Greetings, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of Mana Echoes.
Last episode, we took a broad look at events, discussing some of our processes, attempts, and future plans. This week, we’ll dive deeper into events, focusing primarily on PVE content.
The Current State of PVE and Its Challenges
We know many of you are eager for more PVE events. But have you ever wondered why they’re less frequent than PVP events?
The short answer: they take significantly more time to create, from design through implementation.
The full picture: PVE events involve layers of complexity not present in PVP events. The design process includes:
- Designing encounters: In PVP events, the dynamic can be distilled into defining the lore context for the event (what part of the lore is being worked on), total number of encounters, and gameplay patterns set by deck rules, event supports, and objectives.
- But for PVE, that’s just the beginning. Each encounter must tie in with the event’s lore, showing progression after each match. Opponents must be carefully chosen and crafted, with custom loyalty abilities selected, and behavior on how the enemy AI will prioritize using that given skill, how often will that skill be used, determining the mana bonus, and designing decks that fit the event’s theme while presenting the player a coherent escalate in difficulty according to the position of that encounter in the encounter sequencing, as well as rarity density of each deck (does it make sense for this “low level” NPC to be sporting some of the most unique spells in the game? What about the other encounters, do their decks make sense when looking at the decks of other encounters in this event?). Each PVE encounter is as time-intensive to create as an entire Planeswalker.
The Complexity of Tutorials
It’s a huge amount of work! And if that sounds daunting, imagine a type of event that required all this plus additional complexity: hard-scripted card draws, text popups, and rewards tied to completing unique challenges. These were our set mechanic tutorials.
The tough truth? Despite the effort, most players rarely engaged with them. Our analytics made it clear that the return didn’t justify the resource investment. That’s why we chose to focus those resources on more event creation. Still, we recognize this leaves a gap—and we’ll discuss this further shortly.
The Challenge of Creating Lasting Challenges
Balancing PVE events is another intricate task. Unlike PVP, where player-created decks are expected to bring certain unpredictability, PVE encounters are static. After one run, players often know what to expect and even share deck compositions in the community. So how do we keep things engaging and challenging for both newcomers and seasoned veterans with vast collections?
Shaping Event Complexity
One approach is tailoring event complexity. Some events are simple and casual, like the old story modes—just enjoy the ride. Others, like You’ve Found an Entrance, dynamically respond to player actions, making each run potentially unique. Some events serve as entry points for new players; others push veterans to their limits. Striking the right balance is key.
A challenging PVE encounter isn’t just about giving the opponent high HP or stuffing decks with powerful cards. Often, it’s about crafting puzzles for players to solve. Sometimes, these puzzles land perfectly, like in You’ve Found an Entrance, where objectives influence future matches. Other times, they miss the mark and fail to resonate.
Deviating from Regular Gameplay Patterns
The puzzle aspect of Magic Puzzle Quest is sometimes overlooked. Beyond gem matching for mana optimization, events may feature supports that require specific board actions or interactions. However, conveying complex mechanics during matches is currently resource-heavy and not always clear to players.
Case Study: A Failed Heist
The Greatest Heist event is a great example. While it was a PVP event, it illustrates the issue well. The event lore described the Heist of the Fomori Vault, which translated in-game actions to event support representing the vault, which massively reduced damage dealt to the opponent, and required bomb supports to be matched within range of the vault to destroy the support, and proceed to the second stage of the game, which had the opponent no longer being safe from damage behind the vault’s door, but spawned new event supports for the player attacking the vault and for the opponent!. While this was explained in the event rules, many players had issues understanding how the event worked, or how to interact with the supports, which lead to frustration.
So, what could we do differently? How can we better deliver important information at the right moments without disrupting the player experience?
Looking Ahead: Future Improvements
One of the alternatives that we discussed to prevent scenarios like this in future events is implementing scripted in-duel dialogs, like those used in tutorials. While possibly quite handy as a tool to point out unique interactions during an event, they are tough to implement in encounters that are not completely scripted.
These are not the only alternatives we have been looking into, with some other alternatives we’ve explored being:
- Displaying more visual, graphic-based event rule presentations before the player joins the event. (like in Jumpstart).
- Breaking down complex events like The Greatest Heist into multiple stages with narrative or visual elements between matches.
Think of it like adding seasoning near the salad bar—you can opt-in for flavor or head straight to the main course.
Our Quest: Bringing Fresh Experiences to the Game
Events are at the heart of Magic Puzzle Quest, and we’re always thinking about how to innovate. Our goal is to make events feel fun and rewarding—not just routine grinds—appealing to both casual and competitive players. We can’t wait to be able to share more about some of the plans when we are closer to bringing them to the game.
But the gameplay experience is not just made of the events, and very soon, we’ll be implementing a revamp on a system that enhances the gameplay experience for all players — the improved Quest system!
This improvement to quests will bring multiple updates to this feature, including an increase in the quality of the rewards, new quests, and more. We’ll be deep diving into the details of this revamp in Episode 4 of Mana Echoes, just four weeks from now.
See you in the future!
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I don’t mind worrying about losing a match. I like a challenge.