Threats of violence no matter how jokingly made are not something acceptable. We understand that v4 has upset some people, and that's fine. It's upset me, and I've dealt with it accordingly. We do not condone threats against anyone in the Magic community.
having been here from the beginning, i have found every transition to be worse than the last--that is, despite all expectations, each version is worse, not better, than the previous one.
the amazing thing about v4 to me is how awful the cards look. despite all the play, the prices, everything, it is surprising even to me how much the art matters to me and how inexcusable it is that they have rebuilt the program only to make the whole thing look much worse.
then when you look at each screen, at which elements they decided to give more room to and which they decided not to, it's also inexcusable.
i continue to think that there was a platform development change between v3 and v4, and that v4's reliance on .NET suggests something very constraining (provided by Microsoft) under the hood, that is not compatible with many elements that were used in earlier versions.
I agree with BoB: the game has become an actual pain to play. I've stayed off the forums this time, and so on, but I did sell my whole collection two months ago and don't regret it, and I never did that between previous versions. the little bits i saved or re-bought in order to play my favorite formats (draft and commander) don't excite me much, even when I try to play them. I have a nice VMA draft set, have never pulled power, and the thought of possibly opening a Lotus doesn't interest me because it will look like crap. it's not fun, and given how goddamn much more expensive this game is than games that look absolutely beautiful, i'm just not sure why I should do what feels like work for Wizard's sake.
No matter what Loucks says, Hearthstone and DotP show that games like this CAN be made to look and function well. Why Wizards has made such fucked-up decisions is beyond me, but from the # of players online whenever I log in, I am less than convinced that v4 is actually succeeding for them.
I don't get it? Heath from mtgotraders said people are selling their collections left and right so shouldn't the prices be going down? Perhaps there are too many speculators buying them up.
I think the only problematic card in Selesnya Knights deck is Oversoul of Dusk - the others are just good creatures that can be answered by removal 1-for-1. A deck that would sport lots of removal and card advantage (ETB effects, mass removal, card draw), would be a favourite against both Knights, Elves and Goblins. It is too soon too declare a deck broken based on the impression of previous results, we have only played 3 (or 4?) tournaments so far. I remember when Vampires were seen as such when Singleton started, but they turned out to be just an average-good tribe.
So if bans are to be made, Oversoul of Dusk I think is more than enough (and I wouldn't even necessary do that).
But anyway, I agree with the notion of some folks in the comments that it is time to change. I have supported the Kaleidoscope in the beginning, but now my position is that it's just not that fun of a format to be be played regularly. I would reserve these 6 spots in the year for more special events. We can also repeat some of the successful ones we had, so we don't necessarily have to come up with a new format every time. Some of the events that I would be interested in playing: Vintage Tribal, Commander Tribal, Build-your-own format Tribal (players choose x sets and build decks from those (though the legality wouldn't be possible to be automatically checked with Gatherling)), Loser Tribes tribal (only the Tribes that never won are eligible; or we can have an event where only tribes with, I don't know, less than 10 members are eligible), and others have suggested other possibilites.
It's not a dick move to call a judge and ask to watch for Slow Play. Like you said, you don't want to play faster and make mistakes, so if you call a judge and make sure that the match goes at a proper pace, you don't have to worry about all these things. I never said you should call a judge and accuse your opponent of slow play, I said to call a judge and have him/her WATCH for it.
Just for my clarification, did you ask your opponent to play faster during your match, or did you only bring it up after the fact? I can understand asking for a concession if you asked and he didn't, but that's a different situation than if you didn't say anything and only mentioned it after the fact.
The draw doesn't matter too much, but the loss does. Jon would basically give up any Top 8 chances by conceding, but remains in the hunt along with Paul with a draw in that situation. A win would be nice, but a draw is perfectly acceptable.
It doesn't matter now anyway, what's done is done, best thing to do is learn from it and move on.
I agree, m4vis. Only, forget Pauper Tribal and Standard Tribal. Those formats have been tried. They're terrible. :)
(Too restricted pools, too little variety).
Why would you specifically want to chord-call in front of an upcoming attacker a creature that kills artifacts and enchantments? Unless the attacker was an artifact or enchantment itself, I mean. :)
Felorin: I totally agree that the improvements have been mostly achieved randomly! One thing you can tell after you've used V4 for a while, is that the designers clearly weren't veteran MTGO players. They didn't know how MTGO players used the editor. They didn't know what bot trading is like. They didn't know how many decks a veteran MTGO players own. They didn't know PRE existed. And so on.
V4, as it is right now, seems aimed to a profile player like this: 12 to 15 years old, started playing Magic last month, owns 300 cards, makes decks with those cards, goes in the play lobby only to play with those decks.
Think about it, every default function plays into this profile.
But I think they're starting to realize things are different. (Because they are: that kid is maybe a relevant number overall, but it's not really an accurate portrait of the average MTGO player.)
I mostly see them as clueless, well-intentioned guys (I'm talking of the developers — I'm not even sure the top dogs know about the details of the whole situation, or bother to.) We should sympathize with these developers: they have been assigned a task they weren't prepared or qualified for, they didn't exactly know what they were doing. They could have done worse. (They *did* worse: the open beta from one year ago was to V4 as being dismembered is to a punch in the face).
Some of the complaints I see around are stuff that will get 100% fixed at some point down the line (everybody has their pet peeves, I guess). Like, sure, the minimized players won't be the default status. It's probably just a bug. Honestly, they better fix cards first, then fix the other 1563 things that actually hinder proper use, and THEN things that only make us spare one click.
Also the skins you mention in another post: mark my words, we'll get customizations of the skins and color palette and stuff, Windows-like. In fact, wasn't even sort of there in the open beta, when you could choose several "planeswalker theme", like black-Liliana, brown-Nicol Bolas, etc.? It was disabled at some point, replaced by a Gideon-only theme, then by the current one. I think those themes will come back. But again, that can't be high priority. In fact, I'll severely criticize them if they'll spend time with this kind of stuff before the chat and the editor and the trade are fixed.
Like the very stupid labels for decks and binders: I didn't need those yet. I'll happily take them down the line, but let's first focus on what's really important, no? (And even there, at some point there will be more labels, maybe personalized labels — how hard could it be to have you upload an image for your labels? What am I supposed to do with a Gideon label, anyway? Put that on any deck with Gideon in it? What a Gideon binder should be for? It would have been more useful to have labels representing the guilds for dual-color or mostly-dual-color decks).
I think an important point to make is that V3 was still bad. It worked, but was bad, it wasn't something you could be proud of. It was junk. Granted, it was OUR junk, so we grew attached to it, I'm the first to admit it. But it's not like they took away from us a Ferrari, now, is it? We mostly were used to it. As you say, in a year's time, we'll have already started forgetting what V3 was like.
I don't want to drag this out forever. Everyone has their opinions, but I'll touch on a few points.
I'm not the kind of dick who will call a judge for slow play, unless it is absolutely apparent that my opponent is being malicious.
The Pro Tour is a little different, but if I was playing against my teammate, I'd scoop there. Unless my opponent was okay with a draw, then that's fine, since the PT is higher stakes and having an extra draw doesn't matter much.
I shouldn't be forced to play faster and potentially make mistakes because my opponent is playing slowly.
All being said, I can understand both sides, but if the shoe was on the other foot, I'd concede there.
In the Ten Step Program, points 7 and 9 are the highest priority.
Speaking as an event host, not being able to copy & paste is a severe hindrance (other than, you know, absurd). Like, I need people's email so the sponsor can send prize certificates. People write their emails in chat. But I can't copy them, so I have to TYPE THEM BY HAND. This is unacceptable in 2014. It was probably unacceptable in 1999 already. Can't figure out how it's even possible that the chat ended up that way.
5. Watching other people's games. It's already possible. They have to set the games as watchable exactly like it happened in V3. Again, as a host, I would know, because I need to check on my player's games constantly.
CTRL-Z: It's funny, I always used CTRL-Z, which worked in V3 as well. In fact, I've a CTRL-Z shortcut on my mouse side button, which I use for many programs, and it worked on V3 just as well as in V4. I'm not even sure I ever knew ALT-U was a thing. CTRL-Z is the universal undo shortcut.
Also, what about all these supposed multiplayer issues I keep reading about? Once more, I host a Commander event every week. Last week, we used V4 for the first time. People were mostly happy about it, despite the general criticism on V4. We didn't see anything "busted". In fact, I was able to properly watch a multiplayer game for the first time in probably years, because V3 lately (or ever) had severe bugs that prevented for an external viewer to follow a game, as once a player at a multiplayer table would die, the names of the players would jump around, the clock would go crazy, the life total would become mixed up, etc.
There's also useful improvements like the possibility to recycle the battlefield space of a dead player by minimizing their areas, all the "attack with all/tap piles" functions, and so on.
My vote would be to continually pool ideas and try new things month to month, and see if anything more mass appealing comes up. I personally would be interested in tribal pauper or standard. I don't dislike singleton or kaleidoscope, but I think other formats might be more enjoyable all around.
To add to number 10: Also show the time remaining on the deck building/sideboarding clock. After you submit your deck you have no idea how long till autostart.
Jon's article is both sad and enlightening. It describes how I imagine working for wizards would be for me (I am not really a team player either and I can really bring the mood down when I am unhappy.) In fact aside from all of the details I found myself identifying with Jon as a person. So good article. I feel like his plea at the end is rather silly. People are going to vent. They are going to storm the gates, demanding the heads of those whom they perceive to be the sources of their unhappiness (designers and programmers). Pitchforks and torches are the order of the day, don't expect that to change just because you shared with us.
Yes I personally get it a little better now how things got so screwed up at WOTC but it doesn't change my personal anger towards the facts. I don't want heads to roll but I find the changes made to be intolerable and can't wait for them to change to something less insulting. That said, I WILL wait, and I never do join the mob seeking the monster because I know there but for fortune go I.
As for your analogy, I mostly agree except for the primer part. Keeping in mind they called it "shiny" for the last few years in an attempt to get us more optimistic about it. They clearly think they painted it some wonderful color that people should love. And clearly instead it is a piccassoesque nightmare to look at. Reskinning it would be at a minimum one way to make things better.
As for your editorial, I think it is a good time to hunker down and wait. Selling out is premature and probably a bad idea. I said as much in my article via the cartoon I drew.
This is easily the smoothest new client transition we've had on MTGO. We all agree that V4 isn't great, but the transitions for other clients were sooooooooooooooooo much worse.
I think you misphrase the question. The question isn't whether MTGO is playable, or even whether it is worth the grief, but rather "would I rather do something else with my free time right now?" That's a question each person has to decide for himself, of course. During pre-v.4 life, that was often a negative for most of us - MTGO was the best way to experience the premier game (unless, maybe chess) - but now with all the pain of deckbuilding, bugs, and horrible art, I'm finding lots of other things I'd rather do instead. I'll wait for things to get better and reevaluate then.
In all seriousness, is this format even fun to play. Wizards obviously screwed things up by promoting so many cards to Mythic in Vintage Masters.
The problem I see here is the card that keeps inappropriate insane combos under control in real classic, Force of Will, is priced out of the format. Almost all answer cards are priced out of the format.
So you get busted interactions with nothing to do.Maybe dropping Mythic back to 1.00 is the answer. Maybe running an actual ban list.
I removed some comments on here.
Threats of violence no matter how jokingly made are not something acceptable. We understand that v4 has upset some people, and that's fine. It's upset me, and I've dealt with it accordingly. We do not condone threats against anyone in the Magic community.
I wanted to update this a bit after playing the game on my iPad.
Game is insane on that device. Menus are easy to control, loading times are smaller than on PC, art is just as visually stunning.
This is a mobile game being pushed on PCs and consoles. Play it if you have the iPad or Android device, I really enjoy it there!
It's hard to say whether it's succeeding or not when it's only been what everyone has been using for about 2 weeks now.
Jon explained why the comparison does not make any sense.
having been here from the beginning, i have found every transition to be worse than the last--that is, despite all expectations, each version is worse, not better, than the previous one.
the amazing thing about v4 to me is how awful the cards look. despite all the play, the prices, everything, it is surprising even to me how much the art matters to me and how inexcusable it is that they have rebuilt the program only to make the whole thing look much worse.
then when you look at each screen, at which elements they decided to give more room to and which they decided not to, it's also inexcusable.
i continue to think that there was a platform development change between v3 and v4, and that v4's reliance on .NET suggests something very constraining (provided by Microsoft) under the hood, that is not compatible with many elements that were used in earlier versions.
I agree with BoB: the game has become an actual pain to play. I've stayed off the forums this time, and so on, but I did sell my whole collection two months ago and don't regret it, and I never did that between previous versions. the little bits i saved or re-bought in order to play my favorite formats (draft and commander) don't excite me much, even when I try to play them. I have a nice VMA draft set, have never pulled power, and the thought of possibly opening a Lotus doesn't interest me because it will look like crap. it's not fun, and given how goddamn much more expensive this game is than games that look absolutely beautiful, i'm just not sure why I should do what feels like work for Wizard's sake.
No matter what Loucks says, Hearthstone and DotP show that games like this CAN be made to look and function well. Why Wizards has made such fucked-up decisions is beyond me, but from the # of players online whenever I log in, I am less than convinced that v4 is actually succeeding for them.
you can cut and paste. It just has to be cut from a different source. So ORCs can still cut and paste.
I don't get it? Heath from mtgotraders said people are selling their collections left and right so shouldn't the prices be going down? Perhaps there are too many speculators buying them up.
I think the only problematic card in Selesnya Knights deck is Oversoul of Dusk - the others are just good creatures that can be answered by removal 1-for-1. A deck that would sport lots of removal and card advantage (ETB effects, mass removal, card draw), would be a favourite against both Knights, Elves and Goblins. It is too soon too declare a deck broken based on the impression of previous results, we have only played 3 (or 4?) tournaments so far. I remember when Vampires were seen as such when Singleton started, but they turned out to be just an average-good tribe.
So if bans are to be made, Oversoul of Dusk I think is more than enough (and I wouldn't even necessary do that).
But anyway, I agree with the notion of some folks in the comments that it is time to change. I have supported the Kaleidoscope in the beginning, but now my position is that it's just not that fun of a format to be be played regularly. I would reserve these 6 spots in the year for more special events. We can also repeat some of the successful ones we had, so we don't necessarily have to come up with a new format every time. Some of the events that I would be interested in playing: Vintage Tribal, Commander Tribal, Build-your-own format Tribal (players choose x sets and build decks from those (though the legality wouldn't be possible to be automatically checked with Gatherling)), Loser Tribes tribal (only the Tribes that never won are eligible; or we can have an event where only tribes with, I don't know, less than 10 members are eligible), and others have suggested other possibilites.
It's not a dick move to call a judge and ask to watch for Slow Play. Like you said, you don't want to play faster and make mistakes, so if you call a judge and make sure that the match goes at a proper pace, you don't have to worry about all these things. I never said you should call a judge and accuse your opponent of slow play, I said to call a judge and have him/her WATCH for it.
Just for my clarification, did you ask your opponent to play faster during your match, or did you only bring it up after the fact? I can understand asking for a concession if you asked and he didn't, but that's a different situation than if you didn't say anything and only mentioned it after the fact.
The draw doesn't matter too much, but the loss does. Jon would basically give up any Top 8 chances by conceding, but remains in the hunt along with Paul with a draw in that situation. A win would be nice, but a draw is perfectly acceptable.
It doesn't matter now anyway, what's done is done, best thing to do is learn from it and move on.
Also note that The Wiz put the axe on THS Block Constructed this week Didn't see this mentioned.
Jon's interview was actually not part of Limited Resources. It was a separate podcast that Marshall is doing called The 1-for-1.
How about a tribal week where the tribe is predetermined for that week. Everyone plays that tribe.
Without cut and paste, I pity the ORCs.
I don't know what it's called but we could do only creatures and lands, maybe even only 1 tribe and only creatures and lands.
I agree, m4vis. Only, forget Pauper Tribal and Standard Tribal. Those formats have been tried. They're terrible. :)
(Too restricted pools, too little variety).
Why would you specifically want to chord-call in front of an upcoming attacker a creature that kills artifacts and enchantments? Unless the attacker was an artifact or enchantment itself, I mean. :)
Felorin: I totally agree that the improvements have been mostly achieved randomly! One thing you can tell after you've used V4 for a while, is that the designers clearly weren't veteran MTGO players. They didn't know how MTGO players used the editor. They didn't know what bot trading is like. They didn't know how many decks a veteran MTGO players own. They didn't know PRE existed. And so on.
V4, as it is right now, seems aimed to a profile player like this: 12 to 15 years old, started playing Magic last month, owns 300 cards, makes decks with those cards, goes in the play lobby only to play with those decks.
Think about it, every default function plays into this profile.
But I think they're starting to realize things are different. (Because they are: that kid is maybe a relevant number overall, but it's not really an accurate portrait of the average MTGO player.)
I mostly see them as clueless, well-intentioned guys (I'm talking of the developers — I'm not even sure the top dogs know about the details of the whole situation, or bother to.) We should sympathize with these developers: they have been assigned a task they weren't prepared or qualified for, they didn't exactly know what they were doing. They could have done worse. (They *did* worse: the open beta from one year ago was to V4 as being dismembered is to a punch in the face).
Some of the complaints I see around are stuff that will get 100% fixed at some point down the line (everybody has their pet peeves, I guess). Like, sure, the minimized players won't be the default status. It's probably just a bug. Honestly, they better fix cards first, then fix the other 1563 things that actually hinder proper use, and THEN things that only make us spare one click.
Also the skins you mention in another post: mark my words, we'll get customizations of the skins and color palette and stuff, Windows-like. In fact, wasn't even sort of there in the open beta, when you could choose several "planeswalker theme", like black-Liliana, brown-Nicol Bolas, etc.? It was disabled at some point, replaced by a Gideon-only theme, then by the current one. I think those themes will come back. But again, that can't be high priority. In fact, I'll severely criticize them if they'll spend time with this kind of stuff before the chat and the editor and the trade are fixed.
Like the very stupid labels for decks and binders: I didn't need those yet. I'll happily take them down the line, but let's first focus on what's really important, no? (And even there, at some point there will be more labels, maybe personalized labels — how hard could it be to have you upload an image for your labels? What am I supposed to do with a Gideon label, anyway? Put that on any deck with Gideon in it? What a Gideon binder should be for? It would have been more useful to have labels representing the guilds for dual-color or mostly-dual-color decks).
I think an important point to make is that V3 was still bad. It worked, but was bad, it wasn't something you could be proud of. It was junk. Granted, it was OUR junk, so we grew attached to it, I'm the first to admit it. But it's not like they took away from us a Ferrari, now, is it? We mostly were used to it. As you say, in a year's time, we'll have already started forgetting what V3 was like.
I don't want to drag this out forever. Everyone has their opinions, but I'll touch on a few points.
I'm not the kind of dick who will call a judge for slow play, unless it is absolutely apparent that my opponent is being malicious.
The Pro Tour is a little different, but if I was playing against my teammate, I'd scoop there. Unless my opponent was okay with a draw, then that's fine, since the PT is higher stakes and having an extra draw doesn't matter much.
I shouldn't be forced to play faster and potentially make mistakes because my opponent is playing slowly.
All being said, I can understand both sides, but if the shoe was on the other foot, I'd concede there.
MisterMojoRising & Smawatts: know that I agree with what both of you said.
In the Ten Step Program, points 7 and 9 are the highest priority.
Speaking as an event host, not being able to copy & paste is a severe hindrance (other than, you know, absurd). Like, I need people's email so the sponsor can send prize certificates. People write their emails in chat. But I can't copy them, so I have to TYPE THEM BY HAND. This is unacceptable in 2014. It was probably unacceptable in 1999 already. Can't figure out how it's even possible that the chat ended up that way.
5. Watching other people's games. It's already possible. They have to set the games as watchable exactly like it happened in V3. Again, as a host, I would know, because I need to check on my player's games constantly.
CTRL-Z: It's funny, I always used CTRL-Z, which worked in V3 as well. In fact, I've a CTRL-Z shortcut on my mouse side button, which I use for many programs, and it worked on V3 just as well as in V4. I'm not even sure I ever knew ALT-U was a thing. CTRL-Z is the universal undo shortcut.
Also, what about all these supposed multiplayer issues I keep reading about? Once more, I host a Commander event every week. Last week, we used V4 for the first time. People were mostly happy about it, despite the general criticism on V4. We didn't see anything "busted". In fact, I was able to properly watch a multiplayer game for the first time in probably years, because V3 lately (or ever) had severe bugs that prevented for an external viewer to follow a game, as once a player at a multiplayer table would die, the names of the players would jump around, the clock would go crazy, the life total would become mixed up, etc.
There's also useful improvements like the possibility to recycle the battlefield space of a dead player by minimizing their areas, all the "attack with all/tap piles" functions, and so on.
My vote would be to continually pool ideas and try new things month to month, and see if anything more mass appealing comes up. I personally would be interested in tribal pauper or standard. I don't dislike singleton or kaleidoscope, but I think other formats might be more enjoyable all around.
To add to number 10: Also show the time remaining on the deck building/sideboarding clock. After you submit your deck you have no idea how long till autostart.
Jon's article is both sad and enlightening. It describes how I imagine working for wizards would be for me (I am not really a team player either and I can really bring the mood down when I am unhappy.) In fact aside from all of the details I found myself identifying with Jon as a person. So good article. I feel like his plea at the end is rather silly. People are going to vent. They are going to storm the gates, demanding the heads of those whom they perceive to be the sources of their unhappiness (designers and programmers). Pitchforks and torches are the order of the day, don't expect that to change just because you shared with us.
Yes I personally get it a little better now how things got so screwed up at WOTC but it doesn't change my personal anger towards the facts. I don't want heads to roll but I find the changes made to be intolerable and can't wait for them to change to something less insulting. That said, I WILL wait, and I never do join the mob seeking the monster because I know there but for fortune go I.
As for your analogy, I mostly agree except for the primer part. Keeping in mind they called it "shiny" for the last few years in an attempt to get us more optimistic about it. They clearly think they painted it some wonderful color that people should love. And clearly instead it is a piccassoesque nightmare to look at. Reskinning it would be at a minimum one way to make things better.
As for your editorial, I think it is a good time to hunker down and wait. Selling out is premature and probably a bad idea. I said as much in my article via the cartoon I drew.
BoB has hit the nail on the head there. Yeah v4 is technically playable. But it isnt fun to play on.
There is also a HUGE percentage of people who cannot run it on their current computers and are just quitting because of that.
This is easily the smoothest new client transition we've had on MTGO. We all agree that V4 isn't great, but the transitions for other clients were sooooooooooooooooo much worse.
I think you misphrase the question. The question isn't whether MTGO is playable, or even whether it is worth the grief, but rather "would I rather do something else with my free time right now?" That's a question each person has to decide for himself, of course. During pre-v.4 life, that was often a negative for most of us - MTGO was the best way to experience the premier game (unless, maybe chess) - but now with all the pain of deckbuilding, bugs, and horrible art, I'm finding lots of other things I'd rather do instead. I'll wait for things to get better and reevaluate then.
In all seriousness, is this format even fun to play. Wizards obviously screwed things up by promoting so many cards to Mythic in Vintage Masters.
The problem I see here is the card that keeps inappropriate insane combos under control in real classic, Force of Will, is priced out of the format. Almost all answer cards are priced out of the format.
So you get busted interactions with nothing to do.Maybe dropping Mythic back to 1.00 is the answer. Maybe running an actual ban list.