MtG:PQ Q&A Session - August 2024

Magic:PQ Support Team

Hey, everyone!

Sorry for the delay in posting this month’s answers. We are already working on September questions..

As always, thanks for your contributions and patience. And submit your questions for the next edition through our form.

Lu

1. I haven't seen elite packs for Wilds of Eldraine in the vault for months. What's the reason for that?

   Answer: No special reason. As the sets become older, it takes more time for them to come back. At the same time, WOE is Standard and was scheduled to be in the store in early September.

2. Can we please get an actively updated list of cards rewarded by Battles From The Ages? The event page hasn't been updated since Neon Dynasty, and it's a big cost of time and crystals to find out if the rewards for the exclusive booster have changed or not. If we could get the link to the current list added on the Sneak Peek post with a note on the last time the rewards were updated, I'd be much more likely to give it my crystals.

   Answer: Sure thing! We’ve created a new, updated discussion for this event and will add the process of keeping it up to date to our new release tasks.

3. The original player pools were only 300 people but at some point in time it was switched to 3000. The rewards were properly scaled and now, with so many players, a loss of a single objective in an otherwise perfect event can lead to being placed in the high hundreds of places after all of the players tie for first. This is an incredibly unfair and unfun experience for imperfect players. Do you have any plans to relieve some of that pain?

   Answer: Yes, there are plans to adjust the ranking rewards and the matchmaking system. Part of those changes should relieve the stress of huge pools of players with the best prizes concentrated only on the top portion of the ranking rewards.

gozmaster

REALLY excited about that last answer. Thank you @Magic:PQ Support Team (LU)

Sarah

Ok @Magic:PQ Support Team I'm starting to run out of things to complain about. Thank you so much for answering my question. I will eagerly await these changes!

Machine

@Magic:PQ Support Team Lu, the lack of the monthly Q&A thread, even worse, the lack of communication and visibility in general, is becoming very disheartening. Is this your idea of connecting with the community? Why do we have to keep asking for the monthly Q&A? This is the reverse world. Come on, I know you can do better than this. Thanks in advance.

Sarah

It certainly seems that they aren’t interested in interacting with people who aren’t making YouTube videos full of compliments @Machine

Gideon

The community would really like it if you talked to us more. We welcome the interaction.

Sarah

@Gideon said:
The community would really like it if you talked to us more. We welcome the interaction.

They chat with the content creators daily! 🙂

Tremayne

@Sarah - are you joking? Because then the attention showed to the forum is really pathetic.

Sarah

@Tremayne of course I'm not joking. They are active daily on discord in a chat with their featured content creators. Think of the videos you've seen promoted in game and you'll have a pretty good idea of who is included in the conversations.

And yet the narrative is “Sarah hates the YouTubers” and not “there are legitimate concerns about the lack of transparency here.”

It’s not actually true, you know. I don’t hate the YouTubers nor do I begrudge them their goodies. I just question the wisdom of relying solely on feedback from people who get free stuff in exchange for saying nice things.

Ironically, I think they've accidentally stumbled onto the winning formula; generosity and regular communication. If they'd only apply that to the rest of us, they'd have a much more successful game.

And casting a much wider net for the player base would increase the odds of landing another whale or two which is presumably their end goal.

Instead we get quality of life improvements that no one wants; for what reason would one possibly want to buy packs from a set which contains duplicates when one already has unopened packs? It helps clumsy & careless players spend crystals unintentionally. That's one way to get people to pay more attention to the app but I don't think it's a very elegant solution to that problem.

Tremayne

ridiculous

Sarah

@Tremayne said:
ridiculous

It absolutely IS ridiculous! The best part was when one of the content creators used every synonym he knew for “hysterical” to describe my being upset about it on one of his livestreams… which felt more than a little misogynistic TBH. I’ll not name names as it is against the rules but it should be immediately obvious which of the dude bros dismissed my concerns as “mentally unwell.”

I don’t think it’s “unhinged” for me to be concerned about this. Do you?

Follow up question: What would a calm and rational response from me look like?

Tremayne

@Sarah - I don’t know what the “correct” behaviour is in the situation described. However, I do get the extreme frustration when seeing favouritism being showered upon individuals who panders to those in power.

There is a lot of negativity on this forum (sadly, I have made that mistake occasionally). I can understand too much negativity is demoralising for the person responsible for answering messages, if it happens at length. It seems before webcore the devs were better at handling this.

What I don’t understand is why there is so much reluctance to hand out compensation when the devs make mistakes (505 games have a significantly different policy on some of their other apps). A small compensation would ease a lot of frustration in my experience.

What I also don’t understand is why the devs thinks it is a good idea to ignore the general community and only listen to the yes-men.

Sarah

@Magic:PQ Support Team do you have any thoughts on this issue?

Edit: I’ve messaged you on discord to draw your attention to this conversation… since you might not be checking the forum.

Janosik

@Sarah said:

@Gideon said:
The community would really like it if you talked to us more. We welcome the interaction.

They chat with the content creators daily! 🙂

@Tremayne said:
@Sarah - are you joking? Because then the attention showed to the forum is really pathetic.

I was shocked to discover this myself, but one of the content creators said it to me personally on the main public channel of our Discord...

Magic:PQ Support Team

So much to answer here, so I won't @ each of your for specific topics, OK?

First of all: nope, this is definitely not the level of communication we wish we had with you folks.

About the Q&A, specifically, its answers depends on checking with too many members of our team, some of which may be unavailable or working on some highly demanding projects during the week we need them to check it. We are also not satisfied with this delay and we have changed some processes internally so that the October edition comes out in its proper time.
About the Forum itself, as a team we always read what goes here, but not always answer since only one person does that (hi!). That is why you may have seen many bugs mentioned here being fixed even if they have not been properly acknowledged at their threads. But yes, we do agree we should have more answers and we are shifting some tasks over so this may be possible.
Also, we are working on other means of communication that can align better with how gamers usually gather these days. I'd stay tuned.

About talking to Content Creators, there is a chat group to discuss the technical aspects of the content we support: when can a video come out, rules questions about previewed mechanics etc. Also, they often hear about issues on their servers and coalitions and bring it to us faster than these same issues show up here on the forum (see previous comment about how gamers gather nowaways), just like some of you are super quick in bringing it to the attention of Customer Support, for example. The goal of that group is not and has never been to replace the Forum or to create a privileged environment and even though they may chat there all day and bring other topics, I doubt anyone would find that the MPQ team spends their work hours there instead of here.
Also, one thing nobody really cares about but I do: critic content is also welcome! Every bad thing that was said about the previous version of Kaito was super helpful, for example, and the same happens with events. Honestly, the kind of review we like to receive is less about praise and more about what to do: why is a PW/event/card/set good or bad and what can we do in the future to make the game better?

Finally, about the option to buy packs that one already has, I believe it came out of some inquiry we've received quite some time ago because players wanted to save their non-dupes but that way they wouldn't be able to spend their Runes when those packs were available to buy. It's a very specific but valid situation and even more now with Epic Packs.
BUT
we certainly thought someone might buy stuff they didn't want because of this change! We'll are looking into that and how to avoid problems in this sense - are confirmation prompts enough? Some other solution? We're thinking about those things!

I may have missed some topic above but I hope the ones I've answered have helped. And, once again, we're working so that I able to spend more time here with you all.
You have always been generous with your feedback and that is much appreciated. Truly.

Lu

Janosik

@Magic:PQ Support Team said:
About talking to Content Creators, there is a chat group to discuss the technical aspects of the content we support: when can a video come out, rules questions about previewed mechanics etc. Also, they often hear about issues on their servers and coalitions and bring it to us faster than these same issues show up here on the forum (see previous comment about how gamers gather nowaways)

"They bring it to you faster" because you interact with them daily. You're presenting this as a reasonable excuse for privileged access channels, and I don't think it is. They talk to you because they know you're listening, and you answer them, and we on the forums don't because you don't.

Interact with us players, here, on the forum, and we'll interact with you more too! The MTGPQ forums are pretty inactive, and one reason for this is neglect.

Surely it's better to foster open channels of communication like this one rather than privileged secret channels of communication.

Sarah

@Magic:PQ Support Team can you tell us the criteria you use to determine which content creators are invited to be part of the private chat?

Are content creators who have stopped making content removed for inactivity after six months or so?

The lack of transparency is concerning.

Tremayne

Thank you Lu for that long answer. @Magic:PQ Support Team

I have lost interest in the forum to the level that I just don’t report card bugs any longer. Because it is simply not worth the hassle (in my view). When a card is bugged (discrepancy between written and actual effect) I just shrug and lets someone else do the reporting. Then I move on to another card or I abuse the heck out of it when the bug is in my favour. Once the bug is fixed I do the same depending upon the effect of the fix.

Bugs exist, I accept that, but the opaqueness (currently and historically) of bug fixes is just so demoralising. I recently reported a bug in the trick and treat event because it seemed to be widespread (and I would have gotten first place without the bug). It was a rather symbolic that the compensation given by support was bugged. Opening the booster pack froze the app and I lost a few orbs and runes. ‘Shrugs’

Magic:PQ Support Team

@Sarah I'll try to make this answer as complete as I can, but if something important is missing, please let me know, OK? The worst that can happen is a 'can't comment on that detail'...

Basically, at first we continued the partnerships already stablished (Goz Master, Main Loop and Nalthazar) and since then we've been monitoring new CCs, mostly on Youtube (but other media are welcome too!). Then we have two things to consider: one, if their format makes sense with our current spoiler season format and advanced content format (not that it cannot change in the future, but it is what it is for now); second, is talking to them and, if they'd like to participate, go through the vetting/agreements/red tape process. So far, we've added the Planeswalker Coach and Nerdthuggery to this group.
We do follow some other content creators and we are open to new contacts and formats! As everything else has been, it is open to change even if slowly.

About some creators not being active, we're still new to this experience so we don't have a closed protocol of 'you need to make N videos in M months' - after all, the CCs are not paid/contracted to make their content, right? We do ask of them to send us some info on some videos and gather some other numbers by ourselves. We are aiming at having a (internal) talk about how this format is going soon so we can evaluate what works or not, the impact it is having etc. Of course we don't take it personally when someone is unable to make a certain content (life happens and that's OK), but we shall look into making it make sense for both us, the creators and the general player base.

Magic:PQ Support Team

@Janosik and @Tremayne
Yup, you have a very important point and we get that. We're trying to giving the forum some more love in the next weeks and after that, including the Bugs section.

Sarah

Thank you for that very thoughtful and nuanced answer @Magic:PQ Support Team it is definitely a work in progress, as you say, and I hope that the community can continue to offer you feedback in good faith.

I know it isn’t always nice to hear from people who are saying things other than “yippee! Thanks for the free stuff ahead of time!” but people only complain about things they love they think are worth saving. When people stop caring enough to complain, I’ll be more worried!