The Elderspark

Theros

souki12 said:

The TDW is already too long for my taste, but this was a whole new level. Never-ending story spiced up with a tremendous lag whenever a vanguard support is in play on Greg's side.

Cut it in two halves (but not as with BotFT when we have a very easy and a very hard half) and it might be bearable if you fix the bugs and reduce some of the crazy mana gains some of the opponents have.

But I liked the flavour.

Cutting the event in half is not enough if the rewards are not upped. Each half must give more rewards that the original event

Firstofhisname419

Well, allow me to be the voice of dissent on the # of rounds. Sorry you feel pressure from your coalition to play the whole thing through. But if you don't want to play: don't. Not everybody has a card collection that will  net them auto wins every game (including the fourth node). Some people struggle to get to 750 for the packs, so the extra rounds were helpful. If you don't want to play, then simply don't. I'm sure there are ways to bring joy to your life other than a high rank in a FtP match-3 phone game. Unless it's truly an addiction for you, in which case you should get help.

BigSwifty

I may be in the minority here, but with the exception of the bugs I ran into I thought the event was ok. The harder matches took a long to win, to be sure, but that may just be the decks I have available.

BigSwifty

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   Although, progression rewards should definitely be improved. runes at capstone is ridiculous.

souki12

Theros said:

souki12 said:

The TDW is already too long for my taste, but this was a whole new level. Never-ending story spiced up with a tremendous lag whenever a vanguard support is in play on Greg's side.

Cut it in two halves (but not as with BotFT when we have a very easy and a very hard half) and it might be bearable if you fix the bugs and reduce some of the crazy mana gains some of the opponents have.

But I liked the flavour.

Cutting the event in half is not enough if the rewards are not upped. Each half must give more rewards that the original event

I don't disagree. The rewards should be upped for all new events, not just TE. Mainly the jewel rewards, especially when the vanguards are available only for jewels and in non-dupe packs.

There are more issues with TE and they are well described in the previous posts. My main problem with the event was the length. Of the event and of the matches as well because of the nature of the objectives and laggy vanguards.

Bil

Firstofhisname419 said:

Well, allow me to be the voice of dissent on the # of rounds. Sorry you feel pressure from your coalition to play the whole thing through. But if you don't want to play: don't. Not everybody has a card collection that will  net them auto wins every game (including the fourth node). Some people struggle to get to 750 for the packs, so the extra rounds were helpful. If you don't want to play, then simply don't. I'm sure there are ways to bring joy to your life other than a high rank in a FtP match-3 phone game. Unless it's truly an addiction for you, in which case you should get help.

 Or the progression requirements have just been set too high ... Maybe? It is not like it requires about 40 dragging games ... With secundary objectives fulfilled ... With no losses ... to get full progression.

   If some players really feel like spending 4h a day during 3 days, get 12 charges of dragging encounters on a work day, for less rewards than "a journey through history" for their effort ... This event is perfectly balanced for them ... but should just not be a coalition event.

  I actually wonder what kind of player would be the most addicted ... The one asking for a decent quality of life and a reasonable game pace in order to have fun playing, or the one disposed to play even more charges to get underwhelming rewards.

  That's without even mentionning the heart of the problem ... Which is the fact that a game developer should just be able to balance his game so it can be at least satisfying for most players, and realistic in terms of investment/payout.

  

fiirst

Firstofhisname419 said:

Well, allow me to be the voice of dissent on the # of rounds. Sorry you feel pressure from your coalition to play the whole thing through. But if you don't want to play: don't. Not everybody has a card collection that will  net them auto wins every game (including the fourth node). Some people struggle to get to 750 for the packs, so the extra rounds were helpful. If you don't want to play, then simply don't. I'm sure there are ways to bring joy to your life other than a high rank in a FtP match-3 phone game. Unless it's truly an addiction for you, in which case you should get help.

Majority players here used to swimming in spot of survival 
for 750 ribbons.

It is difficult.
Keep swimming, one day those player become 'The Worthy' .

bk1234

Mburn7 said:

starfall said:

Was Avacyn's Madness really always an 8 hour respawn? I remember having to play it constantly that first time it was run. Maybe it was just because the nodes started full?

Events used to all have 6 hour refreshes.  This was changed to 8 hours because we complained a lot about how time-intensive it was, especially on 4 and 5 node events.

I don't know why Oktagon has decided to make new events with a 6 hour refresh again, since pretty much everyone was very happy with the 8 hour system as it was (except for the end times, but this doesn't exactly help that anyway)

Events all had 4 hour recharges including Acacyn’s Madness. This was changed to 8 hour recharges with the Kaladesh block events — and not well received, I might add. The player base complained loudly of being bored to pieces. 

RotGP was introduced with 4 hour recharges — which enraged the community. After a lot of cooperative polling by all major groups of coalitions, I gave the data to  @Brigby and he went to bat for us with the development and production teams to have the recharges adjusted to a middle ground of 6 hours. 

Not trying to nitpick here, but it’s a good reminder of how diligently he works on our behalf and how much we can accomplish when we work together in a productive and positive manner for the good of the game. 

**Correction the first run or Hallows Eve was the first 8 hour recharge event. (Just found the original TR event info doc) 

Brigby

Hi Everyone. Thanks for providing all of your feedback. I've gone ahead and passed it along to the rest of our team, and we're looking into ways we can improve the event moving forward.

BATMAN1

bken1234 said:

Not trying to nitpick here, but it’s a good reminder of how diligently he works on our behalf and how much we can accomplish when we work together in a productive and positive manner for the good of the game. 

**Correction the first run or Hallows Eve was the first 8 hour recharge event. (Just found the original TR event info doc) 

Yes I agree. @Bri@Brigby is a invaluable part of our community and I believe many players share the same view.

I also agree with your second statement that much can get done if we work together. The player base has made many accommodations for the devs and have supported them through the hard times and have not turned their backs on the game despite the many challenges (Take your pick).  So what I ask now is when are the devs gonna work together with us. There is a long list of matters we have asked them about and they’ve been tight lipped. So let’s just focus on three when are they gonna make some “work together” to fix the grindy events, the slap in the face rewards and the infuriating vanguard fiasco. 

Mburn7

bken1234 said:

Mburn7 said:

starfall said:

Was Avacyn's Madness really always an 8 hour respawn? I remember having to play it constantly that first time it was run. Maybe it was just because the nodes started full?

Events used to all have 6 hour refreshes.  This was changed to 8 hours because we complained a lot about how time-intensive it was, especially on 4 and 5 node events.

I don't know why Oktagon has decided to make new events with a 6 hour refresh again, since pretty much everyone was very happy with the 8 hour system as it was (except for the end times, but this doesn't exactly help that anyway)

Events all had 4 hour recharges including Acacyn’s Madness. This was changed to 8 hour recharges with the Kaladesh block events — and not well received, I might add. The player base complained loudly of being bored to pieces. 

RotGP was introduced with 4 hour recharges — which enraged the community. After a lot of cooperative polling by all major groups of coalitions, I gave the data to  @Brigby and he went to bat for us with the development and production teams to have the recharges adjusted to a middle ground of 6 hours. 

Not trying to nitpick here, but it’s a good reminder of how diligently he works on our behalf and how much we can accomplish when we work together in a productive and positive manner for the good of the game. 

**Correction the first run or Hallows Eve was the first 8 hour recharge event. (Just found the original TR event info doc) 

Huh, it seems my memory is even faultier than usual.  Just goes to show how quickly we get used to new normals.

I really don't remember 4 hour refreshes, although I do remember the backlash when we switched to 8.

Of course back then most events were enraged and loading times were fairly nonexistant, so you could clear a full round in 20 min and then be stuck with nothing to do for 7.5 hours.  Now I can't even clear 2 fights in 20 min, so having to log back in more frequently feels like much more of a drag. 

greenmeanie

I'm on the fence on this one.  I agree that event was long, progression rewards could be better, recharge time seemed low, bosses seemed somewhat overpowered if you tried to get Max points and lots of lag time.

I did like the fact that it forced you to use some different cards if you wanted Max pts.  I thought coalition rewards were fair.  

Let's be honest there though, there is no way they can make a event were everyone will be happy.  

SolRing

We cant compare the game now to back then. As the game is it takes so long to load a match you end up spending more time looking at load screens than playing....except against grindy 500hp bosses.

tfg76

I hear two voices:

- Some want fewer charges because of the pressure to play from the coalition.
- Some want more charges because it can be hard to reach progression rewards with a limited set of cards.

I have been in both of these situations. My suggestion would be to cap the contribution an individual can give to their coalition (maybe at progression +25% or something). That way, the event can have as many charges as it wants. Veterans will be able to fill their quota at some point, and beginners would have more chances.

For this particular event though, progression was also fairly high compared to the maximum, so there might have to be some slight adjustment there too.

Gabrosin

tfg76 said:

I hear two voices:

- Some want fewer charges because of the pressure to play from the coalition.
- Some want more charges because it can be hard to reach progression rewards with a limited set of cards.

I have been in both of these situations. My suggestion would be to cap the contribution an individual can give to their coalition (maybe at progression +25% or something). That way, the event can have as many charges as it wants. Veterans will be able to fill their quota at some point, and beginners would have more chances.

For this particular event though, progression was also fairly high compared to the maximum, so there might have to be some slight adjustment there too.

This is a clever idea, but it would likely result in a 50-way tie for first place on the coalition standings.

I'm sympathetic to newer players struggling with the tough battles in this event and feeling like they won't be able to make progression even after putting in their best effort.  The devs' solution to this appears to be to make sure that the progression rewards aren't worth chasing!

Bil

  As far as i remember, pve events never made things easy for new players neither... At least on the first run. 
  ES was terribly grindy ... But i wouldn't say that the hardest encounters were harder than Tezzeret, samut or even persistent nightmare in their respective events. And considering the rewards you had to leave behind if you were unable to achieve progression back in the days, it was much more frustrating than missing a booster or 5500 runes.

  Anyway, if the grind and the endless charges purpose is to make progession reachable for new players (which i honestly don't believe ...) There are other options too.
   It is already possible for devs to set different rewards for different tiers ... I dont think it would be hard for them to set different progression caps in pve depending on the tier you're in.

bk1234

I think progression was fairly high with a low rewards payout. Like « I did all that and all I got was that ». 

Full disclosure. My score was 940. I had other things going on this weekend. When my coalition seemed unhappy with the tone of the design of the event, as the leader, I made the decision to scale back the normal top 25 requirements and we did 75% of progression as our coalition contribution and used the rest of the weekend to focus on doing whatever we wanted with the event or our real lives. 

I just couldn’t justify forcing my players — most who are high silver, gold or low platinum —to try to find synergy with very few Partner cards on difficult nodes. It went against the fundamentals of deck building and it was frustrating them and it wasn’t something I could see being overcome with group deckbuilding or team discussion. 

The problem with The Elderspark isn’t just the recharge time or the rewards or the mark where progression is set. 

The Elderspark is an event with a beautiful vision but a terrible execution. It completely lacks balance. 

PvE should be progressive. Over the last three years, I have the same conversation probably hundreds of times with bronze players as they start their very first MtGPQ PvE event (some will probably read this now and laugh) "You're not going to do well this weekend -- that's how this event is designed. The first node will be relatively easy. As your skill level and collection increases and you repeat the event, you'll move further through. Once you can clear all three charges on the first node, you'll be able to play it over and over, same for each other. Until then you will hit a wall on each...."

This was how it was for PvE events under Hibernum -- let's face it, Hibernum did a lot of things wrong -- but their PvE events had a glorious progressive balance to them. I see it from this perspective, because most of my life in this game has forced me to see the game from the perspective of players from bronze to the highest level of mastery and competition. 

Oktagon's PvE is a whole different beast, however. 

Once in a job interview I was asked to divide myself as vision versus execution --- (that shut me up quite fast, but this is besides the point)

If I had to divide Hibernum on PvE I would go with 50/50 -- they gave us clean (I don't mean non buggy -- God, there were soooo many bugs), straight forward well progressed events. One ability and it's difficulty increased with the progression of the event. The deck difficulty also increased as the event wore on. To this day, Avacyn's Madness is my favorite event in this game, Fateful Showdown is the second. 

Oktagon I would rate much more like 80/20. When it comes to creativity and the potential of what PvE could be Oktagon gets an A++ -- however for what PvE should be, it falls short. As a top level player who has always loved the not only the puzzle of PvE, but the opportunity to continuously take something familiar and approach it completely differently, I love Oktagon's PvE events. They push me. As the leader of a large alliance, I am constantly disappointed with the lack of thought that goes into player experience in Oktagon PvE. The difficulty increases too fast. The complexity is introduced too early. With B4T I was mildly frustrated by this, but TE takes it to a whole new level. I couldn't imagine having to take this on as a Bronze or even Silver player. Even going in with the expectation that I wouldn't get far -- still trying to learn the mechanics of the game, being hit so early with so many moving pieces.... just wow. Even as a top player, building for 12 nodes with 3 PW abilities and perm supports and objectives that were frequently tribal and set specific was extremely overwhelming -- and I almost have a complete War of Spark collection already. So I can't imagine what it was like to even be faced with a little of that. 

I think the event should go back to the drawing board. As far as difficulty -- I liked the design of B4T where the perm support was on the last encounter of each node -- it added an extra challenge to move forward. Some of the objectives need to be considered -- especially the Partner and Proliferate ones. Why are they there? Is it because they are intelligent or are they there for flavor? Right now I think it's the latter? I struggled, with a large collection to get synergy casting this many partner cards, maybe back it up to 2? Does it seem small, yes? But should we sacrifice the principles of great deck building (which lead to fun and engagement) for flavor?

I love the creativity Oktagon puts into PvE and really all events -- and I think with this set, this is a place our devs have really delivered for us. We have been begging for new events and boy did we ever get them!!! And they are good events. But like B4T, the execution is off -- and it's the same as it was for B4T. We are almost 4 years into this game. You can't please everyone -- and the skill range grows wider every day -- however this is a complaint that is now twice echoed so I consider it a double failure. 

Most here are complaining the event is grindy, or the refreshes are off -- but you're not looking deeper. The event is poorly balanced. Look at the real cause, the real differences. 

The concepts are amazing -- but they aren't designed for a wide audience. For veteran players, even we will see the difference and get frustrated because the amount of work for payout is equally apparent.

I would close here, however me being me, I would like to leave on a positive note: in around 4 months I will hit 4 years in this game -- I've seen a lot of updates and a lot of new events come in I would like to extend a whole hearted congratulations to Oktagon on what is (in my memory at least) the least buggy PvE first run ever in MtGPQ. 

Well done ladies and gentlemen. 

Edit: tl;dr: A friend of most of ours (who IS NOT and never has been a banned forum user) messaged me just after reading this and said something to the extent of -- it seems Oktagon keeps designing for the 1% playerbase and alienating the other 99% -- and I added -- and the 1% gets upset because we are also expecting a product designed for the 100%. 

My thought on this -- elitists we may be (me too -- oh yes I am) -- we like the stuff for everyone -- and we would probably love TE just the way it is happily pay 20 crystals to play it at this difficulty level with prizes that reward us for the work we put into the grind.

Mburn7

Wow @bken1234, very well said.  Its true that the lack of progressive balance is what makes the event feel much more grindy than it otherwise would have been (well, that and the massive loading times we have now).

Oktagon really does not seem to understand balance at all.  It was acceptable at first but now they've been doing this long enough that they should have something figured out.

Also, I get that its a low bar but can we really say that this was a non-buggy PvE run?  There is a post with literally two pages of bugs from this event in the events forum (quite a few of which were objectives or abilities not working properly).  I mean, the premier boss (Bolas) fight had an ability that worked absolutely nothing like it was written.
I'm not saying that you're wrong (since the app didn't crash, which is usually what happens), but man it feels weird congratulating the team for this mess.

bk1234

Mburn7 said:

Wow @bken1234, very well said.  Its true that the lack of progressive balance is what makes the event feel much more grindy than it otherwise would have been (well, that and the massive loading times we have now).

Oktagon really does not seem to understand balance at all.  It was acceptable at first but now they've been doing this long enough that they should have something figured out.

Also, I get that its a low bar but can we really say that this was a non-buggy PvE run?  There is a post with literally two pages of bugs from this event in the events forum (quite a few of which were objectives or abilities not working properly).  I mean, the premier boss (Bolas) fight had an ability that worked absolutely nothing like it was written.
I'm not saying that you're wrong (since the app didn't crash, which is usually what happens), but man it feels weird congratulating the team for this mess.

I did not say non buggy. 

I said least buggy. 

Huge difference. 

madwren

Firstofhisname419 said:

Well, allow me to be the voice of dissent on the # of rounds. Sorry you feel pressure from your coalition to play the whole thing through. But if you don't want to play: don't. Not everybody has a card collection that will  net them auto wins every game (including the fourth node). Some people struggle to get to 750 for the packs, so the extra rounds were helpful. If you don't want to play, then simply don't. I'm sure there are ways to bring joy to your life other than a high rank in a FtP match-3 phone game. Unless it's truly an addiction for you, in which case you should get help.

The “love it or leave it” mentality is a fallacious argument at its core.  Nothing is so immutably perfect as to be immune to criticism or potential refinement. Yes, competition is a choice. Most things are. However, any competitive game’s success is tied inextricably to the drive and passion of the most fervent players. When a game starts alienating its top competitors, then there is an issue. This is true whether you’re discussing a mobile game, board game, or physical sport.

What you omit is that there are ways to satisfy both competitive and casual players. Events can be designed to be friendly to those with large AND small collections.  Assuming that the 750 bar is fixed, and that the only way to help casual players is to insist upon 6-hour refresh timers, is an inherently limiting perspective. For example, if your concern is that people struggle to get to 750 for the packs, some solutions could be:

1) to lower the progression bar instead of forcing players to play more games to meet it;

2) to adjust the difficulty so that those with large collections don’t have such a profound and distinct advantage in completing content;

3) to increase rewards or drop rates so that lower-tier collections can more quickly make up the ground between “I can’t do it” and “I can do it”; or

4) to increase the power of lower rarity cards to assist in fulfilling objectives specifically geared toward a new set’s mechanics

Also, please don’t conflate the desire to excel at a game, and to win, with an addiction. There’s no need to spew thinly-veiled insults because you dislike an opinion on node refresh timers. Let’s focus on finding solutions that help everyone.