Booster Draft - Suggestion and Feedback

[The Oracle]

Please post suggestions and feedback about Booster Draft. Thanks.

[Acsabi44]

I know that it's supposed to be random, but there's a vast difference between the power level of various stacks and boosters.
Some trimming wouldn't hurt.

Or an even better option than after-seeding manual rearrangement is to allocate "power levels" to the cards (poor- Skeleton, average- Wyrm,  powerful- Antimatter, Very powerful- Phoenix) prior to seeding them, and make sure that no two cards above average is in the same stack, and no two "very powerful" cards are in the same booster.

I know that this is much like the common- UC-rare-Mythic classificatin in MtG, but still I think it is necessary to avoid huge differences between the team's initial picks, that could very much affect the final outcome.
I would be glad to make an initial classification of all cards, based on common evaluation of their usage in PVP. Then this classification could be further discussed.

[Scaredgirl]

Here's an event idea that uses a similar classification: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,24878.0.html

I wanted to make it completely random because it's simpler that way. There are many good cards in Elements, so I don't think there are any "instant win" stacks. If we take the opening round as an example, each team gets to pick one from 8 stacks. I'm pretty sure that each booster pack has at least one strong stack, giving everyone a strong start.

But I could be wrong. Maybe some teams get all the best cards and run over everyone else. If that is the case, I'll just have to file this event under "FAIL", and make the changes you suggested.

The reason I'm not a huge fan of your system, is that it's maybe too balanced. I like it when the stacks can be totally uneven, and you have to find the best ones.

But if we used your system, wouldn't it make more sense to have 3 power levels? This way one stack could have one card from each level.

[Acsabi44]

well in our starting booster, we have 2 stack containing 2 nymphs, which are, despite their power level, pretty much unpickable stacks...

Compare this with an Antimatter-Reverse time or a Graboid-GoTP stack.
Or with the Phoenix(most players would say it's the best card in the game)- Ice shield (usually the main reason to play water) one.
Or with the voodoo doll-freeze stack, which is a half deck in itself.

3 levels would be okay, in that case the "average" and "powerful" categories should be merged since most of the cards are "average" or "powerful", with a few "very powerful" and "poor" among them. It would be impossible to balance stacks of 3 by placing one card of each power level into them.
Generally, most stacks could contain "average" cards, while the ones with a "very powerful" would contain a "poor" as well.


From the top off my head I can name only a few which can be considered "very powerful": Phoenix, Graboid, then maybe Nova and Discord. "poors" are equally small in number.
But of course this would need a more throughful evaluation.

[Scaredgirl]

well in our starting booster, we have 2 stack containing 2 nymphs, which are, despite their power level, pretty much unpickable stacks...

Compare this with an Antimatter-Reverse time or a Graboid-GoTP stack.
Or with the Phoenix(most players would say it's the best card in the game)- Ice shield (usually the main reason to play water) one.
Or with the voodoo doll-freeze stack, which is a half deck in itself.

Some Stacks being weak while others are strong, is not a problem. The whole idea is that the best ones get picked first. And even if a single Booster Pack contained all the best cards, it doesn't matter because the Booster Packs are rotated. In theory, it's pretty much impossible for one team getting a huge card disadvantage over others, unless all other teams pick the "wrong" Stacks.

[TStar]

Getting 2 or even 3 good cards in a single stack isn't enough to unbalance the event.  I might get Immolation, Nova, and Steal in a single pack but if I never get a chance to draft good cards to complement them it doesn't really matter.

[Scaredgirl]

I was thinking that if this event happens again, maybe we should start battles before the drafting is even over. Maybe we could have 5 rounds of drafting, then start the battles at the same time we start round 6 drafting. In other words, we would have battles during the last 3 rounds of drafting.

Advantages:
- we could start battles sooner
- drafting between rounds could add a new element to deckbuilding because you can draft cards based on who you will face

Disadvantages:
- deckbuilding will be difficult when you have only drafted 15 cards (easy to counter)

[TStar]

Some teams might have an unfair advantage as well if they get a strong combo early, whereas some of the counters might not develop until later in the draft.  Considering the entire drafting phase will last only 7 days I'm not sure if there is really a big need to try and speed up the event more as it's already moving along fairly quickly.  As the current rules stand the entire draft plus the first 2 rounds will be completed in 15 days.  If you change the dueling phase from 4 days to 3 days then you'll be done in under two weeks.  I think the current event timeline is pretty well perfect in length.

Draft: 7 days (7 picks + autopick)
Duels: 4 days each for 7 teams = 28 days (21 days if you want 3 day duels)
Total: 35 days for the entire event (28 days if you want 3 day duels)

[Jappert]

Making the duelphase last less then 4 days would mean serious trouble for people like me.

Just saying....

[kev]

We need to ensure draft rules don't change once drafting has started, and such rule changes should definitely never be applied retroactively.  For instance, Team Z cannot be allowed to draft after the deadline for any reason at all if that was the original rule.  Team Y, Team X, and all the other teams may have drafted according to their belief that Team Z missed the deadline.  Adding rule changes, if absolutely necessary, should be on a this-point-forward basis only.

[UTAlan]

We need to ensure draft rules don't change once drafting has started, and such rule changes should definitely never be applied retroactively.  For instance, Team Z cannot be allowed to draft after the deadline for any reason at all if that was the original rule.  Team Y, Team X, and all the other teams may have drafted according to their belief that Team Z missed the deadline.  Adding rule changes, if absolutely necessary, should be on a this-point-forward basis only.

If I'm not mistaken, these suggestions are for future instances of the Booster Draft, not for changing the current event.

[SnoWeb]

I don't where I read that but I thought we would have the possiblity to trade some of our cards at the end of the card drafting period. Unfortunatelly I haven't been able to find the quote back. Maybe I just imagined it. I still think it could be nice ...