We need to rethink PVE Events

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

I came to realize one thing during a quest I made playing in random coalitions. At one coalition I visited a players just said “hit progression with boss at 64% is wonderful”. I am sure this guy event ended just after he made progression. This only emphasis how poor the design of this event is. It burn out top players, it make event easy to good players not fighting for coalition rewards and it’s impossible for newer players. This kind of event is the one that needs most time to rethink what it should be like.

I really don’t know how to solve this problem. The most difficult to me is how to make it fun for experienced players and don’t feel impossible for new players. Maybe progression should be different for each tier. I really don’t know. What I know is that the event we have today is completely broken and is bad for everyone.

2

Generally, these discussions come down to two groups of players:

  • Experienced players: These have no trouble completing the nodes, possibly also the secondary objectives. They get “burned out” by playing the same trivial, but time-consuming nodes again and again.

  • New players: These may struggle completing nodes or secondary objectives, and appreciate many chances to do so and complete progression.

It´s hard, if not impossible, to adjust the parameters of the current structure to please both groups. Similarly, if you increase the difficulty level, the latter players feel lost.

I think the simplest solution is to have a limitation of points counting towards the coalition score. With the current points payout, I think “max progression” should be “complete all nodes once”, or 60+50+40+253+153 = 280 points, and “max coalition score” should be double that.

Once this was in place, you can adjust the “boss score” accordingly.

I also feel that the “boss death” timeline should be something players think about strategically. Coalitions could conceivably gain the upper hand by being quick at getting the 600 points - there should not be 600 points to go around for everyone!

I remember back in the days when Revolt Against the Consulate was considered difficult (Tezzeret especially), and I really felt the pressure to finish quickly to make sure I could get progression in before event end. That was fun. Now there´s just an overflow of charges that really just takes all pressure off, and instead replaces it with some kind of guilt that I´m not willing to grind endlessly so that my coalition can get an extra unobtanium or two.

3

You’re just playing better now that’s all. It’s not so much the overflow of charges as it is that you can now get to progression easier. There are still people who are struggling like you did to complete during the ratc event.

If we treat this weekend as an anomaly due to log in problems, we usually get about 6 round cycles or so before event ends. You’ll need a 50% success rate playing every charge to get to progression. That’s pretty middle of the road.

4

The problems with the current event are myriad, but it should be pointed out that creating this grind was a deliberate effort by the devs. Their spontaneous decision to move the progression threshold to a higher point, while simultaneously reducing rewards, has contributed to the “what’s the point” attitude that pervades the forums.

This isn’t a problem for experienced players or new players. It’s a problem for both.

A couple of ideas I haven’t completely thought through:

  1. Shorter refreshes when an event is new, longer after people are more experienced with it;
  2. The ability to pay crystals or runes or jewels or whatever to have another opportunity at a node
5

Others have suggested this, which seemed like a good idea : fixed length for the coalition race, then extended time for the players who want to make progression

6

I vote ‘introduce a completely different format of event’.

7

Last week you were talking about coalitions acting as a team to take down the big guy. What’s your idea ?

8

I posted an idea in the Suggestions forum. Upvote it if you like it.

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https://forums.505go.com/discussion/68137/a-new-way-to-score-pve-events#latest

Link to Mainloop25’s Suggestion thread for those of us too lazy to track it down:

10

Including myself. Haha. Thanks

11

Hi Everyone. Since the OP first brought up Coalition Boss events, I just wanted to let everyone know that I have brought this topic up with Oktagon, and we are discussing consideration of making adjustments to various settings: recharge time, max progression, boss health, etc.

I do not have any conclusive information to provide at the moment, but once I receive more definitive plans and time frames, I will update the community with that info.

12

@Brigby since you’re talking about events. please read the Event start/end times and possible reduce 1 charge to end event earlier? Killing West Coast players with this.

13

Honestly, the pve events are usually fine. Not optimal. Let’s be honest, though. What is optimal about this game? In this situation, we’re dealing with a new dev team that was not set up well by the previous team. That translates to a bunch of tech issues, on top of an extra month or so of this event which has been a comedy of errors from the jump. I’m at the point where I would rather just have coalition events suspended til ixalan is ready. Play some old events or something. This is a game and the grind that it has become due to all of the recent issues is defeating the single purpose. It just isn’t fun right now. That’s evidenced by the recent rotgp. There is no reason I should have scored over 2000 points. So many people were either locked out or bored.

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@Brigby Thanks for listening to the players and making the adjustments you did. This weekend´s PVE event was much more enjoyable than previous ones - the reduced number of charges made it more feasible to play all of them, and the reduced HP made the event end just after the weekend.

That being said, I think there´s still a lot of room for improvement. Personally, I would like to see the PVE coalition events move in one of two directions:

  1. Non-competitive team vs. boss battle
    In this scenario, the coalition has a personal progression bar and a coalition progress bar. The coalition progress bar has progression rewards just like the personal one. For casual players, the most important will be the personal one, which I would recommend use the same style as the one eventually used by the single-player PVE events: 5/1/1 points for win/secondaries, and a maximum of 63 points scored (maxing out progression at 55 points so that not all objectives need to be met). Similarly, the coalition progression score could be around 1000 points for full completion (where full completion means that the boss has been defeated!).

  2. Competitive
    It´s a little hard to define what should be the basis of a competitive event like this, but my first recommendation would be to get rid of the whole “Boss HP” gimmick. It simply means that the event ends at a slightly random time, which is always unfair to some coalitions, which may not be able to complete the last round. The mindset I´d really like to see (for all events) is that the idea is that the players with the most skill and better cards (so as to drive card sales!) will prevail, as opposed to the players that put in the most time to “grind”.

My recommendation would be to again score similarly to the single-player PVE events (max 63 points/player), and limit the players from trying the hard nodes until the easier ones have been defeated. Of course, this would mean that a lot of coalitions would likely tie for first (since achieving this score might not be that hard - but see below!). To remedy this, I suggest that you add a tiebreaker of “least matches played”, so that the perfect score is 63*20, with 20 matches played. Everyone can thus have an unlimited number of charges to meet their personal progression scores, just as in single-player PVE.

Once you have this framework in place, you can adjust the difficulty levels to make ties even less likely, especially with the higher level nodes. Let´s say that the hardest node had an even harder secondary objective - it would then be a real challenge for the top coalitions to figure out how to beat that consistently (and on the first try!). For instance, today´s Nicol Bolas node could have “Play at least 5 creatures”. These hard objectives will not affect the casual players´ability to complete progression or even compete in for middling coalition prizes.

16

Just small comment: adding creatures to objectives just make this encounter longer (not harder) - I’ll adapt to that by playing creatures and killing them myself. For that I’ll just change one card in whole deck. If you intend to make it harder the simple way would be to add playing spell limitations. Edit: limit also cycling :wink:

17

I only logged in to show my appreciation for the current changes in the RotGP event refresh timers… and I didn’t want to post anything long.. but I am probably going to start rambling… here goes.

I will only address one main issue - Progression Rewards. However, keep in mind this may correlate to other possible issues.

The problem with RotGP is meeting the needs of two different groups on opposite ends of the spectrum, specifically, the newer players and the more experienced players. It is nearly impossible to accommodate everyone; however, as in business or in marriage… or anything else.. compromises need to be made, preferably that yield the highest possible benefit for both parties.

The main issues these two groups have are:
*Please understand that there are probably a long list of issues, but yeah, anyways.

Issues newer players have:

  1. Cannot obtain full progression rewards
  2. Do not have many opportunities to play a specified node (probably one they are stuck on). This exacerbates issue #1
  3. I can’t think of anything right now… I am sure there are more… but to stay on topic with regard to progression rewards.. I’ll stop here :wink:

Issues experienced players have/had:

  1. Grindy, i.e. refresh timers were way too short.
  2. Better rewards. This correlates with issue #1, the grindier it is, the more rewards that are expected.
  3. Repetitive and boring. This also correlates with issue #1, the grindier it is, the more boring it is playing the same thing over and over and over and over… I digress.
  4. I can’t think of anything.. but as I said above I am sure there are more..

With the new changes, I actually thought it was better for everyone, new and experienced players; but, I was sooooo wrong. It was pointed out to me by someone, can’t remember who, that newer players have less of a chance at progression rewards. So considering I was a new player relatively recently, I began thinking..

First off, experienced players (and perhaps some newer players too) have gotten what they wanted. We got a better quality of life with 6 hour refreshes. Thank goodness! As a result, technically, the rewards have gotten better since there is less work for the rewards associated. Granted the rewards did not change per say. (Let’s all try to be positive). Also on that note, technically, the event became less repetitive and boring since you play less of the games that intensify this feeling (I understand it doesn’t change the fact that it still may be boring since the content hasn’t changed but at least we have to endure less of it). Therefore, technically, we have gotten the pivotal change that was correlated to other possible issues. And honestly, the refresh timer was the biggest issue I had with this event; I am sure, some of you may disagree and I respect that, just so you know.

Now, for newer players, it has become harder to achieve the progression rewards. Although there was a decrease in the progression reward structure (from what 750 ribbons to 600 ribbons), the decrease in Boss health and the increase in refresh timers caused it be harder for newer players to get all the progression rewards. Very unfortunate. Being a once newer player… that sucks.. it’s okay to throw your phone.. I have.. but I don’t recommend it. So this happens for a number of reasons, the two main ones being:

  1. Lack of cards
  2. Lack of knowledge

Consequently, newer players are going to get stuck on a node they cannot pass. This makes it so difficult to get all the progression rewards.

You can skip reading this part, as this will talk about my experience as a newer player, during the Trial of Zeal event. I posted this somewhere else to… but anyhow. I remember being frustrated a lot because I couldn’t figure out how to get past node 2.3 and node 3.1 in that event. I spent hours playing every opportunity only to throw my phone in outrage. Then I had to wait “x” hours for another try at failure. insert curse words here It was impossible. I so desperately wanted to at least get the progression rewards but I couldn’t since I was limited to only the 3 games on node 1, considering I couldn’t get past node 2.3 and 3.1. This went on for a couple of weeks until finally i decided to search the internet. The solution was “cast out.” First off, I didn’t own the card at first (see reason #1 Lack of cards). Then after I acquired it, I didn’t know its value (see reason #2 Lack of knowledge). It was only after visiting the forums that I found out; thus, those who don’t or are not in an active enough coalition may never know. They are forever stuck. And so I built a cycling Gideon1 deck with cast out, totem-guide?, aviary mechanic, and cycling cards. It worked like 30% of the time; but it required a lot of deck building and probably spending hours looking at all the cards in my collection over and over and over again. But I made progress. It was a difficult time… It felt great after I succeeded but no one, I mean no one should have to endure that amount of frustration, especially for a game. It’s not even my job! The point is I understand the desire for rewards and more opportunities. But anyhow, getting back on topic…

Thus, I propose a non-conventional progression reward structure. I call it a “bell-curve” reward structure; but the name may need to change… because I just looked at the current progression reward structure and perhaps it should be adjusted more.

The basic premise is the provide the high value rewards in the middle of the progression structure. PLEASE NOTE, this is a crude example with the assumption that the “booster” is considered the most valuable prize and runes being the least valuable. I did not factor in Mana jewels here at this time. Also, I understand that “most valued” is a relative term.

100 Ribbons - 300 mana runes
200 Ribbons - 5 mana crystals
300 Ribbons - 10 mana crystals
350 Ribbons - Booster
400 Ribbons - 10 mana crystals
500 Ribbons - 5 mana crystals
600 Ribbons - 300 mana runes
700 Ribbons - 200 mana runes
… etc etc etc.

In other words, the most valuable prize is placed right near the middle. All progression rewards prior to the most valuable prize would scale higher, All progression rewards after the most valuable prize would scale lower. This creates a bell curve.

This model serves multiple functions. It allows new players to get the most valuable rewards at lower progression tiers even if they get “stuck.” The tapering (prizes scaling lower) allows the addition of further rewards for those who wish to and are capable of grinding more. As for experienced players, they will usually hit all progression rewards either way, but for experienced players with maybe a weak card pool; they have a better shot at getting key rewards. And then I guess, for lazy players or those who only want to do the bare minimum they can stop whenever they are satisfied.

Side note, I tried to do this with the current silver tier reward structure that is already in place and it was a lot hard than I had expected.. I wasn’t sure where to put some of the rewards.. as “value” is technically in the eye of the beholder, i.e. those who need runes may value runes more, etc etc. This may present a slight problem as bronze tier may value boosters and mana crystals over mana jewels. But nonetheless, if jewels are considered the most valuable and they are going to be given out; it should probably be towards the middle.. technically. I am only presenting an outline anyway so the details are up to D3Go and Oktagon.

Another consideration is a reverse reward structure in which higher rewards are given out first then it keeps tapering. This was the reason I hinted at a possible name change to my “bell-curve” idea. Not sure what would be best.

I will say this once more, honestly, experienced players are probably going to get all the progression rewards anyway so there’s nothing wrong with giving newer players the opportunity to hit better rewards in the beginning. After all, experienced players still get the 6 hour refresh timers, which really was one of the most important things for us.

This was just an idea I had that would address some of the issues newer players would have with coalition Boss events. And most importantly, it addresses those stuck on a specific node, as having infinite tries (and even with ribbons earned scaling down), technically wouldn’t allow those who are stuck on an “unbeatable” node to progress further and get progression rewards. Not to mention adjusting the ribbon handout? delivery system? would probably just be more work, etc etc.

Also, I felt it would be significantly easier to implement than other changes.

Please just consider it, thank you.

@Brigby

18

@jimpark another simple solution to the progression curve is to just have a relatively low top reward / pack threshild and then give like 350 runes for every 20 ribbons past the goal.

A third option is also radically different progression curves based on mastery. Silver gets the pack a lot sooner than Platinum. Right now, it’s just the prize earned at each tier that increases but the ribbons required is constant.

19

I am more of a proponent of having a second non coalition event running durring the weekend with standard boosters as the rewards at all tiers. Give newer players something to go for while more experienced players duke it out with the bosses. Something like:
10: 3 card booster
25: Kaladesh booster
50: Origins booster
80: Amonkhet Booster
120: Hour of Devastation

20

Its funny, the first ever event in MTGPQ was a PvE that wasn’t a boss battle. It was the most universally loved event, and the top request for a rerun after they stopped. It was the Oath of the Gatewatch (I can never remember the exact name) event. The format was what they now use for the Kaladesh PvE, which is basically a limited-time only story chapter.

Even though I am sick of playing the same 2 events like this (Would it be possible to add Oath and Avacyn’s Madness to the cycle @Brigby ), it is by far the best format for all players. It provides a challenge for new players and unlimited attempts to figure out how to beat it, a relaxed way to get rewards and play around with new deck ideas against unique opponents for the top players (and it gives more runes than grinding out Training Grounds).

I think future PvE events should be structured more like that. The Boss Fight is a fun concept, but its difficult to execute and balance properly in any game, especially this one. If you absolutely must keep using it, I do like the idea that there is a cap on how many ribbons each person can contribute to their coalition score, although it will create quite the logjam at the top.