Mana Echoes - Episode 2

Greetings, everyone!

Welcome to the second episode of Mana Echoes! If you’re new to the series, this is where we share insights into the development of Magic: Puzzle Quest. If you haven’t read the first episode yet, we highly recommend checking it out. Don’t worry—we’ll wait.

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Welcome back! Now, let’s talk about Events!

Evolving Event Structures

Before we took over development, some events in Magic: Puzzle Quest followed well-established cycles. For example, Revolving Planeswalk had just received its third installment, and most events required players to carefully manage their game logins to maximize participation.

At first glance, this system seemed fine. However, there were some underlying issues that needed to be addressed.

While events like Revolving Planeswalk provided daily opportunities to earn the most set-specific packs at the time, they occupied a significant portion of the daily event schedule. This created a scenario where players with a more strict schedule could have to choose between prioritizing these recurring events due to rewards or heading to other events that offered more diverse gameplay.

To address this, we’ve shifted the design choices towards a more diverse event rotation. The current schedule ensures that each week includes at least six events offering packs from the latest set, with some weeks featuring up to twelve packs available from progression rewards alone.

Additionally, we’ve increased the number of new events introduced with each set update. Every set now launches with at least one new event, and we believe new content should be celebrated—so we schedule versions with Bonus Rewards of these events at their inaugural runs.

Bonus Rewards

These Bonus Rewards feature Super Packs at the highest Progression Rewards tiers. Since they occur during the first week of a set’s launch, they help players expand their collections right away.

This increased event production rate also helped to ensure packs would remain accessible without compromising large portions of the event schedule.

Rethinking Ranked Rewards

You may have noticed that rank-based rewards are mostly limited to Coalition Events these days. This was a deliberate decision.

Ranked reward systems work best when rankings can be properly determined. However, Magic: Puzzle Quest presents a unique challenge—many players finish events with identical results, making it difficult to establish clear rankings. Without extensive reworks to matchmaking and scoring systems, rank-based rewards could introduce unnecessary complications.

That said, we are exploring ways to refine ranked rewards in the future. We’ll discuss matchmaking and ranking adjustments in a later update!

Additionally, we’ve moved away from entry fees in newly designed events. This change ensures that players don’t have to choose between participation and preserving their resources for an upcoming release. However, this doesn’t mean entry fees are gone forever—certain event structures may still incorporate them in meaningful ways.

A More Flexible Charge System

Event charges previously required strict scheduling to maximize attempts—especially in Coalition Events, where individual performance impacted an entire group. Players in different time zones often had to wake up in the middle of the night just to use their event charges before the event ended!

To improve flexibility, all event charges are now granted upfront, with no recharge time, allowing players to complete matches at their own pace.

While this change was a huge quality-of-life improvement, it did introduce some unintended side effects. For example, certain events—like Duel Decks—were not designed for a system where all charges were available immediately. As a result, these events temporarily disappeared from rotation.

The good news? They’re making a comeback soon! The design team has even drawn inspiration from them for new event concepts—so keep an eye out on future updates!

Exploring New Event Concepts

We’ve also been experimenting with Boss Mechanics and World-Altering Events.

Boss events have always been polarizing—some players enjoy them, while others find them frustrating due to concerns like:

• What happens if the boss is defeated before all players use their charges?
• Are boss fights too long?
• Are there too many enemy encounters?

During the last Holiversary we extended to players a challenge issued by Nicol Bolas's himself: Defeat the God-Pharaoh during the event, and reap rewards that extended beyond the event itself! \
This taunt from Nichol Bolas did draw our attention to some exciting possibilities, such as::

• Unlocking Bonus Rewards versions of events
• Adjusting in-game store discounts
• Temporarily modifying game rules or enabling new game modes

However, we should have known better than to listen to this Elder Dragon at face value, and we acknowledge that the execution of this idea could have been better. One issue was timing—since the event coincided with the Holiversary, many players felt pressured to participate just to maintain the benefits they already expected

We’ve taken your feedback to heart and will refine this concept before bringing it back. Rest assured—this wasn’t the final form of boss mechanics!

Balancing Deck Restrictions & Player Freedom

Another challenge in event design is objective-based restrictions and how they impact players—both intentionally and unintentionally.

For example, events like Colors of Magic limit deckbuilding by restricting card rarities. However, some players bypass these restrictions by using high-powered Quick Battle decks, prioritizing fast wins over the points from these secondary objectives.

So, should we enforce stricter deck restrictions like in Commoner’s Cup or Silver Duel? Maybe. But it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.

Consider an event with an objective like "Destroy X opposing creatures." Would it make sense to force players to include creatures in their deck? What if a player prefers spell-based decks or control strategies?

We asked our Lead Game Designer, about this topic, and here’s what he had to say:

“Restriction objectives work well with veteran players but can easily be overlooked by players expecting a lighter, more casual experience with the game. Restriction Rules work better in general, although they demand higher resources from the player. While we have recently leaned towards Restriction Rules, focused objectives are still going to be used in end-game content”

What’s Next?

That’s all for this episode!

But don’t worry—Episode 3 will be hitting the forums in two weeks. We’ll discuss:

• The challenges of implementing PvE content
• Why is PvE content less frequent than PvP
• Our vision for the evolution of PvE (and other events) in the future

See you then!