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That was a fun match; thanks for the game!
Also, to continue the theme here, I've been playing since closed beta (duh) and I've only played against 3 other orange names on the live servers.
I wonder if there are required to NOT play net decks or jank. Yah know?
Employees are free to play what they want on prod. Designers and others who mess with balance are encouraged to play a good variety of decks/modes so they understand the space, but it's really up to the individual. For me, I'm mostly playing limited or janky fun things in the play queue. This was my "Mindless Aggression of Birds" deck, which I was largely playing for my "Play 40 Creatures" quest.
Thank you too, it was a really fun and great game! I got lucky with top-decking the shock, otherwise you would most likely have beaten me. Hope to meet you again, always up for the challenge ;)
In general there are a variety of reasons I'm playing: - First, I've been playing Magic since Dark/Fallen Empires, and I just really love the game :) - I want to understand what the player experience generally feels like. I complete my quests and weekly wins (almost) every week, just finished my ZNR pass, etc. I want to know first-hand how doing that feels. - For overall meta understanding we have a variety of other data/tools we use to get the whole sense, but I like to supplement that with some qualitative experience. The data does a good job of showing what is/isn't balanced; it does worse with showing what is/isn't fun to play with/against. - I really enjoy playing jank/off-meta, and recently I've been spending a lot of time in the Play queue so I can better understand how well the matchmaking is working there
Basically, I think it's really important for anyone making a game to be an active player so they have a good understanding of what that's like.
Okay I see, thank you for the reply! Sounds like a good concept to try to understand the game from the players point of view, and trying jank/off-meta decks would be the best way to do it, since those decks often are the most fun to play. Follow-up question: When you play on your "work-account" is it still like a normal account except for the orange name, or do you for instance have access to all cards in the game so you can try out a variety of decks?
I only have the one account on the live servers, and it works like everyone else's (barring name color). No special permissions, access, or anything like that. Since I like to be able to try out a variety of decks, I draft a lot and build elaborate spreadsheets to track getting to rare complete. I play a good bit, and it's also pretty easy to convince myself to spend on the game :)
Most real testing happens on our internal development servers. There everyone on the team has many accounts with 1000 WCs, etc. so they can test whatever they need to, try particular decks, whatever. For example, before each emblem event we'll have playtest rounds on these internal servers to help us test what does/doesn't need to be in the ban lists. But for understanding what the real metas feel like, there's no substitute for playing on live.