Mana Echoes - Episode 4

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
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Greetings everyone!

Welcome back to another episode of Mana Echoes!

In this week’s episode, we’re changing the primary focus from our previous actions, and we’ll be diving into the pool of upcoming changes that the team has been working on for a while: and in the surface of this pool, lies the first of the changes that will released: a complete overhaul of the Quest Journal system!

Warning: Viewer Discretion is Advised

The topic we are previewing in today’s episode is still in development and might undergo changes until its public release. We would also like to disclaim that not all details from the features are present in this preview, and such features will be introduced to the game in a testing stage, meaning that some of the details will be closely monitored and can be adjusted or balanced if needed to ensure their goals are achieved.

These features will be improved and expanded over time, and their goal is to create more enjoyable daily and weekly gameplay routine experiences that can be enjoyed by new players and veterans alike in a way that can be felt by players daily.

In case the UI looks a bit old, that’s because it is. This, too, is scheduled to receive an overhaul at a later date, but in the meanwhile, minor adjustments will be made to accommodate new features as they are implemented into the game, while the new UI for the game is still in its development stage.

What we talking about today?

The current quest system was introduced back in January 2021. Since then, it’s served as a way to offer players an extra layer of in-game challenges and rewards—from simple objectives that nearly any Planeswalker can complete, to more specific tasks requiring a bit more focus. The goal for this, and other upcoming changes that will be implemented and presented in the future aim to modernize the feeling and accessibility of gameplay systems and experiences and have these systems implemented in a way that they be improved over time. Let’s break down The topics we’ll be talking today about this new feature:

  • We’ll be implementing a new Quest System in the game
  • The system is being implemented in a testing state: it will be closely monitored and can be adjusted and rebalanced if necessary
  • The total number of Daily Quests will increase from three to five
  • A new, more streamlined Weekly reward system will also be implemented
  • Higher number of quests in the quest pool
  • The rewards from the old Guiding Journal, accessed by new players, will be awarded at the end of the tutorial
  • The goals for the redesign of the quest system are:
    • Players should complete many quests in their daily routine.
    • Progression on quests should be satisfying for new players and veterans alike.
    • Quests are a good source of rewards if engaged with daily.

Player experience goals are design goals we set for the systems when we create the features.

They drive the development and balancing and help the team with a clear goal we can aim for and measure via community feedback and data.

That sounds fine—so why change it?

Among the features that are on our plans to be implemented, the revamp of the Quest System was the one that could be delivered fast to the community and allows us to continuously deliver value post-feature launch, while we work on other upcoming features.

While the old Quest Journal system still works, it hasn’t kept up with how the game has grown and evolved. We believe quests should be a core part of the Magic: Puzzle Quest experience—for both newcomers and veterans. This overhaul is all about making quests more rewarding and integrated into your daily play.

So, what’s changing?

Quite a bit in this first release! Let’s take a quick look at how the new system is shaping up:

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Warning: These images were produced with a development version. Visuals might be different upon launch.

To make room for the improvements, we’ve restructured the layout a bit. Here’s what’s new:

  • More daily quests, less journals!

  • The Journal nomenclature is being retired from the game in favor of Quests. Having all the quests under the same system makes it simpler to provide updates and adjustments to the quests with this new system.

  • We’re also expanding from 3 to 5 daily quests. That means more opportunities to engage with the game and earn rewards as part of your regular play loop.

  • While the goal will be to have more quests, some actions that were tied to the retired terminology, such as the guiding journal, will be disabled, and all rewards from this previous system, which were aimed at players who had just created an account, will be temporarily awarded after the third tutorial battle. This way, new players are not at a disadvantage due to having fewer resources, due to the implementation of this system.

  • Better variety, better pacing

  • The new quest pool offers a broader mix of challenges—from quick and easy wins to slightly more complex tasks—without sacrificing that satisfying feeling of progress. We are confident that the new quest method will help deliver that sweet feeling of completing a quest more times per day, every day. Check that box and claim that reward!

So… more “tasks”?

Not quite. While we have a higher volume of quests delivered in this first implementation, the majority of these are designed to be easily achieved by regular gameplay from new accounts, so the expected result is to have more players completing more quests and obtaining more rewards.

What about rewards?

Each completed quest will now grant a reward that may include Mana Runes, Mana Crystals, or Mana Jewels—plus account XP.

And that’s not all—there’s also a Weekly Reward track!

As you complete quests throughout the week, your progress will count toward unlocking bonus rewards.

And don’t worry: even if you complete more than the required quests, you’ll still earn individual rewards for each one. Nothing left on the table.

Whether you’re powering up your Planeswalkers or chasing level-up rewards, this update is designed to make your time in the game more rewarding every single day.

How much time do I have to complete them?

Daily quests reset every 24 hours, and you’ll see a countdown timer to help you stay on track.

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Completed quests you haven’t claimed in time? Don’t worry—those rewards will be granted automatically the next time you access the Home.

The Weekly Reward tracker also has a timer, and when that time’s up, progress resets—so be sure to plan ahead if you’re aiming to hit the weekly goal!

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Is that all the changes?

Funny you should ask—yes and no.

What we’ve covered today is everything that will be visible to players. The finer details will be updated in our official documentation upon release.

Behind the scenes, we’ve also laid the groundwork for future features, including the ability to quickly introduce new quests or fine-tune existing ones. There’s more to come, and this update gets us ready for what’s next.

We’re confident this revamp will have a strong, positive impact—especially for players who log in daily and want meaningful goals to chase.

And when is this going live again?

The updated quest system will roll out with version 7.2.1, our next content release, ahead of [REDACTED]—landing in the first half of May.

That’s all for this week’s episode of Mana Echoes!

Join us again in 4 weeks from now when we’ll be talking about [REDACTED], the next set that will be reaching Magic Puzzle Quest around June, and information about the Standard Rotation for 2025.

Until then, may your gem cascades be as kind to you as they are to Greg!

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That’s a lot of changes. I’ll be curious to see how they turn out. Thank you!

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Having more quests seems like a cool idea if there’s not a lot of extra effort required, and being able to gain more crystals and gems is also cool. But let me tell you a secret - Magic players LOVE to open packs of cards. So, for the sake of the newer players, and even older players who haven’t completed their Legacy collection - PLEASE don’t take away those regular packs that were given away with the quests.

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I like the way that if you complete a quest with this upcoming system but don’t claim it in time for some reason, that it may auto claim it for you. Is this all done in the background though? Or do you need to be finished with a match for it to register and claim? (My thought process here is that one might be progressing for a cast X cards of y or z color, or a gain q extra swaps, or cast r creatures… but might be doing so in the middle of a long battle that they don’t want to just dip out of and lose. If it auto claims the quest in the background, might be less worries for that player).

I have noticed in the past though that sometimes a player might not want to automatically gain xp in a way, such as if they are trying to hold out on leveling into a 10th account level until an upcoming new standard set drops, so that whatever Non-dupe pack that they get then may include said new set to help more in their collection progression. With this in mind, could it be reasonable to have the auto-quest-claim as something that is toggleable in the settings menu? Downside/issue I could see with this situation is that if one is switching between alt accounts, they may deal with it resetting to whatever the default option is each time (kinda like with animation settings going to auto currently). Maybe it might not really be an issue people care on anymore (it might have been something I saw a while ago), but anyone else have thoughts on this?

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WOW!!! Now @Magic_PQ_Support_Team , THIS is what I’ve been waiting to hear… oh man, that looks AMAZING!

CAN’T WAIT FOR THIS TO ROLL OUT!

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I second keeping packs as an option. Heck take us to school and throw Strixhaven packs in the mix (There is practically no way to get them in game outside of straight up buying packs or booster crafting. Or I guess getting lucky with legacy packs). Other sets would be nice too, but I’m kinda being an Arcavios plug.

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I CAN’T WAIT EITHER!

I just hope we will get another 100+ new cards.

I also hope they will nerf down another good old Legacy toy, so we can spend more time in Legacy matches, without telling it to the community.

So yes, GO GO GO

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It is good to have news in the game, may be it changes nothing to people who play the game daily because will be done only playing and simply is replacing those 80 crystals lost by reducing login rewards from 30 to 21 days. Watching the expample of daily rewards, we will get 2 crystals for day so 60 per month.
I dont know if simply will be a “finish your games and go to quest to click your rewards” or really become a funny way to change a little some decks to achieve them. But well its a try to change something so not bad.

New set on june when still we are watching the tarkir ones seems like the game its becoming excessively suffocating at the time of getting cards, we must read a lot quantity of them, when finally are playing only 20 in standard, also having too much cards become the experience of filtering them to make decks more annoying, why not less cards but better quality?. Adding a button to mark cards as favorites to be able to have the playable cards easily filterable would help a lot.
Will this new set be Final Fantasy (I don’t think Square Enix extend its colaboration to Puzzle), or will it be an older set like the Odyssey, Judgment, and Torment block?
If it’s the last one, and an event is going to be played only with cards from that set, I hope the cards were balanced and will be fun to build different decks, and not just a bunch of broken cards that are played all the time, making it just another boring event.

And in the case that this set is not standard, when will the Tarkir cards be available to craft? In August with Edge of Eternities? If the collaboration sets are not going to be available in Puzzle Quest, we find Spiderman and Avatar as the two following Edges of Eternities, which would mean more than 5 months from Edges to the next non-collaborative set. In that case, Edges would be uncrafted for almost half a year? Many questions that I hope will be answered in Echoes of Mana 5.

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Dunno how this will pan out yet, but I’m excited to find out!

I like the quest journal at the moment, I enjoy minmaxing the xp gain from it (the gains are miniscule, but they exist!) and playing around the cheaper 200xp quests so I can avoid collecting them and reroll them the next day helps diversify the decks I play during weekdays and sometimes even gives me a fun little extra challenge when playing something like Seize the Day

I’m hoping I get at least some of this experience from the new journal? We’ll see! Perhaps, even, if the rewards were greater, it might encourage other people to get more value out of their weekday games like I do?

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I also don’t know how this will pan out, but it seems to me that this is another way of nerfing rewards. I guess we’ll find out in 4 weeks. I’m not yet too optimistic about this. I do welcome the increased number of daily quests and new quest to the pool overall.

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I know the visuals are just an example of the UI and things will change but I really dont like the idea of getting 1-4 crystals at a time. I really like my increments of 5.

The loss of mana orbs from not getting packs will hurt as well. Crafting is often the only way to get cards you want.

12

Will we continue to face impossible quests? That has been a huge problem from the beginning. When I had every planeswalker and all leveled all the way, I couldn’t buy a new one or level anything.

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To add to the concern of impossible quests, I can easily see how you get a time-limited quest to Defeat x opponents in PvE events, when there are no PvE events available. Unless you merge Story and PvE in one category, that might be tricky.

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If I’m not mistaken, story fights already counts towards PvE quests

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@Estragon said:

@Asylamb said:
To add to the concern of impossible quests, I can easily see how you get a time-limited quest to Defeat x opponents in PvE events, when there are no PvE events available. Unless you merge Story and PvE in one category, that might be tricky.

If I’m not mistaken, story fights already counts towards PvE quests

You are mistaken. In the previous journal system, Story Mode does not count as a PvE win.

That, of course, might change under the new system.

While we’re talking about impossible quests and Story Mode, tho: I suspect you’ll find a large number of players, like me, have completed Story Mode (not until surprisingly recently, considering I’ve been playing so long, but those PMA cards a couple of years back were hella expensive!). So having a quest like ‘Play 6 Story Mode levels’ is a bit of a drudge. We could reroll quests like that, but we usually grind it if we can save ourselves crystals or gain a little extra XP. I get that quests like this are to encourage less veteran players to go back to an incomplete Story Mode, but perhaps ‘Play 2 Story Mode levels’ might be a nice compromise.

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I notice one of the quests gives ‘Free Boosters’ cards

Any chance you could move the ‘Free Boosters’ banner to the top of the shop? It takes me a loooooooong time to scroll to the bottom past all the unopened boosters I have. There’s no point opening almost all of them because I own all the cards in them, and it would take… I dunno, maybe weeks to open them all.

Its been suggested that you add some kind of button to open all of your boosters at once but that’s not really the solution I’d be looking for… I’d hate for it to open my non-duplicate boosters when I’m not ready to, it’s useful to be able to see the content of a number of the unopened boosters I own (like some Elite packs!), and I’m sure it would take a lot more coding work than just moving the ‘Free Boosters’ banner.

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It’s a shame all the tribal quests (e.g. ‘Cast 15 Soldiers’, ‘Cast 15 Goblins’) all seem to be ‘Cast’ and not ‘Summon’. Really limits your creativity when building decks for the quests if they don’t count the token summoning cards too.

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I got a “Cast 15 Vampires” quest. The other 4 were “Cast 3 creatures in one turn”, “Attack with creatures 8 times”, “Match Black gems 10 times”, and “Win 4 fights in the Story Mode”.
I just threw a random deck for Sorin1 (Grim Nemesis) with 10 cheapest unmastered Vampires and went to do Story Mode (I normally pick 1-2).
After the 2nd fight I had 3 quest completed (creature-related ones), after the 3rd - gem-matching quest as well. So I only had to play one more Story Mode fight for the final daily quest.

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I’ve been collecting data today from the quests and it seems like Group 4 only has 5 quests in it:

  • 4 PvE
  • 3 PvP
  • 4 Event Fights
  • Win 4 games
  • 4 Story Mode

I expect that’s all the possible quests in Group 4 (since, in the same time, I’ve logged 30 different Group 5 quests!)

So expect these quests to cycle around every 5 days

A couple of notes about Group 4 then:

  1. It seems like quite a few people will have a PvE quest on a day when no PvE events are running. How often will this happen? Honestly I’m not sure, but certainly under the old system I found myself occasionally unable to collect a PvE quest on the final day of the week after my free reroll.

  2. Playing 4 Story Mode levels once every 5 days seems like a drudge to me, given that I completed Story Mode a good few years ago, and the devs gave up updating Story Mode a few years ago too!

So Group 4 probably needs a little tweaking to make it more fun. Sure, in the latter case, you might expect all your players not to do the thing that’s unfun for them despite the incentive to do the unfun thing, but my 40 or so years as a gamer have taught me that a lot of players will do the unfun thing because of the incentive and just grouse about it endlessly :slight_smile: And, sure, there are rerolls, but the funny thing about disincentives is that they disincentivise people to actually use them.

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This is what I’ve seen in Group 5 so far

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For me, the jury is out on this one until I’ve had chance to play with them a bit, but those numbers do seem rather high to me on the Tribal quests… Webcore can often be a little guilty of high numbers on objectives in MTGPQ, and I know I’m not the only one that find events like Seasons of Bloomburrow a slog because of them.