babar3355 said: With the new and poorly received Race to Orazca event, my general sentiment about the game has soured further. The objectives are a rehash of the same boring and tedious objectives that we have been living with for well over a year. It honestly reminds me of those DirectTV commercials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RpmwqaxrwA. "Some people like banging their head into low hanging beams, spilling coffee on themselves, or ending a match with 20 or less life in MTGPQ... for the rest of us..."Not only are many of these objectives insanely tedious, they also encourage one of the most tedious methods of accomplishing the goal in the entire game (cycling). Beyond that, and as mentioned in other threads, the insanity of combining "Creatures get..." game overlays with "Cast x or less creatures" and similar contradictory objectives ruins the intent of the overlay in the first place.However, there is a big problem here. Because we have 2 conflicting conditions that force objectives to be a certain way.1. They must be challenging for veteran players.2. They must be manageable for newer players.Here in lies the problem. The answer for the last year has been to use luck based (kill x creatures) and tedium based (win with 20 or life left) objectives. Unfortunately, I was sick of these the first day I played them. And now it has been over a year! This has made the game not fun, and I will not waste my life on playing a not fun game.So, to the point of the post. Can we as a community come up with some good ideas that will be both challenging for veterans and approachable by newbies? Which objectives do you already like? Which really need to go? Are there other ideas that might help with this issue?One idea I have is segmenting the objectives by mastery level. As an example, in the blue node:Platinum: Cast 3 or more merfolks and cast 5 or more spells.Gold: Cast 2 or more merfolks and cast 5 or more spells.Silver: Cast 3 or more blue creatures and cast 5 or more spells.Bronze: Cast 2 or more blue creatures and cast 3 or more spells.Perhaps those objectives are too easy, but just putting some ideas out there.Another idea would be to make Greg better as you increase in color mastery. Why not just have fun objectives but a challenging opponent that prevents 300 players from tying for first prize? Using tedium and luck to increase dispersion between outcomes does not lead to a fun player experience.Anyway, let me hear your thoughts. I will be ignoring my last 16 games because the potential for 80 jewels is't remotely worth the 2 hours it will take me to potentially win them.
Matthew said: Something I would like to see more of is objectives based on what you include in your own deck, rather than what an opponent may or may not have in theirs.I'm not talking about "X or more/fewer creatures/spells/supports" objectives either. Rather, I think they should make objectives where you get points based purely on what's in your deck.And in inject some level of competition into it, they could also include event objectives (unrelated to deckbuilding restrictions) that make it more challenging to use decks of certain builds. So you could be incentivized to make a deck that will be more challenging to achieve full points with. Sort of a high-risk, high-reward scenario.I'd give more thought to this and flesh it out, but my afternoon caffeine hasn't kicked in quite yet.
FindingHeart8 said: I just don't want to go back to another Fate is Rarely Fair. One of the most tedious and boring events to date (though the most recent one might be worse)
babar3355 said: One idea I have is segmenting the objectives by mastery level. As an example, in the blue node:Platinum: Cast 3 or more merfolks and cast 5 or more spells.Gold: Cast 2 or more merfolks and cast 5 or more spells.Silver: Cast 3 or more blue creatures and cast 5 or more spells.Bronze: Cast 2 or more blue creatures and cast 3 or more spells.
I am not absolutely convinced by the need to have different objectives in each tier. After all the objectives are shared by everyone in the tier, and if it's difficult to cast 3 merfolks in silver, then it's difficult for everyone there and the average scores are lower.
But I completly agree we should really have "cast X [insert creature subtype] " objectives in the event.
They really missed the chance to make us use our new cards. It is a pity because the tribal bonus for each node was a great idea.
In current Emrakul's Corruption you face vampires, werewolves, Eldrazis. In Race to Orazca I faced a single pirate deck (a fun one, with treasure generation and Marionette Master) and one Merfolk deck. But no Dino, no vampire (and the event had a high number of games though......)
Matthew said: FindingHeart8 said: I just don't want to go back to another Fate is Rarely Fair. One of the most tedious and boring events to date (though the most recent one might be worse) I can see why you might have mistaken my intent, but I agree completely that that event was garbage. I wasn't talking about that.To further clarify, what I was suggesting (but neglected to include, due to my waning caffeine reserves) is that there is a reward structure (personal or coalition, or both) that is tiered, and whose payout rises in concert with deck building restrictions that get more difficult.So maybe there's a restriction that says you can't use MPs, for instance, or you can only bring one creature in your deck, or you can only have one mythic of each type (creature, spell, support). Things like that. Those might be terrible ideas; I'm not a game designer, and I don't claim to be an expert. But I would have a lot of fun trying to find ways to make difficult concepts into decks that will also get me more rewards.