I was reading an article on Channel Fireball by Will Jonathan about defining success and placing goals (link here). It’s a pretty decent article, but it got me thinking about what I view as success when playing MTGPQ. For me, it’s playing interactive decks, enjoying the combinations I put together, and performing as well as possible in events. Aside from the event scores, I realized I actually care less about winning than I do in having an interesting game, which is why I think I took the loss of brainy Greg personally. I also don’t feel a need to obtain every card, I have enough cards to fall back on to be competitive.
But for others, it could be many other things: Accruing as many resources as possible, collecting every card, winning every match, gaining admittance to a top10 coalition, creating video content and getting likes/feedback, etc.
The more strenuous the goal, or the definition of success, the more frustration the player feels according to the article. This would explain why I found not being allowed to compete in Bo4T over the weekend so offensive, it clashed with my ideals of success. In that light, I wonder how the rest of you define success?
A lot of people don’t properly analyse their own drives or realise that something slightly different will make them happier!
I am similar to you about interesting games, my favourite favourite games are almost dying and then clawing back a victory from a scattered handful of life. And if I get close enough, or survive for a while against all odds then that’s just as good as winning.
I find it hard to bother about requirements or scores, I just want to be tricksy.
I enjoy using my resources optimally. On a match to match basis, that means making the right matches to fuel the right spells in the right order to hopefully achieve a victory. I don’t get too salty when Greg lands a couple huge cascades and wins, as long as I played well.
At a broader level, I like trying to collect as many cards as I can. That means playing all the events, doing as well as possible in them, and earning as many rewards as I can from them. It also means spending crystals and jewels efficiently: taking advantage of sales and discounts, not dumping resources into packs with lower rewards, and so on.
Sadly, playing well means a lot less than it could do, what with Greg’s notable drop in skill, the wild imbalance of the cards, and being given random opponents.
A good friend of mine asked me to leave these thoughts of his here, for all to ponder as his contribution to the thread:
“Sadly, playing well means a lot less than it could do, what with Greg’s notable drop in skill, the wild imbalance of the cards, and being given random opponents.”
You see through everyone to the core of their souls. We all look up to you and will strive everyday to achieve this, so that we too may find happiness.
This.
Those are the best games. My goal is to have all the cards (at least the interesting ones) so that I can tinker around with all the interesting interactions at my leisure.
There was a time though, when the goal was never to miss even a single game available for play. Do all the events and finish with top rewards. Finish at least top 10 in every QB. I mean i used to wake up at 4 am daily after they introduced competitive QB up till the release of KLD. (Also the reason i find it infuriating when people come after the “huge hoards” of runes and orbs that gave “unfair” advantage to veteran players).
My personal success is stepping away from this game and getting my life back. Honestly, i love the game. But the content just got really stale. Same events over and over and over. No tweaks or changes to make things interesting. No new features like daily rewards, to atleast find something to do inbetween events. I really hope the devs do something about it. Make it fun. I want to play the game again. But not in the state it is in right now. To all of you, continue enjoying the game we love. And to me, enjoy the extra hours i have back in my life. Success!!
I enjoy winning, and I’m not above taking an undeserved win to keep my score up. But it’s not a great feeling when Greg plays a bomb creature on you and then immediately smacks it with his own removal spell, even when you controlled a perfectly valid target for it.
I’d like to collect all the cards, but that’s not happening anytime soon, so I’ve defined success as getting new cards regularly and collecting all the Planeswalkers (with crystals, besides Karn). Crafting makes the first quite reasonable, and Jaya and Tezz1 are the only gaps for the second. I’ll be able to get them as soon as they’re available, but who knows when that’ll happen for Tezz… I also like winning the majority of my games, though my frustration when I lose in a coalition event tends to be a bit overboard. Especially because most of my decks have to get unlucky in several ways simultaneously for me to lose, which happens with disturbing regularity. Well, that or a freeze.
Success is developing a really interesting deck combination to fully abuse the potential of a card, planeswalkre etc. I do get a lot of joy out of sharing these ideas with my coalition and those who enjoy watching my youtube videos. It does make me happy when I get a new person following my channel… it feels pretty cool to have someone who I don’t even know get enough out of a video to want to be aware when I release a new one. It is the “ultimate like” =)
Success is finding decks that succeed more often than not. It’s also collecting most of the cards I want. Coming from a paper background, I much prefer having access to the entire set, but I’ve grudgingly accepted the gacha model will never agree to simply letting us obtain any card we desire.
Success is being part of a passionate coalition of players that has constantly striven to excel and managed not to let up for two years, despite a lot of dissatisfaction with the game and/or its creators at times.
Success is having not missed an event.
Success is advocating for positive changes to the player experience across all levels, and seeing some of them bear fruit. I would prefer if all of them bore fruit, which is why things such as lack of communication, random event schedules, and punitive game mechanics frustrate me the most.
