It is unfortunate to learn that though a large portion of the players who participated in the beta were unhappy with the second iteration’s changes, and indeed submitted that as feedback and suggested that changes be made before the official release, we find ourselves with the official release of the event being an exact mirror of the second beta. It would seem as though no changes were made between the second beta and the actual release. Now some of this may be changed once the event starts, and I will edit this post accordingly; however, at this time we are apparently seeing nothing to indicate anything else was changed and so, I will offer some initial feedback.
So what was changed between one and the other?
Well, as Brigby posted, there were the changes made to the objectives, refresh timers, and overall event time. But also to the rewards structure.
So here’s my personal feedback on these changes. I can say that most of this was echoed by a rather decent portion of my fellow beta testers.
- Nissa’s PvP objective’s should have remained as -
Geomancer: Summon 5 or more Elementals or Elves during a single fight.
Ambush: Summon 3 or more Creatures during a single turn.
Geomancer played to the Planeswalkers abilities and strengths and so it was a natural objective to have there. Ambush is a fitting tertiary objective to match with Geomancer. Pauper is a terrible objective in regards to a PvP node. That was one of the first responses when it was announced that Pauper was going to be an objective in the game during the change to RotGP’s objectives; Don’t put it in a PvP node.
- The Eldrazi’s PvE objective 3 and both PvP objectives should have remained as -
PvE
Striker: Deal 16 or more damage during a single turn.
PvP
Emrakul’s Emergence: Summon 5 or more Eldrazi during a single turn.
Artificer: Cast 4 or more supports during a single fight
Once again, Emrakul’s Emergence actually fits the theme of the Planeswalker and is a natural objective to feature in this situation. Artificer isn’t exactly a matched tertiary to the other but it’s far and away a better objective to have in a PvP node than Pauper. Striker in the PvE node serves as a fitting mirror to Nissa’s Bounty Hunter objective.
- The charges during the Duel/Final Duel phases need to be drastically lowered from 5 hrs 30 min back to either 10 minutes, or to a solid 30 minute timer.
The 10 minute timer on the refreshes could be considered too much. It resulted in the illusion of time pressure on players who wanted to grind runes and also felt compelled to participate in the Coalition event being run at the same times. There was no actual pressure because there are no “progression” rewards to attain in Duel Decks, nor a Coalition rank to achieve. The rewards for winning and losing are so close that outside of winning on each side once to attain the exclusive mythic, it’s actually nearly irrelevant whether you win or lose. So really, the entirety of the PvP phases was a rune grind that at best could net you 230,000 or so runes if you ground it non-stop. But, that is entirely optional and you don’t need to do that.
However, the consensus came to be that if the timer were to be changed to help alter that perception, a 30 minute refresh on charges during those phases would result in sufficient content and play time without inundating the players without hundreds of thousands of runes.
A 5 and a half hour refresh gives players, at best, 5 extra matches over a 30 hour period. That’s pitiful and results in almost no game play. Certainly not enough to justify not running a coaltion event alongside the duel decks.
- Change the Phase times. Swap the Final Duel time frame with the Challenge phase’s time frame.
The PvP phases are where the real meat of the event takes place. Both of it’s phases should last longer than 12 hours to account for timezone variables. The PvE phase can be done at any point during the event so even if you jump in during the Final Duel phase, you can still knock that out and then jump into the Final Duel.
- The rewards for the Challenge phase were drastically reduced from the first beta to the second beta. Please reduce them less.
The first beta awarded 200 pinks for completing both sides of the Challenge phase (100 from each side). Granted, that is far too much. But reducing those to 10 from each is a massive drop. You could have halved them and run Duel Decks once a month for a solid 100 jewel gain each month. Or quartered them and run it twice a month for the same result.
Now on to some comments and questions that we **all** had regarding the event itself that we have yet to get answers for.
1. **What is the purpose of the Duel and Final Duel phases being separate?**
- While a silly question at first glance, it's really more of "What is the reason for the Duel phase?" because from what we could all tell, the Duel phase has no bearing on the Final Duel. At the end of both beta's, the "Leading" side didn't start with an advantage in the Clash Bar of the Final Duel so the first Duel phase seemingly serves no overall purpose.
2. **Can who is winning be made more clear?**
- The clash bar is a fancy graphic, but unless one side is just absolutely dominating the other, we actually have no clue who is winning, or by how much. We had to drop screenshots into Photoshop and measure the pixels to see who was leading during the first beta. We'd very much like a numerical system added that shows how many victories each side has.
3. **Do the secondary objectives during the Duel and Final Duel phases actually contribute to your side's "score"?**
- Aside from earning them once each to get the rewards from them, do they actually have any bearing on your side's duel score? Or is just winning the only thing that contributes to the "Leading" or the clash bar moving?