Scarlet Witch blue

simonsez

At 5 covers, it's supposed to be a 3 turn countdown, but when it first spawns, it has a "4" on it. It counts down to 3 as part of the start of your turn. Can we expect this to be fixed as speedily as her green was "fixed"?

CrookedKnight

What would the "fix" be? Place the tile after coundowns tick for the turn, changing nothing of substance at all?

simonsez

CrookedKnight wrote:

What would the "fix" be? Place the tile after coundowns tick for the turn, changing nothing of substance at all?

The fix is that it should place a 3 turn countdown like it says, not a 4 turn countdown.

CrookedKnight

A three-turn countdown that would resolve in two turns, or three?

turul

As described, it places a 3-turn CD tile at the beginning of the turn, which is before CD tile resolving, so it does need to be fixed, just as her green ability.

Its like Hulks anger - It describes and places 1-turn tiles. By same false logic with Scarlet's blue, Hulks anger should describe 0-turn, or should create 2-turn tiles which turn 1 before player gets to move.

CrookedKnight

But the same logic applies to both, because they show the listed number for the move during the turn where they appear, and then tick down when Hulk/SW begins his/her next turn after the one where the countdown showed up (which, since Anger only triggers on an enemy turn, is Hulk's only turn in this process, but the logic still holds). The only difference is that thanks to MPQ's kinda-hacky order of operations that resolves passives before countdown ticks, Arcane Incantation has to briefly show “4” in order to behave like a three-turn countdown. Otherwise you'd get a bizarre situation where if SW and Captain America placed their “three-turn countdowns” on the same turn, SW's would resolve on the turn before Cap's.

simonsez

CrookedKnight wrote:

But the same logic applies to both, because they show the listed number for the move during the turn where they appear, and then tick down when Hulk/SW begins his/her next turn after the one where the countdown showed up

No, this isn't true. You can only see it when the tile is placed in a spot where it gets matched right away, but when it first is placed, it is a 4 turn countdown. This is NOT what the ability description says it's supposed to be.

CrookedKnight

But....I brought that up in the very next sentence.

CrookedKnight wrote:

The only difference is that thanks to MPQ's kinda-hacky order of operations that resolves passives before countdown ticks, Arcane Incantation has to briefly show “4” in order to behave like a three-turn countdown. Otherwise you'd get a bizarre situation where if SW and Captain America placed their “three-turn countdowns” on the same turn, SW's would resolve on the turn before Cap's.

simonsez

Why would that be bizarre? The countdowns for those characters are placed at different points in your turn. The SW cd gets placed before cds resolve, and the LCap cds get placed after they resolved. Not understanding why any of this should be confusing. Simply put, the ability is NOT matching the description. It might be doing what you think it ought to be doing, but that doesn't change the fact that the description is telling you it places a 3 turn countdown, and yet the game is placing a 4 turn countdown. I'm not looking to debate what it should or shouldn't be doing. I'm merely stating what it IS doing, and what it IS doing is NOT what the description is telling us it's supposed to be doing.

CrookedKnight

Really? You don't understand why it would be confusing for a power to say it places a three-turn countdown but have the tile show up and immediately tick to 2, only ever being visible as a "3" if you were looking directly at the spot where it dropped at the moment when it dropped, and with no explanation for that behavior beyond the completely undocumented order of operations? That seems completely reasonable and straightforward to you, and nothing you would complain about when it helped out an AI team?

simonsez

I'm also not looking to debate what would or wouldn't be confusing to people, nor anything else of a subjective nature. Again, it''s really very simple. The game isn't doing what the description says it's supposed to do.

Malcrof

simonsez wrote:

I'm also not looking to debate what would or wouldn't be confusing to people, nor anything else of a subjective nature. Again, it''s really very simple. The game isn't doing what the description says it's supposed to do.

Think hulk black.. with 5 covers, it says a 1 turn CD tile.. but it isn't, a true 1 turn CD tile would give you a chance to match it, you do not get that chance, it shows at the end of your turn and immediately pops..

For example, boosted IF pops hulk at the end of each turn, the CD tile immediately goes off for hulk at the beginning of his.. it is not a cd tile if it does not wait a turn.

I will have to agree with Simonsez, per the description, it should start at 3, not 4 when placed.

BlackSheep101

The power behaves as intended. Any "fix" would simply hide the "4" that briefly appears on screen so that the power behaves as intended in vagaries of the current system. Any proposed solution that would shorten the countdown timer is based on semantics, not developer intent.

CrookedKnight

You do get a chance to match Hulk's black if you trigger it with a (non-turn-ending) power or a match-five. Similarly you only get one chance to match a two-turn Mischief tile (again, unless it shows up via match-five or power use) and yet nobody seems to think that's a bug in need of fixing.

Anyway, my point is that the possible “fixes” for Arcane Incantation are:

1) Rewrite the order of operations so a countdown placed by a passive doesn't immediately tick down, thus allowing the countdown to have an initial count of "3" and still resolve after three turns rather than two. Given that this involves a change to the battle system architecture with huge bug potential (just off the top of my head, it would constitute a major buff for Redwing), I would expect D3 to do this shortly after they hire a flying pig as an additional programmer.

2) Change the description to a four-turn countdown while continuing to have the tile resolve in three, confusing everybody who's never spotted the initial “4” and realized what it means about the OOO.

3) Change the initial state of the countdown to 3, meaning the tile would now resolve every two turns, confusing everybody who's never spotted the initial “4” and realized what it means about the OOO while also substantially buffing the power in order to resolve what amounts to a trivial display error.

So yeah, I kinda doubt this'll be fixed "as speedily as her green," and not just because unlike Hex Bolt it actually has the effect it's supposed to.

simonsez

BlackSheep101 wrote:

The power behaves as intended. Any "fix" would simply hide the "4" that briefly appears on screen so that the power behaves as intended in vagaries of the current system. Any proposed solution that would shorten the countdown timer is based on semantics, not developer intent.

I'm glad you're confident in your abilities to deduce developer intent. You could be absolutely correct. But I'll say it again for your benefit: I don't care about these subjective arguments. I'm only interested in the fact that the game isn't correctly executing the ability as described. I don't even care what they do to fix it. I just want to see the same sort of fire under their butts that we saw with the green ability issue.

CrookedKnight

Okay, for real, I do not get the idea that the Hex Bolt shows the devs hate us all and are looking for ways to screw the players over. Am I sorry it's gone? My SW is 5/5/3, of course I am! But it was inarguably a bug, even if a subtle one, and it fixing it was apparently really simple seeing as it didn't even need a client patch. I don't see the point in turning into a pillar of salt over it, much less coming up with “bugs” like this one as a false equvalent.

fmftint

If anything this will get the Ultron Sentry Flyer treatment, description will be reworded to match the action

Unknown

For the vast majority of players the description of Arcane Incantation is effectively accurate, so it is fine as it stands even if not ideal. Should the developers have any sense of priority, this issue will likely never be fixed by itself. I would only expect a change to occur if the underlying code governing the order of execution for various abilities were to be adjusted.

This is ultimately not a good choice for a protest issue. It would be better to pick something that will resonate more with the average player.

GothicKratos

simonsez wrote:

BlackSheep101 wrote:

The power behaves as intended. Any "fix" would simply hide the "4" that briefly appears on screen so that the power behaves as intended in vagaries of the current system. Any proposed solution that would shorten the countdown timer is based on semantics, not developer intent.

I'm glad you're confident in your abilities to deduce developer intent. You could be absolutely correct. But I'll say it again for your benefit: I don't care about these subjective arguments. I'm only interested in the fact that the game isn't correctly executing the ability as described. I don't even care what they do to fix it. I just want to see the same sort of fire under their butts that we saw with the green ability issue.

It's working as intended. The two "issues" are different.

You're just being obstinate.

turul

beginning of turn ≠ middle of turn
4 ≠ 3

yogi_

My half comment on this topic is that there are a number of character powers whose description and exact way the power is executed in game, are not identical. It shouldn't happen, but it does.

My other half comment are two questions. My SW has no Blue, so I wanted to ask, what number appears on the countdown tile for power levels 1 - 3? (Her blurb indicates 4).

If indeed at power level 4, the numbering is supposed to come down to 3 and a 4 is showing at some part of this process (not getting into these specifics), what actually changes with the 4th cover?