Reigning in the Power of Omniscience

THEMAGICkMAN

I'm going to put here what I personally think is grounds for a nerf.
1. incredibly difficult to interact with or stop. anything that has the potential to win in one turn falls here due to mtgpq being turn based. 
2. allows you to semi-consistently win very quickly. I think that copying paper MtGs modern 'rule' of <4 turns would work well here as well. this doesn't account for crazy cascades, that can happen. I'm talking about 1/3 games. give or take.
3. very unfun to lose to or play against. baral is the perfect example, his loops took forever to finish, and you generally had to either quit or cross your fingers that the loop fizzled early. anything the Ai can setup with relative ease falls here (most creature based combos or heavy support combos due to the way Ai prioritises card ordering) 
I'm going to add another one that's simply my thoughts: unbreakable loops, or 10 minute + loops. no one likes an unbreakable loop. whichever side you're on its a loss, since you have to quit. 10 minute loops also fall under a similar category, basically anything that makes you quit simply to end the match.

I'm certain theres some I missed, but this feels like a good starting list. 

ertaii

I suggest to fix whir of invention into "Fetch the first support with converted mana cost 15 or less and put it into play".

The same thing could be done with HUF. I currently possess it, play it with DtG, Samut, skysovereign, Gisela and Bruna. When I cast HUF it's an instant win, I even won on turn 1, it shouldn't be that easy...

Kinesia

Rereading that I would think I was drunk, except I was at work in the middle of the day, but something was clearly messing up my head. Supports only have Whir and Refurbish that I know of for freeness.
And, yes, the minotaur that gives extra mana.

I think I started thinking Omniscience was a spell in your hand but a support in play... Maybe...

Let's never speak of this again!

blacklotus

before Omniscience, there was another even more OP blue card: Days Undoing. 

The original Days Undoing costs only 6 mana. It still reshuffles your deck and draws 5 cards and gives each card 3 mana. Now that is a card that I have seen looped till i lost when it was paired with Behold the Beyond or Harness the Storm. 

FindingHeart8

blacklotus said:

before Omniscience, there was another even more OP blue card: Days Undoing. 

The original Days Undoing costs only 6 mana. It still reshuffles your deck and draws 5 cards and gives each card 3 mana. Now that is a card that I have seen looped till i lost when it was paired with Behold the Beyond or Harness the Storm. 

Harness the Storm has always been a combo until victory card since it hit game, if we're thinking of rewording Omniscience to make it functional but less synergistic with 10+ minute win combos, maybe Harness the Storm should be considered as well.

FindingHeart8

ertaii said:

I suggest to fix whir of invention into "Fetch the first support with converted mana cost 15 or less and put it into play".

The same thing could be done with HUF. I currently possess it, play it with DtG, Samut, skysovereign, Gisela and Bruna. When I cast HUF it's an instant win, I even won on turn 1, it shouldn't be that easy...

  what's wrong with having a few easy wins once and a while?  It's no guarantee HUF will be in your opening hand and still need to get the mana to pull it off once you do (and if you're playing a black deck they might make you discard it before you can pull it off, as Liliana/Bolas has done to me many times.  Blue can easily have their counterspell-supports out before you drop it, and white could have lockdown-supports in play already as well).  I don't have 24/7 to devote to a phone game, so an occasional easy victory once and a while is appreciated.

khurram

blacklotus said:

before Omniscience, there was another even more OP blue card: Days Undoing. 

The original Days Undoing costs only 6 mana. It still reshuffles your deck and draws 5 cards and gives each card 3 mana. Now that is a card that I have seen looped till i lost when it was paired with Behold the Beyond or Harness the Storm. 

Erm... Days undoing was already nerfed way before BtB was introduced. And while it cost 6 it's looping potential rose from blue-green decks where green gem converters take as much blame, if not more.

Bil

Another option would be to avoid omniscience from stacking too much.
I first thought about "when omniscience enters the battlefield, it is destroyed if it's already in game" (obviously an anti endless loop) but it would make the card too hard to play

I think a good option might be "when omniscience is reinforced, it only gains 1 shield". That wouldn't break any loop but would limit the number of cards launched. 

__Adam

I don't see omni as all that OP.  It's potent, but not some huge outlier on the power curve.  I've never experienced these loops people are concerned with.

Of course I'm talking the limited format, the standard/wild format is so broken it's laughable and citing any 1 card is silly.

Bil

Omniscience by itself is already powerful (4priceless cards for the price of one is not bad)... But the loops that can be created with omniscience are really out of control for now on.

  Having trouble facing a deck because it's a good deck or because of cascades is something, having no chance to play a swap is something else.

  I almost face an Omniloop deck each time I play TOTP and in most cases after Omni is played i either die on that turn (if the loop goes well) or (If I'm lucky)  I get another turn to clear his board before I get achieved.
I recently got kill by the IA on his first turn, all he did was casting a single card once, the loop did it all.

   If we could find a way to leave Omni efficient for the one who plays it, but less loopy when the IA plays it would be better... I think.

Sirchombli

Well with the never ending whining about the card, it was probably a mistake. I've still never lost to it, but I must be alone in this, so I concede. I don't think it can really be balanced in a realistic manner. It's far from the only loop enabler. Might as well just nerf em all. 

Houdin

Perhaps I'm wrong. However just like may other threads lately, this feels like just another "poor me" "boo hoo" thread.
So you lose once in awhile to a very good deck.
Oh nooo! That's so terrible!!! What??
If the only reason for nerfing a card is simply because you can sometimes lose to it, well then perhaps you don't realize the point of the game.
It's supposed to be hard to win matches.
What's the fun in a game that you win every single game unless some extreme outlier of AI swaps occurs.
The struggle is the entire engine behind getting better cards and making better decks.
If I can just throw whatever ten cards I want on the board and win this game becomes pointless.

You can not infinitely loop omni except possibly in the most extreme one in a million game.

The card doesn't break the meta of the game, as by itself it is not an instant win card.

It's just my opinion but I really think people should stop trying to snowflake the game.

It should be hard for new players to beat legacy players.
It should be hard to complete your card collection.
You should lose games.
You should feel the need to struggle and rethink your decks every game. 
The above are all the same as paper magic and the reason it is still relevant.

I for one would get too bored of this game very quickly if the above wasn't  true. 

khurram

Of all the ways you can loop in this game Omniscience isn't even the most effective one. That is, it hasn't brought any more extreme levels of "brokenness" than those already existing in the game. It can one shot in a turn?? Well, if it does that I think it's very fitting flavour-wise. It's called Omniscience!!

One of these days, i'd like to see people starting some threads about all those useless mythics and rares that are gathering dust in our collections .

Mainloop25

khurram said:

One of these days, i'd like to see people starting some threads about all those useless mythics and rares that are gathering dust in our collections .

That is more of less what I did with this thread :
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/69773/how-would-you-nerf-it-buff-it#latest

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Houdin this is not a boo-hoo thread. It's a serious call out to a broken card. It's broken all by itself. Any card, that by itself, can cause you to lose after your first turn needs adjustment. The ideas I and others raised to adjust it are sensible. This is not the first time the community has pointed out such things and gotten a card adjusted.

Kinesia

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

@Houdin this is not a boo-hoo thread. It's a serious call out to a broken card. It's broken all by itself. Any card, that by itself, can cause you to lose after your first turn needs adjustment. The ideas I and others raised to adjust it are sensible. This is not the first time the community has pointed out such things and gotten a card adjusted.

The problem from my perspective isn't losing @Houdin , it's not getting to play, if you are just sitting watching the AI match gems it should just be a video on youtube not a game. I _absolutely_ agree with you that we should lose, someone _good_ should actually still lose 30% of the time maybe, beginners 50%, the best players should _still_ lose 5% of the time, but it shouldn't be because they don't get to have their turn, because they don't get to play their deck. (People feel seriously entitled about winning and it's a really really dumb attitude they need to drop, but that's _not_ the reason for _this_ boo hoo thread.)

It needs to be interactive and the loops ruin that. It's not one card and I don't necessarily think nerfs are the answer, I want _more_ options to break loops and stop things, like to stop the green cascades have a blue support that says "no more than 2 green gems can be made per turn" or other weird things that have never been done in the game before.
Shake things up, a lot even, but games need to be _slower_ so people have a chance to actually play, that's the whole point of everything after all.

Houdin

I hear what you are saying, but my point is this.
I have omni. 
Is It possible to create a pre nerf  barril loop?
No.
It is possible to create a very long loop in one certain build.
However that loop is not easy to get out nor is it easy to sustain.
The right cards have to come out in the right order.
If I play it in TG I might be able to get it running 1 time in 10? Where I need to actively stop it.

To get it running on the first turn would require the exact right first three cards that pull the exact right cards when dropped. Due to the man costs involved you would also need to cascade on that turn as well.

I might see that happen 1 time in a 100?

If it's happening more often when Greg pilots my deck against you then the problem isn't the card. The problem is the AI  cascade percentage.

I could understand the call for a nerf  it was a pre need barril situation. But in this case I still disagree.

Kinesia

And I would _dearly_ like to know if the AI has a cascade percentage advantage. Many of us _think_ this is true but we can't prove it. The devs probably wouldn't be allowed to admit to it (because then we could all sue d3go for "fixed gambling machines" in at least one of our countries), the best we can hope for is that they remove it behind the scenes without comment.

Volrak

Some good points in this thread, including that losses should be expected sometimes - but interactivity in a game is important.

Kinesia said:

And I would _dearly_ like to know if the AI has a cascade percentage advantage. Many of us _think_ this is true but we can't prove it. The devs probably wouldn't be allowed to admit to it (because then we could all sue d3go for "fixed gambling machines" in at least one of our countries), the best we can hope for is that they remove it behind the scenes without comment.

Collecting data takes effort and discipline, but it can certainly be done.  Here's how I'd do it if I dearly wanted to investigate this:

• At the end of each game, open the battle log, and record to a spreadsheet the per-turn mana gains for each player
• Record the planeswalkers and levels used so you know their mana gains (best of all, do mirror matches with same walkers, same level)
  
• Make sure you only do this for games where neither player used gem-destroying abilities or cards, since they'll distort the data
• Also to avoid bias, make sure the decision to collect is made at the start of the game, not at the end (for example, if you forget to record half the time, and only record results after being reminded in a game in which a big cascade happens, the data will be biased and of limited use)
• And decide up front how to choose moves as the human player, and stick to it.  Two strategies are possible:
  - Make the best move you can see (in which case the default expectation is human gets more mana per turn than AI), or
  Try to make the move you think the AI would make, which may be similar but perhaps not identical to the "suggested move" (in which case, if you get it right, the default expectation is neither human or AI gaining significantly more mana).

The average per-turn mana of human and AI could then be statistically compared.  It would probably only take in the order of hundreds of turns (not thousands) to get some useful insight, though as always, the more data the better.  I'll even volunteer to do the stats if someone is willing to collect the data.

FindingHeart8

Houdin said:

I hear what you are saying, but my point is this.
I have omni. 
Is It possible to create a pre nerf  barril loop?
No.
It is possible to create a very long loop in one certain build.
However that loop is not easy to get out nor is it easy to sustain.
The right cards have to come out in the right order.
If I play it in TG I might be able to get it running 1 time in 10? Where I need to actively stop it.

To get it running on the first turn would require the exact right first three cards that pull the exact right cards when dropped. Due to the man costs involved you would also need to cascade on that turn as well.

I might see that happen 1 time in a 100?

If it's happening more often when Greg pilots my deck against you then the problem isn't the card. The problem is the AI  cascade percentage.

I could understand the call for a nerf  it was a pre need barril situation. But in this case I still disagree.

I'm on the boat for nerfing Omni, but only a little bit.  Frequently when I play an AI who has it, from the turn they drop it it's a 5-15minute wait (I've timed it) of sitting and waiting for my eventual turn, knowing that if I'm unable to defeat the AI by my next turn, it will likely be another 10 minutes before I get my following turn, if I'm still alive by the time I'm done waiting

More than once I've just quit matches once the combo started, even if I was at full health and my opponent was almost defeated, because the time I can devote to this game (like many other players) is limited, and in the amount of time I'd have to wait to finish this match I could have won 2-3 others. 

I get that it's a powerful card, and I'd want it's abilities to remain as much intact as possible, without being abuse-able.  Something like "Omni can't be fetched or Omni can't be used to play another Omni."

This is a game where we (win or lose) we are supposed to be able to play, and current Omniscience turns it into feeling like I'm waiting at the DMV.