The mulitplayer room removal is super annoying. I understand why they did it (sort of a one stop way to meet up and play with people looking for the same level of action) but the implementation is horrible. After playing last night in the Just for Fun room, I found that I had to sort the games by type, then scroll down until I saw Commander. Typically they would all stay on screen. The annoying part was that there is no distinction between 1v1 and multiplayer Commander games unless someone puts something in the notes. So I ended up joining a couple 1v1 games before getting into multiplayer. The other way to get a multiplayer game going is to create one yourself, put something in the notes, and then advertise in the chat. I had good success with this.
But it's really just a huge pain in the ass. I have heard several people mention the horrible lag. It seems apparent they didn't want to create a multiplayer room for the new UI, so might as well get us used to it now. I wonder if the multiplayer community is big enough and ticked enough to get something done about it.
Also interestingly, I didn't see anything in the article on the mothership covering the new UI about multiplayer capability or functionality.
Glad you guys like the videos! I will try to keep them coming. Unfortunately many of my replays either never get onto the system (ie., I play a game, win, then look for it under the Games tab and it isn't there) or get corrupted a couple turns in. Super freaking annoying. I've already had 3 games for next weeks deck that would be good for the article, but all of them are missing/corrupted. Le sigh.
Mana Echoes is interesting, and a card I hadn't thought of. I did have Snake Basket in my initial version as you can see, but I was disappointed to note that you can only make snakes at sorcery speed. Super annoying.
You are correct that the turn 0 starts with whoever is on the play during the time where the clock expires. But.......good players should be aware of the timeclock and play with that in mind. I see your point though.
I'm online from time to time, hit me up in game (Narrowgate on MTGO).
Geist dies to Nimble, just remember that, so if you are going to go that plan, I'd highly recommend academy ruins/engineered explosives or just run terminus like everyone else, then again, if you are on the terminus plan you should probably just be winning with mishra's and jace.
I love the article. Huge amounts of data to work with. You are right in that pauper is very healthy. I think MTGO players that really want their moneys worth should be playing pauper. I have the cards on my account for a good mono blue, I just have not tossed my hat in the ring with it (or any other format) for awhile. Since Legacy does not fire, Pauper is the way I will go when looking for a quick pick up game of magic online.
Thanks again and keep putting out the reports... you are obviously good!
Paul they already told us that the long term goal is to be able to scale the client to set filters of all types.
This was over a year ago. Granted they werent going to be able to do this until V4 was up and running.
Short term, they cold make Standard pauper happen, but long term Chris K said he wanted a cleint that could do any format aplayer might dream up of playing.
What I think would be a fair way to do "extra turns" is make sure the players note what player was on the play each game. When time runs out, the next time the "one the play" player starts a turn, the extra turn count starts with turn 0. That way both players in that game get exactly the same amount of turns for that game and it really would not cause much more of a time delay in the event.
Either way, when you are in your turn and time is called your turn becomes Turn 0 and you effectively lost what would have been your last timed turn if you had been able to pass.
Attack and don't pass in time, you get 2 more turns to attacks, attack and pass in time you get 3 attack phases. That is what I am eluding to.
I am assuming that the player taking their turn when time is called is on turn 0 at that time. I could have that wrong if turn 0 starts when the turn is passed outside of time. Please correct me if I am wrong about that. I would like to know for sure if I am right about the out side of time rounds.
The Virgin prize is awarded to the virgin tribe that performs best. As all remaining virgins are endangered, a virgin that performs well will be in the running for the Endangered prize no matter what. This has been exacerbated by making both contests have the same criterion, 'best-performing'.
If you want the prizes to diversify, diversify what is needed to win each.
Just because a tribe has not been played does not mean that tribe is automatically weak and uncompetitive. Several efreeti saw tournament play when they were legal, after all. Wildfire Efreet is just as immune to bolt and swords now as it was then. Gnomes too have seen play at the top tables, particularly bottle, but also ticking and copper.
Yeah the low count on instants and sorceries works against flipping the delver and puts more stress on correctly playing Brainstorms. The Fred Edelkamp list only has 24. The backs that up with 4 ponders in the list. In my list the Jace was acting as the back up to the top of deck fixing. The Delvers flip for the deck fine though. It was the weak counter package that needed to be fixed more than anything. It was not able to handle the counter war in Sneak and Show match-ups.
All said, you are correct that Delvers are not perfect in the deck. It might be better to concede the early game to just disrupting the opponents plans and move in G. of St. Traft. After all, they are extremely powerful in Legacy.
Hit me up on MTGO sometime if you feel like helping with testing.
Sounds like a plan to me! I'll leave all the Special Prizes and such to you.
And no joke. This past Saturday at Double, I was this close (*holds fingers 1mm apart*) to saying "[bleep] it!" and leaving you guys in the lurch. That's how frustrating the event went for me. A lot of that is due to the antique PC I'm forced to use these day, and how MTGO acts when several people PM me at once. When you see me disappear during registration, that's usually the reason: PM bombardment causes my client to puke.
The flip side is, I saw how fun to play it is, and have NO PROBLEM with you running the doubles and getting some more creds. No problem at all. I can appreciate a free Saturday afternoon every three months.
I built Chris's balance deck yesterday, cost me a couple tix to get the cards I didn't have already. It's pretty absurd against most things. It's great that there are two events now every week. I'm really happy to see this format doing so well. I like that the archetypes in events harken back to a more noble time in Magic's history. The super aggro deck vs the control deck vs the combo deck vs the midrange deck. It still feels like theres so much room to brew, like before everyone could download decklists and know they had a teir one deck. Everything's here and viable and cheap, what more could you want in a Magic format? I'm an explorer type, if I've seen everything there is to see in a format I get bored and Heirloom always has thousands of square miles yet to trek.
I'm appalled as well about the disappearance of the multiplayer room (I didn't get the update yesterday and weirdly enough the program let me in anyway, so earlier today I was in the ghost of the multiplayer room with 3 other people looking confused). The Just for Fun room was already overcrowded as it was, and I for one can't afford to have all the games shown, or my PC would slow down to impossible levels. It looks like Resource Management 101 to me: to divide your customers into marketing profiles then address each of them to where they want to go is more logic and profitable than having everything and everyone mixed together. That's why supermarkets have aisles with different product types, and not just one gigantic shelf with everything on it.
Just purely from a coder's perspective this change to how the editors work seems like a fairly intuitive one (true sandbox mode may never exist because we will never get proxies but otherwise I don't see the obstacles here). Obvious even. I know sometimes things don't get developed just because they can be but there has been a lot of words and passion given in support of this type of thing for a long time from the casual community.
As an aside, I wouldn't play tribal with sideboards but it would be cool to have the option.
Actually each pack given out represents packs potentially bought from the store, because not every pack given out would have been guaranteed to be purchased.
Granted your right I was wrong to say that the packs have no overhead value what so ever because obviously everything has some overhead of some type.
However my point was that the true overhead cost per pack given out is very very likely less then $1 each and honestly likely much lower then even that.
WE can go in circles around this subject forever and honestly get no where, but obviously Hasbro makes a killing off MTGO, else they would not have outright scrapped the sliverlight version of the client and then be working on developing yet another version to be a v4.0 client for us.
But I repeat officially here: ignore everything by Clan Leys from now on. I'll keep track of everything and announce the prizes at the end of each event (unless you want to do it, in that case I'll tell you what they are).
You now only have to care about the MTGOTraders pool.
Yeah, Blippy said (in the forum) Double Tribal will be out of rotation due to managing complications behind the scenes unless a substitute host is found. I could do that, but I feel bad taking the host fee from Blippy, so I won't do it. Also, I don't really liked the kind of decks we end up seeing in Double, but I'll elaborate more on this in the following article.
Blippy is now officially out of the Special Prizes AND Achievements.
a 100 to 200% increase is not considered skyrocketing? O.o
Remember that drafters typically try to sell everything from a pack they an to obtain more packs or tickets so they an continue drafting.
In the case of saying if delver were to jump from .11 to .25 even (which would be very possible if standard pauper became a sanctioned format)
That would add 14 cents value to each time they opened delver which isn't alot but then add in all cards the commons that jumped from .02 to even .05 because of it and you would add alot of expected value to each draft.
Values don't need to raise in the amounts that classic pauper made them raise to have dramatic effects. For example if that EV of a pack rose even by .20 cents ,that would mean that every draft would gain up to .60 value.
Granted it might not sound like alot but it's exactly these type of margins that drafters deal with on a daily basis.
@RexDart: this is a very strange concern of yours. Like, are you assuming we're doing things Blippy wasn't ok with? Of course this proposal has been on the works for at least a couple months, and both Heath Newton and Blippy had to agree to it before it was brought to reality.
I also assure you that the first reaction from less vocal members of the community (which is larger than 30, but problem is: just 5-6 members, including me, ever voice their opinions in public, and we usually do it very loudly) has been "wow, awesome!". And everything we do is to generate this kind of response, especially from players who don't just care about doing 20 damage to 3 opponents as fast as possible and get over with (sometimes I wonder if people who aim to win each game by turn 3 are really enjoying playing Magic).
The truth is: you don't care about achievements? Can't give a shit about special prizes? Fine, you ignore all of it, and you'll play exactly the same way. You won't even notice that they exist at all. So, I don't undestand why you should be concerned about something that is there for an entirely different kind of player. It's like when MaRo is asked (as recently as this very week) about why they keep printing casual cards that competitive players will never use. His answer is always the same: because casual players exist and they will enjoy those cards.
About the "extra headaches": maybe you're picturing this the wrong way. We will NOT track each game to see if something happens that will unlock an achievement. A player has to tell us if he's doing it, and I seriously doubt it will happen by chance. Nobody will even notice this is happening except for the player, his opponent who will be obviously there, and a witness. Are you concerned about Blippy? Ok, tell you what, UPDATE: Blippy doesn't count as a witness. I repeat: Blippy is officially out of achievement stuff. Don't call on him as a witness. Leave him alone. If you want the prizes, call on me, and only me. Then SBena if I'm not there. You can also send me (aicardigianluca at gmail.com) a video of the game where the achievement is unlocked, and we'll give you the prize afterwards (I actually like for this to happen anyway, because it would be nice to document the achievement here).
The special prizes are all tracked by me now. So Blippy will actually be LESS busy now, since he only manages the MTGOTraders pool, and even the math for that now is simpler.
The Virgin stuff: Virgin shouldn't be Endangered Redux. The two categories should be totally different, aiming at awarding a different kind of feat. As I wrote, the Changelings aren't allowed RIGHT NOW, until the remaining 11 Virgin Tribes will be played. When we start again, we'll reconsider it. But right now, if you play Mercenary with 8 Changelings, that's beside the spirit of the prize. You're essentially cheating, and that's unacceptable on behalf of all the players who take the spirit of the Virgin Prize seriously. And the Spirit isn't "let's make a strong competitive deck that will end T4 and happen to be Virgin as well". The Spirit is: "let's play an unplayed tribe and get a prize out of this alone". You shouldn't even compare your deck with a regular deck, you're playing a different league there. I was surprised Gnome did it so well (as your Efreet earlier), and that proves you can build and play a Virgin tribe with a certain amount of success, without resorting to any building "trick". Plus, this argument is kinda moot to begin with, since 6 out of 11 remaining Virgins have only 3 members, so they will play with 8 Changelings by rules. The other five ones have to suss out how to put their superior numbers of choices to use.
Verification of some of the achievements could be a problem. Absolutely agree that this must not be on Blippy's plate, but my inner deckbuilder is looking over that list and already devising ways to get as many simultaneous achievements as possible whilst still winning.
The mulitplayer room removal is super annoying. I understand why they did it (sort of a one stop way to meet up and play with people looking for the same level of action) but the implementation is horrible. After playing last night in the Just for Fun room, I found that I had to sort the games by type, then scroll down until I saw Commander. Typically they would all stay on screen. The annoying part was that there is no distinction between 1v1 and multiplayer Commander games unless someone puts something in the notes. So I ended up joining a couple 1v1 games before getting into multiplayer. The other way to get a multiplayer game going is to create one yourself, put something in the notes, and then advertise in the chat. I had good success with this.
But it's really just a huge pain in the ass. I have heard several people mention the horrible lag. It seems apparent they didn't want to create a multiplayer room for the new UI, so might as well get us used to it now. I wonder if the multiplayer community is big enough and ticked enough to get something done about it.
Also interestingly, I didn't see anything in the article on the mothership covering the new UI about multiplayer capability or functionality.
Glad you guys like the videos! I will try to keep them coming. Unfortunately many of my replays either never get onto the system (ie., I play a game, win, then look for it under the Games tab and it isn't there) or get corrupted a couple turns in. Super freaking annoying. I've already had 3 games for next weeks deck that would be good for the article, but all of them are missing/corrupted. Le sigh.
Mana Echoes is interesting, and a card I hadn't thought of. I did have Snake Basket in my initial version as you can see, but I was disappointed to note that you can only make snakes at sorcery speed. Super annoying.
theres a bunch of options at downloads.net or whatever and search like video recorder
You are correct that the turn 0 starts with whoever is on the play during the time where the clock expires. But.......good players should be aware of the timeclock and play with that in mind. I see your point though.
I'm online from time to time, hit me up in game (Narrowgate on MTGO).
Geist dies to Nimble, just remember that, so if you are going to go that plan, I'd highly recommend academy ruins/engineered explosives or just run terminus like everyone else, then again, if you are on the terminus plan you should probably just be winning with mishra's and jace.
That UG FAE deck list looks insane. 7 swords, no wonder it won. Great list rambo88!!
If you are new to the game or just starting over on a limited budget this is exactly the type of article you want to read.
Im glad to see JVL putting some MTGO articles up in the Daily. We don't see that enough
Can you tell I am catching up on some reading? Good again. Would you be willing to share some options (free if possible) on recording online games?
I love the article. Huge amounts of data to work with. You are right in that pauper is very healthy. I think MTGO players that really want their moneys worth should be playing pauper. I have the cards on my account for a good mono blue, I just have not tossed my hat in the ring with it (or any other format) for awhile. Since Legacy does not fire, Pauper is the way I will go when looking for a quick pick up game of magic online.
Thanks again and keep putting out the reports... you are obviously good!
Paul they already told us that the long term goal is to be able to scale the client to set filters of all types.
This was over a year ago. Granted they werent going to be able to do this until V4 was up and running.
Short term, they cold make Standard pauper happen, but long term Chris K said he wanted a cleint that could do any format aplayer might dream up of playing.
What I think would be a fair way to do "extra turns" is make sure the players note what player was on the play each game. When time runs out, the next time the "one the play" player starts a turn, the extra turn count starts with turn 0. That way both players in that game get exactly the same amount of turns for that game and it really would not cause much more of a time delay in the event.
Either way, when you are in your turn and time is called your turn becomes Turn 0 and you effectively lost what would have been your last timed turn if you had been able to pass.
Attack and don't pass in time, you get 2 more turns to attacks, attack and pass in time you get 3 attack phases. That is what I am eluding to.
I am assuming that the player taking their turn when time is called is on turn 0 at that time. I could have that wrong if turn 0 starts when the turn is passed outside of time. Please correct me if I am wrong about that. I would like to know for sure if I am right about the out side of time rounds.
Thanks for the comment Raddman.
The Virgin prize is awarded to the virgin tribe that performs best. As all remaining virgins are endangered, a virgin that performs well will be in the running for the Endangered prize no matter what. This has been exacerbated by making both contests have the same criterion, 'best-performing'.
If you want the prizes to diversify, diversify what is needed to win each.
Just because a tribe has not been played does not mean that tribe is automatically weak and uncompetitive. Several efreeti saw tournament play when they were legal, after all. Wildfire Efreet is just as immune to bolt and swords now as it was then. Gnomes too have seen play at the top tables, particularly bottle, but also ticking and copper.
Yeah the low count on instants and sorceries works against flipping the delver and puts more stress on correctly playing Brainstorms. The Fred Edelkamp list only has 24. The backs that up with 4 ponders in the list. In my list the Jace was acting as the back up to the top of deck fixing. The Delvers flip for the deck fine though. It was the weak counter package that needed to be fixed more than anything. It was not able to handle the counter war in Sneak and Show match-ups.
All said, you are correct that Delvers are not perfect in the deck. It might be better to concede the early game to just disrupting the opponents plans and move in G. of St. Traft. After all, they are extremely powerful in Legacy.
Hit me up on MTGO sometime if you feel like helping with testing.
Thanks gain
Sounds like a plan to me! I'll leave all the Special Prizes and such to you.
And no joke. This past Saturday at Double, I was this close (*holds fingers 1mm apart*) to saying "[bleep] it!" and leaving you guys in the lurch. That's how frustrating the event went for me. A lot of that is due to the antique PC I'm forced to use these day, and how MTGO acts when several people PM me at once. When you see me disappear during registration, that's usually the reason: PM bombardment causes my client to puke.
The flip side is, I saw how fun to play it is, and have NO PROBLEM with you running the doubles and getting some more creds. No problem at all. I can appreciate a free Saturday afternoon every three months.
I built Chris's balance deck yesterday, cost me a couple tix to get the cards I didn't have already. It's pretty absurd against most things. It's great that there are two events now every week. I'm really happy to see this format doing so well. I like that the archetypes in events harken back to a more noble time in Magic's history. The super aggro deck vs the control deck vs the combo deck vs the midrange deck. It still feels like theres so much room to brew, like before everyone could download decklists and know they had a teir one deck. Everything's here and viable and cheap, what more could you want in a Magic format? I'm an explorer type, if I've seen everything there is to see in a format I get bored and Heirloom always has thousands of square miles yet to trek.
I'm appalled as well about the disappearance of the multiplayer room (I didn't get the update yesterday and weirdly enough the program let me in anyway, so earlier today I was in the ghost of the multiplayer room with 3 other people looking confused). The Just for Fun room was already overcrowded as it was, and I for one can't afford to have all the games shown, or my PC would slow down to impossible levels. It looks like Resource Management 101 to me: to divide your customers into marketing profiles then address each of them to where they want to go is more logic and profitable than having everything and everyone mixed together. That's why supermarkets have aisles with different product types, and not just one gigantic shelf with everything on it.
Just purely from a coder's perspective this change to how the editors work seems like a fairly intuitive one (true sandbox mode may never exist because we will never get proxies but otherwise I don't see the obstacles here). Obvious even. I know sometimes things don't get developed just because they can be but there has been a lot of words and passion given in support of this type of thing for a long time from the casual community.
As an aside, I wouldn't play tribal with sideboards but it would be cool to have the option.
I have been looking about this topic. Finally I jumped over this area.
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Actually each pack given out represents packs potentially bought from the store, because not every pack given out would have been guaranteed to be purchased.
Granted your right I was wrong to say that the packs have no overhead value what so ever because obviously everything has some overhead of some type.
However my point was that the true overhead cost per pack given out is very very likely less then $1 each and honestly likely much lower then even that.
WE can go in circles around this subject forever and honestly get no where, but obviously Hasbro makes a killing off MTGO, else they would not have outright scrapped the sliverlight version of the client and then be working on developing yet another version to be a v4.0 client for us.
I was absolutely sure of that. :)
I hope this is a joke. :P
But I repeat officially here: ignore everything by Clan Leys from now on. I'll keep track of everything and announce the prizes at the end of each event (unless you want to do it, in that case I'll tell you what they are).
You now only have to care about the MTGOTraders pool.
Yeah, Blippy said (in the forum) Double Tribal will be out of rotation due to managing complications behind the scenes unless a substitute host is found. I could do that, but I feel bad taking the host fee from Blippy, so I won't do it. Also, I don't really liked the kind of decks we end up seeing in Double, but I'll elaborate more on this in the following article.
Blippy is now officially out of the Special Prizes AND Achievements.
a 100 to 200% increase is not considered skyrocketing? O.o
Remember that drafters typically try to sell everything from a pack they an to obtain more packs or tickets so they an continue drafting.
In the case of saying if delver were to jump from .11 to .25 even (which would be very possible if standard pauper became a sanctioned format)
That would add 14 cents value to each time they opened delver which isn't alot but then add in all cards the commons that jumped from .02 to even .05 because of it and you would add alot of expected value to each draft.
Values don't need to raise in the amounts that classic pauper made them raise to have dramatic effects. For example if that EV of a pack rose even by .20 cents ,that would mean that every draft would gain up to .60 value.
Granted it might not sound like alot but it's exactly these type of margins that drafters deal with on a daily basis.
@RexDart: this is a very strange concern of yours. Like, are you assuming we're doing things Blippy wasn't ok with? Of course this proposal has been on the works for at least a couple months, and both Heath Newton and Blippy had to agree to it before it was brought to reality.
I also assure you that the first reaction from less vocal members of the community (which is larger than 30, but problem is: just 5-6 members, including me, ever voice their opinions in public, and we usually do it very loudly) has been "wow, awesome!". And everything we do is to generate this kind of response, especially from players who don't just care about doing 20 damage to 3 opponents as fast as possible and get over with (sometimes I wonder if people who aim to win each game by turn 3 are really enjoying playing Magic).
The truth is: you don't care about achievements? Can't give a shit about special prizes? Fine, you ignore all of it, and you'll play exactly the same way. You won't even notice that they exist at all. So, I don't undestand why you should be concerned about something that is there for an entirely different kind of player. It's like when MaRo is asked (as recently as this very week) about why they keep printing casual cards that competitive players will never use. His answer is always the same: because casual players exist and they will enjoy those cards.
About the "extra headaches": maybe you're picturing this the wrong way. We will NOT track each game to see if something happens that will unlock an achievement. A player has to tell us if he's doing it, and I seriously doubt it will happen by chance. Nobody will even notice this is happening except for the player, his opponent who will be obviously there, and a witness. Are you concerned about Blippy? Ok, tell you what, UPDATE: Blippy doesn't count as a witness. I repeat: Blippy is officially out of achievement stuff. Don't call on him as a witness. Leave him alone. If you want the prizes, call on me, and only me. Then SBena if I'm not there. You can also send me (aicardigianluca at gmail.com) a video of the game where the achievement is unlocked, and we'll give you the prize afterwards (I actually like for this to happen anyway, because it would be nice to document the achievement here).
The special prizes are all tracked by me now. So Blippy will actually be LESS busy now, since he only manages the MTGOTraders pool, and even the math for that now is simpler.
The Virgin stuff: Virgin shouldn't be Endangered Redux. The two categories should be totally different, aiming at awarding a different kind of feat. As I wrote, the Changelings aren't allowed RIGHT NOW, until the remaining 11 Virgin Tribes will be played. When we start again, we'll reconsider it. But right now, if you play Mercenary with 8 Changelings, that's beside the spirit of the prize. You're essentially cheating, and that's unacceptable on behalf of all the players who take the spirit of the Virgin Prize seriously. And the Spirit isn't "let's make a strong competitive deck that will end T4 and happen to be Virgin as well". The Spirit is: "let's play an unplayed tribe and get a prize out of this alone". You shouldn't even compare your deck with a regular deck, you're playing a different league there. I was surprised Gnome did it so well (as your Efreet earlier), and that proves you can build and play a Virgin tribe with a certain amount of success, without resorting to any building "trick". Plus, this argument is kinda moot to begin with, since 6 out of 11 remaining Virgins have only 3 members, so they will play with 8 Changelings by rules. The other five ones have to suss out how to put their superior numbers of choices to use.
Soul is an active or essential part of human beings. It's the part of us that arouses emotions and sentiments.
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Verification of some of the achievements could be a problem. Absolutely agree that this must not be on Blippy's plate, but my inner deckbuilder is looking over that list and already devising ways to get as many simultaneous achievements as possible whilst still winning.