How do we feel about The Elderspark now?

We had several players quit our coalition after this event I noticed. We are not very competetive but they just felt it was too much anyway.

Hello @Brigby
Thank you for this awesome news. But I can't help myself not asking a bit more. Would you consider also cutting one day off this event? I think it would make player base even more happy. I believe most of the player base are employed and playing on Monday is out of the question or very hard. This also applies on TDW.
Thank you very much for consideration.

starfall said:

Gideon said:

I’ve been asking for charges up front for a least a year and a half. Instead they just continue to break the game with every update. This Vanguard slow fest is crazy. Do they get paid to make us hate the game? Once again I must ask. Do you even play test your own game before you release an update? 

It does seem to me like theyve reduced the Vanguard lag a little bit with the last update? Certainly when there's only one in play it seems better. Unfortunately, you often have three or more in play in The Elderspark, and the lag is obvious.

I only seem to see Vanguard lag now when Greg has a vanguard out whose ability cannot be used due to the boardstate.  But that definitely has gotten better too.  I guess sometimes they do listen!

What I'm wondering is: Is this event more hated that RotGP was? Try and think back to the first time you played RotGP (so many moons ago!)... did you dislike it more or less than The Elderspark?

I've been playing for over a year, and I remember looking forward to the first iteration of ROTGP I could play.  I didn't do very well, seeing as I only had Nissa 1 and Gideon 1 to play with, but made a decent effort.  One of the other players in my then coalition mailed me some cheat sheets, but they were worse than useless, being based on Innistrad and Kaladesh mythics I didn't have!  I ended up working out my own strategies with what I had available.

The third node did annoy me from the first, because I could see that either a trick was needed or the principle was that of a boxing game where the boss in the welterweight division is a big heavyweight with no skill but who needs to be hit a lot of times, giving him the opportunity to land a few lucky blows for the KO.(IOW, prioritising HP loading instead of increased skill).

I only began despising ROTGP when it started appearing every few weeks like clockwork.  Even though I score well on it, I hold the event in contempt now.

As for the Elderspark - this was risible from the start.  Another AM clone centred around Nicol Bolas, just with more bugs and the boss (to continue the boxing game analogy) now sits in an Abrams tank which you must punch through.  The amount of HP slathered on was almost laughable.

In other words, my expectations of a pathetic event weren't even met.  All the Elderspark did was waste my time in frustration.

I shall not play this event competitively again, no matter what promises, claims and blandishments are made.  I don't have the time for interminable idiocy which I couldn't care less about.

RotGP I will play, albeit under protest.

I don't have anything nice to say. 

Edit: Just finished another round of nodes. No change. 

All of the coalition events have gone to ****.  There are obvious benefits to joining a coalition  and I am in a great one (Loadtoad in Tinykitty), but none of them are directly game driven.  BFZ is the exception which is still playable.  The elderspark is grossly overpowered for a reduced standard format.  Add to it the game script which powers Greg's cascades and constantly gives player 5-6 supporting cards like demolish or Jayas welcome for a starting hand makes it really suck. Even the new pay to win architecture can't beat that.  There are some really good players that are doing great, but I bet most of us are struggling.  Right now the 2 things keeping me are my great coalition and the $$$$$ I have spent to keep up.  I will be removing the 2nd factor immediately.  Additionally, if you are going to grind us to death, at least make the rewards worth it-BFZ and FLBTH (whatever) give 10 x the rewards for less effort
Thanks for asking!

Tim C; the LOADTOAD!

While I'm sure all of us appreciate the effort to improve the gaming experience, I'm afraid more steps will need to be taken before you stop losing players big time.
You see this is an improvement. However if you put it in perspective, it makes too little diference for people to express gratitute, let alone to say: "Now that's the change, that I was waiting for /made me stay!"
Honestly I think, your whole team coud use a good marketing psychology workshop. If that is too expensive, use ted talks. I'm sure you'll learn to understand your public much better cuz in my opinion that's what's lacking. 
It all comes down to dopamine/ cortizol balance. Player is afraid to miss out on something if they don't log in (cortiozol). They log in and get a reward (dopamine). Then they play and they win, which shouldn't be too easy (dopamine), or lose/ get a game bug (cortisol).
And in this last step at the moment it's the cortisol all the time. Removal of the playable cards with new standard, grinding, preassure to play all your free time in the weekend and on monday not to let your coalition down, losses, lags, bugs and freezes... You see the negative reward pattern? So winning rewards should compensate for this. Do they? 

If you read reactions of your player base, I guess, you can answer that for yourself.
I hope you take a little time (as little as an hour goes a long way) to learn about needs of your customers, they will be a lot happier and you even more so. 

I'm glad I can now quit at 500 points. My sympathies to those who have to score for top10.

ArielSira said:

I'm glad I can now quit at 500 points. My sympathies to those who have to score for top10.

Don’t think it’s gonna be that hard. Most people aren’t even bothering with progression.