Variable ribbons for secondary objectives depending on events (a.k.a, complaints from Hallow's Eve)

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

So, during the few times I played the Hallow’s Eve, sometimes I ran into decks that plays NO Zombies. In an event where everyone is encouraged to play Zombies. And some of those decks are potential one-turn-kill kind of decks (looking at you, Kiora)

While obviously these un-living players have a disadvantage of never reaching 1st spot due to not completing objectives, it’s still downright annoying that they are, for a lack of better words, rewarded by ignoring secondary objectives. Sure, you can say that I am a sore loser whatever, but look, you make a supposedly for fun event where people are encouraged to play Zombies, and then you don’t give them proper incentives to actually play Zombies. What gives?

In light of this, I want to suggest that depending on the events:

1. Give more ribbons on secondary objectives as opposed to winning, or if possible, NO winning objectives.
The first part of the sentence is self-explanatory: For example, 1 ribbon for winning, 4 ribbons for 7 Zombies and 2 ribbons for 13 Zombies. I know this sounds cruel for players who want to win, but please, there are enough events out there where winning is everything (such as the PvE event and Nodes of Power); For those win-happy events, it’s very understandable, and in fact very very logical and expected that winning has more ribbon reward. But for this Hallow’s Eve? Why do you tell people to play Zombies if playing a lot of Zombies is not as rewarding as winning? It’s stupid.

As for the second part, I know it may seem confusing that an event/node would ask players to just complete the for-fun objectives and no direct reward for winning, which brings me to the next points:

2. Try implementing objectives that give ribbons even when you lose
This is in part due to the occasional decks that deliberately ignore the event theme just to fish for the win, meaning that players who actually want to try completing the objectives are immediately set up for very, very bad disadvantage. In light of this, for events such as Hallow’s Eve, allow players to obtain the ribbons for playing Zombies even if they get trashed by those overpowered, out-of-theme decks.

However, I also need to reiterate that this idea for getting ribbons by completing secondary objectives even if you lose should apply only to specific events, in other words there is no specific need to implement this in Nodes of Power, for example (that event really is about murdering everyone as brutally as possible, so who cares).

Thank you

2

I don’t like the concept of not rewarding winning. Winning is and should be the most important thing in any event (in any game, not just this one).

Rewarding secondaries for losing, however, is not a bad idea. It makes losing due to you purposely not winning in order to complete a secondary a little less frustrating, and means if you lose to a non-event deck you can still get some points.

Another solution that has been proposed is to prevent players from locking in a deck without cards that could meet the secondaries (in this case, making it so you have to have at least 1-2 zombies in your deck to use it).

3

The issue for winning is that lazy players who just implement and deck with their best cards to win fast and don’t care about the 2nd and 3rd objectives. Going for the objectives can somewhat of a liability for some players. I have 2nd Bolas so I can shutdown the AI for 50 rounds if needed to kill my zombies and cast new ones. Not everyone is so lucky. Not to mention, it’s boring as heck. I lost one point because the AI killed itself early.

Either way it’s not fun. Same happens in other event where you win with common and uncommon cards when another player’s deck has all Mythics. Having to use crappy creatures because they’re wolves facing a deck with 9/9+ dinosaurs that seems to autocast themselves onto the board.

If they’re going to make it more difficult to get the 2nd and 3rd objective then it should be way more rewarding than winning. Since winning is, well too easy…why should it be so rewarding?

4

Thanks for your feedback so far.

Yeah, you’re right. Not giving a reward at all for winning does feel way too strange, and in retrospect I shouldn’t have suggested that in the first place considering that even I found that kinda stupid when I remember what happened to the very first Race to Orazca (where there was NO ribbon for winning)

And indeed, why not? I mean, a lot of objectives are already worded so that they technically don’t require a win (Summon X something, play X or less Supports etc), and especially for quirky events like the Hallow’s Eve, that no-win-required objective should not be too out of place…

As for the deck restriction suggestion, good idea, but at the same time I fear it can never get implemented due to how complex it may become. But yeah, I support that.

Oh, yeah, I agree with that last sentence in some situations such as the Hallow’s Eve. Of course, it’s normal to expect people to try to win, but the idea for secondary objective is that people should be rewarded for actually trying to fulfill those objectives, especially in cases where those objectives may be contradictory to each other (Across Ixalan’s 1st node is a good example. Lose 5 or more creatures but win in 10 turns or less? For players without Ball Lightning, that combination of objectives are contradictory as hell).

This is what I like about Across Ixalan: 5 riboons for winning, 5 for any of the objectives, which gives incentive to actually try to fulfill those objectives while winning at the same time. And this is I believe also why a LOT of people here HATES “Win with X or less HP” objective, such as in Nodes of Power; That objective is already hell to fulfill in a legacy event, but the fact that it rewards a measly 1 point means people generally won’t bother trying (I am such an example: At most I’ll only fulfil the 50 or less HP and ignore the 20 or less)

5

I’ve long wished that objective scoring was independent of winning. I’m fully in favor of people accruing points for objectives even if they lose the match.

6

I’m also on board with (lesser) points/ribbons rewarded, even if you lose a match.

Many of us here are a collection of some of the top players, best of the best, where losing a match to us is a long distant memory from times past.

Some of these matches can take a significant amount of time to complete. Especially if it’s a close match, coming away with nothing but a petty 50xp (which is better than nothing) is still quite disheartening.

Even a 1 point/ribbon Event Engagement reward can make a losing player feel like they’re still progressing through the event, and contributes to the player retention that we all want. Assuming victorious players get 4-7 points/ribbons per match (the average victory range for events), there will still be enough of a gap where winning players shouldn’t have any worry about being caught up to if this change was implemented.

7

I had 1 loss during the 2nd run of the event and I managed to summon 54 zombies during that match. Even with that many, I could not overcome the overwhelming zombie tokens in a Bolas deck running Relentless Dead and Prized Amalgam and all of the token generators.

Would not have minded getting points for the secondaries there. Probably would have kept me in the top 25 at least in my bracket.

8

When they had the “no ribbons for winning” bug in the first RtO I actually liked it a lot. To have this in special events, where the focus should be on theme, I’d welcome it.

My one loss last Halloween Event came from a Teferi deck (StV, BSZ etc) that played no zombies. They could still play it to troll but at least no rewards for them.

9

Huh? Could you elaborate a bit more - i dont recall this. Was it just 2ndary object. based?

10

Also you have to keep in mind newer players.. not only the lazy ones.

When i 1st started i remember the vehicle objective for fate is rarely fair… i had like poop stick vehicles with only the starting 5 PWs… my only choice was to ignore the secondaries and get as many wins since they still gave points. So removing win points might be a little rough for super newer players.

But i do actually like the premise of no points for wins idea - its creative and interesting.

11

@jimpark yes, you didn’t get ribbons for winning but just for the objectives. We thought it was a new rule (like swapping 4-2-1 for 5-1-1 ribbons) but turned out to be unintended.

https://forums.505go.com/discussion/70834/race-to-orazca-event-issues-fix-in-upcoming-data-push/p1