What is your favorite event, and why?
Brigby
ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,763 Site Admin
in MtGPQ Events
Hey Everyone!
We know that many people have drastically different schedules and interests compared to each other. Some have more time to play than others. Some enjoy PVP more than PVE. Some like Coalition events, and others prefer going solo.
This is why we want to ask you, our passionate community of players, specifically what your favorite events are. Please also include your reasoning, as that will be very important to the team in potentially applying that to future events.
Thank you for helping us create even more events that you all will enjoy!
We know that many people have drastically different schedules and interests compared to each other. Some have more time to play than others. Some enjoy PVP more than PVE. Some like Coalition events, and others prefer going solo.
This is why we want to ask you, our passionate community of players, specifically what your favorite events are. Please also include your reasoning, as that will be very important to the team in potentially applying that to future events.
Thank you for helping us create even more events that you all will enjoy!
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Comments
Solo or Coalition: I like a mixture of both. I do not like multiple coalition events in a week. I do not like consecutive coalition events without a break in between; at least one day's reprieve should occur.
Type of Event: I prefer PVP for deck variety. PVE gets very static once you figure out each node's gimmick. However, I do prefer PVE for coalition scoring; I like the concept of working together and scoring as a team rather than dealing with individual rankings. Because of the very narrow tier cutoffs--and because it is often a result of luck or bugs rather than skill--I'd much rather that rewards be ladder-based, so that if you reach a certain threshold (and subsequent range of scores) you're considered part of X prize tier.
Refresh timers: I like 8-hour refreshes, because it more naturally fits an average work schedule. Play in the morning, play when you get home. It naturally aligns with leisure time. When the refreshes start getting shortened, the game begins to intrude upon non-leisure time.
Nodes and charges: I like 4 or 5 nodes, with 1 charge to start. I think that the whole idea of "lost charges" is ridiculous, and thus support a large number of max charges before reaching that point. It's a mobile game, and should encourage flexibility.
Number of events: I like having something to do, when I want to do it. That varies for everyone, of course. For me, I like 1-2 hours of game play a day. When it increases beyond that, it's annoying and tedious. It's a mobile game, not a job, but it sure does feel like one at times--and that isn't a positive.
Rewards: I like rewards that are worth the effort. We shouldn't be playing Standard events for Legacy cards. While we should be inundated with the most current set as rewards, instead they're in short supply.
Conclusion: The Dragon War is my favorite because it hits the most of my preferences. The only thing I don't like is that it suffers from a bit of overcomplexity. Oktagon, buddy, we get that you like having a billion effects going on at once, but you need to chill and stop confusing complexity with challenge. However, the nodes, colors, charges, and objectives in TDW? They're great. Well done.
I find it important to get various events. Some PVE to test your memory, PVP to test your flexibility, and the story based events to quickly accumulate some resources. I also like that some events are longer as long as we can enjoy shorter events to balance it out. I think weekends for coalition events and weekdays for individual events are a good balance. It can also be alternated.
For objectives it's also about balance. Sometimes using luck based objectives is fine. But we shouldn't have a general feeling that it's almost always about luck.
Some things can be done better too. It's important to play at your own free time. This is different for everyone, so charges upfront would be ideal. Otherwise more charges being held at max can increase flexibility too. I'm more likely to play more if it's not more stressful than I enjoy. This also goes for the last charge. 6 hours is way too short. Stretching this will mean no player will be limited by their timezone, which is very important for a global competitive game.
A World Reborn is probably my favorite, it has a nice thematic flavor, the objectives tie in directly to the set, and it's not a huge time hog to complete.
Mostly I enjoy puzzles, and crafting decks to meet specific known or anticipated challenges. For Coalition-level events, this lets me work with the rest of the team to strategize an efficient and effective build.
The other DOM events, A Journey Through History parts 1-4, are also among my favorites as they play to the theme for the set. In my opinion they are among the best PvE non-Coalition events in the game.
I did like the updated objectives for RotGP, but it would have been better had that not happened after part or all of its block had rotate out of Standard. This event could have been better if the new objectives could have been keyed to the unique capabilities of AKH and HOD.
Perhaps if this event were Legacy instead of Standard, this could be done. Or a Restricted format, which allows all Standard cards plus those from the event's native block (ORI, AKH, HOU, XLN-M19).
The other big issue with RotGP is the node refresh rate. It was good when they lengthened it from 4 hours to 6, but that's still short of the 8 for everything else. This makes it too hectic for casual play. Plus the unpredictable end time, and short duration of the final refresh, makes it more luck of the draw for highly competitive players to keep up.
Having a standardized 10-12 hours after the final refresh for all events would go a long way to fix this quality of life issue. Making nodes refresh 3 charges every 24 hours (instead of 1 every 8), with the final recharge given 22 hours to play would be even better.
The oversized PvE events, such as Avacyn's Madness, and Bo4T (especially this one) feel oppressive in their scale. AM is good as an occasional challenge, we've only seen it twice in the past year that I can recall.
Bo4T on the other hand, feels like some of the matches were made to be a challenge for the meta of the era when the event was created. But Standard has changed a lot, and this event hasn't. I almost feel it would be best to break this into two events, nodes 1-3 on part 1, and 4-5 on part 2, just due to the way some of the matches seem to be long slow grinds.
A lot of the old PvE that we rarely (if ever) see anymore would probably be better modified to become part of Story Mode, so players can enjoy them at their leisure.
PvP requires more of a swiss-army-knife deckbuilding approach, and leads to a lot of similar builds as everyone tries to compensate for any eventuality, eventually keying in on the most popular combos instead of rewarding interesting novel build ideas.
This isn't as bad now that cycling is out of the meta (as far as Standard goes, at least. Still a lot of Deploy the Emrakul Pigs in Legacy).
I prefer smaller events for PvP.
The daily Training Grounds, Across Ixalan, and Trial of the Planes, which I can play as I choose if I feel like it and have the time.
Terror in the Shadows and Emrakul's Corruption are good Legacy events, with specific objectives keyed to the flavor of the originating block. Short, quick fights (only 3 nodes) makes these good mid-week non-Coalition events.
The KLD/AER PvPs (Emergency Ordinances, Fate is Rarely Fair) feel a bit lazy on the design. 4 nodes, so more engagement than their predecessors, but the same objective for each color? No wonder we've almost never seen them in the past year.
HoR and HoD also don't really tie strongly to their blocks flavor, with the exception of a required PW for one node. But otherwise generic objectives that you may or may not actually have control over whether you can obtain them.
As for the 5-node PvP events, while I like that those from the newer sets (The Dragon War, Race to Orazca) have a strong flavor theme to tie them to their blocks, they can feel over-complicated and tedious at times.
It runs almost every day, and for 3-5 wins I get 10 crystals, 25 jewels, and a pack. By rotating colors, I'm forced to play a variety of different decks. I wish the pack were more relevant, and that there was a wider variety of secondaries available; rarely do I have reason to play beyond the first two nodes. But it offers a low-stress, high-success pathway to consequential rewards, and it runs regularly. I don't need to check a schedule to see when it's coming around next. I don't need to worry about performing poorly and letting my coalition down. I don't need to force myself through dozens of matches to achieve progression or get to a leaderboard. I just sit down at a time that fits my schedule, and I play my way through. Maybe I'm short on time and I play my very best cards. Maybe, because the risk of failure is so low, I decide to try something different using cards I haven't gotten to experiment with yet. But always I walk away with something that made it worth my time.
It's the perfect format for me to play when on the way to work.
It does have a few flaws though:
- not worth doing unless you are platinum (the rewards should really be the same for all tiers if there is an entry fee)
- still rewards ixalan packs (would be nicer if it was just a random standard pack)
Also training grounds is needed, but it would be perfect if I could choose everyday between Sandard or Legacy or even better play it in both ways everyday.
What I like most of the events I have chosen is that almost every battle can be done in a few minutes, what it is what I expect in a mobile game and rewads are worth enough.
Also I like Emrakuls Corruption and Terrors in Shadows. Rewards could be improved a little in legacy events
Special ones! Valentine! Xmas! Halloween ! The ones happening rarely but with a lot of flavor.
Great ones:
A World Reborn - two nodes, no luck based achievements, timing just ok to allow me clear nodes after work on Monday.
A journey through the time: excellent time/reward ratio, no charges constraints - allows me to test different kind of decks without worrying about the objectives if I don't want.
The dragon war - nice mechanics, challenging , good rewards.
Good ones:
Across ixalan -if reward switched to rix (or like tg rotation between rix and xln packs) - it would be perfect.
Trials - mostly due to legacy flavor and most recent pack as reward. I'd change the cost to 30 though
Bad ones :
Rotgp - booorimg (too long ,too many times played). Changes: length of event - one day less would help .
Oath - I hate exclusive objectives forcing me to play twice almost every encounter to get rare.
(While I wouldn't object to a 3 node as some people have suggested in the past and 3 nodes is usually ok timewise, it should NOT be harder than the current 3rd but slot in the middle instead)
Across Ixalan for excellent every day that is low stress and can be fit in at any time.
Journey across history is awesome and can be done whenever, but all the stuff that can be done "whenever" and doesn't affect anyone at all... I don't understand the "1 day" time limits... Why not leave them up for 4 days or something? You can safely overlap them with over things, then they fill in the "gaps" better.
The only thing missing is this kind of fun interesting new stuff that is HARD without being a blunt instrument (like Azor's Gateway, it's blunt and dumb and luck-based, not a "clever" design for "difficult").
One thing I would really love is (in things like the Journey ones perhaps) is that after you hit the current points you unlock "SuperGREGMode!" where the exact same fights all unlock again but with the boosted AI from a few months back. (For some people the rewards don't even matter, they'd just enjoy playing SuperGREG again in interesting fights, other people would certainly want rewards, but you are already catering to them in other ways.)
1) I am not a fan of the alternating Standard/Legacy idea. I'd prefer an option to choose. I started playing just before DOM release so most of my cards are Standard. As a bit of a newer player Standard is a better atmosphere for me.
2) Having a max reward at 4 wins is low. I really think that should be increased to allow TG to give some other rewards. If it was upped to 6 it would be great. It would allow for a reward structure like this:
1 Win - 500 Runes
2 Wins - 500 Runes
3 Wins - 3 or maybe 5 Jewels
4 Wins - 600 Runes
5 Wins - 15 Crystals (although 20 or 25 would be ideal)
6 Wins - Booster pack (either always newest set or a random 5 card pack that pulls from sets available depending on the format you picked.)
I generally prefer PVP over PvE as the health and abilities of certain PvE fights create a sluggish matchup. An opponent with 300+ health just takes too long to defeat. (And don't get me started on opponents with "I win" buttons that's just horrible.)
I also hate too specific of objectives. Such as play 2+ of a creature type that is only in this set... Werewolves and Dinosaurs I'm looking at you. Play 2+ Goblins is fine because Goblins will always exist. The win wuth x or less life is also a bad objective.
Some other events I like include Across Ixalan, The Dragon War, and Journey through History .
Personal rewards are set at a reasonable level.
The best thing about this event is either or objectives.
1. From a vet perspective, if there’s an objective I just really hate, I can choose to take the loss of a point and play the one I enjoy more.
2. From a noob or mid level perspective; it gives me more creativity in deck building with a limited collection and it gives me a second option if I make a mistake or because of lack of experience, accidentally messing up an objective or having to make an emergency call. Cast 2 or less spells for 2 points is a great thing for a mid level player to aim for, but it’s nice that they can still get one point if they miss this and have to cast 3.
I think it is still our most well balanced event.
I love objectives involving creature or card types- it forces you to use a variety of other cards. I hate objectives involving "Win with x much life left" and "Win in X amount of turns"
Tribes could be fun if the mana cascades were toned down
If there is such event - maybe in form of tg - on daily basis, one mode, specific pw (available in vault that day) - I'd gladly use my yellows/real $ to buy pw and compete
My favorite coalition events are PVE; I love the way the community comes together to solve problems. The teamwork involved brings out the best of our nmrtwirk of coalitions. I prefer 3 nodes with 8 hour refreshes; I hate having to worry about “losing charges.” Of course, that could be solved by simply awarding full charges at the beginning.
Pvp is my preferred event style, simply because I can't really turn on autopilot and coast. I also like how swingy things can be. A lot of the time, a single cascade can change everything, so resilience is very important.
I think 3-4 nodes is the sweet spot. Awr is so low commitment that it feels a bit pointless except the week after battle of the 4,000 triggers . Events like BOFT which has multiple horrid matches would be much more easily digested with 1 or two fewer nodes . I like 8 hour charges, though 6 is fine ,too .