Bo4T notes

starfall · February 2019

I wanted to thank Oktagon for this latest round of Bo4T! It seems like they have been listening to our ideas for new events: take an old event, make some simple changes, and produce something that feels like new content (e.g. this event, or this one, or this one)

I have some feedback!

Firstly, you'll notice the events suggested above are all PvP; I'd have much rather had a 'new' PvP event than a PvE one. PvP events are by their very nature more varied than PvE because of all the different player decks you interact with. They also mean far less work for the developers creating their own decks (and it means less 'bloopers' in the decks, like 1.1's inclusion of Favorable Winds in a deck with only one flying creature! 😆 ). The decks in a PvP event also change naturally when a new set is released, whereas PvE decks remain the same and grow stale, especially when the card pool we can use to fight them expands.

Secondly, the 'Pauper' objectives. There were a lot of these, 3 out of 9 of the objectives. Personally I liked them, as they provided new deckbuilding challenges, but they were tough, and I wonder how popular they were amoung the wider player community? I've certainly heard some negative reactions to these objectives.

Thirdly, the 'Play X creaturetype' objectives. Again, 3 out of 9 of the objectives were of this type. I feel like the numbers chosen for X were generally too high. Playing 6 Dinosaurs or Merfolk is a lot, and can be quite a grind. 'Play 3 Merfolk' would have a similar effect during deckbuilding, but would be less grindy during gameplay. Again, personally, I didn't have much problem with these objectives; like most Platinum Tier players I can chain Surveil effects and BSZs and play 6 Dinosaur cards fairly easily, but there must be a lot of players who found it a strain (I still remember what a terrible time we all had playing 6 Vampires and 8 Eldrazi in the original Emrakul's Corruption' event!)

Tremayne · February 2019

I think that play 3 creatures of a type is a bit to little particularly against bigger opponents. But casting 6 is a bit to much, I would say the sweet spot is cast 4-5 creature. However summon 6 may not be all that difficult depending upon the creature type.

If the goal is to easy, then players only need to create a deck that can cast the 3 creatures in their deck onto the table.

Machine · February 2019

The biggest plus for me is that they split the original event in two parts. It was already tough to keep these three nodes clear. Imagine having the original five nodes (that also held two charges each!)... That was the reason we all complained.

Another plus: the event ends on Sunday! No more pressure during work day. That's also different from the original event, that ended on Monday.

Thanks for these changes, Oktagon!

madwren · February 2019

Casting X creatures is fine as long as it scales based on the node/opponent. I think 4 pirates on 1.3 is probably fine, and likewise 6 on 3.3 is fine; both nodes facilitate wanting to cast a lot of creatures anyway. I'm much more annoyed with pauper objectives, because I don't invest in the game to play with **** uncommons. =p

Brakkis · February 2019

Originally, 1.3 required 6 pirates to be cast and we said "6 is too much, but 4 would be good". Now it's 4. That didn't mean make the new objectives on 2.3 and 3.3 the same number as the one we said was too much.

Pauper is a fine objective. Not an issue with that. But winning by Turn 6 with Pauper is kind of a pain in the ****. I did it but it was too close for comfort each time.

IM_CARLOS · February 2019

As a veteran I still like the pauper objectives, because you have build a new deck with cards that normally wouldn't make the cut and newer player have also better chance.

I dislike heavy "x creature type" objectives, especially in low life node 1.

Also the max rewards are to short on max. pts. If you lost a match on node 2 or 3 max reward is out of reach.

I like the timing and lenght. Not too much grinding.

But the worst parts are still bugs. Lost 1.3 to a bouncing bug with admiral boarded. The eternal support didn't made it easier. On second run I took a deck that ignored pirates at all.

Summary: fine event but the devs have to exile the bugs and tweek the rewards a little (maybe start with 3 starting charges or kick the second last reward... 2k runes and end with 280).

TheBigBad · February 2019

IM_CARLOS said:

Summary: fine event but the devs have to exile the bugs and tweek the rewards a little (maybe start with 3 starting charges or kick the second last reward... 2k runes and end with 280).

Agreed.

Actually didn't mind any of the objectives, but 315 max points with full progression at 300 is a bit tight. I was running along pretty smoothly until a soft lock ended any hope of hitting 300. Oh well, stopped at 255 (for the runes

).

Maybe the objectives could be a bit more relaxed to accommodate non-veteran or non-platinum players (or those who don't have the variety of PWs or cards yet -- but maybe that's the point).

Kinesia · February 2019

I like pauper and win in 6 turns was a nice challenge with it (that only works because of 1.1's low health!), but since you can't practise things properly and the rewards line is soooo tight, it becomes irritating.
I lost a few objectives, tightened up my decks and would've been fine except... Then I had a crash.

Without the crash I would've hit the 300. I'm not annoyed about losing the objectives and needing to practise and organise better, I'm annoyed that a crash prevented me from succeeding.

Tight lines are fine if known about and worked towards, but the same thing WITH CRASHES is totally unacceptable.

We need an update that is solely and completely dedicated to stability, tweaks put in to catch the crashes and save things. The app should never ever be crashing. (Hint, most other apps don't ever do it! Certainly not the roughly 10% of games this does...)

Stormcrow · February 2019

I had an absolutely perfect score, but I wasn't able to play during the last 6 hours of the event so I couldn't possibly hit max score, due to needing the very last set of charges, which only came up a relatively short time before the event ended. I imagine anybody whose time zone is such that they were asleep for the end of the event had the same problem. Tight scoring is one thing, but tight scheduling is just a whole 'nother level of unnecessary grief. A little more schedule flexibility, please.

As a general rule of thumb I think giving your playerbase a 12-hour window to do stuff/play matches/get stuff is fine; anything less than that is almost certainly screwing over somebody.

arNero · February 2019

Brakkis said:

Originally, 1.3 required 6 pirates to be cast and we said "6 is too much, but 4 would be good". Now it's 4. That didn't mean make the new objectives on 2.3 and 3.3 the same number as the one we said was too much.

Pauper is a fine objective. Not an issue with that. But winning by Turn 6 with Pauper is kind of a pain in the tinykitty. I did it but it was too close for comfort each time.

Same feeling here. Even with Worlwaker Nissa and her hasty Elementals, this still just isn't easy.

Stormcrow said:

I had an absolutely perfect score, but I wasn't able to play during the last 6 hours of the event so I couldn't possibly hit max score, due to needing the very last set of charges, which only came up a relatively short time before the event ended. I imagine anybody whose time zone is such that they were asleep for the end of the event had the same problem. Tight scoring is one thing, but tight scheduling is just a whole 'nother level of unnecessary grief. A little more schedule flexibility, please.

As a general rule of thumb I think giving your playerbase a 12-hour window to do stuff/play matches/get stuff is fine; anything less than that is almost certainly screwing over somebody.

The event ended without me realizing it either, but I did suspect I make have missed one match each on the nodes.... Yeah, I think this is another upvote for those who think 8-hour recharge has become too short these days.Kinesia said:Kinesia said:

I like pauper and win in 6 turns was a nice challenge with it (that only works because of 1.1's low health!), but since you can't practise things properly and the rewards line is soooo tight, it becomes irritating.
I lost a few objectives, tightened up my decks and would've been fine except... Then I had a crash.

Without the crash I would've hit the 300. I'm not annoyed about losing the objectives and needing to practise and organise better, I'm annoyed that a crash prevented me from succeeding.

Tight lines are fine if known about and worked towards, but the same thing WITH CRASHES is totally unacceptable.

We need an update that is solely and completely dedicated to stability, tweaks put in to catch the crashes and save things. The app should never ever be crashing. (Hint, most other apps don't ever do it! Certainly not the roughly 10% of games this does...)

I do not like crashes either, but MtgPQ is indeed the ONLY ONE game I know where a crash punishes YOU for being unlucky. Case in point: In Hearthstone, after a crash you have about a minute to reestablish connection and resume playing, which probably still means you are screwed, but at least there is a chance you can come back from that. Another game I play have save states: If the app crashes, the next time I reboot it it asks me if I want to continue from where I left off, meaning that I don't lose anything.

bobby_2613 · February 2019

I loved the event. Only thing I'd change is the high score needed to get progression. I've lost 1 match, lost 20 points, finished at 295. This is 94% of max total. Still couldn't get progression. This is harsh... I liked the rewards, only I think needing 95% to get to progression is far to high.

Edit: There's far too much crashes and bugs to ask for that kind of score. IMHO

wereotter · February 2019

arNero said:

I do not like crashes either, but MtgPQ is indeed the ONLY ONE game I know where a crash punishes YOU for being unlucky. Case in point: In Hearthstone, after a crash you have about a minute to reestablish connection and resume playing, which probably still means you are screwed, but at least there is a chance you can come back from that. Another game I play have save states: If the app crashes, the next time I reboot it it asks me if I want to continue from where I left off, meaning that I don't lose anything.

PQ is even worse than that. I've had where I get a call mid-match and by the time I return to the game, even if I just send the call to voicemail, PQ has decided to reload the app and forfeit the match.

ShaarkBiite · February 2019

In summary: I LOVE that the max score was around progression, but I don't think it should be quite that close. I also think all charges upfront is the best way to achieve fairness.

In full:
I love that max score was right around progression, but I agree with everyone above that it was too close. A crash, soft lock, or an imprecisely worded objective could prevent you from reaching progression. Even still, one or two losses shouldn't prevent you from reaching progression; that's why there are additional rewards for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.

There is also a valid point on the table that events end inconveniently for some folks depending on where they live, when they work, or the other things they have going on in their lives. If folks want to play, they should be able to play. If events are run with just a few extra charges, not forty extra (looking at you Dragon War), it would be especially great to have all the charges upfront. I know, I know, the d3go/Oktagon position is that all the charges upfront would decrease engagement. I don't agree and I'd challenge them to prove me wrong. There must be metrics on all sorts of things: number of players, number of matches played, length of time, etc. Pick an event, give all the charges upfront, and see what happens. I would imagine it would be easy enough to code; just set max charge per node to ten (or whatever), set starting charges to ten, and refresh time to 90 hours. When the event's over, compare metrics.

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