. Stop requiring us to play X of a card type or mechanic you want us to promote.  Instead, just force us to put 1-3 of the card in our decklist and then let us try to win from turn 1, rather than having to stall until we've found enough of the required thing.  If we can make the best use of our partner or vanguard or proliferate cards, great!  If we use them as padding around a core set of 5-7 other cards, that's fine!  If you want us to buy more of your new product, the way to do it is to make better cards out of them, not arbitrarily force us to use marginal/poor cards and try to win in spite of them.

    4. Playtest your game on average hardware so you can get an idea of how long these matches actually take.  You are making a match-3 mobile game into a part-time-job/chore.  You will not keep players this way.

    I like this game, but I like a lot of other games too.  I'm not going to be more inclined to spend money on this product because you're demanding an ever-increasing share of my time.  I'm just going to start looking for the exit.

  • Theros
    Theros Posts: 490 Mover and Shaker
    edited July 2019
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    This is probably the longest event I've ever seen and 6 hours recharges didn't made it any faster. The event is not yet over as I'm typing this.
    It will finish at 4: 00 PM (est) or 2 hours from now on a freakin Monday. 
  • mrixl2520
    mrixl2520 Posts: 240 Tile Toppler
    edited July 2019
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    I kinda of liked Elderspark, despite all the flaws (and there are a lot of them.) It was nice to finally have a PVE setting! I was pretty bored with playing my tried and true decks against random decks for what seems like months on end. Some opponents we’re very challenging, but in a good way. There need to be a number of edits to make it a really good event, but I personally think this is a good start.

    #1 DON’T PUNISH US FOR PLAYING VANGUARDS!
    There were so many anti-Vanguard elements like taking damage when using an ability, or the AI just up and nukes your Vanguard. Vanguards are the cool new toy that no one plays with. They are a bit underwhelming and the price point + chance of dupes means they aren’t worth the squeeze. Make them worth playing in this event and it’d help a lot.

    #2 Node 2 didn’t work at all
    One of Domri’s abilities hard locked the game, basically locking out an entire 1/4 of the event. Maybe the rewards would have been more achievable if this portion of the event had been playable.

    #3 Challenge was… Weird.
    I personally found the hardest fight to be Vitu-Gazi. First try and I knocked it out no problem with a dragon heavy Sarkhan v.1 deck (hitting most of objectives). The next several tries though I got steamrolled by massive cascades or green gem conversions into elemental token spam, often casting their hand and refilling with Camaraderie. I think this opponent needs to be toned down a bit

    #4 It was a bit grindy & Rewards were a bit underwhelming

    #5 Load times are getting very long
    Not tied to the event, but the games takes several minutes to get from home screen to actual play. I know this is in the works, but I feel I still need to mention it

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