Stepping down

tfg76
tfg76 Posts: 258 Mover and Shaker
edited July 2019 in MtGPQ General Discussion
Hi,

I've decided to step down from MTGPQ competitive play. Meaning: I'll cancel my VIP and play whenever I feel like it.

As such, I thought I would write some feedback to the dev team so they can understand why, and perhaps how they could win paying players like me back.

To me, MTGPQ is a diversion that I want to play during free time - on the bus, on lunch break, and so on. It's not a part-time job. However, playing competitively requires so much time that it may as well be. Let me define competitively: It means being in a top 10 coalition, trying to get top 10 coalition and/or top 5 individual in every event. When playing a game like this, I'm looking for a challenge: When I sit down with it, I would like to concentrate and focus on the game, and encounter challenges that require me to think, reason and plan, and when I do so well, win and achieve the goals I've set for myself.

MTGPQ was like this in the beginning. With a limited card pool, it was a challenge to simply get enough decent Vampires, Werewolves or Spirits to build a good deck for Terrors or EC, and maybe make top 25 or top 50, with a loss here and there. However, now that I'm platinum with access to every card in Standard, the goal is to build a deck that can consistently (>99%) win and achieve all objectives, and _then_ repeat a very simple formula to achieve that goal in each game. Yes, there are games that challenge me, and there are games that I underestimate and thus lose, but they are far and few between. 

Recent events like RAW, TDW and most agregiously, TE have showed me how ridiculously grindy the game has become. I estimate that TE requires 4-5 hours of play _per day_ in order to clear all nodes. It's just not sustainable.

Here are some thoughts on what it would take to get me back:

1. Solve the issues of "the last charge". Noone, regardless of time zone, should have to wake up in the middle of the night in order to stay competitive. This should be trivial to fix - let the last recharge happen 12-24 hours before the end of the event, rather than 4 or 6 as today.

2. Increase the difficulty of games. Too many events have a "top 5" with easily 20-50 players sharing full marks. I realize that making the AI smarter can be difficult in general, but there are some trivial improvements that could be made:
   - Make it choose matches optimally. Given knowledge only about the state of the board, the AI should be able to choose the best match to give it the most amount of mana and/or new swaps.
   - Avoid bugs like the AI choosing itself or its own creatures for burn spells, or the opponent's creatures for pump spells.
   - Let the AI start the game.
   - Fix matchmaking so it relies on previous event prowess rather than how many cards you have.

3. Reduce the number of nodes that you need to play in order to compete for top prizes. Roughly 4-5 per day seems right to me.

4. Come up with some overall reason to do well in events - I think "seasons" sounds like it may be a solution to that, but who knows (and why is it taking so long?)? It'd be cool to be touted as the "season winner" of MTGPQ or something. The prize could be some kind of avatar mod or whatever. 

One specific solution I have for 1-3 is the following event structure:

1. All nodes in all events (including TG) have the same point structure: X points for a win, Y points for capturing each of several fixed objectives: "Flawless victory", "Cast no creatures", "Dealt more than 50 damage in a turn", and so on. 

2. An event node additionally has a deck building restriction: "Only common cards", "Only cards from some sets", "At least 4 Merfolk", and so on. 

3. An event node, when won, scores points for the win, plus all of the objectives. However, only the best score for a node counts towards your event total.

This kind of structure would achieve all my hopes for the game I think:

- There's always a challenge! How can you achieve even more objectives? How can you refine your deck or play to do that the next time you play?
- You can get decent points (but maybe not max) for playing each node once, so for coalition play, it's probably "ok" to do just that.
- If the last charge is inappropriate for your time zone, that's probably ok - hopefully you can use the previous charges to achieve the point scores you're looking for.

Anyway, good luck to the team in building up the game to be great (again?), and to all the players. I'll still play and follow along, so hopefully some changes to the better will happen and throw me back in.



Comments

  • Machine
    Machine Posts: 857 Critical Contributor
    I totally agree regarding the grind the game has become. This weekend has gone to nothingness just because of the four nodes with a six hour recharge. I actually gave this feedback in the The Elderspark thread. The really should address this and I already gave some feedback on how they could achieve this.
  • Theros
    Theros Posts: 490 Mover and Shaker
    The grind and event duration is something they're obviously aware of and no change has been done. This is not a new issue.
    I don't understand why do events go past the weekend and finish on Monday despite starting on Friday?
    Time zones are not an issue if the grind is reduced
  • tfg76
    tfg76 Posts: 258 Mover and Shaker
    Theros said:

    Time zones are not an issue if the grind is reduced

    Actually, this is not true currently. In RAW, if you're in Europe you have to play your last charge between midnight and 4 AM. I know that this is not new, and that some events have had similar effects in other parts of the world before.
  • Theros
    Theros Posts: 490 Mover and Shaker
    edited July 2019
    tfg76 said:
    Theros said:

    Time zones are not an issue if the grind is reduced

    Actually, this is not true currently. In RAW, if you're in Europe you have to play your last charge between midnight and 4 AM. I know that this is not new, and that some events have had similar effects in other parts of the world before.
    If hours are reduced, you wont have to finish your charges between midnight and 4 AM and I wont have to finish my charges on Monday during working hours.
    Do you see why time zones is not an issue. Reducing the grind/time/nodes is always a win-win. Even a 12 hours reduction (around -2 nodes) will make both of us finish during logical times.
    All they have to do is reduce node played and leave the end time intact. That way you'll have so many hours to finish your last nodes before the even ends and that should accommodate all time zones. There are so many other novel ideas and its really up to Octagon
  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
    Reducing the grind of TE would be a good step to take, but absolutely does not solve the "last charge" issue, which time zones relate to.  If the last charge has only ~6 hours, then someone, somewhere in the world who would like to play that node will find it inconvenient or impossible.  This is true for every possible event end time.


  • Theros
    Theros Posts: 490 Mover and Shaker
    Volrak said:
    Reducing the grind of TE would be a good step to take, but absolutely does not solve the "last charge" issue, which time zones relate to.  If the last charge has only ~6 hours, then someone, somewhere in the world who would like to play that node will find it inconvenient or impossible.  This is true for every possible event end time.



    If you remove the last node only, that person somewhere in the world would have 12 hours which is pretty flexible
  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
    It sounded like your suggestion was just to shorten the event.  If it's to make the final recharge not actually a recharge then it could be a good solution (it's similar to what some other people have proposed).
  • NickBKK
    NickBKK Posts: 97 Match Maker
    edited July 2019
    The problem in this game is they ignore voice of customers. They don’t really listen or try to see things from customers perspective.
    They may think, believe, or that  they do, but they repeatedly make moves that burn customers again and again.

    And with all the recent changes in game, I wish they can understand that it’s okay to try to make money but no need to a dich about it. Dupe Vanguard packs, 5 jewels for top weekend event winners, 6 hours recharges, torturously grindy events, .... the list could go on, but all these unpleasant experiences  are driving their customer away from the game.
  • nerdstrap
    nerdstrap Posts: 180 Tile Toppler
    I have just under 100,000 coalition points with BlackVise (top10 all time) and I just relinquished my leadership... I don't want to play Magic the Gathering with gems, I wanted to play gems themed with Magic the Gathering... it's too much work for a phone game. The developers and producers just don't know what a good game is...
  • Stalker
    Stalker Posts: 141 Tile Toppler
    This game grew to take too much time to complete all tasks. The final node charge should be 12 plus hours. Also the money walls got too high. So not only were my school studies suffering, so was my wallet. Could be ftp but when you have a chance to grab a card you want to play with vs rng, it is an easy choice. Didn’t mind supporting the game, but quit due to all the negatives it brought in to my life. Many gamers are casual and don’t want a mobile game to be a second job. 
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    nerdstrap said:
    I have just under 100,000 coalition points with BlackVise (top10 all time) and I just relinquished my leadership... I don't want to play Magic the Gathering with gems, I wanted to play gems themed with Magic the Gathering... it's too much work for a phone game. The developers and producers just don't know what a good game is...
    That's awful.  I hope you're still able to play a little after all the time you've put in.  But I definitely feel your pain.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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  • Drogo
    Drogo Posts: 5 Just Dropped In
    I have been in a top 10 coalition for the last year or so and quit coalition play entirely recently.   Just too much time.  I am so much happier to play the odd RT or random event when I feel like and the game is so absurdly grindy at the top it has freed up HOURS every week for me now.   I highly recommend it.  
  • Xenagos12
    Xenagos12 Posts: 2 Just Dropped In
    I just started playing this week but can already tell this is yet another mobile game that has a **** grind and forces you to spend a lot of money so it's not. Not sure how long I'm sticking with this one.
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
    Xenagos12 said:
    I just started playing this week but can already tell this is yet another mobile game that has a tinykitty grind and forces you to spend a lot of money so it's not. Not sure how long I'm sticking with this one.
    Ironically I think this is one of the few games where skill trumps spending every single time. 
  • Xenagos12
    Xenagos12 Posts: 2 Just Dropped In
    No, simply no.....lol

    Not saying skill isn't a big part of the game but most of the best cards are hard to get without spending quite a bit of money. The ability to acquire cards through play is painfully slow compared to other games.
  • ArielSira
    ArielSira Posts: 520 Critical Contributor
    Until VIP I didn't spend more than 12 euro on this game (in almost 3 years) and got 2636 cards. F2p is quite accessible.

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