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.
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.
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.
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.
When you went to combat, could your angels actually not attack? When I get back to work on Monday I'll take a look. Very likely the game was marking them as unable to attack because they are indeed forbidden from attacking YOU and your planeswalkers by Sandwurm Convergence... as well as the normal rules of the game of course. #wotc_staff
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BO3 limited is less populated because the usual reward structure scares people away. I love BO3 Magic and would play only this type of drafts, but as a decent not great player I will always lose gems on average, so if I want more drafts I have to play BO1 which I don't love. I'm referring not only to the cube, but also regular draft (where I lose 500 gems for going 2-1) or the draft challenge where I went 5-2 and was gold neutral). I can assure you BO3 queues would be full of life if the payoffs encouraged more people than just the top echelon, infinite drafters etc.
It's not just draft modes. It's also ladder, constructed events, even Day 1 of Arena Opens. Best-of-1 modes get played more. Players value the ability to play quick games.
Seems like if you make the Bo1 easier to find, it will be more populated! Try the other way. Put Bo3 front and center and Bo1 stuff behind the "other game modes" toggle and see where players land :)
(You could probably do it as an A/B experiment, but making sure your docs are clear gets trickier that way).
The trend holds even among players who have flipped the toggle and can see both modes. Right this moment, Traditional Cube is listed above Bo1 Cube, and it's still the case.
This scheduling is us being conservative and consolidating Cube players into a single queue as activity naturally decays. Best-of-3 game modes are always less populated than Best-of-1, and if the drafts end up taking too long to fire a table or pair matches, it creates a worse overall experience for players.
That said, we'll very likely make it longer next time around. KLR Traditional Draft held up acceptably enough for two weeks, and Traditional Cube looks like it will be able to handle it, too.
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