Objectives and in-game abilities are poorly done - Seize the Day is an example

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

RE: Seize the Day
Dear D3go, I would like for you to pay closer attention to the combination of effects that you grant within an event and the objectives within an event.

Seize the Day is prime example. Here are some of the objectives:
Objective: Win in 10 Rounds
Objective: Deal 15 Damage in a single round

Well, ok, fine, but… what if my opponent randomly uses the support “Delaying Shield”?
Delaying Shield makes it impossible to deal enough damage to complete those objectives… and therefore, it isn’t a game about building better decks, matching gems or anything anymore. That’s taken away from you. It’s a game of “Randomly do I not hit an opponent using Delaying Shield” or not. There’s no way to prepare for it, and no way to get around it really. There is no proper response. If you’re aiming to “win” the event, it’s just a crapshoot. Delaying Shield shouldn’t exist where those objectives also exist.

Yes, I am aware that everyone has to deal with this as well, but that’s the point - the player who gets lucky and doesn’t have this happen wins. Is that what you want this to be?

Please fix this and maybe have someone actually put a few minutes of thought into these things.

BTW Seize the Day isn’t alone. There’s other examples of this, like when you have standard events with Objectives like “Cast X vampires”, which are holdovers from the sets where Vampires were actually relevant enough that you could put them in decks and not get slaughtered because they weren’t awful. In the future there might not even be enough Vampires to make a deck with, but we’ll still probably get that objective. Objectives like these should remain with the format they were intended to be with in the beginning, because sometimes, they’re just absolutely painful to achieve, and doing so makes the game a random crapshoot instead of anything else because sometimes, it’s just not possible to make an effective deck and also meet their outdated requests.

TLDR: Game makers really need to think about the Objectives and how they relate to the game, but they don’t.

2

I have literally never had a problem dealing 15 damage in a single turn to an opponent with Delaying Shield. There are absolutely ways to get around it, maybe read the support a little more closely. “If a source would deal damage to you, prevent X of that damage…X is the number of white gems.” Have a single creature with power equal to 15 plus the number of white gems on the board, and you’re done. Not exactly “impossible”, especially when you can have Holistic Wisdom or Battle of Wits to help you out. But if you really desperately don’t want to deal with Delaying Shield you can always just pick it yourself; I’ve never seen the AI have the same support I chose, I believe the one you choose is removed from the pool the AI can pick from.

Also there are plenty of good vampires left in Standard. Even if you don’t have the big guns like Etrata or Szadek, Blood Operative is still an absolute star and only Rare. What’s more, events have rotated into Legacy in the past and I’m sure they will again in the future, to deal with precisely that problem.

3

Just wanted to point out this isnt true. I routinely go against Delaying Shield while picking it myself. Same with the Atog support on the top node. Delaying shield is slightly annoying but no more than any of the others if Greg manages to make good use of them.

4

I also had picked Delaying Shield (thinking then the opponent won’t have it) but it also selected it.

5

I always assumed that whatever deck the AI was playing it used the support that was chosen by original player

6

I had one match against Delaying Shield in StD. I just plowed over the top of it. Worked out fine, and ended up being a fun wrinkle in an otherwise easy match.

I assumed the AI chose randomly

7

@greenmeanie

This event is set-restricted, so you can’t use IKO cards like QC.
However, there are a lot of ways to overcome Greg picking delaying shield. I usually just steamroll over with Nissa ww’s tokens. Direct damage spells can do it as well.