Hello fellow MTGPQs. I always see topics in General about problems in the game and have started feeling that the statements of the problem are in fact… part of the problem. Mainly that they aren’t specific enough to what the actual problem is, and this seems to lead to misunderstandings as they get handed over to the development team. General also doesn’t feel quite the right place for them but all the other forums seem very dead. Here’s hoping that isn’t the case.
So, I was hoping to have a much more detailed breakdown of some specific issues so we can clearly state a problem and a solution.
Let’s start with something simple that I think is actually a problem. The Tier System
Problem Qualification:
- System is lacking a well formed statement for it’s purpose in the game (both explicit and implicit)
- As a matchmaking component (if that is a purpose) it is far too coarse and un-focused to actually match
- System is inherently flawed as it allows gaming of the system
Goals:
- Establish what the tier systems purpose is
- Fulfill the purpose the 1st goal provides
- Eliminate player gaming of the tier system
Brainstorming:
- I believe that the system has ought to have a few purposes: a) Primarily it ought to be the primary mechanism to actually match up players together, b) Secondarily it ought to be used to organize the players into competition brackets (bronze, silver, gold, platinum)
Right now it is based on this mechanic called “card mastery”. Use a card enough and it adds it’s value to your mastery field for certain color(s). Reach a certain amount and you “level up” and go up in tier. This is a flawed mechanic for several reasons. It discourages card diversity: “Don’t play around with those sub-optimal cards as you will level up into a tier your aren’t prepared for”. Second it can inadvertently pull a player up in tier when they don’t have a card base to compete.
- Fulfilling the purpose: I think we can do better than such a coarse knob. What makes it so you can go up in a tier of competition? Overall card collection (in my opinion). As you have more in your pool, you have more options to tune your deck. You no longer have to rely on sub-optimal uncommons or gasp commons. But, we all know that not all cards are created equal. In each rarity level, there is good and bulk, just like paper magic. So, you need some weighted way of calculating it.
The term I was batting around in my head was maintaining color score for each color in order to give a collection score. Something like this:
Masterpieces * 30
Power Mythics * 20
Mythics * 12
Power Rares * 10
Rares * 5
Power Uncommons * 2
Uncommons * 1
= Color Score
Now, those numbers are completely bogus and the only criteria was weighting the contribution of each level toward what the color score would be.
As each color (including colorless) would have a score, it opens up a new realm both for matchmaking and bracket organization. Now it can be based on a more gradient scale since there are numerical values being used instead of just broad levels. Bronze could be scores of < 300 and silver can be 300 - 600 and so on. It also means that matching can be more accurate, as it can be calculated on the fly. E.g. You choose Nahiri, a 2 colors PW: Red 100 + White 300 + Colorless 200 / 3 = 200 PW score. You can match that up to a mono-color PW of around 200PW score. If you had used a mono color Gideon your PW score would have been 250 instead because your white collection score is much better than your red.
- Gaming the system: the problem takes care of itself. At least the problem as it exists right now since you simply avoid all of the non-optimal cards to keep your tier low in order to easily? get the top prizes.
That’s all I have to start off. Hopefully others will find this interesting or engaging and maybe something will come of it, if only to give devs some new ideas they may not have considered. If you made it this far, thanks for reading the wall of text.
-Kyo