Persil's list of 10 major problems with MPQ

Persil

Also, before #9, I added one more line to #8 (which I forgot to include) ->

"What is more, in some events I can use same PW for all nodes. In others, I can only use him/her in one noe. In some events, I can change PW once I started playing. In others, I can't. Why there is no info about it? Why do we need to guess, check wiki or write down notes?"

TheHunter

Persil said:

Also, before #9, I added one more line to #8 (which I forgot to include) ->

"What is more, in some events I can use same PW for all nodes. In others, I can only use him/her in one noe. In some events, I can change PW once I started playing. In others, I can't. Why there is no info about it? Why do we need to guess, check wiki or write down notes?"

I think it always says 'once locked' on the events where your PW is locked in, but have no way checking them to test this!

Persil

Xucachris said:

I think it always says 'once locked' on the events where your PW is locked in, but have no way checking them to test this!

My experience is that this information in many cases is either missing or incomplete. E.g., a new "Rising Tensions" event just opened a few minutes ago, and its description says:

Your PWs will be attached to their current nodes, so you can play with any PW that shares at least one color with the node's colors.

So - can I use the same PW in all three nodes? Or I can't?

Not to mention a lot of other info which we can't find in descriptions. What is recharge time? What is max charge? Etc.

TheHunter

You're quite right. There's unlikely to be a rule book or information guide any time coming from the developers so I guess its up to all of the regular contributors on here, and I'm including me in that, to update Volrak's excellent wiki pages with this information as we're able to gather it. I'd like the devs to do this, but the wiki is a great resource and user-owned.

Persil

9) Randomness & lack of balance

Randomness, to sam extent, isn't bad. It can add some diversification, making each match a fresh experience. Problems start when randomness takes over, having too much impact. Imagine a chess tournament, where each player is allowed to roll a dice at the beginning of a match, and if the roll is lucky, destroys have of the enemy's pieces. Do you think this tournament woud be popular among serious players? Well, that's how playing MPQ sometimes feels.

The game itself is very random. We get random cards from boosters, we fight random enemies in PvP, matches start with a random board, new gems fall in a random manner, cards are drawn in a random order. This is how the game is built and probably cannot be changed without serious mechanics changes. Ok - understandable.

However, it does feel like, despite all this randomness which causes serious balance issues, devs try to put even more randomness. Randomness, which will casue even more balance problems and thus frustrate even more players.

One example is lack of mechanics for destroying target supports. If an enemy casts two creatures, one of them being powerful, I have ways to target it and destroy (even if hexproofed, there are cards like "destroy first creature" etc.). However, if it casts two supports, one being weak and the other being game-breaking, there is no mechanics for targeting which one to destroy - only "destroy a [random] support". If it destroys the good one, I'm lucky. If not, it can mean loosing the game, and droping from Rank 1 to Rank 200. There is such a mechanics in original Magic The Gathering, so I can't understand wht you didn't implement it and left things even more random. It feels like the only reason for that was the devs not willing to spend time on adding such a mechanics.

Then we have random permanents in some events. I don't mind if the're similar, or weaj, or if it's a PvE event. However, this is not always the case. E.g. in Seize the Day, right node, where you have 25% chances of enemy picking "Delaying Shield". Given that it blocks damage, and the objectives require you to do a specific amount of damage, in my experience every match has a 25% chance of turning into a rubbish. Of course, on average every player will experience this, however some will be unlucky and will get 3 out of 6 games like this, while other will not face any. Again, this is a ranked event where even loosing one objective puts you out of competition. Why add even more randomness?

Then, objectives likes "win in 5 rounds". Sure, I can build a deck which often wins in round 2-3. However if I'm unlucky sometimes, e.g. if I draw 3-4 same cards, I will need more than 5 rounds. And yep - because of being unlucky, I'm just going down the Tier.

Also, many cards feel broken. I do get that some cards need to be powerful - that's how it always work and worked for original Magic The Gathering. However, in MTG, I don't think people experienced loosing games in their 2nd round. On the other hand. this happens in MPQ. There are common and well known combos which often result in mass converting, drawing, casting cards as early as in 1st or 2nd round. If you don't know them, just play any Legacy Trial of the Planes event, preferably against a Green PW. Convert, convert, convert, convert, convert...

The broken cards are well known, namely: Omniscience, Stitch in Time, Song of Creation (not even a Masterpiece!), Rishkar's Expertise (again, not even a Masterpiece!), etc. And if I loose a game in 2nd round because the enemy got a combo, it doens't make me pay you more money because I have most of these cards. Instead, It makes me want to shut donw the app because I'm frustrated at lack of balance and reasoning in such games.

Possible solutions

Add the missing mechanics. Make less random objectives. Nerf some cards (even though some of them have already been nerfed).

Persil

Before the final, 10th entry...

Special Mentions

A) Dead Mechanics

Apart from Story mode being dead, there are smaller game elements which are dead, too. Color Mastery is one of them - you get to Platinum in a few months, after that, you're done. As many other players, I'm currently at 3000 out of 2500 and nothing ever happens.

Next one is completing PWs decks - with more and more cards in one big Legacy basket, targeting any card is pointless and so is trying to finish PWs decks.

There are also card mechanics which no one uses anymore. One of those is Meld, but there are many others. Some at least are forced via specific events, other (like Meld) are simply not used.

B) Legacy Booster Crafting

As mentioned earlier, with collections as big as 250+, new players stand no chance to craft any specific card, or even to target any specific set. The sets in crafting should at least be grouped into (Standard) years.

C) Event prizes

Imagine a World Chess Tournament where the main prize would be 5 Dollars and 3 packs of crisps. Sure, it's something, however do you think people would take this tournament seriously?

That's how if feels about prizes in many events, in particular the weekend ones. 5 Jewels for Rank 1 in "Hunter X Bonder", and many similar events? Wow. It really makes me want to play. Just imagine what I'll do with such a generous reward.

D) Dupes

Do you know this excitement feeling when opening a new booster, wondering what new cards will you get? No? I don't either.

Most of the time, the only thing you get from boosters is 60-80 Cratfing Runes, and some useless Mana Runes. Even packs from new sets, after two or three weeks, get to the same level.

E) VIP

Forcing people to go VIP, while regularly downgrading VIP - is this how the devs really want to encourage people to join it? I considered it at some point, however checking how VIP is regularly downgraded, made me resign.

jtwood

Persil said:

Before the final, 10th entry...

Special Mentions</code></h1><div><pre class="CodeBlock"><code>C) Event prizesImagine a World Chess Tournament where the main prize would be 5 Dollars and 3 packs of crisps. Sure, it's something, however do you think people would take this tournament seriously?

That's how if feels about prizes in many events, in particular the weekend ones. 5 Jewels for Rank 1 in "Hunter X Bonder", and many similar events? Wow. It really makes me want to play. Just imagine what I'll do with such a generous reward.

It took me a while to notice this, but the game has categorically placed newer events into either "Individual" or "Coalition" groups. The prizes for those events are weighted based on that designation. Coalitions events, like HxB, pay out the bulk of their rewards to top-placing coalitions. If you're on a low-performing coalition, you won't get many rewards from that event because of its focus on the team aspect of this game. Individual events, like today's StV, are designed to give people the chance to get rewards for their individual ranks without needing to be on a coalition.

I'm not saying this is good/bad, right/wrong, fun/annoying, whatever... Just pointing it out, because it was something that sort of snuck up on me, and I'm not sure everyone realized that the fundamental prize distribution approach had changed in MTGPQ.

jtwood

I'm not sure how that got borked by me simply quoting another post... and I'm not really in the mood to fix that, either.

Persil

jtwood said:

It took me a while to notice this, but the game has categorically placed newer events into either "Individual" or "Coalition" groups. The prizes for those events are weighted based on that designation. Coalitions events, like HxB, pay out the bulk of their rewards to top-placing coalitions. If you're on a low-performing coalition, you won't get many rewards from that event because of its focus on the team aspect of this game. Individual events, like today's StV, are designed to give people the chance to get rewards for their individual ranks without needing to be on a coalition.

I have a similar feeling, too. However, even this rule often does not apply as we still get many individual events where Rank 1 prize dissapoints. For example: all 5 Challenges of the Courts, Terrors in the Shadows, or Emrakul's Corruption. And it's not that it only applies to old events. Colors of Magic is new and its Rank 1 prize is very little, too.

And regarding the coalition events: following the earlier example, it's as if there was a group chess tournament, where the main prize for team #1 would be, say, 10000 Dollars, plus 5 Dollars and 3 packs of crisps bonus to individual members of the team. Sounds silly.

jtwood said:

I'm not sure how that got borked by me simply quoting another post... and I'm not really in the mood to fix that, either.

That's just another thing about MTGPQ - how broken the forum is, too - the quotation mechanism in particular. When writing a reply to my post, the code quotation is fine. It breaks only once you publish the post

jtwood

Persil said:

I have a similar feeling, too. However, even this rule often does not apply as we still get many individual events where Rank 1 prize dissapoints. For example: all 5 Challenges of the Courts, Terrors in the Shadows, or Emrakul's Corruption. And it's not that it only applies to old events. Colors of Magic is new and its Rank 1 prize is very little, too.

CotC is fine in my book. The progression is solid, and the top rewards are just fine for an event with only 250 people per pod. That event would be the closest thing to perfect if the node timers and start/end times weren't an affront to humanity. Terror and EC are old and trash.

I have no excuses to make for Colors. It's just terrible from top to bottom.

Persil said:

And regarding the coalition events: following the earlier example, it's as if there was a group chess tournament, where the main prize for team #1 would be, say, 10000 Dollars, plus 5 Dollars and 3 packs of crisps bonus to individual members of the team. Sounds silly.

Yes, it is a bit silly that they only offer to put three sprinkles on top of the 6 scoops of ice cream

Persil

And the final one...

10) It just feels they don't care at all

And by "they", I mean everyone responsible for the game - devs, publisher etc.

Sure, the devs do add new sets, features etc. to the game. This is what they have to do, otherwise the game would die, as any other game which doesn't get updates.

At the same time, everything else seems to be not working.

If they care, how is it that the list of bugs goes now in hundreds, or maybe even more? With some really serious, often causing people to lose ranked games?

If they care, how is it that serious bugs don't get fixed even a year after being reported? Mono Teferi's been out for a year, yet his 3rd ability is still not working proper. Even despite many people reporting it, and some of us suggesting what is likely the exact cause, the only thing we got from the devs was "sorry, we didn't manage to recreate the bug". Yey, problem solved!

If they care, how is that when people lose a game and drop 200 ranks down due to a bug, when they report it, they are only recompensated one bracket up? This basically says "it's our fault but we don't care".

If they care, how is it that we can't even get a few new games in the Story mode?

For years, many people have also been reporting the problem with millions of useless Runes accumulated, asking for any (any!) way of spending them. So what they got was one of the moderators trying to convince them that they actually don't have a problem because this moderator is still spending her runes.

A few months ago, I reported on the forum that in a ranked game, one of the players got more points than the maximum possible. This is a very serious issue, which shows that either 1) the game is seriously broken, 2) that player cheats or 3) the devs cheat on us (I'm not saying which one is the case, just listing them). 
Oh, how much about the state of the game says that, instead of something like "thank you for reporting this, we'll have a look as this is serious", the only reaction I got was... a warning from one of the moderators for publishing publically the score board.

Etc. etc.

And, sadly, this forum even magnifies the feeling. Sure, the devs pretend to listen. In practice, however, many of us realised that our serious questions won't get answered. That most of the bugs won't be fixed. That most of our suggestions won't be considered, even if reported by many players.

And that's how it goes.

The end.

Mburn7

Wow, I never thought I'd see the day when the list ended

On a more serious note, you're absolutely right about the feeling that the devs just don't care.  And I really hope they take notice sometime, because I've never seen the forums and coalition chats so dead before.  It seems the more random new stuff they add in to make money the less they care about actual gameplay.  And as the gameplay gets more complex and buggy (and tedious with the high complexity of the few new events we are getting) the less people will want to play.

Taranis

The most silly thing (not in a good way) is the problem with the rewards. For example: Max points 140 = first place. Next lower points 138 is place 1xx . I don't get it. If it would be logical it should be second place. No matter how many players had full points.