Infinite loops

Brigby

Monkeynutts said:

Brigby, it's not necessarily a loop prevention you need. Just stop older set interacting with newer sets in most cases and it will eliminate pieces interacting as they won't be in the decks together.

Having Origins around for her I get...kinda, but having BFZ & SOI card interacting with IXA & DOM for example is a recipe for disaster. It why the paper version rotates out older sets.

There is one spell combo about with new cards and a few masterpieces that has been going around. Mostly Ram Derek planeswalker.

Just to clarify for my own understanding, are you essentially suggesting that Legacy should exclude Standard card sets or are you suggesting that specific cards from older sets should be restricted from interacting with Standard card sets?

nerdstrap

Obviously the game needs something to halt broken interactions. They’ve  built a fun system, with exciting effects, that is unfortunately degenerate at the upper limit. The upper limit is where the fix should be. Not the average or the above average. The upper limit. 100+ actions, 1+ minutes, 50+ turns etc. 

MomirQaViggy

Oh man, reading all this gives me so much more sympathy for the developers. I mean, the new loop prevention system definitely detracts a lot while improving nothing, but I can see how a team with a basic computer science program and absolutely no enthusiasm for trading card games could inadvertently zero in on the worst recommendations in this thread and miss the solid recommendation systems here.

To quote the design team:

The Loop Prevention System (LPS) intends to solve problems related to loops that provide a negative experience for the player, such as infinite ones, where the player is forced to quit the game and forfeit the match due to the opponent never finishing their play or the player not being able to cancel a play her/himself made.

Let me collate some of the feedback aready present, just so the design team doesn’t get the chronology wrong and categorizing this as an unforeseeable situation that only received negative feedback after the proposed solution was implemented.

1) Loops aren’t necessarily bad. A lot of people made sure to mention this here. Even if you had no idea why someone would have that opinion, you all had a duty to note that as a widely held opinion expressed here. And in case you still don’t get it, here’s a clue. If there are some cards that generate more mana, and some cards that draw cards, players will dream up ways to combine them into ways to continually drawing and casting cards. Some mechanics will outright encourage that style. You can ban that playstyle, but that makes the game much more boring. Any tcg player knows this. It’s not up for debate. And whether you nerf every card that opens up this possibility or put a global limitation that punishes this style, both are tantamount to banning this playstyle and making the game less fun. Moreover, it is crucial to understand that from a player’s perspective, a sequence of cards that, according to the text of the cards, should result in 200 damage is better than a sequence of cards that, according to the text of the cards, should result in 100 damage. The fact that the first sequence involves more actions, or repetitions, or animation time should not be a part of the deck-builder’s consideration, and should not be any part of the game’s enforcement.

2) Player-AI symmetry is neither necessary nor desirable. Coming up with a solution that treats the player the same way it treats the AI is completely unnecessary. For example, a system that assumes the AI would continue to improve their position should the loop continue, but assumes the player will be no better off than they are at the break would be fine. (For the record, it is quite safe to assume that, since the opponent is piloting a user-submitted deck, if the opponent is looping, they are putting themself in a position to win, because if the player entered such a loop without it being able to cause a win, they’d be making themself lose. For that reason, and going along with the idea loops aren’t bad, it is entirely reasonable to presume that if the AI is playing a sequence of cards that takes a long time  to resolve, that this is an effective system of cards.)

3) Players should have the option to keep going. A number of suggestions were brainstormed, but for almost every one, it was suggested either by the author or another comment that the player have some way to opt to continue the loop or terminate the loop. The critique of this often boiled down to the problem of the AI not knowing how to decide, but, again, if symmetry is not becessary, this isn’t a problem.

All these components were present before the disastrous design choices now before us, but since this is a message board it was hard to tell that, given a real conversation, these components would draw the most consensus. If this had been realized, it would be easy to see that the two front-runner solutions would be:

1) No change.
2) A system that prompts the player after a possible loop is detected (whether by timer, repeated action count, or a simple manual override button), checks if the user wants to bail, then proceeds as-is if it is the user’s turn, or imposes a big penalty if it is the opponent’s turn.

Please note that, while option 1 may even be superior, option 2 fulfills the desiderata in the programmer’s quoted goals.

tl;dr When the mob comes with your pitchforks, please understand that you already had access to their critiques, even if it was drowned out by a little noise.

Unknown

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MomirQaViggy

Agreed. Also, designers need to be aware of this: newer players will *always* complain about powerful opponent strategies. This will be obvious to anyone who seriously plays MtG or another trading card game. For every card WotC bans, there are 10-100 cards with long forum threads about cards that some people passionately feel should be banned. You can't ignore everything that a new user says, but you have to consider that they will be biased against more successful strategies. Surprisingly, the developers will also be biased against successful strategies, because they playtest minimally and have no personal decks to speak of, so the probability that their random tinkering will line up with any competitive player's favorite deck is vanishingly small. The point is, if you do take user feedback seriously, there is a temptation to give weight to everyone who says, "If that card weren't around (or were nerfed) I'd lose a lot less," or even its insidious cousin, "If that card weren't around (or were nerfed) I'd be less frustrated about losing," when really the main thing you need to pay attention to is, "If that card weren't around, I'd lose (or win) in a much greater variety of ways." By that test, nerfing or banning Prism Array and Blue Sun's Zenith would be much better for the game than the loop prevention system (not that I endorse nerfing or banning Prism Array and Blue Sun's Zenith without more consideration).

Mojo

Yeah keep on working on it.   Won’t make much difference to people who haven’t spent thousands of dollars.  Still will get slaughtered.  Who made up these cards anyways?  Ever play test?

Monkeynutts

@Brigby, what I mean is legacy and current set of cards should have NO interaction. 
Origins and Masterpieces aside and even those I think should be restricted.
Cards from older sets are not intended to interact with current cards this why paper rotates and modern exists.
I've been playing this game since release and this is the worse it has been for bad card design, loops and bugs.
A lot of this is self inflicted by D3 and whoever is developing trying to appease everyone, but at some point you have to make the game playable.
Watching an AI opponent play for 90secs is poor and if you weren't MTG affiliated you would have no one persevering with this game. I for one would of stopped playing years ago, but i enjoy collecting the cards and the events. Right now it is a grind and game where you are hoping to avoid loops and bugs whilst playing the game

Monkeynutts

When are you going to patch out these pathetically manufactured combos?????

Stop ruining the game and having to introduce loop timers......no one wants that. You dont invest to see the AI play on its own for 90secs.......

Getting sick of this tiny kitty !!!!

//Removed All Caps -Brigby