Animation speed

Upstartes

This is not a new topic, but I thought I'd put this out there as a specific example of the depth of the problem, along with identifying what I think is a simple way to improve things slightly.

I have a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar deck that revolves around a combo of Gideon's 2nd ability, Grovetender Druids, and Valor in Akros. I love the synergy created and, conceptually, I really like this deck.

In practice, however, the deck gets annoying to play because the animations cause my turns to take so long. Several minutes waiting on animations is not uncommon. It's not uncommon for me to set my phone down and do something else while waiting for a turn to complete.

The tokens coming into play is bad, but surprisingly, the biggest culprit is Valor in Akros. Each time it triggers, this simple animation of an energy arc flowing from the support gem to the card being boosted gets triggered, and this little arc moves surprisingly slow. I feel that this animation could easily be twice as fast without impacting its visual purpose.

This arcing energy animation shows up all over the place with other cards (not just associated with this deck), and I don't think the current slow speed of the arc adds anything as compared to a faster arc. I think a lot of similar combos could be sped up by accelerating this animation.

My 2 cents.

Monk

Yesterday, I fought Koth with Harness of the Storm + Devils playground combinaison. His rounds took so long I had to take my book because it was really boring...

shteev

Indeed. The vast majority of creatures do not win games any more, and you're much better off fielding some way of making multiple token creatures, like Thopter Spy Network, Zendikar's Roil, or Harness the Storm + Devil's Playground. By trying to win games in this fashion you are penalised by an effective time penalty.