OKTAGON Q&A Session - March 2020 *UPDATE (04/01/2020)

Magic:PQ Support Team
Magic:PQ Support Team ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 3,257 Chairperson of the Boards
edited April 2020 in MtGPQ General Discussion

UPDATE

1. Recently, a wonderful update improved the AI by reducing the number of times it destroyed its own creatures. I think the broad opinion is that a better AI is good for the game. Are there any other improvements scheduled in this area?

Answer: We indeed have plans to improve the AI even further and we are looking into a specific mechanic for the upcoming collection, but we can't mention any details at this point.

2. Whatever happened to the idea of a pity timer when opening packs? This was mentioned in October of 2018 but we have not heard about it since. 

Answer: There are no plans so far for this. 

3. What are you all planning to do in order to get coalition rewards back on a meaningful level? And Do you plan to improve or modify coalition events that have received a lot of negative feedback recently? (Too many matches, too long, too tedious, little rewards, inconvenient ending times, etc.)

Answer:  We are aware of this topic and are currently reviewing the Coalition Event rewards, but have no concrete plans yet. In regards to the length and amount of matches, we think that the most recent event Titanomachy already reflects the tendency for having shorter Coalition Events and we are planning future Coalition Events likewise.   

4. Where do you post information about cards/mechanics that is currently being tested?

Answer: We have not posted anything in the past and have no plans for this either. 

5. Are daily quests still happening? 

Answer: It is, but to be honest there are no concrete plans about when it will happen. There has been a considerable amount of players showing interest in the idea (see the thread here) and we thank you for asking about it. Production wise the main topic right now is the next collection Ikora: Lair of the Behemoths and Bug Fixing, where the team is focusing on primarily. Nonetheless, the Design Team took the community’s feedback on the Daily Quests into account and will continue working on it. 

6. Many major bugs linger for months and are not addressed until the next major set releases (which ends up introducing more bugs). Will we see more frequent updates to the app, in between set releases, in order to more quickly deal with these issues? And Can you please inform us when a problematic card has been fixed rather than us continuing to not use the card until a player confirms that it is working?

Answer: Even running the risk to sound like a broken record: we know that communication about bug fixes has been, and still is a topic, where we need to improve. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience. 

7. Will we ever see an event where the AI gets to go first? Possibly by means of an alternating counter that ensures the AI and player take turns going first?

Answer: This is a very interesting idea. We will make some iterations with this possibility.

8. Why do we see other cards and PW rebalanced, but not the original (Origins) PW? These are important for new player engagement. 

Answer: Rebalancing existing content is always interesting, but also delicate in terms of implementation and the impact and outcome need to be looked at carefully. However, we would like to return part of this question and ask you, the players, which Planeswalker of the original (ORI) ones would you like to see rebalanced?

Hi everyone,


How are you?
Here's another Q&A SESSION.
The March edition is officially open! :smiley: 
The form will be available until March 20th, so send your questions and doubts HERE.

Thank you for all the support,
Marcela.

Comments

  • Julie71
    Julie71 MTGPQ Mod Posts: 707 Critical Contributor

    Hi everyone,


    How are you?
    Here's another Q&A SESSION.
    The March edition is officially open! :smiley: 
    The form will be available until March 20th, so send your questions and doubts HERE.

    Thank you for all the support,
    Marcela.
    Questions and doubts.  Well I don't have either of those but I do have an observation. I have noticed that (bugs) are now being tagged as investigating, confirmed, and works as intended.  So I am grateful that these are being taken a little more seriously. As this is the biggest complaints I see for players leaving. So now at least I can pull up a thread, and explain to a player yes they know about it.  If I could make one suggestion is to now give an ETA on when they will be fixed. Thanks.
  • Tremayne
    Tremayne Posts: 1,607 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2020
    I have submitted the following questions

    1. Where do you post information about cards/mechanics that is currently being tested?

    Update 1
    2. What is the purpose of booster crafting, if a player have a paid VIP membership? Is booster crafting only for casual free to play players.

    (I’ll update this post if/when more questions are submitted).
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2020
    Tremayne said:
    I have submitted the following questions

    1. Where do you post information about cards/mechanics that is currently being tested?

    (I’ll update this post if/when more questions are submitted).
    Do you mean bugs? 

    New mechanics would be proprietary or related to new sets  and not public information, I would think. 
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    Machine said:
    I asked this question before and you said you would relay to the devs, but I'm going to ask it here too, just for administrative purposes:

    Will rare vanguard packs also become nondupe? Reason for this is that vanguards can NOT be crafted and wasting high end resources (jewels) is a very bad player experience.
    I'm going to guess this one is a "no", similar to how the Rare+ Premium Packs work.

    That being said the uncraftability of Vanguards should definitely make them consider changing their policy (I just don't think they will)
  • ElfNeedsFood
    ElfNeedsFood Posts: 944 Critical Contributor
    Vanguards were mishandled from day one in my opinion. They're special support cards, I get that, but they're the only cards that don't make it into any packs?  I don't get that. They're also cheaper and easier to acquire (i.e. no dupes) in alternative art format from Fbthbp?  Alternative art versions are supposed to be the rarer and more expensive versions of the cards. 
  • Tremayne
    Tremayne Posts: 1,607 Chairperson of the Boards
    bken1234 said:
    Tremayne said:
    I have submitted the following questions

    1. Where do you post information about cards/mechanics that is currently being tested?

    (I’ll update this post if/when more questions are submitted).
    Do you mean bugs? 

    New mechanics would be proprietary or related to new sets  and not public information, I would think. 
    No, Oktagon has just announced that vigilance was being tested and feedback from players had been received and therefore vigilance was to be changed. That was very surprising since I had not heard anything about that test and possible feedback.

    It seems the vigilance change was unforeseen by the forum community in general, so that is why (and what) I’m asking about.
  • Poppy99
    Poppy99 Posts: 7 Just Dropped In
    When are improved Coalition Search features coming?

    One suggestion was to add "last coalition event rank" to the coalition search result or random coalition search result, and FILTER OUT any coalitions who did not rank/did not join.   This one feature would massively improve the newer player experience when trying to find active coalitions.  I see many mostly dead coalitions with recent joiners on them who have also lost interest, and I have to speculate that retention rate among new MtGPQ players is suffering from this lack of active engagement with coalition mates.

  • ElfNeedsFood
    ElfNeedsFood Posts: 944 Critical Contributor
    Poppy99 said:
    When are improved Coalition Search features coming?

    One suggestion was to add "last coalition event rank" to the coalition search result or random coalition search result, and FILTER OUT any coalitions who did not rank/did not join.   This one feature would massively improve the newer player experience when trying to find active coalitions.  I see many mostly dead coalitions with recent joiners on them who have also lost interest, and I have to speculate that retention rate among new MtGPQ players is suffering from this lack of active engagement with coalition mates.

    I think if they just added automatic inactivity kicks for each team, it could also fix a lot of this.  Kick team members, including the leader when they have no activity in 30 days, retire the team when there are no members left.
  • Machine
    Machine Posts: 787 Critical Contributor
    edited March 2020
    Hi @Julie71
    Thank you so much for the feedback!
    I'm trying my best to put everything in order now that my first priority is our Forum.
    I already working on the update of the Bug Status List, it will come out soon. (I will keep it updated as well from now on)
    Unfortunately, the information about when  never get to me, but I can confirm that until the middle of this year our plan is to try fixing all the bugs we can! That's why I'm taking care of all the bugs reported here as best as I can.
    Hope you guys can be patient to wait for it  :#

    Thank you again,
    Marcela.

    When are you implementing a soft lock recovery system?
    When are you shortening events that now run through on Mondays?
    Do you realize that you are running two 5 node events back to back? Both of them ending on Mondays?
  • NickBKK
    NickBKK Posts: 89 Match Maker
    Do you plan to improve or modify coalition events that have received a lot of negative feedbacks recently? (Too many matches, too long, too tedious, little rewards, inconvenient ending times, etc.)
  • Michael_WC
    Michael_WC Posts: 74 Match Maker
    NickBKK said:
    Do you plan to improve or modify coalition events that have received a lot of negative feedbacks recently? (Too many matches, too long, too tedious, little rewards, inconvenient ending times, etc.)
    This, this, THIS!

    TGT and Elderspark are absolute trash Coalition events. The tedium to rewards ratio is so out of proportion its ridiculous. If these aren't re-balanced next time around I will certainly be sitting them out.
  • Magic:PQ Support Team
    Magic:PQ Support Team ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 3,257 Chairperson of the Boards

    Hello everyone,


    Thank you for all the feedback and all the questions!
    I will pass this along to our team, BUT, to make sure you get the chance to have your questions answered, please fill up the Google form ok?
  • Magic:PQ Support Team
    Magic:PQ Support Team ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 3,257 Chairperson of the Boards
    *UPDATE (04/01/2020)
    Q&A Answers posted.
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards


    8. Why do we see other cards and PW rebalanced, but not the original (Origins) PW? These are important for new player engagement. 

    Answer: Rebalancing existing content is always interesting, but also delicate in terms of implementation and the impact and outcome need to be looked at carefully. However, we would like to return part of this question and ask you, the players, which Planeswalker of the original (ORI) ones would you like to see rebalanced?

    .



    This was my question so I’ll take a crack at it. Recently my coalition did a week of challenges with mono blue PW and I could not build a satisfactory Standard deck with Jace, Telepath Unbound. 


    As someone who who has spent a considerable amount of time mentoring brand new players, I like the Origins PW in concept. They do what they’re supposed to do, which is teach the mechanics of each color to new players. I encourage brand new (week 1 and 2 players) to get them immediately because they learn MTGPQ through them. 


    However, playing Jace was a disaster. His mana gains are entirely too low to make standard cards playable and his abilities usable. In addition, he has extremely low health which makes him die very fast as you struggle to just get cards out. 


    Now I was playing him with a 3000+ card collection and struggling and I thought “wow, I’m telling brand new players to buy him”. They’re playing with 200 commons and uncommons that cost twice as much as my cards and they don’t have Mox and a gate to put in their decks. 


    If I’m barely or not winning with what I have to work with, he’s just not playable with their collections.

  • ElfNeedsFood
    ElfNeedsFood Posts: 944 Critical Contributor
    @bken1234 - they can just replace him with Mu...  Lol...