Webcore Q&A Session - November 2023 (ANSWERS POSTED 12/15/23)

Magic:PQ Support Team

MtG:PQ Q&A Session - November 2023

Hey, everyone!

This year’s been an adventure. Thank you for all of your questions and requests throughout this time we’ve been together. It helps us align our plan with your views - and it means a lot!

Lu

1. Is there any possibility of adding an option to accelerate the animations into the game to 2x speed for example? The animations of creature tokens coming into play, reinforcements, +1/+1 bonuses to creatures executed multiple times, damage or healing to a player/enemy several times per turn take too much time to run on screen and when it happens several times in each turn the games become very heavy and slow to play, spending most of the time watching the screen simply waiting for all tokens finish to coming into play (buffs/heal...), and also if those tokens generate additional interactions the turns become eternals as for example in the recent Halloween rats event. Speeding up these animations would make some decks playable more fluidly and even when the enemy plays with many tokens or creature bonuses per turn would also help those games not become so heavy and slow. It's funny to create decks with a lot of interactions between cards but not when they make each battle much slower.

   Answer: Thank you for bringing rich details to base your question. Many of the points line with our internal discussions for a UI revision that will take place in 2024. This is also one of the reasons why the Plague Control event hasn't been scheduled again. It will be brought back after a redesign to address these points.

2. Another little question is if it's really necessary to start each combat with the health reduced for the previous battle ending. At the beginnings of the game (5 years ago) there was only one event where you can play infinites matches and the final ranking was about the number of victories so HP healing limit was the main factor to play more matches but at the actual state of the game seems is not useful maintain that reduction of HPs. Also there still exists a bug when you try to start a match and have a server connection error, it counts as a lost game and your PWs HPs are reduced to 12 more or less and if you don't realize about this, you probably will lose the next game too.

   Thanks and greetings

   Answer: Thank you for bringing this suggestion and sharing a lesson on the game history. We agree that there are less situations where the interactions with this feature are not as common as it once was, we believe that there are still interesting ways to interact with this mechanism, and removing it from the game would ultimately mean reducing design options. As for the issue you pointed out regarding server connection errors potentially initiating a chain of actions leading into games being lost due to reasons not originating from normal gameplay flow: There are other lines of action that we can take to make such scenarios more unlikely, such as revising the pre-game UI.

3. Asking again since you skipped this question in September and October:

   Something that frustrates a lot of players is the disappointing rankings after dropping a few points—there are so many perfect scores that they often take up the first hundred or so places in PVP events.

   Most of these events (and their rewards) were originally designed for pools of 300 players compared to the pools of 3000 players these days.

   Will you consider either narrowing the competition AND/OR increasing the rewards to better reflect the time & effort players give to the game?"

   Answer: You are right! We are aware of the need for more granularity in events ranking. This should be addressed with the reworking of the event rewards system which will be implemented alongside changes to matchmaking and ranking systems in an upcoming 2024 update. Also, to comment on your question being skipped: A great way to ensure that your questions will be visualized by the team, is to make use of the forms to submit your questions. This will ensure your question is not lost in the crowd.

4. Why has the 250 crystal pack for PMA been removed? We can see the value in 300 crystals packs because it doesn't have non PMA cards but you do realize that the players who had already spent crystals on 250 crystals packs and have cleared out most of the non PMA cards have gotten the shorter end of the stick.

5. When can we expect to see the "normal" PMA packs in the vault again, the ones costing 250 mana crystals?

   Answer: The 250 mana crystal versions for PMA packs were created during a time where not enough PMA cards were available to have packs with a big enough card pool. As this situation has changed with the addition of more cards to the PMA set, the second version of the pack, without the “non-PMA filler” cards to reach the minimum card pool, the 300 mana crystal pack was created, alongside a pack redundancy: Both packs are listed as the same set, however the difference between them is not explicit, and to a new player can cause confusion on which pack to select, or frustration, if the person pulls one of the non-PMA cards, unknowingly that these were present in the pool. For this reason, the 250 mana crystal version of the pack has been rotated out from the vault.

   We acknowledge that many veteran players that already cleared these fillers over the course of many packs might feel that the “toll has been paid”. We are discussing the best ways to bring these lower cost packs without leaving the door open for feel-bad scenarios for neither veterans or newcomers.

6. Mythic WAR vanguards can be bought in the vault in "non duplicate free" boosters for 300 pinkies. Getting a duplicate for that amount of pinkies is unacceptable. Would you consider making these packs duplicate free? We also need a way to get the rare vanguards duplicate free. Would you consider this pattern: keep the 120 pinkies (rare+, allows duplicate) and 400 pinkies (mythic+, duplicate free) and create a new category for 200 pinkies (rare only, duplicate free) for all sets, past and future?

   Answer: We completely agree that the presentation for this item is not ideal. While we have an ongoing process of re-evaluating all products, the WAR Vanguard packs might indeed require an expedited treatment.

7. [Translated from Russian] Hello! I would like to know if it is possible to revise the abilities of PW Vraska, Golgari Queen due to the fact that she is significantly weaker than other PWs? Her abilities are very dependent on the presence of creatures both on the battlefield and in the graveyard, which significantly limits the possibilities of building decks for this PW. If we take the same Garruk, cursed huntsman, then there is room to expand: you can create many options for decks, including without creatures. In the case of Vraska, this opportunity is not provided, and you have to think all the time about how to put cards into the graveyard and play as many creatures as possible, although the abilities themselves do not allow you to put cards in the cemetery and have weak synergy. The third ability is very weak and often doesn't work. Please consider this issue!

   Answer: Altering a planeswalker is not a simple task, and might ultimately deface the original intent behind the mechanics added for a specific walker. While we agree that, and have as a design philosophy that all planeswalkers should be interesting to play with, we understand that not all walkers are the same, and that some will excel at more niche play styles, while other planeswalkers will have a more generalist, all round approach. This does not mean that there is no hope for the Gorgon Planeswalker to have another version that approaches a different play style that, perhaps, aligns with your preferred one in a more compleat way.

8. What are your plans for giving players a place to experiment with decks? As it is now it is impossible to play any event without using the “big guns” at least in Platinum. It is a problem in both standard and legacy.

9. (Inspired by another question asked this month) What do you think of adding a "sandbox" area to the game? It's always available to play unlike Training Grounds. No objectives, no prizes, no wins or losses, just a dummy boss with infinite health and 10 random cards. You just play your deck until you end the match yourself. It would just be a fun way to experiment with your collections and play your cards and Planeswalkers to see what happens without worrying so much about trying to win

   Answer: Our current plans include experimental modes that will bring some new ways to experience the game. While we don't have a set timeline for their rollout, we can say that some points brought in the suggestions were part of our discussions on the topic..

10. Would you consider changing the loop detection system, so that when a deck controlled by Greg (AI) loops, the human player can choose to win the match.

    This will allow loop-players to loop and those who want to use the full variety of their library, can do so.

    Answer: We appreciate the good intentions behind this suggestion. However, altering the loop prevention system significantly impacts gameplay. Our goal is also to ensure that match outcomes are not directly influenced by this system to maintain the integrity of event rankings.

11. What happened to Into The Wilds of Eldraine? I liked that event and was hoping that it wouldn't be a one-time run.

    Answer: This event had some issues that had to be fixed before it could return to the regular event rotation. It will be available once again with version 6.4.0.

12. Where are the deck slot sales? It's been so many months since I've seen one.

    Answer: Deckslot sales will return in 2024. Perhaps with some additional slots on the way to obtain extra slots.

---

Hello, everyone!

Hope you are all well.

Here's another Q&A SESSION.
You can send your questions through this link and we'll answer here the ones sent up to November 30rd. We aim at posting their answers before the holidays.

This is the same link as previous month because this form with remain open continuously, so you can keep sending questions even if there is not an official post 'open'.

If you have more than one question on different topics, submit them separately.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Lu

Sarah

Is the link working correctly? Because I keep asking the same question. Perhaps the third time is the charm?

Asking again since you skipped this question in September and October:

Something that frustrates a lot of players is the disappointing rankings after dropping a few points—there are so many perfect scores that they often take up the first hundred or so places in PVP events.

Most of these events (and their rewards) were originally designed for pools of 300 players compared to the pools of 3000 players these days.

Will you consider either narrowing the competition AND/OR increasing the rewards to better reflect the time & effort players give to the game?

Tremayne

Logging my question

What are your plans for give players a place to experiment with decks? As it is now it is impossible to play any event without using the “big guns” at least in Platinum. It is a problem in both standard and legacy.

Tremayne

Logging my question

Would you consider changing the loop detection system, so that when a deck controlled by Greg (AI) loops, the human player can choose to win the match.
This will allow loop-players to loop and those who wants to use the full variety of their library, can do so.

Mainloop25

@Tremayne said:
Logging my question

What are your plans for give players a place to experiment with decks? As it is now it is impossible to play any event without using the “big guns” at least in Platinum. It is a problem in both standard and legacy.

I love the idea of a "sandbox" mode. No objectives, no wins or losses, a boss with infinite health. You just play your deck until you end the match yourself.

Magic:PQ Support Team

Hey @Sarah! I checked October's questions and couldn't find any similar to this one so I think we didn't receive it. "/

Thank you for sending it this month once again so we have the opportunity to answer. No spoilers, tho.

Lu

Machine

We acknowledge that many veteran players that already cleared these fillers over the course of many packs might feel that the “toll has been paid”. We are discussing the best ways to bring these lower cost packs without leaving the door open for feel-bad scenarios for neither veterans or newcomers.

What does this exactly mean @Magic:PQ Support Team ? Are you planning to return the 250 gold packs? When might that be? If there are two kind of packs available, 250 and 300, then players should know there is a difference between packs and not be surprised to open a 250 pack that drops a non-PMA card. This seems an invalid reason to me to NOT run the 250 packs.