Q&A w/Oktagon - November Edition (11/7/19)

How close are you to release the Throne of Eldraine set and can you give a rough estimate as to when we will see it?

We plan to release Throne of Eldraine near the end of this month and we plan to have some details about what is to come in a week or so with the Pre-Release Notes.

Are there plans to improve the game startup loading time, it currently takes 30+ seconds for me and I'm not on an ancient device. What about improving the loading time between in-game screens?”

There have been Performance and Loading Optimizations in the 3.7 release. There might be room in a future Between-Sets release, however there are no plans yet. 

What is the future of legacy other than an ever-growing repository of old sets?  Will there ever be sets eliminated from the game?  Will more legacy events become set/block-restricted?

As Legacy is an ever growing environment, that increases with the standard set rotations and with the launch of retroactively contents, it is natural that this format becomes more and more controlled by specific overwhelming strategies. In order to avoid this negative perspective, and to make it healthier for new Legacy sets, some old events and new alike will be gradually reworked to become set or block-restricted. This way, players will be able to play with their older cards within thematic events that require more of deck building and decision making, instead of powerful card combinations that can win a fight in a single turn.

How will you fix the bugs and errors that make us lose games or charges? The leaderboards should not be dictated by being lucky enough not to encounter bugs or errors.

The player’s experience is very important to us. The coders, together with the QA team, are working every day to reproduce and fix all the bugs and issues in the game. Some issues are not easy to simulate, due to the large pool of devices that the players have, so your help is crucial to figuring out the root of the issue; particularly for events. We gather a lot of information from Player Reports on the Forum and via the in-game messages sent to Support.

How will you fix event end times in a way that everyone can finish all their charges (if they choose to do so), but won't be restricted by the timezone they live in?

For 2020, we intend to introduce some new event types, which will count with different systems other than the regular "charges" (such as a win/lose streak count, for example, with a given amount of lives). This will enable both players and developers to evaluate new methods of scoring and engagement for events.

In an August 2018 Q&A asking about longer refreshes (specifically the last refresh), it was said that, ‘We are currently looking at this and other options, in order to allow players in different regions the chance to participate equally in events. A year later we got The Elderspark with 6-hour refreshes & Ravnica at War with 6-hour refreshes (Only 4 hours for the last refresh). How soon will we see the longer, region-friendly refreshes?

Starting with Throne of Eldraine, most longer upcoming events will feature the standard 8-hour refreshes instead of the shorter ones. However, this format is not able to be applied to every event, which is the case of daily casual events.

Also, as aforementioned, some of the 2020 sets will present new playing formats, with different systems other than the standard one with charges.

We have received various questions about Player Level and Progression.  Some feedback here from the team on plans to improve upon these efforts.

While the Player Level release and subsequent months could have been handled better than they were, we believe it can become an exciting feature for both new players and old players alike. That being said, we are looking for ways to revitalize the game after an admittedly rough year. As such, we wanted to try and avoid the mistakes that were made.

In that light, we’ll have a more concrete announcement, that will relate to Player Level, to make during the Holiversary. However, that does not mean that nothing new is coming into the game...

A new, First Theros Block, Duel Decks is scheduled to be released alongside the Theros Beyond Death set. This new iteration will also have slight adjustments to the ruleset and rewards, which will contain Player XP. The previous Duel Decks (ZvE) will also be subjected to these slight adjustments. That being said, not all events will have Player XP as a reward. Starting from the Theros release, which should be done on schedule (~1 month after the tabletop release), Special events like Duel Deck events and the leading event for each set release will.

Finally, all of that being said, we'd like to personally apologize to all veteran players who felt damaged by the Player Level implementation. That was far from its actual goal. Hopefully, you accept this apology and help us realize this new direction for the game.