Of course I wasn't discouraging reporting. Reporting is a DUTY. Blocking is what you do to preserve your own sanity (also, as Rada perfectly pointed out, to avoid becoming the monster down the line).
In fact, I'm thinking to use the fact that I'm the host of three weekly events now, to ban every proved abuser instantly and for life from those events (easily from every Gatherling event, since I know Dabil has absolutely no patience whatsoever for such kind of things).
At least one should feel safe to play in PREs, and the PREs have the moral obligation to provide a safe environment to their players, since they're created and run by people, not by machines.
Okay, I looked into that just superficially, but it seems he did it intentionally to prove how speculation works or something?
I don't know, if that's the case, I'm kinda appalled.
Hearthstone does not have a chat room, I really like that approach. I can not tell you how many times I've been called nasty things by someone flipping out, nor can I tell you how many times I've done the same.
LoL has the tribunal system I like that idea a lot as well.
RexDart and Xger, if you all facebook me please message me there, so I can add you all to the writers group. I know that I missed a ton of writers when I started it.
There will be an article that shows the new schedule before the weekend is over. A lot of it is for consistency and cosmetic, plus opening up some new features. hopefully!
What's the skinny on this re-formatting of author schedules? This is the first I'm hearing about it. I only write the one article per month now for Theme Week, but I have been assuming I'm still part of that lineup??
For post-apocalyptic tournaments, single-elimination is very appropriate. "Two men enter, one man leaves."
I usually preferred 3 round tournaments, since a playoff between undefeateds was faster than waiting on another full round. Mid-day Saturday is just a tough time slot to justify sitting at the computer that long when the weather is nice and you're in a relationship with an outdoors-lover. I also agree with you that certain flashy decks lacking in consistency suffer from longer tournaments -- I'm not sure my 2012 Efreet deck, for example, would have won a four round tournament. But on the flip side, having decks with insane nut draws blow through a short event might not be what you want either.
I suspect that would have a lot of backlash from the community in general as soon as someone was garnished for something they didn't feel was inappropriate or sanctionable.
The post-apocalypse idea has merit. What you need is a secondary host who can do the work for you so that you merely need to be the man in charge and not have to do the drudgery of a second event on top of the first.
Was there an article or anything on the site about the new daily article updates? I love this site and read it daily and occasionally write articles, but sometimes it suffers from the same problem as Wizards: bad communication. I think revamping the schedule and making things more consistent is great, but it would be awesome to get some details. In addition, I enjoy theme weeks, but I think it would be far better to talk about the week BEFORE articles come out instead of afterward.
I've been playing Naya after playing RG and Mono Black, and it's so much better than RG and Mono Black that it's no surprise it's dominating so much. It has better game against the Heroic decks because of Chained to the Rocks, and Elspeth just dominates the RG/Naya mirror. Naya also makes the removal in Mono Black much much worse since instead of having to deal with just Polukranos/Stormbreath, they also have to kill Elspeth, which means things will stick more often than not.
Wow, Great article as usual Pete! Also thanks for the shout out, never thought I was worthy enough to be mentioned in your article!
Also, the article that Rada wrote was one of the best articles I have ever read in my life. It speaks to me also because when I got to the section of the top player who felt entitled etc... At some point in my life of playing mtg, I felt I was finally good enough at the game where I should never lose. I didn't quite go to the extent that he did, with spamming trade chats and what have you, but anyone who has watched my videos from the past knows how angry and how not fun I used to make magic look and if I could go back in time, I would tell myself its not worth it. No matter how much apologizing I do to my viewers and to my past self, I still used to be that way in the end. I could easily delete the videos, but I leave them up there for myself so I know how not to act and how not to take magic so serious and try to have fun.
Again thank you for linking Rada's article, it was an awesome read.
Yes, it is slow and bureaucratic, but it is the only way to get these people off MTGO. Having been involved in investigations, it takes a while to make sure you have the full story, and can prove it. It may take a few reports to get a critical mass of evidence.
More importantly, Wizards cannot watch every game. They watch those people who they have reason to suspect - often those that have been reported. If no one reports an abuser, they may never be caught.
Blocking someone protects you from that person. Reporting them protects the whole community. So block them if the bother you, but report them as well.
Thank you for highlighting Rada's article. That really hit home for me. I've shared it to my social media outlets. Something like that really should go viral.
What happened with Summoner's Egg? I was going to buy a set, had my few cents ready, and now it's almost 2 tix apiece?! Essentially overnight? (Just look at this chart)
Great piece about bullying, Pete. It really is an issue on MTGO. We recently witnessed a few psychological casualties of it, it's always soul-crushing. Reporting isn't even a real solution, it's an extremely bureaucratic procedure that takes forever to get results and possibly doesn't. The best course of action is always blocking the offenders, immediately and forever. Zero tolerance.
I think doing what you are doing is fine. If you want to add some polish to the site over all you could summarize each week the articles you liked best or felt were at the top of their formats.
RE bullying: step number one, don't call your opponent a jerk even by implication. Instead call them on their abuse. "I know you were xxx in the game because of yyy but please don't be abusive about it."
I get giddier than a school girl when someone else mentions me in their article. Thanks for the shout out! I'll be running a very detailed deck tech of Naya next week.
Block DEs are getting bigger because Pauper players had to find a next cheapest market for DEs.
I, for one, would really enjoy it if you kept the Cutting Edge Tech as it was before. Other writers might write about these formats, it's still enjoyable to have a few deck lists of your choice come Friday evening. But if not, then yes, please, do talk about legacy in that section.
Of course I wasn't discouraging reporting. Reporting is a DUTY. Blocking is what you do to preserve your own sanity (also, as Rada perfectly pointed out, to avoid becoming the monster down the line).
In fact, I'm thinking to use the fact that I'm the host of three weekly events now, to ban every proved abuser instantly and for life from those events (easily from every Gatherling event, since I know Dabil has absolutely no patience whatsoever for such kind of things).
At least one should feel safe to play in PREs, and the PREs have the moral obligation to provide a safe environment to their players, since they're created and run by people, not by machines.
Okay, I looked into that just superficially, but it seems he did it intentionally to prove how speculation works or something?
I don't know, if that's the case, I'm kinda appalled.
Rex is already added.
Hearthstone does not have a chat room, I really like that approach. I can not tell you how many times I've been called nasty things by someone flipping out, nor can I tell you how many times I've done the same.
LoL has the tribunal system I like that idea a lot as well.
Travis Woo happened in regards to Summoner's Egg. He sent out an early morning tweet, and that kinda snowballed!
RexDart and Xger, if you all facebook me please message me there, so I can add you all to the writers group. I know that I missed a ton of writers when I started it.
There will be an article that shows the new schedule before the weekend is over. A lot of it is for consistency and cosmetic, plus opening up some new features. hopefully!
Joshua should have something up Monday.
Same thing for me, though I had some other articles I write. Would be nice to know what is going on...
Ok, Paul, respect your opinion.
However, I forgot the real point I wanted to make =) (when posting previous post);
We cannot expect WotC to reduce the number of idiot-wanna-be's out there, wotc has no chance to change personalities.
What wotc CAN do though, and to a very large extent, is reduce the substance of their bad behaviour.
It wont take much for people to become trigger happy with reporting.
The general bad behaviour is at least 70 percent WotC's fault.
When talking more seldom cases(the worst offenders) WotC has little to no fault.
Apart from the last mentioned the bad behaviour is in general a WotC problem and not a player/customer problem !
What's the skinny on this re-formatting of author schedules? This is the first I'm hearing about it. I only write the one article per month now for Theme Week, but I have been assuming I'm still part of that lineup??
For post-apocalyptic tournaments, single-elimination is very appropriate. "Two men enter, one man leaves."
I usually preferred 3 round tournaments, since a playoff between undefeateds was faster than waiting on another full round. Mid-day Saturday is just a tough time slot to justify sitting at the computer that long when the weather is nice and you're in a relationship with an outdoors-lover. I also agree with you that certain flashy decks lacking in consistency suffer from longer tournaments -- I'm not sure my 2012 Efreet deck, for example, would have won a four round tournament. But on the flip side, having decks with insane nut draws blow through a short event might not be what you want either.
I suspect that would have a lot of backlash from the community in general as soon as someone was garnished for something they didn't feel was inappropriate or sanctionable.
The post-apocalypse idea has merit. What you need is a secondary host who can do the work for you so that you merely need to be the man in charge and not have to do the drudgery of a second event on top of the first.
Was there an article or anything on the site about the new daily article updates? I love this site and read it daily and occasionally write articles, but sometimes it suffers from the same problem as Wizards: bad communication. I think revamping the schedule and making things more consistent is great, but it would be awesome to get some details. In addition, I enjoy theme weeks, but I think it would be far better to talk about the week BEFORE articles come out instead of afterward.
I've been playing Naya after playing RG and Mono Black, and it's so much better than RG and Mono Black that it's no surprise it's dominating so much. It has better game against the Heroic decks because of Chained to the Rocks, and Elspeth just dominates the RG/Naya mirror. Naya also makes the removal in Mono Black much much worse since instead of having to deal with just Polukranos/Stormbreath, they also have to kill Elspeth, which means things will stick more often than not.
WotC has done far to little(close to nothing ?) to stop bad behaviour on mtgo, also in paper in my opinion (but that is a discussion for another day).
"We uphold rights to close down an mtgo account for any reason...". ,or however wotc phrases that.
How about WotC actually using that stuff to, f.ex, withdraw some tickets/mythics from accounts held by players that uses bad language on mtgo ?
It does not need be much, I BET 90 percent of this would stop if they just took away 2 tickets each time someone said something bad on mtgo.
As it is now it seems that WotC just dont care for their customers and people that are hit with bad language from opponents.
Wow, Great article as usual Pete! Also thanks for the shout out, never thought I was worthy enough to be mentioned in your article!
Also, the article that Rada wrote was one of the best articles I have ever read in my life. It speaks to me also because when I got to the section of the top player who felt entitled etc... At some point in my life of playing mtg, I felt I was finally good enough at the game where I should never lose. I didn't quite go to the extent that he did, with spamming trade chats and what have you, but anyone who has watched my videos from the past knows how angry and how not fun I used to make magic look and if I could go back in time, I would tell myself its not worth it. No matter how much apologizing I do to my viewers and to my past self, I still used to be that way in the end. I could easily delete the videos, but I leave them up there for myself so I know how not to act and how not to take magic so serious and try to have fun.
Again thank you for linking Rada's article, it was an awesome read.
Yes, it is slow and bureaucratic, but it is the only way to get these people off MTGO. Having been involved in investigations, it takes a while to make sure you have the full story, and can prove it. It may take a few reports to get a critical mass of evidence.
More importantly, Wizards cannot watch every game. They watch those people who they have reason to suspect - often those that have been reported. If no one reports an abuser, they may never be caught.
Blocking someone protects you from that person. Reporting them protects the whole community. So block them if the bother you, but report them as well.
Thank you for highlighting Rada's article. That really hit home for me. I've shared it to my social media outlets. Something like that really should go viral.
What happened with Summoner's Egg? I was going to buy a set, had my few cents ready, and now it's almost 2 tix apiece?! Essentially overnight? (Just look at this chart)
Great piece about bullying, Pete. It really is an issue on MTGO. We recently witnessed a few psychological casualties of it, it's always soul-crushing. Reporting isn't even a real solution, it's an extremely bureaucratic procedure that takes forever to get results and possibly doesn't. The best course of action is always blocking the offenders, immediately and forever. Zero tolerance.
I think doing what you are doing is fine. If you want to add some polish to the site over all you could summarize each week the articles you liked best or felt were at the top of their formats.
RE bullying: step number one, don't call your opponent a jerk even by implication. Instead call them on their abuse. "I know you were xxx in the game because of yyy but please don't be abusive about it."
I get giddier than a school girl when someone else mentions me in their article. Thanks for the shout out! I'll be running a very detailed deck tech of Naya next week.
Block DEs are getting bigger because Pauper players had to find a next cheapest market for DEs.
I, for one, would really enjoy it if you kept the Cutting Edge Tech as it was before. Other writers might write about these formats, it's still enjoyable to have a few deck lists of your choice come Friday evening. But if not, then yes, please, do talk about legacy in that section.
Cheers.
Heroes and Vial-Ins. I like it. :)