Asynch draft experience results

    • Sukebe wrote:

      I never said it was easy or hard. Only that people don't know either way. You chose to read more into that than I actually wrote. I only mentioned it could be harder than thought because so many say it is probably easy. By your own logic and your own posts there is nothing wrong with doing that so I fail to see why you take offense to it.

      I admit I should have put "so many" instead of everyone though. But did it really deserve all of this from you? While I usually disagree with you this hardly seems like your usually well thought out posts.
      All of this? My initial comment was only a single sentence.

      I didn't take offense at your statement. I didn't say or imply it was incorrect - just incomplete. I do think that those who keep saying that everything is hard are more damaging than those who keep saying that everything is easy, because it makes the devs look bad.

    • As a Dad who can't string more than an hour and a bit together, the gauntlet works great for me.

      I agree that the waiting times, especially for 2-0 matches, are spectacularly painful, but it's more a symptom of the small playerbase than the format itself.

      [Minor Hijack]
      With the game getting on in age, my real concern is that we shouldn't miss the boat in actively marketing it to get more players. The team, while dedicated and brilliant, is made of people, and people will move along when opportunity comes knocking.

      We should have a critical mass of players that are well-established and generating enough revenue to minimise the impacts of those events.
      [/End Hijack]

    • I no longer voluntarily play async drafts. If I could use my weekly ticket on evo I would.

      I don't like the payout and don't like the differences in strategy/skill. Also don't appreciate payouts not always being paid out.

      Edit: And I don't even like evo, I'm being forced to play a format I don't enjoy because I enjoy it only slightly more than async draft.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Katkilla ().

    • Goliathus wrote:

      Reading this thread I really feel like HexEnt should bring back the 8 man pod draft and have both formats up. "Not having the player base for both queues" is not a valid reason if the people who prefer 8 man pod draft are not playing the async draft already.

      What? on top of snooty overreaction you want them to rant about normal draft firing only every 2 hours?

    • Gregangel wrote:

      Goliathus wrote:

      Reading this thread I really feel like HexEnt should bring back the 8 man pod draft and have both formats up. "Not having the player base for both queues" is not a valid reason if the people who prefer 8 man pod draft are not playing the async draft already.
      What? on top of snooty overreaction you want them to rant about normal draft firing only every 2 hours?
      I like my game with a lot of salt and I would be happy to get 4 copies of S.A.L.T. Bot if the Dwarves ever invent them. And last I checked, the forum of every mainstream game out there are filled with rants, maybe Hex needs more of them to be successful. :rolleyes:

    • JeffHoogland wrote:



      There is plenty of skill the leverage in async draft and it is definitely lower variance than any form of sealed.

      I have no idea how you can come to that conclusion that it has less variance then any other form of sealed I would even argue it has more variance from my 2-0 experience I always had match up's against people with decks a few times better pool and drafted cards that were better then anything I had in my pool. So it's for sure more variance for me.

    • Treasure wrote:

      I have no idea how you can come to that conclusion that it has less variance then any other form of sealed I would even argue it has more variance from my 2-0 experience I always had match up's against people with decks a few times better pool and drafted cards that were better then anything I had in my pool. So it's for sure more variance for me.
      There is pool variance in sealed too. You just don't get the chance to draft around opening crappy packs in sealed, so if your deck is bad, it is just that - bad.

      In draft there is so much removal at common / uncommon in this current format that if you are ending up with a bad deck you are likely drafting poorly.

      I'm probably not going to change your mind, but I'm winning over 70% of my matches in draft, which means the format doesn't have a ton of variance in it.

    • JeffHoogland wrote:

      The people complaining about async draft having less / no skill compared to "traditional" drafting, but play sealed / evo confuse me.

      I started recording my draft matches this season after my first 25~ gauntlets. I've won 141 matches and lost 45.

      There is plenty of skill the leverage in async draft and it is definitely lower variance than any form of sealed.
      I cannot speak for everyone, but here is how it is for me. If there were still classic draft available with large time investment and waiting time, I would play it 99% of the time, because I love the format, including cutting, counterpicking etc.

      Now, when lot of what I love was removed and for me that also means that it needs less skill, I am faced with two options. Playing draft which is not much fun anymore and the times are horrid. Or playing evo, which I do not like, but is fast.

      For me its not better or more fun, just faster way to grind new cards to be honest. (Thats why I put up this topic, in hope maybe sometime soon I can play mode I actually love and enjoy)

    • JeffHoogland wrote:

      The people complaining about async draft having less / no skill compared to "traditional" drafting, but play sealed / evo confuse me.
      I think some of them just choose to play evo because they refused to see the current drafting as "drafting", not that evo is better in terms of variance. Say I am a Big Mac fan, and McDonald decided to revamp their Big Mac to something that is...not a Big Mac to me. So, I decided to give the "New Big Mac" a middle finger and grab other burger on the menu. It doesn't mean that the other burger are tastier(equivalent of "less variance" in this analogy) than a Big Mac to me, I just simply don't acknowledge the "New Big Mac" to be worthy of the name, "Big Mac". At least the other burgers are still the same old other burgers.

    • i don't really play evo unless it's the only mode for the card pool, but it does the power/consistency tradeoffs somewhat properly. there's at least some puzzle/dilemma with the deck construction, and there can be more variety when you're playing cards that wouldn't make the list in draft

      draft gauntlet makes it super easy to get a 40-card deck without including any mediocre/weak cards. and the prize payouts kind of incentivize constructing the same decks over and over again

      i still only play draft gauntlet for the rare occasions where i get some absurd synergy-based deck that would literally never happen in evo, but most of the time it's just too easy

      it's basically tuned for newer players with the 17-card packs, and i kind of accepted that change if it helped make the game more accessible. but after so many changes, the whole concept of having tough choices and dilemmas is absent most of the time, and that's kind of what limited is all about

    • JeffHoogland wrote:

      The people complaining about async draft having less / no skill compared to "traditional" drafting, but play sealed / evo confuse me.

      I started recording my draft matches this season after my first 25~ gauntlets. I've won 141 matches and lost 45.

      There is plenty of skill the leverage in async draft and it is definitely lower variance than any form of sealed.
      I agree with you that this has more skill than evo and sealed but to me its still half draft half sealed compared to the old format which is not what i am looking for. I can't fault anyone for enjoying this format it has a lot of upsides to it but i want my "real" drafts back even if its once a day, only on weekends only from 4-8 pm on saturdays. I don't care i just want the real deal back because it is what i loved about limited.

    • Wolzarg wrote:

      half draft half sealed compared
      I'm curious what part of it is sealed?

      I can understand people not liking it... but claiming it's 'half sealed' is literal nonsense. There is no part of draft gauntlet that is closer to Sealed than a Draft because it IS A DRAFT. And even the 'pod nature' applies to in-person sealed tournaments as well... so using that to compare doesn't work either.

      Why can't people just accept that there can be draft formats they don't like that are still drafts? Why is that such a hard concept... why do they have to deny what it is and try to pretend it's something else just to justify not liking it?

      I don't like coffee ice cream. It's still ice cream. It's just a flavour of ice cream that doesn't have the stuff I like and has stuff I don't like. I don't like deluxe pizza because even though it has some toppings I like, it also has some I dislike. I don't like DotA because even though I like MOBAs it has a few elements I dislike and thus it doesn't appeal to me. It's still a MOBA, but it's one I dislike.

      Draft Gauntlet is a form of draft you dislike. But it is still 100% a draft. It is still 100% a real draft.
      Gamer. Streamer. Photographer. Writer. Anime Lover. Possessor of Stuffed Animals.

      Also... I'm terrible at this game.

    • I think he is saying that it is partially like sealed because you may not be in the same pod you drafted. Also, the format no longer really rewards hate drafting like it use to.

      One issue that isn't brought up as much is that asynch makes imbalances even more glaring. In the past, if wild was weak in limited you could come up with a pretty good wild deck that did alright. Now 2-0 decks are extremely good and would be extraordinarily hard to get in normal draft.

    • Eraia wrote:

      Wolzarg wrote:

      half draft half sealed compared
      I'm curious what part of it is sealed?
      I can understand people not liking it... but claiming it's 'half sealed' is literal nonsense. There is no part of draft gauntlet that is closer to Sealed than a Draft because it IS A DRAFT. And even the 'pod nature' applies to in-person sealed tournaments as well... so using that to compare doesn't work either.

      Why can't people just accept that there can be draft formats they don't like that are still drafts? Why is that such a hard concept... why do they have to deny what it is and try to pretend it's something else just to justify not liking it?

      I don't like coffee ice cream. It's still ice cream. It's just a flavour of ice cream that doesn't have the stuff I like and has stuff I don't like. I don't like deluxe pizza because even though it has some toppings I like, it also has some I dislike. I don't like DotA because even though I like MOBAs it has a few elements I dislike and thus it doesn't appeal to me. It's still a MOBA, but it's one I dislike.

      Draft Gauntlet is a form of draft you dislike. But it is still 100% a draft. It is still 100% a real draft.
      You are just being too technical on the wording when it is not necessary. We are not writing a science report here. Ever heard of someone saying "music nowaday ain't music"? It's kind of like that. As for half draft half sealed, here how I see it:

      In a sealed tournament, you open a bunch of cards(let's call it a one-man pod), make a deck and fight with other people that has their own one-man pod.
      In a draft tournament, X persons share a bunch of cards(let's call it a multiplayer pod), take the cards they want to put into their deck and fight people that also pick cards from the same(bold,italic and underline cuz it's key) multiplayer pod.

      In the current async draft, 8 persons share a bunch of cards(so a multiplayer pod), take the cards they want to put into their deck from their pod and (has the chance to) fight people that pick cards from other(you get the gist) multiplayer pod. Sounds like half draft, half sealed to me. Half draft because you pick cards like a "normal draft"; half sealed because you are not just playing with people in your own multiplayer pod.

    • Pandaemonium wrote:

      like sealed because you may not be in the same pod you drafted.
      Yet there are pod-based sealed tournaments in paper tcgs too... so that's even a bad comparison. There's no sharing of cards, yet you play within a 8-player pod.

      A 'draft' is literally a setup where people select an item from a limited selection in turns whereas a sealed is when you use the entire packs you bring yourself. The setup of the tournament after is irrelevant to it being called a draft or sealed, by definition. A pod sealed would still be sealed, not half-sealed, half-draft.
      Gamer. Streamer. Photographer. Writer. Anime Lover. Possessor of Stuffed Animals.

      Also... I'm terrible at this game.

    • Eraia wrote:

      Pandaemonium wrote:

      like sealed because you may not be in the same pod you drafted.
      Yet there are pod-based sealed tournaments in paper tcgs too... so that's even a bad comparison. There's no sharing of cards, yet you play within a 8-player pod.
      A 'draft' is literally a setup where people select an item from a limited selection in turns whereas a sealed is when you use the entire packs you bring yourself. The setup of the tournament after is irrelevant to it being called a draft or sealed, by definition. A pod sealed would still be sealed, not half-sealed, half-draft.
      I really dont like when someone takes a sentence out of a comprehensive reason and picks it apart. Hoogland is bad about that also. Read the entire thought process and comment on that rather then one small factor about why asynch is kind of like sealed. Also who cares if it is 10% or 1% like sealed.

    • Pandaemonium wrote:

      Also who cares if it is 10% or 1% like sealed.
      I tend to quote the part I want to reply to directly, since there are sometimes parts of the quote I either have nothing to say about or are summed up within other parts. My apologies.

      It's 0% like sealed.

      It is 100% like draft.

      When you set up a tournament, there are two components: The selection process and the tournament process.

      Drafting is a selection process, asynchronous matchmaking is a tournament process.

      Constructed is a selection process, pod based is a tournament process.

      Sealed is a selection process, bracket is a tournament process.

      A draft gauntlet is a draft selection process with an asynchronous tournament process.
      A pod draft is a draft selection process with a pod based tournament.
      you could even do a 64 man draft tournament where you have 8 drafting groups and after that you get seeded into a bracket style tournament.


      The problem is people are confusing how you get your deck(selection process) with how the tournament is played(tournament process). Draft is not a tournament process. It is a selection process. But for a long time the ONLY form of drafting(asynch is hard with in person paper events ;)) was 'pod drafting' so they didn't call it anything but 'draft', so people got into a habit of assumign draft described both when it doesn't. Draft is literally just how they get the cards.
      Gamer. Streamer. Photographer. Writer. Anime Lover. Possessor of Stuffed Animals.

      Also... I'm terrible at this game.

    • Wolzarg wrote:

      JeffHoogland wrote:

      The people complaining about async draft having less / no skill compared to "traditional" drafting, but play sealed / evo confuse me.

      I started recording my draft matches this season after my first 25~ gauntlets. I've won 141 matches and lost 45.

      There is plenty of skill the leverage in async draft and it is definitely lower variance than any form of sealed.
      I agree with you that this has more skill than evo and sealed but to me its still half draft half sealed compared to the old format which is not what i am looking for. I can't fault anyone for enjoying this format it has a lot of upsides to it but i want my "real" drafts back even if its once a day, only on weekends only from 4-8 pm on saturdays. I don't care i just want the real deal back because it is what i loved about limited.

      That would be really nice, a day or a rotating day of old draft and old payouts once a week.