Duels 2015

[Utilitarian]

So, downloaded the (free demo) of Duels 2015 today. Messed around with it a little, seemed alright. I liked the greater freedom in deck construction. Thought I'd pay up for the full version.

Looked into it... distressing.

So 10 bucks for the full campaign. Alright.
20 bucks to unlock all the cards. Well half the fun is opening boosters, no need to pay that I'll just grind out the campaign mode right, I'll get the stuff eventually.

Wait, what's this? "Premium" boosters? *research*

Oh so... infact... the "full unlock" doesn't unlock the "Premium" cards, which can only be purchased separately for cash and can't be actually unlocked within the game? And are also randomized? And are two dollars each?...

Suddenly I'm not so sure I want to contribute money to this product anymore. Thoughts?

[Under_Score]

Yeah, it's a little worrying to me that packs are a thing now. I'm a little worried Duels might just become a single-set MtGO at some point. However, I'm still getting the base game, and I don't think that it's promoting a bad model specifically. In fact, I think buying the base game but not buying any of the peripheral stuff may actually send a stronger message about what I do and don't support.

[MowDownJoe]

First Duels that I'm not buying. It's very sad for me, as they were always fun distractions and I liked the promos. Oh, well. If I don't get a free Soul, I won't be too distraught.

[JackSlack]

It's not worth it?

Neato. I'll be back here playing Magic 2013 still! (2014 was poorly optimised for iPad.)

[Volafortis]

Complaining about paying extra for premium cards is silly. I always felt like foil cards in digital games were meaningless anyway. At least in Paper Magic the foiling looks nice and is actually something shiny that I have.

In Duels or MTGO, I feel like it's no different than paying money for new skins for characters in other games, which I don't mind, since it's purely cosmetic anyway.

I already bought Duels 2015, but I got it for Steam, so I haven't had the chance to play it yet. Still, it can't be any worse than Duels 2014 was.

The main thing I'm annoyed by is that they got rid of the little puzzle challenges (at least, that's what I've heard.)

Still, getting to build a full deck is a nice change of pace.

[Phosphatide]

The big article on the game claims you should be able to nab boosters through in-game battles. I'm assuming these little events that would award you said boosters are infrequent enough to make your collection take a very long time?

Honestly, while it sounds like a big bummer that they ended up trying to find a way to squeeze out more money from us, I didn't buy the game on Steam with the deck building and card collection in mind. I just wanted to romp through the planes and find out what happens to Garruk.

And a free soul I guess. Probably not gonna make my money back like with the Scavenging Ooze last year, but maybe I'll finally build a Standard deck with it. If they end up being good at all.

[Kapol]

Complaining about paying extra for premium cards is silly. I always felt like foil cards in digital games were meaningless anyway. At least in Paper Magic the foiling looks nice and is actually something shiny that I have.

From my understanding, it doesn't mean premium in the sense that they're foil. It means that they're specific cards you can only get from the paid boosters. Don't pay? You can't have access to a not insignificant amount of cards from the sounds of it. Here's a list.

[Duckay]

Bearing in mind that I haven't played much Duels, the big thing I've been hearing buzz about that sounds awesome is deck building. Can anyone comment on that? Does that feature go any way towards balancing that out?

[Utilitarian]

Bearing in mind that I haven't played much Duels, the big thing I've been hearing buzz about that sounds awesome is deck building. Can anyone comment on that? Does that feature go any way towards balancing that out?

Well that's kind of the issue. By including this premium card issue along side deckbuilding it ends up cheapening the deckbuilding because you're deliberately hamstringing the new cool feature.

[Phosphatide]

Non-iPad versions have now been released.



A good start. This is just from me trying to change the game to windowed mode at 16:9 ratio.

Somehow I should've expected the graphical settings for Steam to be this bad, as it's clearly never priority or even on the checklist in the first place with any of the DotP games. If you insist on changing something in the video settings (it's widescreen by default, don't touch anything, seriously), enjoy playing the game in 4:3 aspect ratio because they never put any other resolutions besides 1024x768 for 4:3 and there's actually nothing available for 16:9 (looks like it's 300x240 or something). For fun, try switching to 16:9 full screen from there.

[DaMage]

So I've spent a few hours playing through it and I'll outline the positives and negatives:

Pros:
-Preset Decks are no more, you now unlock a decent pool of cards and build decks from them.
-They have provided fixing and variation so multi-colour decks are pretty viable.
-The Campaign is the same length as before, but for each plane you can fighting a number of different random duels (used for unlocking more cards)
-The duel screen interface is cleaner and better. Though some additional markers for what step you are in would be nice (hard to tell if the opponent has past the point of declaring blockers or not).
-Unlike previous games, every duel is randomized (eg, the AI draws different each time, not preset like they did before). Meaning if you get to a hard AI you can eventually get lucky if they have a bad draw.

Negs:
-A fair number of card (called "premium") are locked behind a paywall, and the 'premium' boosters that give you access cost $2 and give a random selection.
-The challenge mode from the previous games is gone.
-Two Headed Giant multiplayer is gone.
-The menu interface has gotten worse and there seems to be input lag on them. Lucky once in a duel that doesnt happen.
-The deckbuilding interface is similar to previous game and really annoying to use.
-You get to play against a number of interesting archtypes in the campaign, but do not have access to any of those cards (eg, you play against Orzhov extort, but you cannot get any card with extort for your decks)

It's not perfect, but for $10 (steam version) you can get access to a decent sized pool of cards. I'm having quite a bit of fun with it, if they sell a couple of dlc expansions like they normally do later on and boost the card count it will be a really nice game. But if they continue down the route of 'buy special booster pack for access to a couple of random special cards' I think the interest will quickly die off.

For example, some of the really powerful cards like Kozilek, Doubling Season, Stoneforge Mystic, Talrand, Darksteel Ingot etc are all behind the paywall. Now youstill have plenty of powerful cards in in the main game like Time Walk, Planar Cleansing, Baneslayer Angel, Brimaz etc, but it is annoying there are a bunch of archtype specific card you have to gamble real money to try and get.

[susu.exp]

Some notes:
The premium cards are semi-random. Not only do you never get cards you can't use, providing a cap for "unlock everything", but the ones you do get are predominantly in the colors you pick at the atart of the game. So think pre-seeded prerelease pack here.

You also got one pack for preordering and a pack if you own Duels 14. These are given you prior to picking your colors though.

They have announced that the expansions will not increase the premium pool.

Now, I'm not a fan of the microtransactions and even less a fan of not announcing that the game would have them ahead of time. We will see if it is pay to win in multiplayer or not (according to the dev the decks you can build with the premium cards won't be more powerful). The one thing I find astonishing is that DotP is - according to Mark Rosewater - the basic rulebook. Yes, there is still a Pdf and of course there are the comprehensive rules. But to start somebody with MtG, DotP is the teaching tool. Now it is a teaching tool with microtransactions. That's a bit like making FNM judge calls something you have to pay for.

According to the dev AMA 2HG had some issues and they will bring it back "done right", not clear whether in a patch or as DLC.