Another week, another town hall in the books! A reminder that this isn't a full recap, just the 5 things I found most interesting and worth sharing. Let's go ahead and dive in!
Town Halls move to Bi-Weekly
I suppose I'm not surprised by this considering the fact that the team works on 2-week sprints in their current Agile system. Having team members take time out of their day to discuss what was probably already discussed the previous week doesn't make much sense, so the move to align with that schedule will be a productive one. I'd be sad about not having a Town Hall on given Monday, but the good news is Aggy wants to keep the weekly cadence with the community and is planning to do some kind of Player Open Mic on off weeks to provide a touch point on weeks with no Town Hall. I'm very much looking forward to those!
Land 1.5 & Soulkeep (Tower Defense) shifting to July?
With the new roadmap showing the Age of the Phoenix going through August 1st, the speculation is that we may run into delays for the major summer releases. June was the most recent date given but based on comments in the Town Hall it seems like July is a safer bet at this point. The team feels very confident with their planning this Age and I'm hopeful that will translate to a more concrete delivery date within the Age of the Phoenix.
WeirdBeard on Marketing/Release Process
One common complaint the community has had over the past year or so is the waiting time between when new products/features are announced and the actual implementation. So much hype is built up that it actually turns sour if left for too long without a release or resolution. Now don't get me wrong, I love when team members come onto the Town Halls and drop some cool alpha, but I agree with Weirdbeard that this needs to be managed better to help with community expectations. By having everything go officially through marketing I think it will help to set community expectations and the resulting sentiment will trend more towards 'surprise and delight' rather than a lot of the salt we have seen recently.
Aggy Addressing Card Inflation
There is no doubt that we have a LOT of cards out in the ecosystem right now, so it was nice hearing Aggy acknowledge this head on and talk about the fact that the team isn't going to add any more cards into the mix via mini-set or Rebellion until land and new game modes can eat through the supply. Cards are infinitely inflationary so finding creative ways to remove them from circulation is something the team is going to have to be constantly on top of and following the release of Chaos Legion into a bear market we haven't seen anything work effectively yet. Let's hope Land, Soulkeep, and any new game modes can be the answer.
Modern Format Bot Ban Details
Unfortunately, banning bots from Modern Format will not be as simple as the flipping of a switch. I appreciate the team's thorough approach to this, because they could just turn Cloudflare on and say they fulfilled the requirements of the proposal, but we all know that will only impact bot farms which have largely been removed from the game since early 2022. High level bots, battle helpers, and the like are what the team is currently working through and I look forward to seeing what the final thought and ultimate implementation are to make Modern Format as human friendly as possible.
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