Beyond the Breaking Point

ElimGarak

Not only is the matchmaking horrible (no level-sensitivity), no,the tiny kitty event had me "something went wrong" 3 times, which, of course, is a instant loss

Machine

ElimGarak said:

Not only is the matchmaking horrible (no level-sensitivity), no,the tiny kitty event had me "something went wrong" 3 times, which, of course, is a instant loss

What is being done about this? I mean, it's just not right if you miss out on the grand prize by a known bug in the game!

UweTellkampf

What is being done? Most probably nothing. If they have a good day tomorrow they will give us 1000 runes "as a compensation"

DumasAG

Just wondering who thought it would be a good idea to, in order, decide to change the weekend event for the first time in over a month without warning > have Rishkar's Expertise be the event reward for an event that will have a locked node > NOT ANNOUNCE that the reward for this event would be Expertise while the locked node PW was in the vault > NOT EXTEND Tezz2's time in the vault to cover the time of this event > launch said event.

This is one of the cards people have been looking forward to most (because it's stupid-broken). Why are many people being punished for not buying Tezz2 at the right time by denying them EVEN A CHANCE at this mythic? It's not even like someone said, "you can choose not to buy this PW, but you're going to need it for a chance at Expertise." I WOULD HAVE bought it had I been made aware that it was a necessary purchase. 

This is the opposite of good marketing. I'm not being encouraged to buy new things, I'm being punished for not buying everything ever. Far from making me buy everything, this pushes me to buy nothing.

Tilwin90

Bottom line, D3 has no feasible means of solving these problems related to errors during events that lead to people losing charges.
The reason why we lose charges like idiots is they can't seem to be able to handle this transaction in a fair manner for all players in order to prevent abuse. And I can't say I have a solution for this.

I was going to suggest to take charge at the end of the battle after handing-over reward but this is abusable.
- Exploit: Players close and reopen their device forcefully. Since that is in theory a "connection error", the charge is not subtracted yet the "would be lost" match is avoided.

I do have some recommendations here:
* Some charges are deducted before the match even begins (a.k.a seeing anything on the board). Once you see the board, in all fairness you shouldn't be able to restart. But clearly the charge is deducted slightly earlier.
* After match is over, should an error occur, store information locally until connection is restored. Just because the connection to the server goes poof during the "granting reward" process is silly. I expect this can be encrypted in such a manner that it can't be abused by players (besides, you can cross-check info with the server anyway... otherwise abuses would be possible even now).
* Find a way to detect "multiple retry" on "an error has occurred" to avoid costing players multiple charges. That is again unfair and lead me to completely abandon an event because I lost all 5 charges on one of the nodes. Ever since then, I refrain from pushing the "retry" button as it is only going to make things worse for me than do any good. Since it was part of your retry, it's not something that can be abused.

This is a must-do as it is already causing enough problems with the events. There is no such thing as "We can't do anything about it". It's your application which needs to be fault tolerant and handle such situations more gracefully. Right now it's just amateurish and embarrassing - if I were a developer in your team I'd be with my head in the sand already because "sorry, I don't have enough information to help you with this".
Nobody said programming is easy, that's why programmers get paid so well (I would know as I am one myself). Start some prototyping and take this as a high-priority situation - this is a critical (if not blocker) bug that is preventing your players from properly using your application during events. You can try to stabilize as much as you want your servers... the truth is that unexpected errors can always occur. Your focus should also be on the client app!

*done ranting...*

madwren

AngelForge said:

Not so far. But Rishka was never really in reach for me... I already said goodbye when I saw it in the rewards! ^^

Edit: But someone in my coalition who plays MtGPQ on an Iphone also experience crashes, accordingly on the 4th -5th game.
He now resets the game after a match and it seems to work even it is a big hassle.
It seems to be a memory issue then, right?

I've also had this problem/fix on my iPhone. It's inconvenient, but it does seem to forestall crashes.

madwren

DumasAG said:

J

This is one of the cards people have been looking forward to most (because it's stupid-broken). Why are many people being punished for not buying Tezz2 at the right time by denying them EVEN A CHANCE at this mythic? It's not even like someone said, "you can choose not to buy this PW, but you're going to need it for a chance at Expertise." I WOULD HAVE bought it had I been made aware that it was a necessary purchase. 

I sympathize, so please don't take this as snarky. It's intended to help you (and others), to explain the process.

1. When a set is released, you can see which mythics are exclusive. For example, with Aether Revolt, they published a list of which ones were event releases and which were not. Only three of the event exclusives were mythics--Mech Production, Planar Bridge, and Rishkar's Expertise.

2. In December (?), they held the first Inventor's Fair (for Dynavolt), and it required Dovin Baan. We were all taken by surprise, but that was a signal that they were going to start requiring PWs for events. This held true in subsequent events.

3. They have run these exclusive events immediately after offering the new planeswalkers for crystals, each time. There have been some scheduling snafus recently due to the update and failed maintenances. However....

4. By the time we were down to two planeswalkers yet to be released (T2 and A2), there was only one unreleased mythic remaining (Rishkar's Expertise). Thus, you could logically conclude that the Breaking Points event to obtain it would require whichever of those planeswalkers was the first one to be released (and subsequently available for crystals).

I'm delineating it like this because I expect them to continue this model well into the future. While I recommend keeping a list of the event exclusives for Amonkhet organized by rarity and whether it is event/purchase, the most important thing to take from this is that EVERY NEW PLANESWALKER WILL BE REQUIRED IN AN EXCLUSIVE EVENT AT SOME POINT. Capitalized for emphasis, not for yelling. That means hoard your crystals, or selectively choose which pw to buy based on what card you think (or in this case, know) is going to be coming.

shteev

Machine said:

ElimGarak said:

Not only is the matchmaking horrible (no level-sensitivity), no,the tiny kitty event had me "something went wrong" 3 times, which, of course, is a instant loss

What is being done about this? I mean, it's just not right if you miss out on the grand prize by a known bug in the game!

Well, ma big post got deleted for breaking the new forum rules.

So, without breaking the new forum rules, here was the jist of it:

• Player missed out on Dynavolt Tower because of game crashes in events.
• Player missed out on Aetherworks Marvel because of game crashes in events.
• Player missed out on Saheeli Rai because of game crashes in events.
• D3/Hibernum did not care.

If you'd like any more information about this, then feel free to message me personally. Obviously I will converse with you in a way that does not breach any new forum rules or Byzantine new confidentially clauses.