Balancing Changes 7.6.1

124

Comments

  • LoboX01
    LoboX01 Posts: 65 Match Maker

    @AnonymousPW123 said:

    @LoboX01 said:

    @AnonymousPW123 said:

    @LoboX01 said:

    @AnonymousPW123 said:

    @AbyssalChicken said:
    I support almost all of these changes, with the only exception being Mystical Teachings. For being a Masterpiece, it absolutely must net you more than +3 mana. 3 mana is what any planeswalker with a neutral mana bonus gets on a 3-swap. Hello? lol

    To echo what Nalthazar said above, I would appreciate seeing changes made, and communicated(!), more frequently. I think you hit almost everything else on the head, more or less. Although, I do still think Grist needs a nerf to her abilities, which you could accomplish in any number of ways; she's just too efficient with milling, reanimation, support removal, token creation, and life drain, (edit: and graveyard removal) all without any cards! Even with Valgavoth available now, I still get stomped with Grist regularly. Otherwise, I again agree with Nalthazar and would like to see the less popular planeswalkers embiggened.

    Too many cry babies about Grist. If you can’t beat grist, that’s a skill issue. Get better. I have zero issues, ever. That’s the puzzle part, learn to play. Everyone keeps screaming nerfs and now look what happens. The game becomes 20x worse just because you crybabies aren’t good at the game.

    Yes, some things needs adjusting and you guys got your wishes. The nerf wave. Now you aren’t satisfied because it didn’t go your exact way?! What did you expect from this company? Seriously.

    You f2p players expect to be on par with people who spend money and allow you to have a game still. Of course you won’t be on par with them in terms of cards but that doesn’t make it impossible. This update was the most **** thing I’ve seen a game do. That’s why I have cancelled my VIP going forward.

    If I spend time and money on these cards because of how they WERE and then they can just be changed to unplayable in a blink of an eye, why should I spend anymore? Oh yeah, I won’t. Especially coming from a **** company like Webcore that has no communication skills or anything.

    2 days later and not a single PR attempt. That’s how sh*tty they are.

    Funny how these nerfs can always turn into a FTP vs PTW battle, because some (not all, please keep in mind) self-entitled d... head comes here and start to put the blame on the FTP "crybabies".

    Well guess what, these changes also impact and hurt those crybabies decks, because they might have spent significant amount of time, and in game resource to get those cards you paid for an early access, so that's that. I don't think they asked for all these changes.

    Second, do we really think that WC would make the change just because the crybabies ask for it? If you believe that than you are ...er than i think ( you can put in any words in there you would like).

    You are unhappy with the changes because you spent money and time, go ahead voice your opinion to the devs. Put blame on another player group, and call them out saying "get better" well that is a different story.

    But using your own words: Get better with your spending decisions my man. The moment you spend money on ANY mobile game, you put it into a black hole. The game can go away, devs can make changes etc. Learn to spend LOL

    You stopped spending, heck you might even quit, I am sure a lot of crybabies will cry over the night for you and your glorious present in the game.

    Ah, yes, you just proved my point. Truth hurts. Get over it

    What truth? that you are a d ... head, nothing to prove there, you did it already lol.

    You were the crybaby there, because you were crying over your spending, so again nothing to prove there.

    Other than that nothing there to see. I am dealing with a holes all the time you are not the first and not the last one lol

    So what did YOU prove? show me your proof that the devs made the changes because of the crybabies. please go ahead and show it

    you came here insulted a whole bunch of players, and proved nothing, so .... duh

    you said it truth hurts, you are self entitled little prick who is crying because someone took away his toy. other than that i proved no points haha but please keep going

    You took it personally… must be some truth there. Enjoy, Sally.

    Crybaby part is spot on also! Look at what it drags out from the deep…

    See that is the funny part? The only ONE card i complained was Ocelot, and for a good reason and i know that for sure, because most of the community agreed that it needed a nerf.

    So no, you missed big time there.

    So where is your crybaby spot on? I really enjoy these conversations, when i talk to a dum...ss who can not prove a single point of his LOL

    In my alliance community, we have a tons of teams and players, including big spenders, smaller spenders, and ftp "crybabies". And i feel sympathy for the spenders, cause they spent money on something, now it changed they are pissed. Not a SINGLE ONE of them put the blame on FTPs, not one... does this tell you something? i guess not, cause you need brain to understand and not money, money can't help with that. FTPs are complaining too about cards they chased, and now garbage or barely usable.

    Oh and another miss there, I spent money on that game, not at a whale level mind you, not lately anyways, few years ago, probably a little whale level. So again you are very wrong.

    I had no problem with anyone here blaming the devs, but a little prick? lol different thing i really enjoy that part, conversing people who think money can buy brain too. so please by all means keep talking about you non-existent proofs and spot on things i am curios what's next that is "spot on"

  • McLaren720S
    McLaren720S Posts: 17 Just Dropped In

    Adjusting card strength in this way is possible, but some game objectives must be modified to match the difficulty level of the cards. For example, certain battles that limit defeating the opponent to 5 turns.

  • Tolkne
    Tolkne Posts: 48 Just Dropped In

    Since they decided to nerf such cards,

    Then please remove the 5-turn requirement for this specific event!
    Beginners won't get through with such a 5-turn requirement, it's not just a matter of luck! I tried it myself, but it doesn't depend on the deck, it depends on LUCK.
    The thing is, I barely managed to get a bunch of minions together with Grist - Ghalta and a Double Attack creature to quickly finish off the boss and complete the trick to win the fight in 5 turns.
    There's no other way! Because not all beginners have such cards.

    That's why they brazenly removed the advantage from MT for GW (Golden Wish). Without MT, there's no way! Because it's the most key and effective card. Turning a Masterpiece into a Mythic or worse is a sign of progress, that you're not developing the game, but rather killing it. The time will come when you'll understand why players leave immediately, because of this.

    Even during EoE, THEY NEVER REWORKED THE STATION FUNCTION! I don't even know how to get a level 9 Station, and it has to be swapped with loyalty every time... and it's incredibly inefficient, and look at the stats. Not a single player plays the Station card, and they won't even play it for 10 years!
    Many people asked to reconsider the possibility of changing the mechanics like Station and Descend (yes, from the Ixalan era). No one made it easier to level up Station and Descend. Instead, they simply killed the MT card, Titan Vanguard, and Desert.
    A really cool strategy with a rebalance! Someday there will be boosters like these, where there will be a feature like Station, but NO ONE will play with cards like these! It's a waste of time and unnecessary garbage that will never be used for many years.

  • TIMEWARP
    TIMEWARP Posts: 117 Tile Toppler

    I feel that the nerfs fail to look at why players play PQ.
    As a veteran since the start, but always FtP, my reason for playing is top performance in the weekend team events. The weekday events are just there to convert resources: "my time" converted into "best cards". I don't care about Planar Chaos, Streets of Ravnica, etc from a game perspective, they are there to gather resources and to do that in the most efficient way. The less time I have to spend during the week, whilst still gathering resources,the better. That is fun for me.
    With these nerfs the playtime has gone up dramatically
    The ideal card for me would be "1 mana, you win this game, you can only cast this in non-coalition PvE matches"
    Mystical Teaching came somewhat close to that card, but with the 'downside' that you could use it anywhere and therefore mess with the experience of other players.

    My point: D3/Webcore needs to address options to make the game rewarding for FtP players whose only resource to invest is time, and ensure that if these players do invest time, they get rewarded by having to spend less of it.

  • TheDude1
    TheDude1 Posts: 240 Tile Toppler

    @TIMEWARP said:
    I feel that the nerfs fail to look at why players play PQ.
    As a veteran since the start, but always FtP, my reason for playing is top performance in the weekend team events. The weekday events are just there to convert resources: "my time" converted into "best cards"
    ....
    My point: D3/Webcore needs to address options to make the game rewarding for FtP players whose only resource to invest is time, and ensure that if these players do invest time, they get rewarded by having to spend less of it.

    I'm disagreeing with you here. F2P are valuable/important to the game ecosystem, but I do not believe they should be the main target of Webcore's priorities compared to other global issues. And it's weird to say that the only resource you can offer is time, but that the devs should put in work so that you give less of it while they get literally nothing else? And as a veteran F2P I'd argue that my playtime with these nerfs functionally hasn't changed.

    To your point about being efficient on time in this game, it's weird that you're skipping Planar Chaos - for time investment purporses, it's a 5-match event that gives better rewards (most recent pack, guaranteed rare, 15 pink and net 20 gold) than most any other event available. I can get through most matches with a Pajani deck (and none of the nerfed cards) in 4-7 rounds. Nerfing MT and others has so far had minimal impact on my time investment, though I'm judicious in the other weekday events I play.

    IMO (and this is probably where I lose most people here), weekend coalition events are the time trap. I almost never play coalition events because my weekend time is more valuable than the rewards I would get. Individual progression is 6-8 perfect matches to get 3 packs, 40 gold and 5 crystals. That's not nothing, but it's not an amazing return on time either. Individual rank requires going perfect in even more matches, but reward is just packs and another 5 crystals. And given the rotation of events, most packs are from older sets and are just dupes at this point.

    I played the most recent coalition event because it gave SHM packs, which I still have a need for. My "coalition" is just me, and I finished in the top 250. If I were to join a top-25, the difference is one pack (dupes), runes (don't need), 45 gold and 35 pink - not even three full days of Planar Chaos. That difference is essentially saying that for 3 months worth of work on the weekends, I can get one extra premium pack and **one ** Mythic+ card. That to me is a grind, and I'd rather do other things with my weekend.

    (Side note, it's alarming that a one-player "coalition" can crack the top 250 over the weekend. Even if every other coalition ahead of me was fully stocked with 20 players - and they're not - that's less than 5,000 total active players on the weekend, plus maybe another few hundred behind me in the standings.)

    TLDR: I don't begrudge your approach, even if mine is different. But I'm not following the idea that F2P and being a high-end collector in this game should be compatible, or that the goal of using time as your exclusive resource should be to spend less time.

  • Anarchangel
    Anarchangel Posts: 64 Match Maker

    Nerfing the cards isn't the best answer.
    When players who don't have and aren't likely to acquire the nerfed cards are playing each other, they have no reason to want the cards nerfed.
    The answer is a better system of player matching.

    I guess there are cards that are annoying to play against, and that's also a separate issue.
    Namely, the animation (still) needs fixing.

  • TIMEWARP
    TIMEWARP Posts: 117 Tile Toppler

    @TheDude1 said:

    @TIMEWARP said:
    I feel that the nerfs fail to look at why players play PQ.
    As a veteran since the start, but always FtP, my reason for playing is top performance in the weekend team events. The weekday events are just there to convert resources: "my time" converted into "best cards"
    ....
    My point: D3/Webcore needs to address options to make the game rewarding for FtP players whose only resource to invest is time, and ensure that if these players do invest time, they get rewarded by having to spend less of it.

    I'm disagreeing with you here. F2P are valuable/important to the game ecosystem, but I do not believe they should be the main target of Webcore's priorities compared to other global issues. And it's weird to say that the only resource you can offer is time, but that the devs should put in work so that you give less of it while they get literally nothing else? And as a veteran F2P I'd argue that my playtime with these nerfs functionally hasn't changed.

    To your point about being efficient on time in this game, it's weird that you're skipping Planar Chaos - for time investment purporses, it's a 5-match event that gives better rewards (most recent pack, guaranteed rare, 15 pink and net 20 gold) than most any other event available. I can get through most matches with a Pajani deck (and none of the nerfed cards) in 4-7 rounds. Nerfing MT and others has so far had minimal impact on my time investment, though I'm judicious in the other weekday events I play.

    IMO (and this is probably where I lose most people here), weekend coalition events are the time trap. I almost never play coalition events because my weekend time is more valuable than the rewards I would get. Individual progression is 6-8 perfect matches to get 3 packs, 40 gold and 5 crystals. That's not nothing, but it's not an amazing return on time either. Individual rank requires going perfect in even more matches, but reward is just packs and another 5 crystals. And given the rotation of events, most packs are from older sets and are just dupes at this point.

    I played the most recent coalition event because it gave SHM packs, which I still have a need for. My "coalition" is just me, and I finished in the top 250. If I were to join a top-25, the difference is one pack (dupes), runes (don't need), 45 gold and 35 pink - not even three full days of Planar Chaos. That difference is essentially saying that for 3 months worth of work on the weekends, I can get one extra premium pack and **one ** Mythic+ card. That to me is a grind, and I'd rather do other things with my weekend.

    (Side note, it's alarming that a one-player "coalition" can crack the top 250 over the weekend. Even if every other coalition ahead of me was fully stocked with 20 players - and they're not - that's less than 5,000 total active players on the weekend, plus maybe another few hundred behind me in the standings.)

    TLDR: I don't begrudge your approach, even if mine is different. But I'm not following the idea that F2P and being a high-end collector in this game should be compatible, or that the goal of using time as your exclusive resource should be to spend less time.

    My friend, I play (nearly) everything, every day. I feel that that had lead to a fine way as a FtP player of 9 years to get a reasonably full collection: as it should be in my opinion. FtP should be the basis to get everything if you dedicate enough time, if you want shortcuts pay irl cash.

  • Enigma
    Enigma Posts: 56 Match Maker
    edited December 2025

    So far, seems like the balancing is ok. Much less stress when Greg's Rakdos or Aegis Assimilation hit the screen. I don't own Mystical Teachings, so I don't feel the loss that many in here do, and I've still gotten wrecked by it a few times... The Cryptex adjustment is the one that hurts most, for me. It helped achieve the 12 mana or less objectives, which was nice, and now it's pretty much junk. The Titan fix also hurts, one of my favorite decks relied pretty heavily on it and, as noted, the adjustment has made the 5 rounds or less objectives more challenging (Moonlight Cavalry is probably going to be my go-to now for those, but I imagine it's probably one of the next cards to face "rebalancing", unfortunately).

    imo despite the rebalancing there will ALWAYS be P2P players (and some F2P players also, of course) that fill their decks with 9 or 10 mythic masterpieces that stomp if you're not fast enough or if you don't build with the right removal. My suggestion is take the opportunity to explore some different cards and Planeswalkers and find other broken combos. Maybe take a break from the game for a while, I did and it made the game fresh upon returning, though I did miss out on some good cards in the sets that were released during that time.

    A lot of good things said in this thread regarding the need for reworking cards and mechanics, for better and for worse. Some really rude and entitled folks too... but that's not surprising at all. It is fair that those who invest $ and tons of time feel slighted though, for sure.

    Anyway, how are others feeling about things now that you've had some gameplay after the reworking?

  • FCLedZep
    FCLedZep Posts: 70 Match Maker

    When I was a new player I was excited to see my opponent defeating me with a combo deck. I had something to chase and try myself. I also had to find something to prevent the combo and chase those cards too.

    The power level of the game already was pretty low but after the whining (I really don’t understand why people are complaining about the power level while most people win 99% of the games) and the poorly executed nerving the game is a pale imitation of itself.

    My interest for the game has dwindled severely the last few months. I played almost every event but since Lorwyn there are no cards to chase so I only played events for Mana Jewels which I can’t spend because there’s nothing left to chase.

    I can’t stand anymore how long it takes to fix bugs. The lack of communication is embarrassing. I did buy Kaalia of the Vast but after the nerving of Mystical Teachings it’s pretty useless. The games are much slower and feel like a drag.

    If this dull nerving ain’t reversed fast I probably quit!

  • Scottyp_123
    Scottyp_123 Posts: 87 Match Maker

    I use Titan' Vanguard in my favorite deck, but I always thought that it was broken and way overpowered; and I can't believe for a second that the developers didn't see it too. To hear them talk about trying to make the cards closer to the paper cards becomes laughable. Look at what they had and how they have changed it:

    "Titans' Vanguard: "One of the other patterns we are starting to keep track of is exponentiable variables. Titans' Vanguard has this issue: his constant power-doubling trigger makes him a one-shot Eldrazi very quickly. We still want to see the power accumulating; just not that fast."

    Before: Creatures you control get +X/+X. X is this creature's power.
    After: Creatures you control get +5/+5."
    

    If they actually wanted it to be more like the paper card it would be closer to:

    When this creature enters the battlefield and whenever this creature attacks, colorless creatures you control get +1/+1.

    That would also make it more inline with a rare card.

  • Machine
    Machine Posts: 957 Critical Contributor
    edited December 2025

    @Magic:PQ Support Team in response to these balancing changes, a dire request to spend your developer resources more wisely. We need a stable game, a game we can trust will always work as expected.

    During the last coalition event (Return of the God-Pharaoh), one of our players experienced a spontaneous app restart while playing a match on the third node, causing him (and thus the entire team) to lose 60 points. This resulted in the entire team losing out on the top 2 rewards (the PMA2 pack as the most wanted reward), as we ended in third place very close to the top 2. Said player was demotivated by this in such a way, that he quit the game. I've been in his spot a few times and know how terrible this feels. For many of us T10 players, ranking is often more important than anything else. We need a stable game for that or all effort will be in vain, making us wonder why we are playing this particular game in the first place.

    I've posted similar messages in the past when there were other developers navigating this broken vessel, but it seems you are also not able to fix our beloved ship. I urge you to do your best in giving us a stable game. For some of us, competition is a driving factor, and there is no fair competition if teams, no matter which team, lose due to factors outside of their influence.

  • BadHippo
    BadHippo Posts: 8 Just Dropped In

    @Tezzeret said:
    Alright, Webcore… your boy’s about to fix your game for you. Sit down, grab a coffee, and listen up.

    (And for my fellow forum-scrollers who see a wall of text and instantly go “Pffft, nope,” just trust me for thirty seconds. I’m about to hand-delivering the devs the single best idea they’ll hear all year, and it’ll keep every single one of us happy.)

    You tried to “balance” the game by nerfing a mountain of cards. I get the intention: new players log in, get absolutely curb-stomped by turn-3 kills, rage-quit, and never come back. Bad for business, cool, understood.

    But you over-corrected so hard you just kicked your most loyal, most addicted, wallet-open-whales square in the nuts. The people who’ve been here since day one, who play ten events a day, who actually keep the lights on at the office… yeah, we’re pissed. And now nobody wins.

    Here’s the thing: you don’t balance the game by touching the cards. You balance the game by fixing matchmaking. And I’m about to give you the cleanest, fairest, most elegant solution imaginable.
    Scrap the idiotic Mastery system entirely. Replace it with two separate power ratings for every account:
    Standard Power Level
    Legacy Power Level
    (You can even pick cooler names; I believe in you.)

    How it works: every card you own adds points to your power level, scaled by rarity.
    Common → 1 point
    Uncommon → 5 points
    Rare → 10 points
    Mythic → 25 points
    Masterpiece → 50 points
    Ultra-staple broken nonsense (looking at you, MT, Golden Wish, Desert, etc.) → 100 points each, because let’s be real....

    The more you’ve collected, the higher your power level climbs. Then you only match players against opponents with similar power levels.

    That’s it. Done. Solved.

    Newbies with 300 cards play other newbies with 300 cards. They get to enjoy the game without getting obliterated in three minutes into their first match.

    Mid-tier grinders fight other mid-tier grinders. Nobody feels cheated.

    Veterans with 8,000+ cards and every busted mythic ever printed finally get to slam their stupid, degenerate, beautiful decks against other degenerates who spent the same amount of time and/or money. We get our playground back.

    Whales fight whales in the most expensive aquarium you’ve ever seen, and it’s glorious.
    You instantly create multiple thriving, self-evolving metas instead of one miserable homogenized sludge.

    MOST IMPORTANTLY,Everyone keeps the toys they worked (or paid) for. Nobody has to watch their favorite cards get murdered on the altar of “balance.”

    Yeah, there’ll be a few edge cases: some brand-new player opens a lucky Masterpiece and spikes their rating for a week. Who cares? The system self-corrects fast. If someone’s punching too far above their weight, drop their rating a little on losses until it settles. Easy.

    Look, I’ve played this game every single day since launch. Literally every day. (Go ahead, look up player ID “Tezzeret”; I dare you.) In all that time you have never once come to the community and said, “Hey, we’re thinking about shaking some stuff up, what do you legends think?”

    So here I am, doing it for you.
    Please, for the love of all that is holy and puzzle-shaped, try something anything that isn’t another nerf bat. Give us a reason to keep playing your game.

    Or........ don’t... and watch the forums burn for another month.
    Your call.

    Much love (but seriously, fix it),

    <3 Your loyal eithrium armed puzzle quester!

    This is actually a good idea (and the narrative is priceless 😂). It is for example very similar to how Chess works, with ELO points. So I’d be in favor of implementing it.
    My only doubt is what happens if you join an event and there is nobody with your power level, or just a couple of players so you keep facing the same players all the time. As we all know the number of active players is not precisely huge..

  • Mepistopheles
    Mepistopheles Posts: 21 Just Dropped In

    @TIMEWARP said:

    My friend, I play (nearly) everything, every day. I feel that that had lead to a fine way as a FtP player of 9 years to get a reasonably full collection: as it should be in my opinion. FtP should be the basis to get everything if you dedicate enough time, if you want shortcuts pay irl cash.

    Please have in mind that the maintenance of the game is not free.
    I play mostly FtP, but I do tend to spend some money on the game I like to keep it going.
    After this ban I actually started monthly subscription again. It is nothing crazy to pay 32€ per month for a game you are playing daily.
    And having all the bonuses is kind of neat too to be completely honest.

  • Endbringer
    Endbringer Posts: 168 Tile Toppler

    This is an outrage! Who had such a horrible idea to nerf practically all of the key cards everyone used and loved to have fun with, that they built so many decks around, searching through the whole card pool to find other cards that would have synergy with them, and grinded and spent a ton of time, money, and resources to acquire, after hoping and praying everytime that the next paid for vip pack or 400 pink elite pack would supply them. You can't just make a bunch of expensive cards, that we can never get our in game resources or money back from, and hype them up, and have content creators display decks around them, and then suddenly rip the chair out from under our ****, and in one fell swoop, and nerf them all at once into cards that are no longer powerhouse cards, but rather meh cards that have no edge or win factor. Do you really think people want to pay and spend time grinding for only ever a bunch of mediocre cards? Absolutely not! People play and pay to get cards that Dominate! If the weaklings can't handle it and want to cry, let them and let them leave or this game will lose all of it's appeal and the whales and veterans will all condemn this game and it's designers. Change it back. Change it all back, and from now on, do your due diligence to make cards powerful and not need to ever nerf them after you've sucked out everybody's cash, time, energy, and resources. Absolutely f***ing ridiculous!

  • FCLedZep
    FCLedZep Posts: 70 Match Maker

    The only thing I can think of doing this nerving is to have new players a higher win loss rate. I play this game because it’s challenging. If new players are not up for a challenge they shouldn’t play this game in the first place. Maybe you should let new players play against more pre-constructed decks until they reach a certain level.

    I know many top 10 coalition players really dislike this nerving, the bugs and the lack of communication. A lot of them also spend significant money on this game. These are your most devoted players. Don’t you think you should do everything you can to keep those players on board?! This nerving is really a terrible mistake!!

  • FCLedZep
    FCLedZep Posts: 70 Match Maker

    I spend quite some time to construct Coalition Event decks and after this **** show I can start all over again for almost every deck I made for each Coalition Event! What a mess!!

  • ArielSira
    ArielSira Posts: 585 Critical Contributor
    edited December 2025

    After some time with the changes I still dislike them in Mystic Teachings, Titan's Vanguard, Aegis and Tempt.

    MT got a double nerf; higher cost and less utility. I did swap some cards to now get a full mana spell (for example Convert to Slime), but the biggest change is simply that everything takes longer. That shouldn't be the "fix" you were looking for I think.

    Titan's Vanguard has lost its place as a finisher of long games/large Boss' HP. I wish it kept the doubling effect but then only to itself.

    Tempt should have converted to 15 at least to take away the bad taste, or cost 20 instead. Or both!

    Aegis got a double nerf too, I'm not even including anymore. If it had 2 shield it would be viable again.