Daxos Vs. Kalemne Broken

Endbringer

I've said it before and I'll say it again and again- "Daxos Vs. Kalemne needs to change drastically because it is entirely messed up that any given player or players or entire coalition could choose one side, and win every single fight with objectives, and still end up on the losing side!" Are you kidding me?! Show me the proof as to why Kalemne is always leading and always wins the event. This is the fourth time the event has come around and once again Kalemne is leading and all my efforts to win and recieve the Daxos Exclusive go to waste. It's ridiculous too! You'd think that all the players that have been on the Kalemne winning side the past 3 times the event has come around, would want the other "New" exclusive, rather than the duplicate exclusive Kalemne mythic they all already have, but nope. It's so cool how so many people participate in a weekend long event and potentially get a perfect score, yet they end up on the losing side and never can get the Daxos exclusive. It needs to be changed to allow people to get what they deserve, what they put effort towards, and win the event if they win the majority of their matches in the event. It's that simple to not waste people's time and do things how they should be done.

ambrosio191

In another thread there was talk about 3000 player brackets.  In platinum tier there is almost always 2 brackets, so we can assume there are 3000+ people in platinum.  If we just take platinum and ignore everything else, in order for people to guarantee one side ones over the other they would need cooperation from 1500+ people.  A full coalition consists of 20 people.  1500/20 is 75, so you need full cooperation from at least 75 coalitions.  Now, we cant just take platinum, there are 3 other tiers of players, so in reality we need many more than 75 coalitions. I dont know 75+ active coalitions. One person, multiple people, or an entire coalition is insignificant compared to the playerbase as a whole.

I find the Daxos deck frustrating to play, and generally weaker than Kalemne and I'm sure others feel the same way.  Once you get past the pre-built deck stage I find Daxos to be weaker than Kalemne, but that could be due to Kalemne matching my style of play better than Daxos.

Not everyone cares about getting all the cards. I'd rather have 500 orbs, 20 jewels and 75 crystals over a card I may never use. Many people wait until mid day Sunday, see which side is winning, and join that side. Doing that ensures maximum rewards with minimal effort. All it takes is Kalemne to be winning by a little to get all those late joiners to pile on and win more.

We have no idea what goes into which side is winning. The devs have never said if getting the secondaries contribute to your side's score. All we can assume is winning more = your side is winning.

madwren

It is a bit silly that there is no path to obtain the card that is unobtainable.

jtwood

A while back, someone here suggested that the Duel Decks should have progressive rewards where the losing PW gets more of a share of the rewards (and keeps increasing like a casino slot progressive reward). Eventually, you'd be stupid not to try the other PW. I thought it was a brilliant suggestion.

Firstofhisname419

While we're on DvK, the "match 18 red gems" is ridiculous in that it only counts reds you swipe on to match. Took me 5 matches just aiming for that one objective. By the end I had 6 cards dedicated to gem conversion, 2 to nuke the other side's threats, and 2 fat creatures. Two straight rounds I saw my final match on the board at the end of Greg's turn, only for my start-of-turn gem conversion to match it first. It's insane that those don't count, and cascades don't count. Absolutely bat-poop crazy.

Smokincookz

@Firstofhisname419
Agreed, it’s a ridiculous slog. Doesn’t help that the RNG seems intent on not dropping enough red gems either, or converting red to white most turns. 

This game is infuriating.

FindingHeart8

Firstofhisname419 said:

While we're on DvK, the "match 18 red gems" is ridiculous in that it only counts reds you swipe on to match. Took me 5 matches just aiming for that one objective. By the end I had 6 cards dedicated to gem conversion, 2 to nuke the other side's threats, and 2 fat creatures. Two straight rounds I saw my final match on the board at the end of Greg's turn, only for my start-of-turn gem conversion to match it first. It's insane that those don't count, and cascades don't count. Absolutely bat-poop crazy.

You had me at bat-poop haha 

But yeah, took me a long time too.  It's a ridiculous objective

FindingHeart8

A major problem is that Daxos just isn't as powerful or as quick, as Kalemne.  If they made him a bit stronger, maybe increase mana gains and give the creature summoned by the first ability lifelink, we may see more players take the other side.

Gunmix25

ambrosio191 said:

In another thread there was talk about 3000 player brackets.  In platinum tier there is almost always 2 brackets, so we can assume there are 3000+ people in platinum.  If we just take platinum and ignore everything else, in order for people to guarantee one side ones over the other they would need cooperation from 1500+ people.  A full coalition consists of 20 people.  1500/20 is 75, so you need full cooperation from at least 75 coalitions.  Now, we cant just take platinum, there are 3 other tiers of players, so in reality we need many more than 75 coalitions. I dont know 75+ active coalitions. One person, multiple people, or an entire coalition is insignificant compared to the playerbase as a whole.

I find the Daxos deck frustrating to play, and generally weaker than Kalemne and I'm sure others feel the same way.  Once you get past the pre-built deck stage I find Daxos to be weaker than Kalemne, but that could be due to Kalemne matching my style of play better than Daxos.

Not everyone cares about getting all the cards. I'd rather have 500 orbs, 20 jewels and 75 crystals over a card I may never use. Many people wait until mid day Sunday, see which side is winning, and join that side. Doing that ensures maximum rewards with minimal effort. All it takes is Kalemne to be winning by a little to get all those late joiners to pile on and win more.

We have no idea what goes into which side is winning. The devs have never said if getting the secondaries contribute to your side's score. All we can assume is winning more = your side is winning.

I find Daxos to be severely handicapped in this event. The black market mythic that _could_ have potential is restricted heavily by the options available to even make that card viable and work for kalemne. Kalemne has a plethora of cards that synergize better with her.  Daxos has very little by comparison to help resist the intensity that Kalemne possesses.  Outside of the event I find Daxos to be far more powerful than Kalemne... because he has access to the whole of standard to maximize his effectiveness. He's one of my favorite PW because no one is built better for the long game than him, imho. Total passive board wipes and life gain. Anyways, he is built for control. Because of this he need access to a greater selection of cards. As it is now the event is like making ashiok fight samut with a limited pool of cards available by comparison. The event needs to be re-designed for balance. The daxos mythic will likely be one of the only unattainable cards in MTGPQ

Volrak

Another idea to improve the balance of Duel Decks events:

• Only allow players to choose a side before the Duel phase starts.  If they haven't chosen, then the Duel phase assigns them randomly to one of the sides they could have picked.
• To make it super-balanced, the random assignment could even be weighted towards the side which fewer players have chosen, with the goal of having an equal number of players on each side.

TomB

meh, I think all it would take to balance things would be to open up the card pools to include all of the current Standard. Limiting the card pools weakens Daxos far worse than Kalemne. It's probable they'll wait until the next rotation to do it though...

madwren

Gunmix25 said:

ambrosio191 said:

In another thread there was talk about 3000 player brackets.  In platinum tier there is almost always 2 brackets, so we can assume there are 3000+ people in platinum.  If we just take platinum and ignore everything else, in order for people to guarantee one side ones over the other they would need cooperation from 1500+ people.  A full coalition consists of 20 people.  1500/20 is 75, so you need full cooperation from at least 75 coalitions.  Now, we cant just take platinum, there are 3 other tiers of players, so in reality we need many more than 75 coalitions. I dont know 75+ active coalitions. One person, multiple people, or an entire coalition is insignificant compared to the playerbase as a whole.

I find the Daxos deck frustrating to play, and generally weaker than Kalemne and I'm sure others feel the same way.  Once you get past the pre-built deck stage I find Daxos to be weaker than Kalemne, but that could be due to Kalemne matching my style of play better than Daxos.

Not everyone cares about getting all the cards. I'd rather have 500 orbs, 20 jewels and 75 crystals over a card I may never use. Many people wait until mid day Sunday, see which side is winning, and join that side. Doing that ensures maximum rewards with minimal effort. All it takes is Kalemne to be winning by a little to get all those late joiners to pile on and win more.

We have no idea what goes into which side is winning. The devs have never said if getting the secondaries contribute to your side's score. All we can assume is winning more = your side is winning.

I find Daxos to be severely handicapped in this event. The black market mythic that _could_ have potential is restricted heavily by the options available to even make that card viable and work for kalemne. Kalemne has a plethora of cards that synergize better with her.  Daxos has very little by comparison to help resist the intensity that Kalemne possesses.  Outside of the event I find Daxos to be far more powerful than Kalemne... because he has access to the whole of standard to maximize his effectiveness. He's one of my favorite PW because no one is built better for the long game than him, imho. Total passive board wipes and life gain. Anyways, he is built for control. Because of this he need access to a greater selection of cards. As it is now the event is like making ashiok fight samut with a limited pool of cards available by comparison. The event needs to be re-designed for balance. The daxos mythic will likely be one of the only unattainable cards in MTGPQ

Good post. 

I've also found Daxos to be a good planeswalker outside of this event.  DvK actually turned me off to using him for a long time because the experience was so terrible.

Kalemne has also become one of my favorites to brew for and is a good planeswalker...but the thing is, Kalemne doesn't need synergistic cards because you can literally just throw any decent creature in her deck and, welp, there you go.  Everything is hasty, everything is huge. She's idiot-proof like Koth. She's more versatile overall, but when those kind of planeswalkers work with any set restrictions. There are always good creatures. 

FindingHeart8

critman said:

Volrak said:

Another idea to improve the balance of Duel Decks events:

• Only allow players to choose a side before the Duel phase starts.  If they haven't chosen, then the Duel phase assigns them randomly to one of the sides they could have picked.
• To make it super-balanced, the random assignment could even be weighted towards the side which fewer players have chosen, with the goal of having an equal number of players on each side.

I can't imagine randomly deciding who gets what prizes will be popular?

It isan interesting idea, but it would only delay the problem, not solve it.
After a few occurences of this event, people would pretty quickly realize the winning side and flock to it anyways.  Late joiners being shoved into the other side might help add some points, but it's more probable that a late joiner (who was forced to a team) will play less than someone who joined and got to pick their team. 

The end result will still be the same.

Volrak

critman said:

I can't imagine randomly deciding who gets what prizes will be popular?

That's kind of the point (or one of the points).  If you want to control your own destiny, you'll prefer to choose in advance.  No more waiting to see who's winning and piling on to turn that side's lead, however large it was, into something larger.  As long as fewer than 100% of the wait-and-seers pick the same side up front, the effect will be to reduce the gap.

Stormcrow

Possibly controversial hot take: It's too late to fix DvK. It's always going to be lopsidedly in favor of Kalemne.

Why? Because many of the players of this game are very casual players. They don't come on the forums, they're probably not in active coalitions (if they're in coalitions at all), and they have no interest in communicating with other players or the developers, they just want to play a match-3 game in their spare time.

By now, those players have learned that the Kalemne side is much easier to get wins on and that side always wins, anyways. You can't communicate with those players except through the blunt means of "gameplay changes" and since they by now always pick Kalemne, even if D3 went through and rebalanced the decks and card selection so that Daxos was actually equal with Kalemne, simple inertia will still keep them all on Kalemne's side.

The actual solution to these unbalanced Duel Deck events is to run multiple rounds of beta testing, incorporating beta tester feedback in between each iteration, and not releasing it to the casual public at large until it's actually balanced.

Increasing the rewards on the loser's side each consecutive loss might work as a stopgap measure, but I'd wager it'll take a lot more losses to get people to shift sides than people think.

Endbringer

I think there shouldn't be a "Winning side" in the first place because of the fact that eventually no matter what it is done, people will figure which side dominates more in general and always choose it. I think each player should receive the upper echelon of rewards if they simply participate and finish X amount of the offered matches. Or win X amount. That serves correct for those deserving from putting in the time and effort.

FindingHeart8

Endbringer said:

I think there shouldn't be a "Winning side" in the first place because of the fact that eventually no matter what it is done, people will figure which side dominates more in general and always choose it. I think each player should receive the upper echelon of rewards if they simply participate and finish X amount of the offered matches. Or win X amount. That serves correct for those deserving from putting in the time and effort.

I mean you're not wrong, but I feel like the developers will just use this as an excuse to reduce rewards if they have to remodel the event.

I'd much rather see everyone win for picking the same team, then no teams but the rewards are reduced.

Kalazan

It doesn't feel right that no official response for the topic that discussed a lot like this one

Endbringer

THEY JUST NEED TO GIVE EVERYONE NECROMANCERS COVENANT AND BE DONE WITH IT!

Horadrim

@Oktagon_Support request to purchase Necromancer's Covenant (crystals or jewels) IF player has won at least 20 matches in duel/final duel phase with Daxos. It looks like most players are playing Kalemne and it's really almost impossible to win the event with Daxos. Same goes to Zendikar vs Eldrazi (as most players play Zendikar).

andrewvanmarle

There seems to be something wonky with temple of triumph, in the past 4 games I've only seen it convert to white. I bug?

Edit: it converts red to white.....