I would love to use shiny, but it crashes my computer. Windows Vista with 3GB of RAM, dual core turion processor. I have a RTR set I need to redeem and I cannot even get into the program.
I think it's unfair that you've banned the Mantle, as you had previously stated you'd give elves another go at Pure until it was banned there (which I've failed to do with the elves and the Mantle in the last two Pure events). I had been having trouble with the elves in Regular now that everyone has caught on to how to beat it, so I had already switched to something else there.
"First, V3 was not all that good. After 5 years of effort it almost, generally, worked, but had a ton of little bugs in many areas."
Yes, V3 was far from perfect. I played V2.5, the whole time of V3 and now V4. V2.5 was fine for playing but like you said it started crashing almost daily. The transaction was horrible and V3 took a long time to be playable. A change was needed but it could have been done way better.
Now the change from V3 to V4 was way different. It's true that V3 had many problems but it worked and it rarely crashed. That is until they put beta and V3 working at the same time. That's when the problems started and that's what forced the change to happen when it did. Unlike the previews transaction, if they had been more patient with V4, we wouldn't have lost MOCS and PTQs, nor we would have had several tournaments like DEs where you 4-0ed and it crashed and all they gave you was 6 tix.
V4 is a "monumental mistake" and “an incredible display of poor leadership" in some aspects. The way they rushed it to share with V3 the status os playable client was insane. It simply wasn't functional and all it did was cause all sorts of problems.
"Another thought: we are comparing a client that is a month or so past release with a client that had been polished and tuned for five years. V4 is getting better and better with every build. (It really is.) "
I completly agree with you here, that's why it is even more ridiculous the way they handled it. Instead of making both clients playable so early, they should have waited more time.
They should have given incentives for people to beta test V4 (before even being playable on the normal serve). I remember they wanting people beta testing it but they didn't reward the beta testers with anything. This one I'm not sure but from what a remember all you could do was draft a core set instead of giving you everything from new to old so people would be more likely to help them. If they made cube drafting available there while it was not available in V3, it would have been a great incentive.
They also should have hired more people to make sure both the current and the future client worked well.
They gave small incentives like some random promos to people who did something in the beta in a few days. That is simply not enough. They "forced" us to use the beta a couple of times. During one of those I played a draft. In the middle of a game I got DCed (it was my internet so nothing wrong here). What was wrong was that it took me over 5 minutes to log back in. In many games those 5 minutes would decide the match. With this alone, there was no way anyone would choose to play the beta instead of V3. So of course they didn't get the beta tested much during these times.
Even now, trading is way worse and slower, multi queueing is harder, chatting is also way worse, not being able to move the graveyard is simply stupid and the huge trigger windows that force you to resize them before choosing the target is always a pain and infuriating. And these aren't all the problems.
Sure, most of these things will eventually get fixed and now that everyone is working on V4 it will be faster but V3 was not broken before V4 broke it. They did not have to force it and they should certainly have made V4 like it is today before putting it as a playable client alongside V3. V4 right now would be an acceptable beta, not the main client.
Rather that many players bring elves and are not successful. (Hint: it was the combo that people finally started playing again. There was a fairly successful campaign by current players to discourage easy button tribe builds at the event which meant that players were struggling with subpar elf builds.)
The bug is not with the VMA duals. Those look like what I would expect given that the rest of the set uses the new frames and text boxes. The issue is that the most of the Masters Edition duals, which are supposed to have the concentric alternating color rectangles that are on the paper versions, have either the new side-to-side gradient that appears on new cards, or a plain tan text box background.
It's interesting that no one had been playing elves before I came back to magic in April and played my list from three years ago with Umbra mantle and took first. Since then I noticed a ton of other people played the infinite combo elves and got mantle banned.
Hopefully Mr.Watts gets his microphone issues sorted out.
:Why should we expect them to get fixed in the next couple of months?
You have to remember that Magic is a fast moving beast. Between regular sets and stuff like VMA and Commander products, WotC puts out a new product 5-6 times a year. Most of these products include cards with brand new rules that need to be implemented on the client, some requiring UI changes or other new functionality.
This means that MTGO is always in a constant scramble to program in the cards for the next set so they can be tested and ready on time, every time.
It took a tremendous amount of resources to do that for 2 separate clients every time. All the work that was going in to constant updates of v3 can now be put in to polishing v4.
We have already seen a number of improvements coming at a faster pace since they cut support for v3. I don't see any reason this won't continue.
Pete, I appreciate your desire for optimism here, but saying that WotC could have messed up worse (and did several times) is not exactly what most of us want to hear. We are mad because a company with the resources of Hasbro STILL cannot deliver even a mediocre product after having been in the business for 10+ years.
I have no technical background in this so maybe the backend of V4 is vastly improved over V3...but the things that regular users see and interact with everyday are completely unacceptable. The card images, collection screen, deck building tool, multiplayer games, the entire outdated trade system, bugs for several heavily played tournament cards, foil graphics...I could go on, but it is all extremely shoddy work. I have been on MTGO since the beginning and you are absolutely right, this release is less of a CF than the other ones, but why can't we be surprised with a good product that exceeds our expectations for once? Why should we constantly have to "suck it up" and use the substandard product we are given? Their history of past screw-ups should not be used as a reason to forgive their current one--quite the opposite actually.
I think a lot of people are concerned because the client is not a month old. It is several years old--and many of the problems that it had years ago...it still has now (UI, Foils, Collection, Deckbuilding). Why should we expect them to get fixed in the next couple of months? I am sure it will be fine eventually--but when they had years to make a decent program (longer than AAA Games have to deliver a much better product), why did it come to this in the first place? The next time I have an angry parent on the phone I am going to tell them to "suck it up" and see how well that goes over.
Shandalar came on floppies?? Not my version, cds all the way baby. I still have some of them. (Yes I know those need throwing out.) And it was a win95 product as I recall. Not sure how it ran on PCjr...
Also the Bribery/Collusion article seems to actually have softened their stance by specifying that Splitting in the finals is definitely allowed and now they will punish those who welsh on agreements to split. (Presumably with screenshots to prove the issue.)
While the punishment isn't new nor is the ability to do so they did not articulate these things before this. A step forward in communications perhaps.
Also a nit pick: Virtue's Ruin is a Perish against white cards. Not a white Perish.
I am pretty sure the VMA duals are supposed to be in the new frame (like the rest of VMA) with the updated boxes. The way they looked on V3 was the bug.
thanks, i agree it isn't mission critical. i finally found an acknowledgement of the issue in a twitter post that is a year old already (posted below before i saw your response). i just find it insulting to change the appearance of something people paid money for. what do they have to do?! swap some jpgs on the server?
also, i'm getting used to v4 and don't really have any issues with it aside from how the social aspects of chat have been demolished/hidden away and how they continue to show "blacked out/art versions you don't have" placeholders for cards you have zero left of while deck building. i like how they note how many are in the current deck being built (0 left in white, 4 in deck in yellow), but this in combination with the "binder" metaphor being gone, just seems to waste an absurd amount of screen real estate. waste of space!
As a purely cosmetic problem that effects only a small number of players, I have to imagine that it is on the back burner right now. And as ugly as my Duals and Academy look right now, I'd much rather them concentrate their efforts on fixing the more egregious bugs like Ponder shuffling and the cards set aside by Necro being visible.
Also, there is no consistancy on the text boxes of ME duals. My Badlands have the correct one, my Seas have the side-to-side gradient that appears on new cards, and the rest have the brown box that was on old colorless lands.
HHmmmm... I think you need to further explain these architectural flaws in v3 and how the architecture in v4 has eliminated those issues. Is there some technical insight you have that I do not that shows that the architecture was critically flawed in v3 and now is fixed in v4?
But anyway I think the heavy criticism is not about v4 being unplayable or even if it is better or worse than v3, rather does it meet expectations for a modern day game and is it "fun" to play Magic on. I play quite often on v4 and I can say overall the magic experience from my perspective is lacking from my high expectations. I am not quitting or selling out, but I have started to play other games (finding chess again as a fun alternative!) and my desire for MTGO v4 has waned.
i have already emailed wizards about this multiple times... but has anyone heard anything about the me4 dual lands having their text background/border art changed? they took away the alternating concentric rectangles that appear on all the paper duals and used the two color fade from newer lands. is hasbro planning to make the cards look like they did when i acquired them in client v3? they also changed many of the text backgrounds for promo cards and some others like the original mirage tap fetches and urza's tolarian bg.
Ya. I've found that the Gatekeepers are much more likely to come back. Even the Black one, which is nuts. In my deck, the Red one seems mediocre, but it's pretty reasonable to pick up some kind of sac effect in the GTC or RTR packs.
Michael had the Hammer in the original sideboard. I was running a lot of haste already, so I cut it for actual Purphoros. Both of them are good in the control matchup. Hammer + Fanatic are great together, so that is worth considering.
Including Manamorphose as a filter for BTE would take up space that could be used for other permanents. I love it in decks like Storm and Niv-Magus Combo, but not as much in this. I could be very wrong though without any testing to say otherwise.
I would have thought that Hammer of Purphoros would have found its way into this deck as it adds 2 to devotion and a way to utilize extra Nykthos if they are drawn.
Also did you consider Manamorphose with the emissary?
Early guildgates vs. gatekeepers is always a tough one for me. It feels like whichever I take, the other one won't wheel. Guildgates are more important, but gatekeepers are insane if you have 4+ gates in the end, and you can pick up more gates in the following packs.
Usually I'd say guildgates still, since you don't need gatekeepers if you're splashing for other big things.
FTV to collectors? I didnt think about that, probably right. I always thought about FTV aiming at casual paper players who were not around when the cards were first printed. Even the bad cards are cool and powerful if you just recently started to play casual paper and dont care about a specific format. I dont really find the FTV sets all that interesting online.
Was it too much to have hoped for Wasteland being in there?
You are probably right (Or nearly so) on the reprint.
I wasn't really upset by the lack of Damnation in FTV but that might be because I see the FTV sets as mostly irrelevant fluff thrown to collectors. I'll keep my 10E Wraths and the rest of the set that I have 4x without any interest whatsoever in this. So in a way I am glad they didn't print something I wanted in it. The FTV sets are priced poorly and rarely present a fair deal even after the individual cards spike a little.
As for MBD getting another great card, well yeah, no. That's not happening. Not without something getting the axe.
I think the real answer here would have been to leave WoG out and put Damnation in.
And I really don't want Damnation in Standard while Theros is around. One of the format's current best decks getting access to what would almost certainly be the best sweeper available? No thank you.
EDIT:
I read the WotC article and this stood out:
"Something important to keep in mind: If something is missing from one of these, there's a good reason. It's not that we just completely miss obvious things, but that we have the entire picture of Magic's future to work with and know where something is going to fit better. If you really want something to appear again, stay patient. If it's something that's realistically reprintable, there's a good chance you can expect to see it eventually."
My money is on Damnation reprint in the mono-colored Commander deck
Read the Bones is extremely effective due to the scrying.
My interest in Replica is the ability to recur with Grim Harvest.
Staying in mono black, you can use Grey Merchant as your lifegain of choice.
It clogs the ground very well to give your Abominations time to grind through.
Grim Harvest also lets you cycle Abomination early and the get it back when you want.
Predatory Nightstalker goes a long way to making the mono black version viable.
Evincar's is your catch all on weenie style matchups.
And helps get your edict effects through.
Though is can be argued that the tron lands aren't actually NEEDED for the list.
And indeed the list I ran could have been fine without, but it was more vulnerable to control without the tron lands feeding the recur engines.
Oh, and Nihil Spellbomb works really well in the Chromatic Star slot for mono black.
Stops many decks from doing things they want to do and at worst just cycles.
I would love to use shiny, but it crashes my computer. Windows Vista with 3GB of RAM, dual core turion processor. I have a RTR set I need to redeem and I cannot even get into the program.
I think it's unfair that you've banned the Mantle, as you had previously stated you'd give elves another go at Pure until it was banned there (which I've failed to do with the elves and the Mantle in the last two Pure events). I had been having trouble with the elves in Regular now that everyone has caught on to how to beat it, so I had already switched to something else there.
"First, V3 was not all that good. After 5 years of effort it almost, generally, worked, but had a ton of little bugs in many areas."
Yes, V3 was far from perfect. I played V2.5, the whole time of V3 and now V4. V2.5 was fine for playing but like you said it started crashing almost daily. The transaction was horrible and V3 took a long time to be playable. A change was needed but it could have been done way better.
Now the change from V3 to V4 was way different. It's true that V3 had many problems but it worked and it rarely crashed. That is until they put beta and V3 working at the same time. That's when the problems started and that's what forced the change to happen when it did. Unlike the previews transaction, if they had been more patient with V4, we wouldn't have lost MOCS and PTQs, nor we would have had several tournaments like DEs where you 4-0ed and it crashed and all they gave you was 6 tix.
V4 is a "monumental mistake" and “an incredible display of poor leadership" in some aspects. The way they rushed it to share with V3 the status os playable client was insane. It simply wasn't functional and all it did was cause all sorts of problems.
"Another thought: we are comparing a client that is a month or so past release with a client that had been polished and tuned for five years. V4 is getting better and better with every build. (It really is.) "
I completly agree with you here, that's why it is even more ridiculous the way they handled it. Instead of making both clients playable so early, they should have waited more time.
They should have given incentives for people to beta test V4 (before even being playable on the normal serve). I remember they wanting people beta testing it but they didn't reward the beta testers with anything. This one I'm not sure but from what a remember all you could do was draft a core set instead of giving you everything from new to old so people would be more likely to help them. If they made cube drafting available there while it was not available in V3, it would have been a great incentive.
They also should have hired more people to make sure both the current and the future client worked well.
They gave small incentives like some random promos to people who did something in the beta in a few days. That is simply not enough. They "forced" us to use the beta a couple of times. During one of those I played a draft. In the middle of a game I got DCed (it was my internet so nothing wrong here). What was wrong was that it took me over 5 minutes to log back in. In many games those 5 minutes would decide the match. With this alone, there was no way anyone would choose to play the beta instead of V3. So of course they didn't get the beta tested much during these times.
Even now, trading is way worse and slower, multi queueing is harder, chatting is also way worse, not being able to move the graveyard is simply stupid and the huge trigger windows that force you to resize them before choosing the target is always a pain and infuriating. And these aren't all the problems.
Sure, most of these things will eventually get fixed and now that everyone is working on V4 it will be faster but V3 was not broken before V4 broke it. They did not have to force it and they should certainly have made V4 like it is today before putting it as a playable client alongside V3. V4 right now would be an acceptable beta, not the main client.
Rather that many players bring elves and are not successful. (Hint: it was the combo that people finally started playing again. There was a fairly successful campaign by current players to discourage easy button tribe builds at the event which meant that players were struggling with subpar elf builds.)
The bug is not with the VMA duals. Those look like what I would expect given that the rest of the set uses the new frames and text boxes. The issue is that the most of the Masters Edition duals, which are supposed to have the concentric alternating color rectangles that are on the paper versions, have either the new side-to-side gradient that appears on new cards, or a plain tan text box background.
It's interesting that no one had been playing elves before I came back to magic in April and played my list from three years ago with Umbra mantle and took first. Since then I noticed a ton of other people played the infinite combo elves and got mantle banned.
Hopefully Mr.Watts gets his microphone issues sorted out.
:Why should we expect them to get fixed in the next couple of months?
You have to remember that Magic is a fast moving beast. Between regular sets and stuff like VMA and Commander products, WotC puts out a new product 5-6 times a year. Most of these products include cards with brand new rules that need to be implemented on the client, some requiring UI changes or other new functionality.
This means that MTGO is always in a constant scramble to program in the cards for the next set so they can be tested and ready on time, every time.
It took a tremendous amount of resources to do that for 2 separate clients every time. All the work that was going in to constant updates of v3 can now be put in to polishing v4.
We have already seen a number of improvements coming at a faster pace since they cut support for v3. I don't see any reason this won't continue.
Pete, I appreciate your desire for optimism here, but saying that WotC could have messed up worse (and did several times) is not exactly what most of us want to hear. We are mad because a company with the resources of Hasbro STILL cannot deliver even a mediocre product after having been in the business for 10+ years.
I have no technical background in this so maybe the backend of V4 is vastly improved over V3...but the things that regular users see and interact with everyday are completely unacceptable. The card images, collection screen, deck building tool, multiplayer games, the entire outdated trade system, bugs for several heavily played tournament cards, foil graphics...I could go on, but it is all extremely shoddy work. I have been on MTGO since the beginning and you are absolutely right, this release is less of a CF than the other ones, but why can't we be surprised with a good product that exceeds our expectations for once? Why should we constantly have to "suck it up" and use the substandard product we are given? Their history of past screw-ups should not be used as a reason to forgive their current one--quite the opposite actually.
I think a lot of people are concerned because the client is not a month old. It is several years old--and many of the problems that it had years ago...it still has now (UI, Foils, Collection, Deckbuilding). Why should we expect them to get fixed in the next couple of months? I am sure it will be fine eventually--but when they had years to make a decent program (longer than AAA Games have to deliver a much better product), why did it come to this in the first place? The next time I have an angry parent on the phone I am going to tell them to "suck it up" and see how well that goes over.
Shandalar came on floppies?? Not my version, cds all the way baby. I still have some of them. (Yes I know those need throwing out.) And it was a win95 product as I recall. Not sure how it ran on PCjr...
Also the Bribery/Collusion article seems to actually have softened their stance by specifying that Splitting in the finals is definitely allowed and now they will punish those who welsh on agreements to split. (Presumably with screenshots to prove the issue.)
While the punishment isn't new nor is the ability to do so they did not articulate these things before this. A step forward in communications perhaps.
Also a nit pick: Virtue's Ruin is a Perish against white cards. Not a white Perish.
I am pretty sure the VMA duals are supposed to be in the new frame (like the rest of VMA) with the updated boxes. The way they looked on V3 was the bug.
thanks, i agree it isn't mission critical. i finally found an acknowledgement of the issue in a twitter post that is a year old already (posted below before i saw your response). i just find it insulting to change the appearance of something people paid money for. what do they have to do?! swap some jpgs on the server?
also, i'm getting used to v4 and don't really have any issues with it aside from how the social aspects of chat have been demolished/hidden away and how they continue to show "blacked out/art versions you don't have" placeholders for cards you have zero left of while deck building. i like how they note how many are in the current deck being built (0 left in white, 4 in deck in yellow), but this in combination with the "binder" metaphor being gone, just seems to waste an absurd amount of screen real estate. waste of space!
As a purely cosmetic problem that effects only a small number of players, I have to imagine that it is on the back burner right now. And as ugly as my Duals and Academy look right now, I'd much rather them concentrate their efforts on fixing the more egregious bugs like Ponder shuffling and the cards set aside by Necro being visible.
Also, there is no consistancy on the text boxes of ME duals. My Badlands have the correct one, my Seas have the side-to-side gradient that appears on new cards, and the rest have the brown box that was on old colorless lands.
I didn't get around to rendering them all this week sadly.
I gather that is you Regero?
HHmmmm... I think you need to further explain these architectural flaws in v3 and how the architecture in v4 has eliminated those issues. Is there some technical insight you have that I do not that shows that the architecture was critically flawed in v3 and now is fixed in v4?
But anyway I think the heavy criticism is not about v4 being unplayable or even if it is better or worse than v3, rather does it meet expectations for a modern day game and is it "fun" to play Magic on. I play quite often on v4 and I can say overall the magic experience from my perspective is lacking from my high expectations. I am not quitting or selling out, but I have started to play other games (finding chess again as a fun alternative!) and my desire for MTGO v4 has waned.
i have already emailed wizards about this multiple times... but has anyone heard anything about the me4 dual lands having their text background/border art changed? they took away the alternating concentric rectangles that appear on all the paper duals and used the two color fade from newer lands. is hasbro planning to make the cards look like they did when i acquired them in client v3? they also changed many of the text backgrounds for promo cards and some others like the original mirage tap fetches and urza's tolarian bg.
Ya. I've found that the Gatekeepers are much more likely to come back. Even the Black one, which is nuts. In my deck, the Red one seems mediocre, but it's pretty reasonable to pick up some kind of sac effect in the GTC or RTR packs.
Michael had the Hammer in the original sideboard. I was running a lot of haste already, so I cut it for actual Purphoros. Both of them are good in the control matchup. Hammer + Fanatic are great together, so that is worth considering.
Including Manamorphose as a filter for BTE would take up space that could be used for other permanents. I love it in decks like Storm and Niv-Magus Combo, but not as much in this. I could be very wrong though without any testing to say otherwise.
Thanks for reading!
I would have thought that Hammer of Purphoros would have found its way into this deck as it adds 2 to devotion and a way to utilize extra Nykthos if they are drawn.
Also did you consider Manamorphose with the emissary?
Early guildgates vs. gatekeepers is always a tough one for me. It feels like whichever I take, the other one won't wheel. Guildgates are more important, but gatekeepers are insane if you have 4+ gates in the end, and you can pick up more gates in the following packs.
Usually I'd say guildgates still, since you don't need gatekeepers if you're splashing for other big things.
FTV to collectors? I didnt think about that, probably right. I always thought about FTV aiming at casual paper players who were not around when the cards were first printed. Even the bad cards are cool and powerful if you just recently started to play casual paper and dont care about a specific format. I dont really find the FTV sets all that interesting online.
Was it too much to have hoped for Wasteland being in there?
You are probably right (Or nearly so) on the reprint.
I wasn't really upset by the lack of Damnation in FTV but that might be because I see the FTV sets as mostly irrelevant fluff thrown to collectors. I'll keep my 10E Wraths and the rest of the set that I have 4x without any interest whatsoever in this. So in a way I am glad they didn't print something I wanted in it. The FTV sets are priced poorly and rarely present a fair deal even after the individual cards spike a little.
As for MBD getting another great card, well yeah, no. That's not happening. Not without something getting the axe.
I think the real answer here would have been to leave WoG out and put Damnation in.
And I really don't want Damnation in Standard while Theros is around. One of the format's current best decks getting access to what would almost certainly be the best sweeper available? No thank you.
EDIT:
I read the WotC article and this stood out:
"Something important to keep in mind: If something is missing from one of these, there's a good reason. It's not that we just completely miss obvious things, but that we have the entire picture of Magic's future to work with and know where something is going to fit better. If you really want something to appear again, stay patient. If it's something that's realistically reprintable, there's a good chance you can expect to see it eventually."
My money is on Damnation reprint in the mono-colored Commander deck
Ok, thanks for that information. :-)
Read the Bones is extremely effective due to the scrying.
My interest in Replica is the ability to recur with Grim Harvest.
Staying in mono black, you can use Grey Merchant as your lifegain of choice.
It clogs the ground very well to give your Abominations time to grind through.
Grim Harvest also lets you cycle Abomination early and the get it back when you want.
Predatory Nightstalker goes a long way to making the mono black version viable.
Evincar's is your catch all on weenie style matchups.
And helps get your edict effects through.
Though is can be argued that the tron lands aren't actually NEEDED for the list.
And indeed the list I ran could have been fine without, but it was more vulnerable to control without the tron lands feeding the recur engines.
Oh, and Nihil Spellbomb works really well in the Chromatic Star slot for mono black.
Stops many decks from doing things they want to do and at worst just cycles.