Undone by Elderspark

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

I finished The Elderspark-- for the first time ever – I played the whole thing. I like exactly two encounters. 1.1 (I only like the first encounter in one other PvE event, RatC) and 3.3. The rest is complete, absolute, total garbage.

I built for all objectives, though loosely for the Partner and Proliferate objectives – because when I reviewed the decklists, PW abilities and special supports, it occurred to me that even with my high skill level and extensive collection I was going to take a chance either way – I could water down my decks and risk losses and quicker matches, or I could go for longer very grindy miserable matches. I chose more balanced decks and the chance of lost objectives in how I played.

I had two losses, they were very fast losses, like within 5 rounds – 3.2 and 4.2.

Skipping objectives made the event feel much less grindy, but why build an event like that? If I’m going to play an event, I want to want to do my best. I don’t want to build to maybe do my best. I’m left hating this event just as much as I did going in.

Final score 1230/1350 91%

That’s my player perspective.

My leader perspective is much worse, as I represent not only my top 25 coalition, but an entire alliance of 35 coalitions that range from top 10 to very casual – and the mood across the board was not good this weekend.

At the beginning of the event, I sent a message to my coalition:

Other TP9 Leaders issued similar messages – the thing is – we operate this way anyway, but this event stresses our players out so much that we have to remind them how to have fun playing a game.

I knew when the forum announcement was updated and I saw this event come up that I had to clear my weekend. My time was split between the forum and Discord. I built a lot of decks this weekend. I whined a lot, too. I begged one of my players not to quit the game.

I supported leaders who are giving up hope that D3Go! and Oktagon read these forums and even care a little about what we think. I supported them. I did not disagree with them.

This poll was done on 13 October. 44% of players said they do not like the event. I have not been very public on the forums lately. I’m reading them and I’m modding them, but I’m going to be honest – The Elderspark breaks me. It makes me hate this game. Every time it runs, I run out of anything constructive to say. It’s not just here, I’m not engaging in Discord either. I’m only engaging with @Brigby on critical issues. If actions speak louder than words, this event is proof that we are not valued.

After the last time it was run, I asked Brigby, in a private conversation, to rehaul it. I gave well researched examples of why this event is unbalanced compared to other PvE events. I explained why it is unhealthy for the playerbase and alienates new and casual players. I even had the (In my very not humble opinion) amazing idea to make it individual. What we got was 8 hour recharges and the next run 2 weeks after half our collections were taken away. I’m not ok with this. This is the second to last straw for me.

I’m going to end this with an apology to this community. I know everyone is frustrated, I can see it. Ironically I see it not in your words, but in your silence. You’ve literally lost your fire. Like me, you’ve just mostly given up. Many have left. I assume most of us who have stayed have just decreased our engagement and are spending much of our other time on other games, with this one as our secondary – I guess we are at the point where we need to decide whether we want to fight for it or not. We know they’re not listening.

We also know we can be much, much louder.

The question is, are we up for it, or has The Elderspark undone us?

2

The Mana curves for a lot of the higher end Encounters are ridiculous. I had a coalition member lose in seven turns because Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi outgained him on Mana 221-35. A +18 Mana curve with ramp cards in the deck, plus a Planeswalker ability that ramps as well? Immediately after all our reliable ramp got shown the door?

Hell, the next encounter on that node has a +21 Mana curve.

Even Ulamog wasn’t that high (+20), and we still had access to good ramp spells to compensate, not to mention cheap removal options (Grip of Desolation, anyone?) without having to consider things like dealing with Vanguards.

You get a bad draw, or the AI luck’s into an early cascade, there’s no way you catch up in time to win, let alone meet the objectives. It also doesn’t help that the proliferate objective doesn’t count every card with the ability (Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, among others)

I’ve stopped submitting bug reports, and logging into the forums, because I really don’t think my time and effort do a damn thing here.

I hope I’m wrong.

3

The objectives required you to use bad cards that don’t fit with the node fight at all
The app freezes or crashes every time a zombie sneezes
Every ability feels like its bugged, even when it isn’t (but quite a few definitely are)
The event lasts for 3 full days, going from Friday afternoon to Monday afternoon
Even the early fights (which I admittedly haven’t played since the first time) are needlessly difficult.

Extinction lost so many players before this event we had to let someone who randomly joined up Friday afternoon play, because absolutely nobody wanted the last spot. In all my years playing I have NEVER seen so many people say “I don’t want to play up this weekend because I hate this event”. Never.

Just like Bolas casting the Elderspell was the beginning of the end for Ravnica, this event is looking like the beginning of the end for MTGPQ. If Oktagon doesn’t figure out how to fix things soon this game might not last until next Christmas. And boy does that suck for all of us.

4

My two cents. I did quite well in this event (1340, all victories, only two objectives missed). My feelings are not so negative. But nonetheless I must agree with bken: many nodes felt like work, and not the pleasant kind of work.

I built for winning and for all the objectives, which meant slow, defensive decks (mostly Karn). They worked, but they took me lots and lots of mind-numbing turns, many of them simply activating abilities to get some extra mana or lick a few hp from the enemy.

Objectives are OK, they present a challenge and add some variety to the game. But please, do not make them so slow and painful to achieve.

And on top of that, the rewards are miserable for such a long and tough event. Not the most important thing, but insult added to injury.

5

Guys, I’m an old player with history with MTG that goes back to Revised 3rd Edition, Legends and The Dark. The way you guys are moving the game overall is kind of boring. I always said to people I know that if you don’t want to pay to win… PLAY MTGPQ.
Since you created VIP, this has changed a lot. gaining cards has became harder. If we had a crashless game, with actual competition, okay… but all updates comes with a high level of bugs and crashes.

This event, for example, It’s too long, too hard and too little rewards… I just finished with 1315.

I strongly recomend that you guys re-think the strategy as whole!

Hope you take this into the best regards and deepest respect.

6

The best part of this game is the Coalition play. You gave us an opportunity to find other players that enjoy this game and can play together in a team. As a leader of BlackLotus, we are losing long time players every week. The game isn’t fun anymore.

The coalition events are what keeps people here and playing because of the friendships and teams we have created. These events are on the weekends which is also when most people can spend time with their families. The coalition events take so much time that people just don’t want to or can’t commit to it any more as it’s taking them away from their families and life.

Please think more about the timing of things and make sense of them. If you are going to introduce and new standard which forces all players to rebuild decks, DON’T have the next 2 coalition events be the longest grinding events with poor rewards. The ElderSpark is too long and the rewards are poor. Period.

I’ve been playing this game for over 3 years. I’m a VIP. I’m tired. Fix the damn bugs and freezes.

7

Despite the increased recharge time, the event is still too long at three days. That’s 40 games, often long and involved as we struggle to stay alive while trying to meet objectives. And this time included the burden of creating all-new decks because of the format shift - decks which are obviously less powerful both because of the strength of specific cards that left and the overall diminished card pool. The 3.2 encounter in particular is close to unwinnable without specifically Leyline of Singularity - much like it necessitated Mistcaller before the rotation.

I played the whole event. I was fortunate to build or find good decks for each node, and I ended with a perfect score. But it was a miserable slog, and I hated it. Coming on the back of last week’s similarly long event has made me exhausted, and I spent all last week dreading the weekend. And with the rewards being so dreadfully poor, if I wasn’t in a coalition I wouldn’t have played it at all.

Of course, it doesn’t feel like anything we say here matters because of the minimal communication we get back and the even more minimal changes.

8

What Bken said - fix this very long (take forever to play), grindy (cards required for objectives, and I’m VIP with top cards in collection, make play slow and unbearably boring), and exhaustive event: rolling into Monday workday like we’re in a terrible hunger games - take care of team by finishing yet another round of charges or take care of life (kids, wife, job… life outside the gaming weekend).

I am also a captain on a Top 25 team and this event alone had at least two longterm team members asking if they should just quit the game. If devs don’t care about the play experience they should at least care about the $$$ walking away from the game as dedicated players move on to other more rewarding gaming experiences.

9

The event being a grind is an issue. I am also the leader of a t10 team and chat with other teams. On a whole I would say the main issue this event was the frequency of the freezes. Are we playing a beta game ? Seems new set old event means old bugs adding to new bugs. I played the event for all objectives missed 1 but had 3 losses due to freezes (each time was well into the game).
Speaking with players in my team 1 player out of 20 didn’t have any issues. Should we celebrate that 1 player in 20 didn’t have a freeze ?

10

Holy crap this is worse than I thought. I’m seeing a lot of posts here from top coalition leaders, and if all of them are losing players due to this nonsense that does not bode well for the long term health of the game.

@Brigby would it be possible for you to DEFCON-1 this to the team? Their silence hurts almost as much as the event and freezes.

11

TK almost lost a player just hours into the event. It’s not a secret, he posted about it in another thread.

I had a long talk with him this weekend. Reminded him that as a coalition, we would rather him stay with us and step back a bit more than leave the game – it’s who we are – we don’t have crazy requirements, we have several very hardcore players and a few pretty casual ones – we manage to pull out top 25 every week – we’re a family.

After TE ran in October I told @Brigby this event does things to people, emotionally. I can’t say exactly why, but it does. It just has an effect. It does it to me too. It causes severe reactions. It’s not just one thing. For some it’s bugs and freezes. Those don’t get me, I’ve never had one. For some it’s the fact that the first node has a difficulty of maybe 2 on a scale of 1-10 and then node 2 goes to 6. That’s deflating. Then there’s 3.2. Yah. I’ll just leave that.

I brought it to the TP9 leader chat this weekend, I like to do this as they represent such a broad sampling of the playerbase from competitive to casual, week 1 players to first week players – and got so many responses, the objectives are on crack compared to other PvE, we did an analysis of mana gains and found that this event has a slightly higher ramp than all other coalition PvE, but it also has more nodes than all other coalition PvE, double the event with the closest ramp, so you’re getting pegged with ramp for twice as long as any other event.

So all this feedback I can come to one conclusion – this event messes with people emotionally because you can only get your butt kicked for so long. Even if you’re winning – it feels like you’re getting your butt kicked.

I went in and did the whole thing for the first time – and I went in with the attitude that I was going to give it my all. I built intelligent decks. I liked my decks – I even spent a lot of time in Discord fine tuning them, and had wayyyyy more fun with the community doing that than I did actually playing the event.

I came out feeling the same as I did every time. #UndoneByElderspark

It’s time to shelf this event.

12

It’s time to fix the constant game freezes or admit we are playing a beta game. I’ve lost count of the players I’ve lost due to being disheartened with the s

13

It’s not just The Elderspark event, even though this event is king. It’s about all the events that take 3 days, have a 4 or 5 nodes and crappy rewards. Our team lost two players during the last Elderspark event. This run it has cost us one more AND on top of that, when the new The Great Tournament event came out, we had one player quit right after the release of the details of that event (3 days again, 5 nodes again, slap in the face rewards again). I’m the team captain of a top 25 team and I told the players in our team to play whatever charges they like and just skip the rest. The Elderspark breaks up our team every time again. I’d rather have a low team rank and keeping all the players in our team together and sane, than getting a great team score where our group falls apart.

14

I have to say, I played node 4 through, and found it easy, and not too much of a grind, with Ob Nixilis, Surveil, Blood Operative, and 5 Gates. A cheap PW, common/uncommon/rare cards.

I still had personal problems with that node: lag and speed of play were both still an issue, and I think they should be addressed. But are we really complaining simply about difficulty? Node 4 presents a hard challenge, and requires you to build a deck tailored to defeating it, but it’s entirely possible.

If we’re complaining that it takes too long to lose or win against certain opponents, then I agree with that as a criticism. But I personally in my own personal opinion which is a personal opinion don’t see anything wrong with Greg representing a hard challenge, in theory.

I didn’t play nodes 2 and 3 because I couldn’t be arsed. I have other better apps to use, play, and buy money for at the weekend.

15

You and I lived the same weekend

16

I would hazard to say that this whole feeling started with the event Return of the God-Pharaoh. As different events came into existence that have similarly long if not longer time commitments and the rewards for those events have diminished drastically many players are losing their drive to play in coalition events. When God-Pharaoh first came out I never imagined leaving my coalition for weekend events so that I wouldn’t have to play them, but within a few runnings of the event, I stopped playing it. To this day I don’t play it. I also don’t play any War of the Spark events, and it seems as though apart from doing them the first time to try the events I won’t be doing the Eldraine events either. I personally really enjoy playing this game as a side game for fun and chatting with all of my coalition friends during and between events. I am content with playing in the day-to-day events that currently exist. I find it to be rewarding.

The reward structure and time requirements for the newer events could definitely use adjustment. Every Coalition is bleeding players as a result of how they are set up. I think it is likely that they will change the reward structure with our feedback, it is just a matter of whether or not it is changed before we lose too many players. With how quickly they changed the rewards for the Zendikar vs. Eldrazi during its beta, I am going to guess that the time it takes to change something as simple as the rewards isn’t too prohibitive to the team.

With all that said, I am reading a lot on the different threads about the devs not listening to us, and I actually disagree with that. If we take a look at some of the major points that we have brought up to the Oktagon team you can see that there have been a lot of positive changes.

  • When they took over, we were still calling Mana Jewels “unobtanium”. Now I see them being called some version of “pinkies”. We are generally getting a lot more currency with which to buy things. The new shortage of Mana Crystals is something that I think will build in contention, but it doesn’t seem to be a critical frustration of the masses yet. At least I am not seeing it being the primary point of expression.

  • Elite packs had duplicates in them when Oktagon took over. That has been changed. We can now guarantee that we get specific cards through Elite Pack Purchases. I know that you could get your pinkies rewarded at some point before Oktagon took over for getting a duplicate, but that also ended and really should have just been non-duplicate in the first place.

  • We weren’t able to fully level each of the Planeswalkers that came out each set because we weren’t getting enough runes. I am pretending that you aren’t a survivor of the old days who spammed the predecessor to Training Grounds (that I am foolishly forgetting the name of…) who had a crazy surplus of runes. There was no point in getting the new Planeswalkers when you couldn’t level them up and use them to their full potential. We now get more than enough runes to level up all of the new Planeswalkers. I no longer determine which 1 walker per set I am going to maybe get because I might have enough runes to fully level them up.

  • Sets weren’t coming out with new Coalition events, and we begged for new events. We wanted them to focus on bringing us many new events, and now we are getting lots of new events with each release. There are so many new events now.

  • The design itself of the Ixalan cards made them difficult to play due to inflated mana issues, and now the cards are coming out, and are dynamic and different and exciting. They are powerful without being too powerful. The balance is fantastic.

  • Before the Eldraine update I would argue that the game was more stable than it had ever been in my time playing. I went what feels like months without any crashes or freezes or real game breaking bugs. Don’t get me wrong, there were still bugs. More than I would generally like to see in a polished game, but they definitely cleaned house pretty darn well while also dealing with some balancing changes like Etali.

  • When M19 came out, there was a massive outcry about imbalance amongst Masterpiece rarity cards, and now they are largely in the same power level as Rares and Mythics. Just because you own all of the Masterpieces doesn’t mean that you can make better decks than everyone else. There are still a few VERY powerful Masterpieces like Killer Instinct and Urza, but it is good to have chase cards that are hard to get.

All these points to say that while they aren’t actively communicating what it is they are prioritizing and working on with us, they are definitely taking in feedback and working on issues. I don’t honestly know what the size of their team is and as a result how much time it takes for them to finish different issues and how much man-power they can devote to those issues. As a result it is difficult to gauge what a realistic expected time frame is for changes to be made to a game like this. I am saying all of this as a devils (angels?) advocate of sorts because I am personally in a very good place with this game right now. I am taking my enjoyment from playing with cards and chasing new ones and playing in the events that I like, and entirely skipping the ones that I don’t like that would otherwise cause me stress. It took me a while to get there because I felt like I was letting my community and my Coalition down, but they are all amazing people and they don’t hold it against me. I participate in the events that I want to, and I earn perfect scores in them almost every time. I grind when I want to grind, and play casually when I want to play casually. It is good to find your happy place with the game for being the game it is. Providing feedback and requesting changes is important and necessary as it fuels the progression of the game. I truly believe that.

I have spoken.

17

The design goals for TE have never been explained, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was created specifically because some players have asked for more challenge; the brief to the designer may have been “make it really hard”. And it’s certainly the most grueling coalition event, both score-wise and psychologically. Not just because of raw numbers (enemy HP, mana gains) but because most enemy decks are strong and well designed, using real synergies and strategies.

I think the problem isn’t the challenge in itself, but that it feels oppressive:

  • Nearly all nodes are on the tough end; there’s no let-up. So it feels inaccessible to newer players and like work to veterans.
  • It has a total of 40 node charges over 3 days, so playing competitively means that work keeps going for a long time.
  • The jewel and crystal rewards for top placings are among the smaller rewards for a coalition event. It’s like the final boss dropping the same rewards as the level 1 boss. (Yes, rewards aren’t bad down the ladder for lower ranked players relative to other events, but that just means there’s even less of an incentive for competitive play.)

For a lot of players, both new and veterans, these things make the event feel like an ordeal, and makes them wonder what the point is. Going from 6h to 8h charges was a necessary step in the right direction but further changes would be beneficial. My own suggestions would be:

  • Reduce event duration from 3d to 2d
  • Do something to the rewards befitting The Actual Hardest Event In The Game. Doesn’t have to be a massive value giveaway; it could just be something special which other events don’t give, e.g. a vanguard pack for sufficiently high rank.
18

It’s just… not fun. I’ve only been playing for a little over a year, but this event is the least fun I’ve ever had.

19

I wonder, is the event made more ‘oppresive’ by the structure of the event itself?

In many games, if you find yourself outclassed, you can quit the game, change your strategy, and then start again. For example, try tackling 4.1 with a deck based around supports, like Killer Instinct, or Drowned Secrets, and it will most likely fail because 4.1 has such strong anti-support powers.

My experience of gaming would tell me that I’m onto a losing strategy right away, and my instinct is to quit, rejig my deck, and start again with a deck better suited (say, a deck based on Land supports).

Now two things happen when I try and do this in MTGPQ.

#1 is that I lose a considerable number of points for my coalition. IF I’m competitive, there’s a psychological drive there to keep me playing the game I know I am outmatched in, and am not having fun in. It may take me a long time to lose, or, it may just take me an interminably long time to win.

#2 is that I quite possibly can’t restart the game straight away because of the way the nodes spawn. I might have ideas right now for altering my strategy, but I can’t put them into practice, and I can’t even alter the event deck I used, so I might forget the alterations I wished to make! I might have to wait 6 hrs to replay a level I lost, or I might have to wait 18h to replay a level that I won through interminable grind. And, if I did win the level, is it even wise for me to experiment in changing my deck to one that might lose?

I’m not suggesting here that we necessarily change this coalition event so that it has the structure of a PvE ladder event we can retry any of the levels on any number of times… but i think it’s worth analysing which the respawning node type event can be infuriating for it’s players.

If you want to correct where you think I’ve gone wrong in this post, or have anything to add to it, please do!

20

It’s no secret that I hate the event as well. Volrak summed it up nicely. It isn’t the challenge that’s the problem; yes, it feels like they turned on cheat mode for the AI, but that’s how a lot of games operate. They turn every boss into an overpowered bullet sponge. That’s essentially what they did here. However, additionally, what drives me crazy is that every match–no, every TURN–takes forever. Tokens spawning, effects happening, the AI still figuring out what it wants to do with Vanguards on the board. It feels like I spend half my game time just waiting for Greg’s turn to finish.

In an environment without spell-based ramp, it seems like our decks run in quicksand. Some of this is simply an adjustment to life without BSZ, but I’ll argue that BSZ abuse was the only way that Elderspark’s time requirement was tolerable before. =p With the AI having insane mana and creature generation, an environment without fast ramp means that mana inequities are far more punitive than before. Combined with the objectives forcing players to use so many terrible cards with proliferate/partner/etc, they’re pigeonholed into a specific range of deck strategies.

I mean, I guess the only good thing is that you can trivialize a lot of the encounters by using Leyline of Singularity or Mistcaller, but…

Anyway, there’s been a noticeable reduction in the value of coalition play. The reward to investment ratio is extremely poor in several events. At this point, it’s hard not to feel that this is a deliberate strategy by Oktagon.