Learn from Magic The Gathering?

Bustapup

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:
This is what I'm hoping for....more diversity in events in place of the "featured character" events.

There are 383 characters in this game and I realistically get to use about 10 of them, if that.

If anybody can't see how that is a huge problem with game design and balancing then I don't know what to say....

Of course it's a huge problem with balancing, and the fix is to actually try to balance the characters.

Yes I agree but considering these broken characters have remained broken for (in some cases, years) we must assume the Devs don't WANT to do that. So an alternative I think are alternate modes like I've been discussing. Let's the characters stay but give the player the choice of whether they want to enter a mode and face these characters or not.

Id LOVE a mode knowing I won't be coming up against Jane and Chasm (who I think are the main problems here- Jane for her OP kit and chasm for the turn one, team wide stun and Ap Reduction)

And touching upon what I just said in another comment, chasm's AP reduction DEFINITELY warps what the game I assume was intended to be about as he frequently prevents you from using ANY abilities the entire match! Surely that's not what the game is about? Locking players out of using their teams' abilities??

If they don't want to balance the characters, why would they want to create these other modes? Like if they think Chasm or m'Thor is fine, why would they create some mode where they're not available?

Because it would have potential to be a vastly more appealing, well-rounded and enjoyable game which, in turn, could expand the player base and then profitability.

In Magic you get players that play one mode exclusively and others that dip in and out of all of them (like me). I have cards that I can't use in some formats but I love playing them in others.

Creating different modes doesn't restrict players, it expands upon what they can do, encourages creativity with team synergies and I think would make for a much better game.

I am sure every player gets bored of using the same team over and over and over and battling the same teams over and over and over.

Also in the recent Q&A, it was acknowledged that the grip the meta teams have in PVP wasn't fun, so the Devs must know which characters are contributing to that problem more than others.

To put it in a nutshell, it would make the game less stagnant, give it more variety and keep it more exciting

BriMan2222

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:
This is what I'm hoping for....more diversity in events in place of the "featured character" events.

There are 383 characters in this game and I realistically get to use about 10 of them, if that.

If anybody can't see how that is a huge problem with game design and balancing then I don't know what to say....

Of course it's a huge problem with balancing, and the fix is to actually try to balance the characters.

Yes I agree but considering these broken characters have remained broken for (in some cases) years, we must assume the Devs don't WANT to do that. So an alternative I think are different formats or modes like I've been discussing. Let the characters stay but give the player the choice of whether they want to enter a mode and face these characters or not.

Id LOVE a mode knowing I won't be coming up against Jane and Chasm (who I think are the main problems here- Jane for her OP kit and chasm for the turn one, team wide stun and Ap Reduction)

And touching upon what I just said in another comment, chasm's AP reduction DEFINITELY warps what the game I assume was intended to be about as he frequently prevents you from using ANY abilities the entire match! Surely that's not what the game is about? Locking players out of using their teams' abilities?

Actually the devs did say on discord that that they were looking at possible rebalances for mthor, polaris, shang, and a few other characters. But, they also have said that they are not doing any rebalances until after the unity engine was ready. So maybe they'll get on that after they've managed to put out all the fires and can actually start working on the game again.

Bustapup

@BriMan2222 said:

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:
This is what I'm hoping for....more diversity in events in place of the "featured character" events.

There are 383 characters in this game and I realistically get to use about 10 of them, if that.

If anybody can't see how that is a huge problem with game design and balancing then I don't know what to say....

Of course it's a huge problem with balancing, and the fix is to actually try to balance the characters.

Yes I agree but considering these broken characters have remained broken for (in some cases) years, we must assume the Devs don't WANT to do that. So an alternative I think are different formats or modes like I've been discussing. Let the characters stay but give the player the choice of whether they want to enter a mode and face these characters or not.

Id LOVE a mode knowing I won't be coming up against Jane and Chasm (who I think are the main problems here- Jane for her OP kit and chasm for the turn one, team wide stun and Ap Reduction)

And touching upon what I just said in another comment, chasm's AP reduction DEFINITELY warps what the game I assume was intended to be about as he frequently prevents you from using ANY abilities the entire match! Surely that's not what the game is about? Locking players out of using their teams' abilities?

Actually the devs did say on discord that that they were looking at possible rebalances for mthor, polaris, shang, and a few other characters. But, they also have said that they are not doing any rebalances until after the unity engine was ready. So maybe they'll get on that after they've managed to put out all the fires and can actually start working on the game again.

They said this in response to my two questions which doesn't give me much hope that there's going to be a drastic or significant fix....but again, maybe they don't need fixing they give the players a choice of which format/mode to compete in?

Neil - Discord - Meta
Q: Are you looking at SHIELD SIM and PVP generally and how to improve the player experience? Coming up against the same OP meta teams is not fun especially when there's no other PvP areas to try newer characters without getting trounced

A: Yup. It also CERTAINLY doesn't help that MMR is a bit broken at the moment. Directly working on THAT and doing some stuff that could be touching on meta Soon(tm). That's not a threat, just that we're well aware that meta is a bit stagnant and we want to address that.

Neil — 11:39 - Discord - Meta
Q: Q: Can you give us any hints of indication of plans to fix the stranglehold that meta-teams have on PVP? My biggest gripe is, and to use Avalon as an example here, I love the character, built him up quickly but I literally can't use him anywhere because especially when he's not ascended. What's the point of having a featured PVP event when you inevitably come up again 4Juggs/Sam or Jane/Polaris or similar every single match?

A: Nothing I can announce today, and I'm not saying that we're suddenly just gonna upend meta or something next week/month, because we're not. But we're really also not happy that meta is so stagnant and that new characters don't feel cool because unless they're better than MThor, Shang Chi, Grocket, and Polaris, they're just kinda not useful. Something we've got designers looking at ways to help/fix

KGB

@Bustapup said:

@KGB said:

@Bustapup said:
This is what I'm hoping for....more diversity in events in place of the "featured character" events.

There are 383 characters in this game and I realistically get to use about 10 of them, if that.

If anybody can't see how that is a huge problem with game design and balancing then I don't know what to say....

How are you enjoying the 'class of' PvP events?

The problem with this game vs MTG is that this game is one in which you perpetually advance your characters in power where MTG is static (the cards never change). It's far more like an RPG game like say Dungeons and Dragons. By the time you're level 20 you don't wonder why you can't use that +1 flaming sword anymore instead of your +5 holy avenger. The reason is obvious, you are facing Dragons now, not Giant Rats. If you want to go back to using your +1 Flaming Sword vs Giant Rats you should be rolling up a new character (starting a new roster - which many players do in an alternate account).

KGB

I'm enjoying the class of events. They're letting me dig out old faves and actually having matches as opposed to one-way romps

I think SHIELD SIM should stay and be MPQ version of "Historic" where anything goes but I definitely think there's rooKGBm for a permanent mode where supports (and dare I say it some characters) are banned from use in addition to a permanent Balance of Power/Black Vortex event

So maybe the answer is just running parallel 'Class of' events all the time instead of just as a lead in to anniversary. The game is about to be 12 years old. These class of events are a week long so if you run them all year long you'll see each one approximately 4 times a year.

This gives everything you want without the need for all these new game modes. At a week long with no placement rewards they are very casual events (they could potentially remove supports from these).

KGB

entrailbucket

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:
This is what I'm hoping for....more diversity in events in place of the "featured character" events.

There are 383 characters in this game and I realistically get to use about 10 of them, if that.

If anybody can't see how that is a huge problem with game design and balancing then I don't know what to say....

Of course it's a huge problem with balancing, and the fix is to actually try to balance the characters.

Yes I agree but considering these broken characters have remained broken for (in some cases, years) we must assume the Devs don't WANT to do that. So an alternative I think are alternate modes like I've been discussing. Let's the characters stay but give the player the choice of whether they want to enter a mode and face these characters or not.

Id LOVE a mode knowing I won't be coming up against Jane and Chasm (who I think are the main problems here- Jane for her OP kit and chasm for the turn one, team wide stun and Ap Reduction)

And touching upon what I just said in another comment, chasm's AP reduction DEFINITELY warps what the game I assume was intended to be about as he frequently prevents you from using ANY abilities the entire match! Surely that's not what the game is about? Locking players out of using their teams' abilities??

If they don't want to balance the characters, why would they want to create these other modes? Like if they think Chasm or m'Thor is fine, why would they create some mode where they're not available?

Because it would have potential to be a vastly more appealing, well-rounded and enjoyable game which, in turn, could expand the player base and then profitability.

In Magic you get players that play one mode exclusively and others that dip in and out of all of them (like me). I have cards that I can't use in some formats but I love playing them in others.

Creating different modes doesn't restrict players, it expands upon what they can do, encourages creativity with team synergies and I think would make for a much better game.

I am sure every player gets bored of using the same team over and over and over and battling the same teams over and over and over.

Also in the recent Q&A, it was acknowledged that the grip the meta teams have in PVP wasn't fun, so the Devs must know which characters are contributing to that problem more than others.

To put it in a nutshell, it would make the game less stagnant, give it more variety and keep it more exciting

Ah, see, your assumptions here are incorrect. In my experience, MPQ players generally DO NOT get bored with using the same teams over and over -- in fact they aspire to it!

There are some very significant differences between Magic players and MPQ players, but one of the biggest is MPQ players' preference for non-games. In Magic, Vintage is unpopular because it's insanely expensive, but also because the power level is so high that many games are decided by who goes first. Legacy isn't far from that either (one of the reasons it's slowly dying as well). Magic players generally don't enjoy games decided by the die roll and/or "did I mulligan to enough free countermagic to shut down their turn 1 win?" because they spent a ton of time working on their deck and would like to actually play Magic.

MPQ players are exactly the opposite. In general they see turn0 wins as an unequivocally good thing, and I think it's understandable because the games are just different. A huge Magic tournament might have 10 Swiss rounds. Individual matches can go almost an hour. An MPQ PvP can involve a hundred matches or more! In PvE you do a ton of fights to open/close.

If MPQ fights took an hour each, and you did 10 or 12 of them per event, you'd see players get very upset about turn0 wins.

With your formats, I don't believe there's much of a market for MPQ "standard" -- players would either play "vintage" or aspire to it. Other formats would be limited to players on their way up, who didn't yet have the resources to compete. So, sure, veteran players could slum it in some other format as a break, but there's no way that rewards would match up. Veterans would demand that "vintage" MPQ gave out the best stuff.

Wizards made the lowest-power format the one that gave the best prizes...how do you think it'd go if MPQ did that?

DAZ0273

Actually the devs did say on discord that that they were looking at possible rebalances for mthor, polaris, shang, and a few other characters. But, they also have said that they are not doing any rebalances until after the unity engine was ready. So maybe they'll get on that after they've managed to put out all the fires and can actually start working on the game again.

So we are never getting any more re-balances then...

Bustapup

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:
This is what I'm hoping for....more diversity in events in place of the "featured character" events.

There are 383 characters in this game and I realistically get to use about 10 of them, if that.

If anybody can't see how that is a huge problem with game design and balancing then I don't know what to say....

Of course it's a huge problem with balancing, and the fix is to actually try to balance the characters.

Yes I agree but considering these broken characters have remained broken for (in some cases, years) we must assume the Devs don't WANT to do that. So an alternative I think are alternate modes like I've been discussing. Let's the characters stay but give the player the choice of whether they want to enter a mode and face these characters or not.

Id LOVE a mode knowing I won't be coming up against Jane and Chasm (who I think are the main problems here- Jane for her OP kit and chasm for the turn one, team wide stun and Ap Reduction)

And touching upon what I just said in another comment, chasm's AP reduction DEFINITELY warps what the game I assume was intended to be about as he frequently prevents you from using ANY abilities the entire match! Surely that's not what the game is about? Locking players out of using their teams' abilities??

If they don't want to balance the characters, why would they want to create these other modes? Like if they think Chasm or m'Thor is fine, why would they create some mode where they're not available?

Because it would have potential to be a vastly more appealing, well-rounded and enjoyable game which, in turn, could expand the player base and then profitability.

In Magic you get players that play one mode exclusively and others that dip in and out of all of them (like me). I have cards that I can't use in some formats but I love playing them in others.

Creating different modes doesn't restrict players, it expands upon what they can do, encourages creativity with team synergies and I think would make for a much better game.

I am sure every player gets bored of using the same team over and over and over and battling the same teams over and over and over.

Also in the recent Q&A, it was acknowledged that the grip the meta teams have in PVP wasn't fun, so the Devs must know which characters are contributing to that problem more than others.

To put it in a nutshell, it would make the game less stagnant, give it more variety and keep it more exciting

Ah, see, your assumptions here are incorrect. In my experience, MPQ players generally DO NOT get bored with using the same teams over and over -- in fact they aspire to it!

There are some very significant differences between Magic players and MPQ players, but one of the biggest is MPQ players' preference for non-games. In Magic, Vintage is unpopular because it's insanely expensive, but also because the power level is so high that many games are decided by who goes first. Legacy isn't far from that either (one of the reasons it's slowly dying as well). Magic players generally don't enjoy games decided by the die roll and/or "did I mulligan to enough free countermagic to shut down their turn 1 win?" because they spent a ton of time working on their deck and would like to actually play Magic.

MPQ players are exactly the opposite. In general they see turn0 wins as an unequivocally good thing, and I think it's understandable because the games are just different. A huge Magic tournament might have 10 Swiss rounds. Individual matches can go almost an hour. An MPQ PvP can involve a hundred matches or more! In PvE you do a ton of fights to open/close.

If MPQ fights took an hour each, and you did 10 or 12 of them per event, you'd see players get very upset about turn0 wins.

With your formats, I don't believe there's much of a market for MPQ "standard" -- players would either play "vintage" or aspire to it. Other formats would be limited to players on their way up, who didn't yet have the resources to compete. So, sure, veteran players could slum it in some other format as a break, but there's no way that rewards would match up. Veterans would demand that "vintage" MPQ gave out the best stuff.

Wizards made the lowest-power format the one that gave the best prizes...how do you think it'd go if MPQ did that?

I think we clearly want different things from the game in that case and I'm sure there's a lot who prefer one turn wins which I find incredibly boring.

The sad thing is, as a whale who's played since almost day one, I'll probably give up the game for the second time and stay gone if it doesn't change.

It's not a "game" when you enter a match and die on turn one and if players like this..... Shrugs

entrailbucket

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:
This is what I'm hoping for....more diversity in events in place of the "featured character" events.

There are 383 characters in this game and I realistically get to use about 10 of them, if that.

If anybody can't see how that is a huge problem with game design and balancing then I don't know what to say....

Of course it's a huge problem with balancing, and the fix is to actually try to balance the characters.

Yes I agree but considering these broken characters have remained broken for (in some cases, years) we must assume the Devs don't WANT to do that. So an alternative I think are alternate modes like I've been discussing. Let's the characters stay but give the player the choice of whether they want to enter a mode and face these characters or not.

Id LOVE a mode knowing I won't be coming up against Jane and Chasm (who I think are the main problems here- Jane for her OP kit and chasm for the turn one, team wide stun and Ap Reduction)

And touching upon what I just said in another comment, chasm's AP reduction DEFINITELY warps what the game I assume was intended to be about as he frequently prevents you from using ANY abilities the entire match! Surely that's not what the game is about? Locking players out of using their teams' abilities??

If they don't want to balance the characters, why would they want to create these other modes? Like if they think Chasm or m'Thor is fine, why would they create some mode where they're not available?

Because it would have potential to be a vastly more appealing, well-rounded and enjoyable game which, in turn, could expand the player base and then profitability.

In Magic you get players that play one mode exclusively and others that dip in and out of all of them (like me). I have cards that I can't use in some formats but I love playing them in others.

Creating different modes doesn't restrict players, it expands upon what they can do, encourages creativity with team synergies and I think would make for a much better game.

I am sure every player gets bored of using the same team over and over and over and battling the same teams over and over and over.

Also in the recent Q&A, it was acknowledged that the grip the meta teams have in PVP wasn't fun, so the Devs must know which characters are contributing to that problem more than others.

To put it in a nutshell, it would make the game less stagnant, give it more variety and keep it more exciting

Ah, see, your assumptions here are incorrect. In my experience, MPQ players generally DO NOT get bored with using the same teams over and over -- in fact they aspire to it!

There are some very significant differences between Magic players and MPQ players, but one of the biggest is MPQ players' preference for non-games. In Magic, Vintage is unpopular because it's insanely expensive, but also because the power level is so high that many games are decided by who goes first. Legacy isn't far from that either (one of the reasons it's slowly dying as well). Magic players generally don't enjoy games decided by the die roll and/or "did I mulligan to enough free countermagic to shut down their turn 1 win?" because they spent a ton of time working on their deck and would like to actually play Magic.

MPQ players are exactly the opposite. In general they see turn0 wins as an unequivocally good thing, and I think it's understandable because the games are just different. A huge Magic tournament might have 10 Swiss rounds. Individual matches can go almost an hour. An MPQ PvP can involve a hundred matches or more! In PvE you do a ton of fights to open/close.

If MPQ fights took an hour each, and you did 10 or 12 of them per event, you'd see players get very upset about turn0 wins.

With your formats, I don't believe there's much of a market for MPQ "standard" -- players would either play "vintage" or aspire to it. Other formats would be limited to players on their way up, who didn't yet have the resources to compete. So, sure, veteran players could slum it in some other format as a break, but there's no way that rewards would match up. Veterans would demand that "vintage" MPQ gave out the best stuff.

Wizards made the lowest-power format the one that gave the best prizes...how do you think it'd go if MPQ did that?

I think we clearly want different things from the game in that case and I'm sure there's a lot who prefer one turn wins which I find incredibly boring.

The sad thing is, as a whale who's played since almost day one, I'll probably give up the game for the second time and stay gone if it doesn't change.

It's not a "game" when you enter a match and die on turn one and if players like this..... Shrugs

I agree with you but we are a tiny, tiny minority. Most players simply do not want what we want, so giving them the choice would result in them all choosing what we've got now.

This is why the only way to slow down the game is for the devs to impose it on everyone with rebalances.

dianetics

@DAZ0273 said:
I didn't realise we had this many Magic the Gathering fans here, do you all play that too? And no...I am not trying that out, I am having enough trouble with GoT!

Are you serious?
MTG is the backbone of the modern RPG.

Grantosium

Class of 2013 and 2014 have been fun for a few reasons. It's been great to have a new problem to solve in putting the teams together, but running the events more often won't repeat that boon as they'll eventually become stagnant too (or should that be once again?). It's also great to be able to work for your wins, taking several turns and using some skill in matching and choosing when to deploy abilities.

The problem with the regular events, in my opinion, is that turn 1 wins exist as anything more than a percentage or two chance of a lucky cascade or as a consequence of an unrealistic player mismatch. This is a result of power creep. Power creep happens with or without an MtG style rotation, but rotation does a lot to slow power creep. In this respect, the horse has already bolted, the genie is out of the bottle. It'll take a whole lot to get the horse and the genie back in their respective stable and bottle. Bans and nerfs aren't happening and even implementing rotation now will do nothing for years unless it's terribly mishandled and heavy handed.

Having a randomised restricted line up from week to week is a great idea, and probably the reason why MPQ already has a system to try and force new team combinations from week to week: weekly boosts. Unfortunately that system is broken. The reason it is broken is because there are reliable turn 1 wins that mean you can usually ignore the boosts and still play your combos. A turn based game should never ever have reached a point where one player never gets their first turn.

It has occurred to me that turn 1 win PvP where you already know your opponent's team before you pick yours is ultimately pretty close to "rock, paper, scissors" where your opponent is always forced to go first. An oversimplification perhaps, as we don't literally have characters called rock, paper and scissors but we do now have a thread with a comprehensive list of counters to meta teams.

I do want to play more restricted roster events, but they'll need to keep being fresh. I want to have a new team of choice every week.

entrailbucket

The other issue here is the direction of MPQ power creep.

Wizards pushes Standard because they are currently selling those cards. They don't make money if you buy stuff from 1995, because you buy that stuff from resellers. But Standard is the lowest-power format because Magic has (roughly, please let's not debate Modern Horizons) reverse power creep -- the strongest stuff is the oldest stuff.

MPQ could technically do the same thing. It'd be great for the bottom line if the format with the best rewards also locked out all the old stuff, so you always had to chase the new stuff.

The issue is that mostly the old stuff is terrible and nobody wants to use it anyway! Like a new mode that banned OML and Silver Surfer would make zero difference, because nobody plays those guys anyway. So our version of a lower-power "standard" would have to ban NEW stuff, which directly impacts the bottom line.

Grantosium

MtG is definitely on an upward trajectory of power creep. It just had such imbalance in the first couple of years it had to nosedive the power levels during the 90s to stabilise things. It's been pretty steadily creeping upwards again since the early 00s though.

They did try and reverse power creep around 2017/2018 when Ixalan came out. The idea was that they could cycle standard down and back up every other year. It isn't often talked about but I think it made enough of a difference to profits that they won't deliberately try to downcycle standard power levels again.

entrailbucket

@Grantosium said:
MtG is definitely on an upward trajectory of power creep. It just had such imbalance in the first couple of years it had to nosedive the power levels during the 90s to stabilise things. It's been pretty steadily creeping upwards again since the early 00s though.

They did try and reverse power creep around 2017/2018 when Ixalan came out. The idea was that they could cycle standard down and back up every other year. It isn't often talked about but I think it made enough of a difference to profits that they won't deliberately try to downcycle standard power levels again.

I mean, they're never going to reprint Power 9 or adjacent effects, and we'll never see stuff like the Legacy blue tempo package in Standard. Reserved list aside, that stuff is too strong.

I agree that it's not consistent, but the formats that can play the oldest cards are the highest power. That wouldn't be the case in MPQ.

DAZ0273

Never underestimate MPQ players ability to be petty. Years ago when we originally got wins based PvP, they removed the CP from progression. In response, the big Alliances (through their spokesperson whoever that was) basically declared that they would disperse players through every SCL to make sure they took all top prizes and ruin the game for lower rosters. They then did exactly that. This resulted in the SR cap for playing in lower PvP's locking out higher rosters but also the return of CP. So if any of these changes altered any sort of status quo, be sure that havoc could still be reigned down > @dianetics said:

@DAZ0273 said:
I didn't realise we had this many Magic the Gathering fans here, do you all play that too? And no...I am not trying that out, I am having enough trouble with GoT!

Are you serious?
MTG is the backbone of the modern RPG.

And that bothers me why?!?!?

sambrookjm

@entrailbucket said:

There are some very significant differences between Magic players and MPQ players, but one of the biggest is MPQ players' preference for non-games. In Magic, Vintage is unpopular because it's insanely expensive, but also because the power level is so high that many games are decided by who goes first. Legacy isn't far from that either (one of the reasons it's slowly dying as well). Magic players generally don't enjoy games decided by the die roll and/or "did I mulligan to enough free countermagic to shut down their turn 1 win?" because they spent a ton of time working on their deck and would like to actually play Magic.

Can we start complaining about the Reserved List now, instead of Nova?

\been playing since RV, and have a full playset of OG duals
\No power 9
\\Strongest Commander deck - Nekusar.

entrailbucket

@sambrookjm said:

@entrailbucket said:

There are some very significant differences between Magic players and MPQ players, but one of the biggest is MPQ players' preference for non-games. In Magic, Vintage is unpopular because it's insanely expensive, but also because the power level is so high that many games are decided by who goes first. Legacy isn't far from that either (one of the reasons it's slowly dying as well). Magic players generally don't enjoy games decided by the die roll and/or "did I mulligan to enough free countermagic to shut down their turn 1 win?" because they spent a ton of time working on their deck and would like to actually play Magic.

Can we start complaining about the Reserved List now, instead of Nova?

\been playing since RV, and have a full playset of OG duals
\No power 9
\\Strongest Commander deck - Nekusar.

I keep trying to talk about Magic as like, a metaphor or a comparison to MPQ, so we don't all get flagged as off topic! I don't think it's a terrible comparison but there are pretty significant differences.

JoeHandle

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@sambrookjm said:
Since we're talking about Magic in an MPQ forum, I'll just throw this up here, from the Sonic Secret Lair that just showed up today.

Getting back on topic, I do like the idea of the tiered lists. To take a page from Commander's recent bracket list

4 - Everyone, with supports. What we currently have.

3 - Everyone, but no supports at all.

2 - Everyone but the "meta" characters (MThor, Polaris, 4* Juggy, 5* Wilson, 3* May, Chasm, etc...) Let's say the Top 10 characters. Consider them the equivalent of the "Game Changers." Yes, defining who the "meta" characters are is key to this bracket's success, but I think we can just count the number of times a character is mentioned in the forums to get that, since all we do is complain about things 99% of the time. We can play ascended characters in this bracket.

1 - Like bracket 2, but with unascended characters only.

Problem is how many brackets are there now in PvP? Say in slice 1, CL10, how many 500 player brackets are there? For 4 new options to make sense (ie 500 players each) you'd need 4 brackets currently in slice 1 CL10 and hope 500 players decided to play each new bracket. Then imagine you need the same in CL9, slice 1 and so on. I just don't think there are enough players to have 4 new game types in PvP unless we went from 5 slices down to 3 or maybe 2.

At best I could imagine rotating the 4 new options one at a time so that every 4th PvP used all 4 new game options.

KGB

That's exactly the problem. There aren't enough players to fill up all these new modes. They could rotate "formats" like you said, or they could replace time slices/CL with "formats," but I think all those options would be quite controversial.

Cut the bracket size to 200 a/o tolerate fewer flips per slice. What's the worst that would happen .. more sets of top placement rewards given out? Oh dear. RIght now top 10 finishers are (at least nominally) the top 2%. If brackets were 200, top 10 would be the top 5%. I don't think the game economy would overheat! Has been a lot of resources pumped in since the management changed, and everything's peachy. Or at least, I'm having a ball!

Scofie

@entrailbucket said:

@sambrookjm said:

@entrailbucket said:

There are some very significant differences between Magic players and MPQ players, but one of the biggest is MPQ players' preference for non-games. In Magic, Vintage is unpopular because it's insanely expensive, but also because the power level is so high that many games are decided by who goes first. Legacy isn't far from that either (one of the reasons it's slowly dying as well). Magic players generally don't enjoy games decided by the die roll and/or "did I mulligan to enough free countermagic to shut down their turn 1 win?" because they spent a ton of time working on their deck and would like to actually play Magic.

Can we start complaining about the Reserved List now, instead of Nova?

\been playing since RV, and have a full playset of OG duals
\No power 9
\\Strongest Commander deck - Nekusar.

I keep trying to talk about Magic as like, a metaphor or a comparison to MPQ, so we don't all get flagged as off topic! I don't think it's a terrible comparison but there are pretty significant differences.

I think I quietly gave up on "off topic" a while ago... 🤫

Bustapup

FFS this s*** NEEDS TO STOP!!!!!!!!! Get rid of these god awful supports completely I absolutely hate them!!! BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN!

DAZ0273

@Scofie said:

@entrailbucket said:

@sambrookjm said:

@entrailbucket said:

There are some very significant differences between Magic players and MPQ players, but one of the biggest is MPQ players' preference for non-games. In Magic, Vintage is unpopular because it's insanely expensive, but also because the power level is so high that many games are decided by who goes first. Legacy isn't far from that either (one of the reasons it's slowly dying as well). Magic players generally don't enjoy games decided by the die roll and/or "did I mulligan to enough free countermagic to shut down their turn 1 win?" because they spent a ton of time working on their deck and would like to actually play Magic.

Can we start complaining about the Reserved List now, instead of Nova?

\been playing since RV, and have a full playset of OG duals
\No power 9
\\Strongest Commander deck - Nekusar.

I keep trying to talk about Magic as like, a metaphor or a comparison to MPQ, so we don't all get flagged as off topic! I don't think it's a terrible comparison but there are pretty significant differences.

I think I quietly gave up on "off topic" a while ago... 🤫

How would you know what the topic is? I don't speak any of this wizard gibberish!