As for the hate Mayael gets:
Mono colored decks are worried about Iona getting flipped out and shutting them down.
Control decks are worried about Avacyn and What's-her-name, Host of Herons making you hard to interact with.
Combo Decks don't like rampant fatties going hulk smash on their faces too fast.
The Beasts deck I brought I knew had some problems because I'd played vs some fairly well honed decks and fallen short on the money but I really wanted to play something new (for me) and something enjoyable. Plus who doesn't love smashing face with Spiritmonger??
The fact is the deck is just not serious enough for the event but it is a lot of fun to pilot and can just steal games with tricks like Aid into Deadbridge Chant which only needs to stick around a turn to be awesome. The numbers are probably wrong but I have few opportunities to test these days so meh. Better fun than good?
As for my opponents, thus is how TWA goes for me. Though the unexpected win vs Pyro's elves was nice as I felt it was a perfectly played match against all odds. Which is rare for me. The rest of the matches I was a little tilted.
I should note that the article links to the old events calendar and not a current one.
Mayael is a ton of fun, who doesn't like bashing with fatties? Plus as you found out you can make a competitive deck pretty cheaply. In addition you found Guild Feud, which I don't think anyone else would have given a second look. However, this quote made me remember what would sometimes happend with my old Mayael deck:
"The worst game I had was when I sat down with a Thada Adel, Acquisitor theft deck and two reanimate decks, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and The Mimeoplasm. I was denied the ability to do anything and the sole purpose of my existence at the table was to be raped and pillaged for fatties by my opponents. I've never been so close to ragequitting before."
Haha, the life of a Mayael player! You give some pretty good ways to combat this, but you didn't put any of them in the deck (Ground Seal, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus are all in your budget). Why not?
Only other thing you're missing is Kessig Wolf Run. Maybe Mana Reflection too. Looks like fun though!
Got on the Beta to play a game of Commander on Wed night and it went pretty much fine. The only issue is the countdown that takes place after the person who set up the table tries to start the game. We got 4 players, the countdown starts from 3, and during that 3 seconds all of a sudden 2 more people jump in. So we end up with a 6 player game that isn't really what I signed up for.
Other than my issues with the battlefield set up (which obviously won't get changed) it worked well for me. I just gotta get used to the interface a little more, which means actually, you know, paying attention.
Funny... Mutavault is going to be in M14, but the price went up. I'm hoping the reason they left thoughtseize out is because they are going to rotate it back into standard too
In a straight side by side comparison 9's will be better. There are not any that can completely wreck your position. It also had a 1/3 chance of a flier. At the same time there are a number that are basically vanilla creatures. So if you get an extra card or for some reason skip a drop, going to 9 is fine. 8's have a lot more with abilities that are really good, so the difference from 8 to 9 is very minor but slightly in 9's favor. Without an extra card, mana accel., or missing a drop for a good reason, stay on 8 is what I would recommend.
Some of the issue with the videos could easily be that it was my first recording and first time using the program. I used BBflash (I think that's the name) as it meet my needs and was free. If people have suggestions for a better program let me know!
I was wondering about some of the numbers that you clarified. Knowing which CMC card to cast in the late game is often important. No more 10s for me. Do you think that in vacuum eights are weaker than nines? I really can't tell; i expect nines to dominate them but it seems there are many mediocre guys there as well.
In regards to your content: Include as much data in it as possible. You started off well, but for example it would be very valuable to know the actual numbers in the "To island or not to island?" debate. Number of crippling islandwalkers vs. number of good activated abilities and upkeeps with U.
I know it's excessively difficult to gather data in Momir, but you have to be the one that does it, you are the chosen one. I will shall maybe explain when the time comes, just thrust me for now.
It's also kind of painful to watch you play Beta. Let's hope with the new updates it becomes bearable soon.
And finally, please don't make any more Momir articles. The format has been gaining a significant amount of momentum lately and, at this pace, we can soon expect a literal spike in player quality. Obviously we cannot allow that, how will we farm all this money then? Think about the future.
I just want to note that since writing this storm has beaten dredge as my favorite archetype. It's synergy with suspend made it much easier and so much more fun.
Why try to replicate one of the worst aspects of physical card games (flicking through binders)???
This makes no sense to me. How is This one of the worst aspects of the physical card game? Maybe, for you, flickering through other people's collections is isn't great. Maybe you had some horrible experiences with binders, I don't know.
I personally like organizing and being able to view my most valuable cards in a way that is visually pleasing such as a collection binder context.In fact I don't just like it. I find it essential. Without this the game is 100% less appealing. There are many many people who have played as long as I have who feel the same way.
Having other ways to view the collection makes sense but not at the cost of something many people find to be essential. Heck before I start building decks I usually go through my admittedly huge collection set by set in the collection binder and wait for inspiration to strike. Without that process (impossible with the current collection view in V4 as there is no visually pleasing way to do so) deck building is more of a chore and so is collecting and managing the collection.
Nothing was easier than right clicking on the binder view after setting some filters for commonality/set and then clicking make all tradeable/untradable.
Now? I have to make what is essentially a deck list and then make it the active binder. (Which is a genius idea implemented poorly by the way.) This is a painful slow process that can easily be screwed up. Not a fan of the current implementation.
The key point to upgrading some software piece is to NOT take away usability and functionality where possible. If no one liked the collection binder then I could see doing away with it. But that is just not the case. Instead they could have made it an optional way to view and interact with your collection. They didn't bother. This is just one aspect that makes v4 incredibly bad for me.
I wouldn't disagree that we deserve to get new innovative features. But if you listened to some of the interviews with Ryan Spain a while back, that's actually one of the key reasons for v4. The V3 coding is such a mess that it became essentially impossible for them to add new features to it. The beta doesn't attempt to do anything revolutionary (although I note that it does now have automated win/loss tracking which is something people have been asking for for a long time), but once it's at a point where it actually works for the base game they intend to implement some of those other features. These are the sorts of things they were exploring in a client survey a couple of months back. Many of these will probably never happen, but it's the type of features that they'll be looking at once they have a client that they can actually program new stuff for:
Deck builder app for smartphones
Leaderboards and achievements
Account leveling based on Magic Online activity
One-player practice mode against a low-skill AI opponent
Constructed deck rental for events
Voice chat
Sale of premium account upgrades
Game play and tournament statistics
Easy deck importing and/or sharing
Retail gift cards for Magic Online
Grand Prix tournaments on Magic Online
In-client reporting for bugs, conduct, and reimbursement requests
Event reminders sent to phone and/or email
Game and/or draft replay sharing in client and/or social media
Magic Planeswalker Points integration
If you guys remember way back when, we were actually promised this sleek, browser based platform, instead of the beta version of the client that we're seeing now. That program ending up falling through for whatever reason, and we were stuck with this as the backup option. They panicked when they found out that their initial idea was no longer a viable plan, so they seemingly just threw this together.
I agree that some things are better. Drafting does look improved. There are features, as have been mentioned above, such as "attack all", which are great to finally see, but it's just not enough to be considered a step in the right direction. RATHER than push forward with a new client, they should have implemented some of these changes, amongst others, into the current client. It is flat out ridiculous that Classic has not fired a DE in so long. Prize support has been straight up embarrassing. How long have we been promised leagues for now? It is flat out hilarious watching a 800+ person PTQ fail. And why is it that such a small percentage of players can make automated trades? We shouldn't have to code our own bots to make trades at this point.
Players want functionality. The changes are aimed towards cosmetic appeal, and frankly, most players don't seem to mind the way the current client looks. How often do you hear complaints about window sizes? Tab layouts? The Deck Editor? These aren't changes that get people excited about this game. While I agree that some of these MAY be barriers for SOME new players, let's face it, the software has to cater to older players as well. If they are losing people who have been playing this game for years, only to gain a couple of new players who may or may not stick around, is that justification for these types of changes? We want changes that will get older players AND newer players excited.
It's unfortunate that it is going to take a lot of players leaving this game before they realize they can't get away with subpar effort on their end.
I walked into this article with the pretense that the Beta Client would just be a cosmetic improvement over the regular client. That I could just jump in and do everything I would normally do and be okay. This is the mindset that most people will come into the Beta. And they will be miserable and further hate the client.
I did a thought experiment. What if I dismissed everything I knew about Magic Online and loaded up the Beta? What would that experience be like? It was pleasant! (unfortunately for me, the lag was still there)
I don't necessarily think the old way is better (I'd have to use the Beta more to pass judgment on that), I'm saying it LOOKS worse. Perception is the thing here. A lot of people will look at it and compare immediately to the old client. That is the basis on which I made that statement (Opinion based, not fact). My issue is I like space. When I'm building a deck, I like to have space because I move things around a lot. More space in the deckbuilding screen allows me to do this, even if it looks cosmetically horrible. The Beta limits what I can do since my deckbuilding screen is essentially cut in half. This is something I'm willing to work with though, as long as it doesn't lag on me.
As for your better points:
-Dual lands - even if you can do that, I still like choosing what colored mana I want (especially important with vivid lands and spells like firespout), but I will agree that it's a nice thing to have.
-Attack all - would definitely help me when I get in a board stall with Assemble the Legion.
-Stacking - I prefer to have things seperated. I even have my lands this way. But if it does make the board less cluttered, then that's a good thing.
-Pop-ups - I don't really like these, so much so that I disabled them.
-Trade binders - I only trade as needed, so having multiple binders wouldn't do me much good. However, if you are extensively trading then it's a good feature.
I have no idea what a SSD hard drive is, so I don't know if that helps or not. If you say the Beta is better, then I'm inclined to agree since you say you've used it more. Personally, I don't like the lag. If the Beta ran as fast as V3 does for me, I'd use the Beta since eventually we'll have start using it.
"Like the collection/deck building screen. On looks alone, it feels worse than the old client. It might be better than the old one, but it doesn't feel better using it the first time."
see, this is something that just strikes me as "you're used to the old one so you think the old way is better". I only started playing MTGO at the start of last year. I never understood why the deckbuilder and collection screen were different, and I was always frustrated by the annoying pseudo-binder replication of the collection. I always thought this was silly - you're a digital game, why try to replicate one of the worst aspects of physical card games (flicking through binders). So the beta client's way of doing things makes much more sense to me. I can do things I could never do in the old collection screen, like look at all my different basic lands from all different sets, or browse through a customised sub-set of cards, and then once i've done that I can instantly start building a deck out of it. So comments like this (which I see all the time) just strike me as "used to it" bias rather than anything inherently wrong with the beta client.
"Also, is the old client just that much worse than the Beta, or is that because you're more used to the Beta than the old client? What does the Beta do bettter? (besides drafts)"
I actively dislike the old client, and this goes beyond "used to it" bias. I have played a couple of games on the old client when on a different machine or whatever and here's a few things (beyond the collection screen that I just talke about) that stand out to me:
* casual game creation and joining is 100x better. "next game" is a feature you can't live without once used to it.
* Dual land and multi-land tapping. In beta, you hold "m" (customisable key) and dual lands automatically tap for the first-listed colour. Also, you can right click on a land of a certain type and tap all of them at once for the same colour. These things are so useful that once you learn them, you really don't know how you used play the game without it. I wince when I see people on vids tapping lands for sphinx's revelation.
* "Attack all". another feature that you can't imagine playing without once you've played with it, especially if you play token decks.
* The battlefield UI genuinely does do a better job of representing and sorting out a cluttered board state. Stuff like token stacking, "from the middle" sorting and pairing of linked creatures makes a huge difference in grokking convoluted board states.
* Graveyards and exiled/revealed zones are handled much better. The graveyard in particular (as of the current build) is really easy to make big when you need it, shrink it when you don't or have somewhere in between if needed. The way the exiled/revaled zones are handled is also much more intuitive and cleaner to me.
* I really like the popup notifications, makes it much easier to multitask without missing something.
* The draft improvements are obvious, from deckbuilding on the fly to seeing the table to auto-separating out of creature and non-creature spells in your pile to auto-submit of you deck if you forget to.
* Multiple trade binders is a feature I'm actually starting to use (you select one to be active at any one point) and is surprisingly useful when you're doing particular trades with particular people or bots.
There's more, but those are the ones that first come to mind.
I also have never had any significant performance issues with the beta (my computer is about 5 years old, though I do run on a SSD hard drive, dunno if that helps). I hope and trust that the program will be properly optimised for a wider range of machines before release, but from my perspective the underlying program is a big upgrade.
"And this is the key thing: as a NEW player, one who didn't have his expectations formed by V3, I found the beta to be intuitive and user-friendly, which is the exact opposite of the V3 client."
This is so true. As I've mentioned above, I only started playing early last year. I very nearly gave up on the game as soon as I loaded the client, because of how budget it looked. I used to play star wars ccg online, and the free, user generated program that I used (holotable) looked way better than the official mtgo client, which looked more like one of the budget pseudo-card rendering ccg engines like lackey ccg. The immediate visual and interface barriers that V3 put to new users, which are substantially higher than the beta, cannot be underestimated.
I think that the biggest difference in experiences with the Beta is the amount of experience with V3. I only started playing MTGO about 18 months ago, and I found V3 APPALLING. The entire process, from installation to the main menu to finding a match to playing was ugly, incomprehensible, and completely opaque to a new player. I would never have gotten past stage one if I didn't have an experienced friend telling me how things worked.
I applied for the closed beta almost immediately and began playing matches on the beta client right away. Now, 18 months ago the beta client was a lot worse than it is now (especially the lag, which was nearly unbearable), but even so I found it a vast improvement. And this is the key thing: as a NEW player, one who didn't have his expectations formed by V3, I found the beta to be intuitive and user-friendly, which is the exact opposite of the V3 client.
I have since gotten used to V3 and can use both clients equally well, but I don't consider this a badge of honor. The V3 interface is frankly bizarre, and the fact that beta changes things so thoroughly is a good thing, since it brings the interface in line with the way we expect most modern software to work.
Thank you! To be fair, I spent the least amount of time and effort on the deck builder because all I had to do was find the .txt file and make a few changes. If I were to make a new deck, I'm sure it would be more difficult and time consuming. I could not imagine trying to build a EDH deck in the Beta Client. In the old client it takes me a bit to load it, I'm sure if I tried to load one in the Beta it would crash instantly.
I haven't used the store yet, but I'll be sure and try it out soon.
I did not touch on the filters since I wasn't really allowed to make games (the PRE plays games on the 30 min time, but the Beta only allows 25 and 40). Today I did have to use the filter, and it was so irritating that I didn't want to play other casual games because of it. One of the problems that I'm going to encounter from now on is how the client autosaves your decks into formats. While it's nice to know what format my deck is once I save it, it's difficult to set up a Classic game in which I want to test Legacy Silverblack games, as I would have to save the deck as a Classic deck for testing, and save it as a Legacy deck for PREs.
Thanks for the article. I think you understated how difficult deck building is in this client. I built the same commander deck in both clients (separately, so they are slightly different decks, based on the same idea) and the deck that took me a little over 50 minutes to build in V3 (to pull cards, sort organize and cut into a "first draft" deck for playtesting) took 4 hours and 30+ minutes in V4. Granted, one of the biggest glitches of the .311 build is not fixed in .315 (list mode not working with color filters set), but still that is an insane jump. And it wasn't just a familiarity thing (as I had built a few decks in the client before and knew where to use allthe functions I needed) it was dealing with problems sorting and viewing, glitches in moving batches of cards (a highlighted cards scrolled off screen is de-selected so you can;t batch move more cards than are visibile in the collection pane of the scene), and other little things that interefered. I wrote up a long post detailing all of the issues on the mothership forums.
Also, some of the things you did not touch on:
1) The Store: Easily the best improvement from V3 (I don't draft,so I think this is the only improvement over V3). Really, I hate the beta so far, but will admit to a few things I like. This one feature they did very well on.
2) Play scene: I find the maze of filters needed just to play a game so bad, that except for one game I only play solitaire on the Beta. I can consistantly make my own solitaire game to play; but doing teh same things to get commander or tribal games often gets different results. I don't reliably get games to show on the right, based on my settings on the left. And I despise the "next open game" idea that just puts you at any table. As bad as the combo deck editor/collection scene is, if I could design one thing from scratch it would be this.
Edit: Forgot to mention, in the update to 311/315 (for those that have not done so yet) a few of us have reported a major error in the colection scene. The most distinctive way to tell if you have the glitch is a column of X icons showing at the right side. After a few days WotC found the only fix was to uninstall and reinstall (and that did fix it for me). Screenshot at http://images.onesite.com/community.wizards.com/user/treamayne/large/53a...
Yeah, I figured out how to dock the windows. My only problem is that you can't dock a chat other than the in-game chat to your match. For instance, I wanted to dock the #Silverblack chat to my match because there was a discussion about the Beta Client, but I could only dock the in-game chat.
makes sense... forgot this is written mid week.
You broke the first two rules of Fight Bear.
As for the hate Mayael gets:
Mono colored decks are worried about Iona getting flipped out and shutting them down.
Control decks are worried about Avacyn and What's-her-name, Host of Herons making you hard to interact with.
Combo Decks don't like rampant fatties going hulk smash on their faces too fast.
:)
Hey now I have played with Guild Feud! That card is a hidden house.
"I should note that the article links to the old events calendar and not a current one."
Oh, thanks! Fixed (for the next ones). I can't tell how that link got there, and why nobody ever told me before. :)
The Beasts deck I brought I knew had some problems because I'd played vs some fairly well honed decks and fallen short on the money but I really wanted to play something new (for me) and something enjoyable. Plus who doesn't love smashing face with Spiritmonger??
The fact is the deck is just not serious enough for the event but it is a lot of fun to pilot and can just steal games with tricks like Aid into Deadbridge Chant which only needs to stick around a turn to be awesome. The numbers are probably wrong but I have few opportunities to test these days so meh. Better fun than good?
As for my opponents, thus is how TWA goes for me. Though the unexpected win vs Pyro's elves was nice as I felt it was a perfectly played match against all odds. Which is rare for me. The rest of the matches I was a little tilted.
I should note that the article links to the old events calendar and not a current one.
Mayael is a ton of fun, who doesn't like bashing with fatties? Plus as you found out you can make a competitive deck pretty cheaply. In addition you found Guild Feud, which I don't think anyone else would have given a second look. However, this quote made me remember what would sometimes happend with my old Mayael deck:
"The worst game I had was when I sat down with a Thada Adel, Acquisitor theft deck and two reanimate decks, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and The Mimeoplasm. I was denied the ability to do anything and the sole purpose of my existence at the table was to be raped and pillaged for fatties by my opponents. I've never been so close to ragequitting before."
Haha, the life of a Mayael player! You give some pretty good ways to combat this, but you didn't put any of them in the deck (Ground Seal, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus are all in your budget). Why not?
Only other thing you're missing is Kessig Wolf Run. Maybe Mana Reflection too. Looks like fun though!
Got on the Beta to play a game of Commander on Wed night and it went pretty much fine. The only issue is the countdown that takes place after the person who set up the table tries to start the game. We got 4 players, the countdown starts from 3, and during that 3 seconds all of a sudden 2 more people jump in. So we end up with a 6 player game that isn't really what I signed up for.
Other than my issues with the battlefield set up (which obviously won't get changed) it worked well for me. I just gotta get used to the interface a little more, which means actually, you know, paying attention.
Mutavault wasn't "confirmed" for M14 until after the prices would have been pulled.
Funny... Mutavault is going to be in M14, but the price went up. I'm hoping the reason they left thoughtseize out is because they are going to rotate it back into standard too
In a straight side by side comparison 9's will be better. There are not any that can completely wreck your position. It also had a 1/3 chance of a flier. At the same time there are a number that are basically vanilla creatures. So if you get an extra card or for some reason skip a drop, going to 9 is fine. 8's have a lot more with abilities that are really good, so the difference from 8 to 9 is very minor but slightly in 9's favor. Without an extra card, mana accel., or missing a drop for a good reason, stay on 8 is what I would recommend.
Some of the issue with the videos could easily be that it was my first recording and first time using the program. I used BBflash (I think that's the name) as it meet my needs and was free. If people have suggestions for a better program let me know!
It kills moxen.
Serves better on offense/defense than Gorilla Shaman.
I was wondering about some of the numbers that you clarified. Knowing which CMC card to cast in the late game is often important. No more 10s for me. Do you think that in vacuum eights are weaker than nines? I really can't tell; i expect nines to dominate them but it seems there are many mediocre guys there as well.
In regards to your content: Include as much data in it as possible. You started off well, but for example it would be very valuable to know the actual numbers in the "To island or not to island?" debate. Number of crippling islandwalkers vs. number of good activated abilities and upkeeps with U.
I know it's excessively difficult to gather data in Momir, but you have to be the one that does it, you are the chosen one. I will shall maybe explain when the time comes, just thrust me for now.
It's also kind of painful to watch you play Beta. Let's hope with the new updates it becomes bearable soon.
And finally, please don't make any more Momir articles. The format has been gaining a significant amount of momentum lately and, at this pace, we can soon expect a literal spike in player quality. Obviously we cannot allow that, how will we farm all this money then? Think about the future.
8/10, stay ouf of Momir, punk.
I just want to note that since writing this storm has beaten dredge as my favorite archetype. It's synergy with suspend made it much easier and so much more fun.
Why try to replicate one of the worst aspects of physical card games (flicking through binders)???
This makes no sense to me. How is This one of the worst aspects of the physical card game? Maybe, for you, flickering through other people's collections is isn't great. Maybe you had some horrible experiences with binders, I don't know.
I personally like organizing and being able to view my most valuable cards in a way that is visually pleasing such as a collection binder context.In fact I don't just like it. I find it essential. Without this the game is 100% less appealing. There are many many people who have played as long as I have who feel the same way.
Having other ways to view the collection makes sense but not at the cost of something many people find to be essential. Heck before I start building decks I usually go through my admittedly huge collection set by set in the collection binder and wait for inspiration to strike. Without that process (impossible with the current collection view in V4 as there is no visually pleasing way to do so) deck building is more of a chore and so is collecting and managing the collection.
Nothing was easier than right clicking on the binder view after setting some filters for commonality/set and then clicking make all tradeable/untradable.
Now? I have to make what is essentially a deck list and then make it the active binder. (Which is a genius idea implemented poorly by the way.) This is a painful slow process that can easily be screwed up. Not a fan of the current implementation.
The key point to upgrading some software piece is to NOT take away usability and functionality where possible. If no one liked the collection binder then I could see doing away with it. But that is just not the case. Instead they could have made it an optional way to view and interact with your collection. They didn't bother. This is just one aspect that makes v4 incredibly bad for me.
I wouldn't disagree that we deserve to get new innovative features. But if you listened to some of the interviews with Ryan Spain a while back, that's actually one of the key reasons for v4. The V3 coding is such a mess that it became essentially impossible for them to add new features to it. The beta doesn't attempt to do anything revolutionary (although I note that it does now have automated win/loss tracking which is something people have been asking for for a long time), but once it's at a point where it actually works for the base game they intend to implement some of those other features. These are the sorts of things they were exploring in a client survey a couple of months back. Many of these will probably never happen, but it's the type of features that they'll be looking at once they have a client that they can actually program new stuff for:
Deck builder app for smartphones
Leaderboards and achievements
Account leveling based on Magic Online activity
One-player practice mode against a low-skill AI opponent
Constructed deck rental for events
Voice chat
Sale of premium account upgrades
Game play and tournament statistics
Easy deck importing and/or sharing
Retail gift cards for Magic Online
Grand Prix tournaments on Magic Online
In-client reporting for bugs, conduct, and reimbursement requests
Event reminders sent to phone and/or email
Game and/or draft replay sharing in client and/or social media
Magic Planeswalker Points integration
If you guys remember way back when, we were actually promised this sleek, browser based platform, instead of the beta version of the client that we're seeing now. That program ending up falling through for whatever reason, and we were stuck with this as the backup option. They panicked when they found out that their initial idea was no longer a viable plan, so they seemingly just threw this together.
I agree that some things are better. Drafting does look improved. There are features, as have been mentioned above, such as "attack all", which are great to finally see, but it's just not enough to be considered a step in the right direction. RATHER than push forward with a new client, they should have implemented some of these changes, amongst others, into the current client. It is flat out ridiculous that Classic has not fired a DE in so long. Prize support has been straight up embarrassing. How long have we been promised leagues for now? It is flat out hilarious watching a 800+ person PTQ fail. And why is it that such a small percentage of players can make automated trades? We shouldn't have to code our own bots to make trades at this point.
Players want functionality. The changes are aimed towards cosmetic appeal, and frankly, most players don't seem to mind the way the current client looks. How often do you hear complaints about window sizes? Tab layouts? The Deck Editor? These aren't changes that get people excited about this game. While I agree that some of these MAY be barriers for SOME new players, let's face it, the software has to cater to older players as well. If they are losing people who have been playing this game for years, only to gain a couple of new players who may or may not stick around, is that justification for these types of changes? We want changes that will get older players AND newer players excited.
It's unfortunate that it is going to take a lot of players leaving this game before they realize they can't get away with subpar effort on their end.
I just ragequitted the Open Beta and then found this. Well timed!
I wish the spam bots would not comment here, I always get so happy when I get a comment on one of my articles and then ... spambot!
I walked into this article with the pretense that the Beta Client would just be a cosmetic improvement over the regular client. That I could just jump in and do everything I would normally do and be okay. This is the mindset that most people will come into the Beta. And they will be miserable and further hate the client.
I did a thought experiment. What if I dismissed everything I knew about Magic Online and loaded up the Beta? What would that experience be like? It was pleasant! (unfortunately for me, the lag was still there)
I don't necessarily think the old way is better (I'd have to use the Beta more to pass judgment on that), I'm saying it LOOKS worse. Perception is the thing here. A lot of people will look at it and compare immediately to the old client. That is the basis on which I made that statement (Opinion based, not fact). My issue is I like space. When I'm building a deck, I like to have space because I move things around a lot. More space in the deckbuilding screen allows me to do this, even if it looks cosmetically horrible. The Beta limits what I can do since my deckbuilding screen is essentially cut in half. This is something I'm willing to work with though, as long as it doesn't lag on me.
As for your better points:
-Dual lands - even if you can do that, I still like choosing what colored mana I want (especially important with vivid lands and spells like firespout), but I will agree that it's a nice thing to have.
-Attack all - would definitely help me when I get in a board stall with Assemble the Legion.
-Stacking - I prefer to have things seperated. I even have my lands this way. But if it does make the board less cluttered, then that's a good thing.
-Pop-ups - I don't really like these, so much so that I disabled them.
-Trade binders - I only trade as needed, so having multiple binders wouldn't do me much good. However, if you are extensively trading then it's a good feature.
I have no idea what a SSD hard drive is, so I don't know if that helps or not. If you say the Beta is better, then I'm inclined to agree since you say you've used it more. Personally, I don't like the lag. If the Beta ran as fast as V3 does for me, I'd use the Beta since eventually we'll have start using it.
"Like the collection/deck building screen. On looks alone, it feels worse than the old client. It might be better than the old one, but it doesn't feel better using it the first time."
see, this is something that just strikes me as "you're used to the old one so you think the old way is better". I only started playing MTGO at the start of last year. I never understood why the deckbuilder and collection screen were different, and I was always frustrated by the annoying pseudo-binder replication of the collection. I always thought this was silly - you're a digital game, why try to replicate one of the worst aspects of physical card games (flicking through binders). So the beta client's way of doing things makes much more sense to me. I can do things I could never do in the old collection screen, like look at all my different basic lands from all different sets, or browse through a customised sub-set of cards, and then once i've done that I can instantly start building a deck out of it. So comments like this (which I see all the time) just strike me as "used to it" bias rather than anything inherently wrong with the beta client.
"Also, is the old client just that much worse than the Beta, or is that because you're more used to the Beta than the old client? What does the Beta do bettter? (besides drafts)"
I actively dislike the old client, and this goes beyond "used to it" bias. I have played a couple of games on the old client when on a different machine or whatever and here's a few things (beyond the collection screen that I just talke about) that stand out to me:
* casual game creation and joining is 100x better. "next game" is a feature you can't live without once used to it.
* Dual land and multi-land tapping. In beta, you hold "m" (customisable key) and dual lands automatically tap for the first-listed colour. Also, you can right click on a land of a certain type and tap all of them at once for the same colour. These things are so useful that once you learn them, you really don't know how you used play the game without it. I wince when I see people on vids tapping lands for sphinx's revelation.
* "Attack all". another feature that you can't imagine playing without once you've played with it, especially if you play token decks.
* The battlefield UI genuinely does do a better job of representing and sorting out a cluttered board state. Stuff like token stacking, "from the middle" sorting and pairing of linked creatures makes a huge difference in grokking convoluted board states.
* Graveyards and exiled/revealed zones are handled much better. The graveyard in particular (as of the current build) is really easy to make big when you need it, shrink it when you don't or have somewhere in between if needed. The way the exiled/revaled zones are handled is also much more intuitive and cleaner to me.
* I really like the popup notifications, makes it much easier to multitask without missing something.
* The draft improvements are obvious, from deckbuilding on the fly to seeing the table to auto-separating out of creature and non-creature spells in your pile to auto-submit of you deck if you forget to.
* Multiple trade binders is a feature I'm actually starting to use (you select one to be active at any one point) and is surprisingly useful when you're doing particular trades with particular people or bots.
There's more, but those are the ones that first come to mind.
I also have never had any significant performance issues with the beta (my computer is about 5 years old, though I do run on a SSD hard drive, dunno if that helps). I hope and trust that the program will be properly optimised for a wider range of machines before release, but from my perspective the underlying program is a big upgrade.
"And this is the key thing: as a NEW player, one who didn't have his expectations formed by V3, I found the beta to be intuitive and user-friendly, which is the exact opposite of the V3 client."
This is so true. As I've mentioned above, I only started playing early last year. I very nearly gave up on the game as soon as I loaded the client, because of how budget it looked. I used to play star wars ccg online, and the free, user generated program that I used (holotable) looked way better than the official mtgo client, which looked more like one of the budget pseudo-card rendering ccg engines like lackey ccg. The immediate visual and interface barriers that V3 put to new users, which are substantially higher than the beta, cannot be underestimated.
I think that the biggest difference in experiences with the Beta is the amount of experience with V3. I only started playing MTGO about 18 months ago, and I found V3 APPALLING. The entire process, from installation to the main menu to finding a match to playing was ugly, incomprehensible, and completely opaque to a new player. I would never have gotten past stage one if I didn't have an experienced friend telling me how things worked.
I applied for the closed beta almost immediately and began playing matches on the beta client right away. Now, 18 months ago the beta client was a lot worse than it is now (especially the lag, which was nearly unbearable), but even so I found it a vast improvement. And this is the key thing: as a NEW player, one who didn't have his expectations formed by V3, I found the beta to be intuitive and user-friendly, which is the exact opposite of the V3 client.
I have since gotten used to V3 and can use both clients equally well, but I don't consider this a badge of honor. The V3 interface is frankly bizarre, and the fact that beta changes things so thoroughly is a good thing, since it brings the interface in line with the way we expect most modern software to work.
Thank you! To be fair, I spent the least amount of time and effort on the deck builder because all I had to do was find the .txt file and make a few changes. If I were to make a new deck, I'm sure it would be more difficult and time consuming. I could not imagine trying to build a EDH deck in the Beta Client. In the old client it takes me a bit to load it, I'm sure if I tried to load one in the Beta it would crash instantly.
I haven't used the store yet, but I'll be sure and try it out soon.
I did not touch on the filters since I wasn't really allowed to make games (the PRE plays games on the 30 min time, but the Beta only allows 25 and 40). Today I did have to use the filter, and it was so irritating that I didn't want to play other casual games because of it. One of the problems that I'm going to encounter from now on is how the client autosaves your decks into formats. While it's nice to know what format my deck is once I save it, it's difficult to set up a Classic game in which I want to test Legacy Silverblack games, as I would have to save the deck as a Classic deck for testing, and save it as a Legacy deck for PREs.
Thanks for the article. I think you understated how difficult deck building is in this client. I built the same commander deck in both clients (separately, so they are slightly different decks, based on the same idea) and the deck that took me a little over 50 minutes to build in V3 (to pull cards, sort organize and cut into a "first draft" deck for playtesting) took 4 hours and 30+ minutes in V4. Granted, one of the biggest glitches of the .311 build is not fixed in .315 (list mode not working with color filters set), but still that is an insane jump. And it wasn't just a familiarity thing (as I had built a few decks in the client before and knew where to use allthe functions I needed) it was dealing with problems sorting and viewing, glitches in moving batches of cards (a highlighted cards scrolled off screen is de-selected so you can;t batch move more cards than are visibile in the collection pane of the scene), and other little things that interefered. I wrote up a long post detailing all of the issues on the mothership forums.
Also, some of the things you did not touch on:
1) The Store: Easily the best improvement from V3 (I don't draft,so I think this is the only improvement over V3). Really, I hate the beta so far, but will admit to a few things I like. This one feature they did very well on.
2) Play scene: I find the maze of filters needed just to play a game so bad, that except for one game I only play solitaire on the Beta. I can consistantly make my own solitaire game to play; but doing teh same things to get commander or tribal games often gets different results. I don't reliably get games to show on the right, based on my settings on the left. And I despise the "next open game" idea that just puts you at any table. As bad as the combo deck editor/collection scene is, if I could design one thing from scratch it would be this.
Edit: Forgot to mention, in the update to 311/315 (for those that have not done so yet) a few of us have reported a major error in the colection scene. The most distinctive way to tell if you have the glitch is a column of X icons showing at the right side. After a few days WotC found the only fix was to uninstall and reinstall (and that did fix it for me). Screenshot at http://images.onesite.com/community.wizards.com/user/treamayne/large/53a...
Yeah, I figured out how to dock the windows. My only problem is that you can't dock a chat other than the in-game chat to your match. For instance, I wanted to dock the #Silverblack chat to my match because there was a discussion about the Beta Client, but I could only dock the in-game chat.