Legacy Cards in Standard Format Exploit (10/1/18)

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  • khurram
    khurram Posts: 1,078 Chairperson of the Boards
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    FindingHeart8 said:
    This sounds like to be an overall great time for me to have been fairly inactive in mtgpq, I seem to have missed a lot of things.
    When are you ever not inactive, seems to happen a lot lately :)  

    FindingHeart8 said:

    1) Were the players notified that they could not use legacy cards in standard decks?  I didn't see anything new or different when I checked my inbox today.
    Event rules. Your frequent inactivity might explain why you missed reading those. The rules for each event do specify which cards are restricted for that event. Now admittedly, there have been some typing mistakes in the event rules section when certain card sets rotated into legacy but the devs forgot to update the rules. Notably, in a few runs of RotGP. 
    FindingHeart8 said:
    2) Were there any obvious signs (like in-game graphic glitches) to hint that using legacy cards in standard was not okay?
    Yes, even while the player could go through with entering their tampered deck in the standard event, they could see (while viewing the deck in the event screen) that yellow sign with the "!" mark; indicating that the card was restricted and not supposed to be used in that deck.
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Sarahschmara said:
    FindingHeart8 said:
    This sounds like to be an overall great time for me to have been fairly inactive in mtgpq, I seem to have missed a lot of things.

    So there were multiple events where you could use legacy cards in standard events? 

    1) Were the players notified that they could not use legacy cards in standard decks?  I didn't see anything new or different when I checked my inbox today.

    2) Were there any obvious signs (like in-game graphic glitches) to hint that using legacy cards in standard was not okay?

    If the answer to these questions is no, there is no argument to claim it's immoral for players to use what they were permitted to do.  It's not exploiting.  Players did what they were allowed to do, and it's not their responsibility to restrain themselves from content that the developers (aware or not) have given them access to.  It's called Corporate Social Responsibility.

    Now if a player hacked MTGPQ and was able to play legacy cards in standard events, then we definitely have an argument for exploitation with concrete grounds for punishment.

    No, @FindingHeart8 it was we who missed you!

    After the deal was broken, it turns out it was much easier to stumble upon the “exploit” then “they” would have one believe. Heck, yeah  I may have actually stumbled upon it myself when accidentally fat-fingering the default deck gif story mode in between coalition matches. 

    Luckily (for me), the devs seem to have settled on <10 times since the bug was reported (purely speculation on my part in absence of official standards).
    Yeah, it was definitely possible and pretty easy to accidentally trigger the bug.  I don't understand why people are making it sound like it was so ridiculously complex.

    Also, we have no way of knowing who was punished and under what circumstances because we have not been told, and there doesn't seem to be any sort of notification in-app to those who were punished. 
  • Sarahschmara
    Sarahschmara Posts: 554 Critical Contributor
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    bken1234 said:
    Tremayne said:
    Question to D3/Octagon concerning this bug.
    1. I didn’t know an exploit existed until it was communicated, so I was unable to send a ticket or otherwise help with the fixing of the bug.
    2. I haven’t on purpose attempted to cheat, but I don’t know if I have accidentally used this bug during an event.
    3. When I make a deck and it is accepted by the app, then I do not verify that it is standard. I expect the app to take care of that! Even though I have played the app for a long time. Why you ask, see bullet 1.
    4. Once I have made my deck, I tend to play with that deck during the entire event without changing it. Changes occur occasionally, if I have forgotten a crucial component which either makes me loose a match or loose points.
    5. I rarely end up with top-10 prizes for various reasons, but I guess that bullet 4 is the main reason. I assume that top players alter their deck depending upon the opponent they are matched up against.

    The play-style and the communication from D3/Octagon plus the speculation on the forum makes me concerned. How can a player provide any proof of innocence to being accused of exploiting the legacy in standard bug if they have a similar approach as I have stated above?
    If you saw legacy cards in standard PvP events, you knew something was wrong and should have reported it. 

    As for the rest, it wasn't really easy to inadvertently put the legacy cards in your decks. There were several steps to using the exploit. If you used it, you did it on purpose. 

    However -- there is some speculation that changing a deck in story mode could also change it in an event -- if that happened to you and you then saw that you were playing the wrong deck in a live event, would you not see that as a bug and report it? 

    If you didn't, then you exploited the game. 
    If that happened to me then I would probably assume that I was imagining things. Due to the way events are scheduled, I’m often playing one charge on each node either very early or very late and would have chalked it up to fatigue. I accidentally fat-finger select the default decks sometimes... that’s not fun either. 

    I respectfully disagree that all instances must be reported immediately to not be considered cheating. I think it’s entirely possible that someone could have done it on accident. That’s why I think it’s important to acknowledge exploits immediately. A not insignificant number of us were being gaslit by the game.
  • Sarahschmara
    Sarahschmara Posts: 554 Critical Contributor
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    Update: this has not actually been fixed. I managed to click on my legacy deck that I use for story mode and it let me use it for RotDP. I didn’t realize it until after the match had started—should I have just quit and taken the loss?

    I’ve already submitted a ticket, what else should I do? @Brigby
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Sarahschmara said:
    Update: this has not actually been fixed. I managed to click on my legacy deck that I use for story mode and it let me use it for RotDP. I didn’t realize it until after the match had started—should I have just quit and taken the loss?

    I’ve already submitted a ticket, what else should I do? @Brigby
    Isn't RotGP a Legacy event now?  Or did I miss some change that made it standard again?
  • Sarahschmara
    Sarahschmara Posts: 554 Critical Contributor
    edited October 2018
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    It says “this event is played in standard mode” when the info button is pressed but does not actually specify what sets can be used @Mburn7
  • Sarahschmara
    Sarahschmara Posts: 554 Critical Contributor
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    So, to recap: this is still happening and there has been no ingame acknowledgement. There are many players who don’t come to the forums and have no way of knowing about this whole debate. 

    This is being handled incredibly poorly by D3Go. 
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Sarahschmara said:
    This is being handled incredibly poorly by D3Go. 
    Now this is something I think 100% of players agree with.
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
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    [MOD NOTE] The RotGP rules state the event is in Standard, but the event has the Legacy ribbon and it appears that we can build decks using Legacy cards. I have sent the information to D3 and Oktagon to review -- please be patient, they are at NYCCC this week. [//MOD NOTE]
  • Sarahschmara
    Sarahschmara Posts: 554 Critical Contributor
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    So is it OK to use legacy cards or will that be considered “cheating?”
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Sarahschmara said:
    So is it OK to use legacy cards or will that be considered “cheating?”
    I’d like an answer to that as well. I’m holding off playing my nodes until we get one — if we don’t; I will play the event in Standard. 
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Sarahschmara said:
    So is it OK to use legacy cards or will that be considered “cheating?”
    The event has the Legacy Ribbon on it, has Legacy rewards, and allows the use of Legacy decks with no shenanigans required. 

    I see absolutely no reason to think it is a Standard event (the "standard event" mentioned in the rules tab is probably just left over from when the event was standard, Oktagon never changes in-game descriptions when they change functionality for whatever reason).

    If using Legacy decks is cheating than you will have to punish everybody who is not on the forums, since they will assume that it is a Legacy event based on what I said above.
  • James13
    James13 Posts: 665 Critical Contributor
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    Schedule thread shows it as Standard.  However, since you can submit legacy cards in the event itself with no workaround required to do it, I don't think it would be considered an exploit.
  • FindingHeart8
    FindingHeart8 Posts: 2,730 Chairperson of the Boards
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    khurram said:
    FindingHeart8 said:
    This sounds like to be an overall great time for me to have been fairly inactive in mtgpq, I seem to have missed a lot of things.
    When are you ever not inactive, seems to happen a lot lately :)  

    FindingHeart8 said:

    1) Were the players notified that they could not use legacy cards in standard decks?  I didn't see anything new or different when I checked my inbox today.
    Event rules. Your frequent inactivity might explain why you missed reading those. The rules for each event do specify which cards are restricted for that event. Now admittedly, there have been some typing mistakes in the event rules section when certain card sets rotated into legacy but the devs forgot to update the rules. Notably, in a few runs of RotGP. 
    FindingHeart8 said:
    2) Were there any obvious signs (like in-game graphic glitches) to hint that using legacy cards in standard was not okay?
    Yes, even while the player could go through with entering their tampered deck in the standard event, they could see (while viewing the deck in the event screen) that yellow sign with the "!" mark; indicating that the card was restricted and not supposed to be used in that deck.
    Haha yeah I took a step back from the forums recently.  Didn't want people to get sick of my wombat love ;)


    Wait, now let's be fair here...yes a conflict between the event rules and what was allowable to play would definitely make a person wonder, but Octagon also has a history of incomplete updates.  I would have presumed that they had changed the settings but failed to update the rules, which seems a lot more logically plausible than a glitch in the system, that wasn't fixed before the event ended, that allowed players to play cards they shouldn't, with no communication from Octagon throughout the entire process.

    Add in the fact that this was co-occuring with the new event, which was legacy, with purchasable legacy cards, and it makes sense they'd run a second event where you were allowed to play these new legacy cards, considering Octagon also allowed you to use the new planeswalkers for the event too.

    I mean, sure reward the players who stuck to standard for attempting to follow what they perceived were the rules at the time and were lucky in being correct, but punishing the ones who branched out is still unethical as a business practice.
  • GrizzoMtGPQ
    GrizzoMtGPQ Posts: 776 Critical Contributor
    edited October 2018
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    Tsk, tsk, tsk now we’re in a dilly of a pickle. All of you who said rules are rules must play ROTGP in Standard or else be hypocrites. The RULES say Standard and the only change here is that the set of steps to cheat got reduced. So tell me how you’re going to play ROTGP, @Gunmix25? I’ll grab my popcorn.
  • James13
    James13 Posts: 665 Critical Contributor
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    If you're honestly thinking there's no difference when an event bars use of a cards vs when an event allows cards to be submitted...

    You're twisting yourself in knots to try to defend your own actions in circumventing event rules that were enforced in the event itself.
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
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    James13 said:
    If you're honestly thinking there's no difference when an event bars use of a cards vs when an event allows cards to be submitted...

    You're twisting yourself in knots to try to defend your own actions in circumventing event rules that were enforced in the event itself.
    But what is the difference between event rules that are easy to circumvent and event rules that are "difficult" to circumvent?  In both cases it is an event that says it is standard in the rules but allows legacy cards to be played.
    Why should legacy cards be ok in one but not the other?
  • James13
    James13 Posts: 665 Critical Contributor
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    Because one accepts legacy cards in deck submissions, and one does not.
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Mburn7 said:
    James13 said:
    If you're honestly thinking there's no difference when an event bars use of a cards vs when an event allows cards to be submitted...

    You're twisting yourself in knots to try to defend your own actions in circumventing event rules that were enforced in the event itself.
    But what is the difference between event rules that are easy to circumvent and event rules that are "difficult" to circumvent?  In both cases it is an event that says it is standard in the rules but allows legacy cards to be played.
    Why should legacy cards be ok in one but not the other?
    I answered @GrizzoMtGPQ before he asked.  If I don’t hear from someone from Oktagon or D3, I will play the event in standard. 

    Doesn’t really matter anyway. I’ll get a great score regardless. 

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