Quest Mode Drafting

[friarsol]

Hi,
I guess that may have been one of the reasons coldsnap draft was such a horrible draft format
There are so many cards with snow-activation costs, and relatively few snow-covered lands in the packs...I guess I'll pick those (much) higher in my next draft..

I don't mind a few basic lands as a bonus, but gettting and having to sell 50 seems a bit over the top, but i guess that's personal. As snow-covered lands won't be added it won't yield a 'secret' bonus of 1000 credits

Yea, professional players drafted snow basics fairly high in the format. If you poke around, you can see an article or two about it I'm sure. If drdev's basic land picker gets integrated back into Desktop Forge (assuming it isn't already?), it would probably resolve this request, as you won't get any extra basics aside from what's in your deck and since the deck you build is added to your quest deck list, we don't want that deck to be unplayable if the basics don't get added into your pool afterwards (and you don't happen to have any of that kind).

[serrasmurf]

That makes sense. Thnx

[serrasmurf]

Here some remarks after playing many more quest drafts
- it is still an awesome addition
- thumbs up to those who created the draft modality (pick orders, deck construction, etc.), it is far from easy to win a tournament, if you're in the wrong colours, don't have a bomb or make some mistakes you'll lose (still curious to how Forge does handle drafts)
- the link with my quest is often weak though. The draft has very little to offer to quest deck development (except the first one), it''s more a fun side activity than a supporting modality
- a solution is to make it part of your campaign (i'll restrain myself this time from posting my usual suggestions on that )
- a simple elegant solution could be a more interesing reward: if you win the tournament you may pick a rare from the draft format card pool. If you come in second you pick an uncommon. There is always a relevant card for your deck and it is fun to choose. Additionally a choice between 2 available drafts tournaments immediately become a relevant one
- core set drafts are imho less interesting because they offer similar draft formats, but make up a big part of the available tournaments, i wouldn't mind if they would shop up a bit less (or if you have more choice of tournaments)

[friarsol]

(still curious to how Forge does handle drafts)

We pull in data from other sources for which cards are picked in which order (for specific drafts). The AI will either choose the highest card available from that list, or the highest card in it's chosen colors (depending on a handful of different factors). But basically, it shouldn't let things wheel that are considered highly sought after. (Assuming the draft is structured enough that we have a draft pick list for it).

I think I played a Morningtide/Lorwyn draft where one of my opponents had 4 Feudkiller's Verdict. I'm pretty sure I lost that one. Then it just deckbuilds with 18 lands and 22 spells things that are AI capable, and presto. Not too shabby a decklist.

[Fizanko]

Does the difficulty level of the quest influcence the AI draft ?
I mean in easy it could sometime pick not-that-good cards instead of the "big awesome broken" card while in hard or expert it would go for the best it see first ?

[KrazyTheFox]

Here some remarks after playing many more quest drafts
- it is still an awesome addition
- thumbs up to those who created the draft modality (pick orders, deck construction, etc.), it is far from easy to win a tournament, if you're in the wrong colours, don't have a bomb or make some mistakes you'll lose (still curious to how Forge does handle drafts)
- the link with my quest is often weak though. The draft has very little to offer to quest deck development (except the first one), it''s more a fun side activity than a supporting modality
- a solution is to make it part of your campaign (i'll restrain myself this time from posting my usual suggestions on that )
- a simple elegant solution could be a more interesing reward: if you win the tournament you may pick a rare from the draft format card pool. If you come in second you pick an uncommon. There is always a relevant card for your deck and it is fun to choose. Additionally a choice between 2 available drafts tournaments immediately become a relevant one
- core set drafts are imho less interesting because they offer similar draft formats, but make up a big part of the available tournaments, i wouldn't mind if they would shop up a bit less (or if you have more choice of tournaments)

On my phone at the moment, so individual points are a bit hard to respond to, but I do like a lot these suggestions, especially the improved reward selection (if have any other ideas that front, I'd love to hear them). I'll see about implementing a few before I'm traveling again after I return from this trip.

My first priority will be to clean up and separate the ui from the logic as much as possible so that the mobile version is easier to implement.

Another little project I'd like to work on is a card image generator to convert existing cards (from LEA to CNS) to the new M15 design. I'm not a fan of pre-modern cards at all and I love the new borders, so since mtgimage and mtgjson will make this a simple project (well, simple as generating 22k+ cards can be), I think it'll a nice thing to release alongside my image downloader. It'd also give me cards with oracle text updates, so I'll have to do less switching between views in the Android version to decipher older cards.

Does the difficulty level of the quest influcence the AI draft ?
I mean in easy it could sometime pick not-that-good cards instead of the "big awesome broken" card while in hard or expert it would go for the best it see first ?

It does not, but I also have no idea how to code that. I literally copied the regular draft mode code and tweaked a few things to get it to save to the right locations. I don't recall there being an easy way to access the draft AI. This is something that I'd like to implement, but it may have to wait a couple months for me to get settled after this move (should be done around mid August).

[Fizanko]

It's not a problem, take your time, the draft mode is fun enough to keep us busy

[serrasmurf]

I'm not a fan of pre-modern cards at all

I love them! I guess it is a bit of nostalgia. I like lands and gold cards much better in modern. But I don't like red and green (the're hardly red and green) and hate what they did to artifacts.
And of course the old art is much cooler..
Though I guess it will be a nice tool for a lot of people.

[KrazyTheFox]

I'm not a fan of pre-modern cards at all

I love them! I guess it is a bit of nostalgia. I like lands and gold cards much better in modern. But I don't like red and green (the're hardly red and green) and hate what they did to artifacts.
And of course the old art is much cooler..
Though I guess it will be a nice tool for a lot of people.

I guess I'm kind of a fan of older cards. I have thousands of old lands that people seem to love. I get great deals on trades for cards I don't want at all.

I've just cleaned up the logic in the quest draft UI controller so adding it all to the Android version should mostly be a matter of creating the UI.

[excessum]

It seems that the "age" for quest draft tournaments is not being triggered correctly. QuestAchievements.addWin() does not seem to be called in quest draft matches so the following

Code: Select all

if (drafts != null && currentDraft != -1) {
    drafts.get(currentDraft).addWin();
}

will never be called to decrement existing draft tournaments for clean-up by generateDrafts().

I was wondering why the overpriced ancient set tournaments never seem to get rotated out after playing dozens of matches and winning several tournaments with more recent sets (and reasonable entry prices...).

[KrazyTheFox]

It seems that the "age" for quest draft tournaments is not being triggered correctly. QuestAchievements.addWin() does not seem to be called in quest draft matches so the following

Code: Select all

if (drafts != null && currentDraft != -1) {
    drafts.get(currentDraft).addWin();
}

will never be called to decrement existing draft tournaments for clean-up by generateDrafts().

I was wondering why the overpriced ancient set tournaments never seem to get rotated out after playing dozens of matches and winning several tournaments with more recent sets (and reasonable entry prices...).

The prices are a fault of the booster pack prices not being quite balanced. The quest entry price is based on the price of 3 boosters multiplied by 1.5.

As for the bug, thanks for pointing out that horrible flaw in logic! I've just committed a fix for that that will allow your tournaments to rotate as they should. All the extra tournaments should disappear at once after enough wins.

[excessum]

The prices are a fault of the booster pack prices not being quite balanced. The quest entry price is based on the price of 3 boosters multiplied by 1.5.

As for the bug, thanks for pointing out that horrible flaw in logic! I've just committed a fix for that that will allow your tournaments to rotate as they should. All the extra tournaments should disappear at once after enough wins.

Yeah I understand the pricing is based on the booster prices. This pretty much makes it very unlikely for anyone to ever bother with tournaments "spawned" in Shandalar and Jamuraa since it involves ancient unbalanced sets with entry prices that are easily 10 times or more of typical drafts. The fact that the cards are 99.9% crap only makes it worse.

Do you think it might be better if the "spend token" function allows the user to select the draft blocks like the current Sanctioned mode drafts? I know that you coded it to create a new draft randomly based on the world settings but it would be useful to not have to play jackpot if the user wants say, a Scars of Mirrodin block or Avacyn Restored draft.

[serrasmurf]

Jamuraa or Shandalar have the same problem when you play a normal quest, some boosters/cards are very expensive. If you choose to restrict yourself to such a world than it is often more fun to not use the normal (real world) card prices. Forge will then charge you with default prices for M/R/U/C.
I don't mind the high prices for cards from these sets, you got to work a bit for your power9 cards! And I like the high stakes for the quest drafts of these sets. I loved saving credits, then selling almost everything to be able to enter a 30k legends draft, knowing if i'd lose in the first I was screwed and winning would yield 50/60k.

Krazy: do you plan to incorporate the adjusted rewards I suggested? (choose a rare from the sets that are part of the draft. Looking forward to that! Some challenge rewards are very similar, so maybe you find some usable code there (but i guess it is very simple too).

[KrazyTheFox]

Do you think it might be better if the "spend token" function allows the user to select the draft blocks like the current Sanctioned mode drafts? I know that you coded it to create a new draft randomly based on the world settings but it would be useful to not have to play jackpot if the user wants say, a Scars of Mirrodin block or Avacyn Restored draft.

I really like that idea. I'll add that to my to-do list.

Jamuraa or Shandalar have the same problem when you play a normal quest, some boosters/cards are very expensive. If you choose to restrict yourself to such a world than it is often more fun to not use the normal (real world) card prices. Forge will then charge you with default prices for M/R/U/C.
I don't mind the high prices for cards from these sets, you got to work a bit for your power9 cards! And I like the high stakes for the quest drafts of these sets. I loved saving credits, then selling almost everything to be able to enter a 30k legends draft, knowing if i'd lose in the first I was screwed and winning would yield 50/60k.

Krazy: do you plan to incorporate the adjusted rewards I suggested? (choose a rare from the sets that are part of the draft. Looking forward to that! Some challenge rewards are very similar, so maybe you find some usable code there (but i guess it is very simple too).

Eventually I'll look at re-working the draft rewards, but I just haven't felt like programming outside of work lately. I'm still settling in and all that. I may get around to fixing up a few things with this long weekend, but no promises.

[serrasmurf]

Eventually I'll look at re-working the draft rewards, but I just haven't felt like programming outside of work lately. I'm still settling in and all that. I may get around to fixing up a few things with this long weekend, but no promises.

No sweat, I recently moved too and somehow it consumes all my productive time in the weekends. I cherish any leasure time i get in which I don't have to do anything productive, like playing Forge