Is it possible to do something about this?

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
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@Brigby @LakeStone

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I think this is a real problem. Missing one ribbon out of a 3 day event knocks a person down from 300 jewels to 80 (if they’re in Platinum). I assume Hibernum tried to remedy this by making contradicting and/or luck-based objectives to limit perfect scores (like kill x or less creatures/ take x or less damage while potentially facing creatureless decks, which is more infuriating, not less), an easy fix is to not have 3000 person brackets. just more fuel to the fire that is burning people into leaving this game. the rewards are a very important part of why we are willing to play 2 weekend events simultaneously, and getting screwed out of them is not good for anyone.

just wanted to make Oktagon aware of these things, if they are not already, and hopefully sometime down the line they can address it. I’m sure they’re busy but a person can dream

//Removed Screenshot Due to In-Game Names -Brigby

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Not sure I follow your logic Krishna. At least 25 other people in your bracket were able to get perfect scores. Why would you expect to get 1st or 2nd place rewards when you under performed these other players in this event?

It is complaints like this that caused them to brutally nerf the top prizes for coalitions and individuals in the first place. So unless you want their response to be a further nerf to prizes then I would be careful what you wish for.
Or we could go back to nothing but a constant stream of RotGP with total redundancy and awful prizes.

I know you are a great player and we had quite a few with -1 that are missing out on another elite pack pull too. But consider the alternatives. I promise you they aren’t better.

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My recommended solution is to reduce the size of the brackets. Is this the solution you promise isn’t better? Or how about making the tiers percentage based? Top 95%, Top 90%, etc. Is that not better?

My complaint isn’t that I didn’t get 1st tier rewards, but that I (and others) received 3rd tier rewards for finishing in the 99% percentile.

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I’m all over the place on this one… for other reasons…

Positive…
They corrected the placement ranking based on the actual score rather than login time. There was a time when people had top scores but were bounced to lower levels based on when they joined.

Negative…
Omniscience - This card has definitely created an imbalance.

Not having the PlanesWalker available for sale - While this didn’t affect me in personal scoring, it did affect my team missing a bracket.

Crashes - I can’t seem to go ONE event without a single crash. 7 pts. Even if I were perfect otherwise I would be knocked down 2 brackets at least…

Lack of New Content - While we know new content is coming… with so much time passing without new content people have been amassing cards and purchases based on NO CHANGE… More and More people having the same decks and strategies for those that can… (Omniscience being the exception).

I’ve held out this long to see the NEW directions… We will have much more to Cheer and Roar about in the coming months I’m sure…

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Back before March 2017 all brackets used to be 3000 players. Then they changed most events to 1000 players and some to 250 players. The 1000 player brackets have a top prize of a rare and 60 crystals. The 250 brackets have a top prize of a rare and 20 jewels. Before these bracket adjustments the rewards for top 5 players were a mythic and 120 crystals.

BTW, this happened ALL the time back then too. In fact, they didn’t even use a tie-breaker system so if you had a PERFECT score but weren’t one of the fastest 5 to finish you didn’t get a mythic.

If you want them to reduce the bracket size, just expect a similar prize nerf. Take your 300 jewels and turn them into 45 crystals for a top 5 finish. (That’s roughly the prize nerf ratio they used last time.) I for one think we should be thankful they are giving us the opportunity to play for 300 jewels and not expect them to become even more generous.

You know I am in the camp of better prizes, better drop rates, and generally the collect-ability of the game. This just seems like a really strange place to cry foul. The event is structured to only pay the top 0.16% (5/3000) of players the top prize. Instead they gave about 0.83% of players top prizes (25/3000). They were already far more generous than they intended.

Anyway, I know its frustrating when the margin of error is so thin and the prize scaling is so dramatic. I do wish they would make the game more challenging without these frustrating luck based objectives like take 10 or less damage. And hell, I wish they would be far more generous with prizes. Again, I just don’t think this particular experience is one wall worth beating your head against.

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I am very grateful that ties were introduced into the ranking system as well.

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Thanks @Brigby , learned something new today.

I don’t want to hold Oktagon accountable for the sins of Hibernum. This is a legitimate problem that upsets the top players in the game (a decent percentage of which will probably be buying Bolas in a couple days) and there is certainly a fair solution that I think Oktagon could come up with. maybe not soon or in the next months, but eventually. I’m just hoping for some fairness. Perhaps the 25-way tie in 1-5 rewards bracket could not be counted through the 6-25 bracket, and so on.
I’ll be perfectly honest, I have only been playing recently because of the added HoD event, which is something I (and others) had suggested as a quick fix to adding new content. I wanted to get some extra rewards while Oktagon planned to release BC “prior to the holidays”. Well, I officially don’t know what that means anymore, because in my opinion the holidays are starting in 3 days. So maybe BC will be released with the update this week, but that seems highly unlikely. Oktagon is working in the right direction it seems, and as time goes on they will continue to update, and we’ll see what that yields. In the meantime, I’m gone for good until BC shows up. I really am tired of dealing with Hibernum’s leavings. Sorry for posting other screennames without authorization Brigby, won’t happen again

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I am thankful Octagon seem to be running 300 jewel top prize events every weekend now. Even the 3rd tier bracket is worth 40 jewels and 80 crystals. This is an improvement of the austere times of Hibernum’s dying days after the v1.10.2 prize nerf.

Keep on improving Octagon/D3go, and I may spend some real cash again soon.

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@Krishna

I will be glad if Octagon can code rewards awarded such that those that get tier1 prizes do not bump those below them out of tier2 prizes and similar situations. I myself was affected at various times in the past

Still, I am happy events like HoU (Hour of Devastation) with prizes worth playing for are a weekly feature now.

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In my opinion, MTGPQ is not really a competitive endeavour. We play against the AI, using decks real people have designed. In PVP, the combination of the event objectives and the expected opponents’ decks comprise the metagame and the basis for the “puzzle” we have to solve. With variations in cards and objectives, this leads to a diverse game with constantly new challenges.

However, we don’t really play against each other. The success of one person is not that detracting to another. Therefore, I feel like the individual leaderboards don’t really have much of a place as a means of distributing prizes. Perhaps it would be possible to award progression prizes all the way to the maximum points, and distribute most of the prizes that way?

For instance, in HoD, we could have, say, a rare at 265 points, and jewels and crystals spread all over so that the total, if you reach 273 points, would be the same as the 1-5 prize today. For recognition, we could have a “leaderboard” across all brackets that gave some prizes, but mostly was there to recognize player achievements (and maybe one could get a badge or something for those reaching the top 10 or whatever).

Interestingly, such a solution would also solve another problem: bracket sniping. Today, if you join really late, you can get lucky and get “top prizes” with no or very little effort. Having a greater emphasis on the progression awards would reward the players who actually play (which I suspect is what D3 is interested in).

Also, the longer runtime of events compared to some months ago would feel less of a grind like this, as you’re constantly rewarded with some awards even though you may not reach the top in the end.

(the coalition leaderboards are a bit different this way - they mostly reward coalitions that are good at encouraging players to be active, which is also good for D3. There are also rarely ties, and there is actually a good, competitive atmosphere as players urge each other on to beat those other coalitions they may know or have a long-standing feud with)

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Since the matchmaking has apparently been fixed with the recent update there will be a lot less flawless record in the next events. Trust me, without the Lvl- Exploit the number of Ribbons will go down

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I agree. I think it’s funny that Oktagon did not mention this in the release notes (which seemed to me to be a repurposed pre.release, that made me chuckle) as this is a BIG deal to those who know of it. Can’t complain, except it feels a bit more like salt in the wound that this happened before BC. Maybe (like Bolas (allegedly)) Hibernum had pre-developed it and Oktagon finished through on it

But I got my wish, for fairness! for that, I’ll tip my hat to Oktagon

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Yes, the biggest update was indeed not even hinted at. (was this on purpose? @brigby) Flawless records are already down significantly, even in ToA :wink:

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