Oktagon - We warned you. You didn't listen.

babar3355

Oktagon, it has now been over a year since you took the reins and became the developer of MTGPQ.  Many of us were excited to have new leadership, because the game has a lot of potential but had tons of bugs and issues.  We were hopeful for a new future.

Most of us who knew the game intimately begged you to start from scratch on the code.  It is very difficult to put the pieces back together for someone else's coding, especially something as complex as this game.

But alas, you did not listen to our warnings.  And here we are a year later with the game in perhaps it's worse state of repair in history.  More ways to freeze or crash than I have ever seen with little effort to quickly fix them (Come on... Sphinx's Decree freeze is unacceptable), new and old bugs with events (ROTGP negative life, FIRF brackets not rolling over, etc) and more issues with cards not functioning properly than I can ever remember.

You tried to take the shortcut path... it has failed miserably.

At this point, I have a hard time mustering the energy to log on.  Much less get involved with the community, produce videos or to really care about that game at all.  Really disappointed.

Mburn7

Don't forget our requests for more communication.  We all said we could live with bugs and issues as long as everything is communicated to us clearly and quickly.  They promised to always keep us in the loop. 

They failed at that too.

ManiiNames

Original code in French, new code written in Portuguese?

Laeuftbeidir

I'm somehow missing the consequences as a logical step in your message.

Although I agree with the reason for the anger, I think there is a verbal escalation step missing. Well. I think we'd have enough reasons to call out a not another dime, but it should sound.. well.. a bit more pilote?

I mean :in the end we all want this game to be better. From a gameplay point of view and from a community experience pov (which they don't seem to acknowledge as being very relevant). Messages, also like this one, should always allow for a productive answer / "leave the door open" (unless it's a "I'm done with this" - goodbye message)

bk1234

@babar3355 can you please cite these specific warnings? I just don’t remember threads « warning » Oktagon to do this. I’m curious. 

Brigby

Hi @babar3355. It seems like your post is addressing numerous elements of the game, so I'd like to provide a response in segments that address each one.

Re-Building MtGPQ From Scratch
When it comes to Oktagon resuming where Hibernum had left off, you're correct that it was quite the challenge having to understand the code for a complex game that they had not written themselves. To that end, I can understand why you may have wanted Oktagon to just start from scratch!

Unfortunately the problem is that the time-frame the team was working with simply did not allow for them to rebuild the entire game from the ground up. This is especially true when you consider that the time spent re-building the game would've meant time that wasn't spent developing and progressing the version that was already available.

Even if it hypothetically took a super-quick turnaround of 3 - 4 months to rebuild what is essentially "MtGPQ 2.0", that would also mean 3 to 4 months of players experiencing a stagnant "MtGPQ 1.0": no events, no new content, no bug fixes. The only available content to play would be Story Mode, and that's it.

Sphinx's Decree
We understand that this can be quite a frustrating experience to encounter, which is why this is definitely something the team is aware of and actively working on a fix for. Please note though that depending on the kind of bug it is, it may take time to come up with a solution and/or it may not be able to be fixed in a data push.

Event Bugs
When it comes to the Return of the God-Pharaoh boss health and the Fate is Rarely Fair brackets, we do apologize for the inconveniences that these issues have presented players. We will be sure to take these experiences with us and ensure they don't occur again in the future.

Card Bugs
Much like how the pool of cards grow with each set that's introduced, the QA process is also growing and adapting as unique bugs present themselves. The development team have been working closely with the QA team, ever since they started working on this project.

While it may seem like there are a significant amount of bugs being reported in the forum (which don't get me wrong, we absolutely appreciate the assistance players have provided, and the bugs reported are certainly valid), there have been 2,500+ other bugs that the team has independently caught and fixed before they even made it into the game for players to discover. Of course a bug-free game is a goal we all strive to achieve, but I want to take this moment to send my appreciation to the QA and development team for their efforts in tackling the challenges of a living game.

Rest assured, the team is always trying to improve the QA process and make it more effective, and we appreciate all of your patience and understanding during this time.

tfg76

@Brigby Have you considered the option of simply removing Sphinx's decree from the game somehow?

Thuran

@Brigby very appreciated brigby, its important to at least hear the concerns addressed

But, while on the subject; why did you send us feedback forms at all for duel decks, when the feedback was clearly completely ignored?

Kinesia

I see things getting so so much better than before. I see evidence of processes being put into place and long term plans and, yeah, absolutely things aren't there yet, but they aren't putting out fires they are building the framework.

I'm happy they are doing it this way rather than spot fixes, this holds way more hope for the long term.

babar3355

bken1234 said:

@babar3355 can you please cite these specific warnings? I just don’t remember threads « warning » Oktagon to do this. I’m curious. 

I can barely muster the effort to log in... I certainly don't have the energy to dig through old threads.  But I remember a lot of discussions around rewriting the code from scratch.  I thought Octal was involved but could be mistaken.

@Brigby I appreciate your answers but I genuinely don't understand how it could take 3-4 weeks to figure out a fix for something that was working before the last patch.  I also don't understand how things constantly go from working to broken, but always in the same way. (e.g. prevent damage things becoming immune to destroy spells).  If the code is really that sloppy, it reaffirms the need to rebuild the code from scratch.

And the willingness to let these things go unaddressed until the next scheduled patch has a massive impact on the game.   It really is unacceptable that any time you play against a SD you automatically lose.  Pushing an update that simply removes it from the game until it can be fixed is warranted in this scenario.

I don't see what @Kinesia is talking about. Looks more like they are lighting a lot of fires and ignoring them for months, then creating a host of new fires that they ignore, repeat.

Anyway, some people agree with me some don't.  Maybe I am just burned out.

EvilDead

@Brigby 

Instead of being appreciative for all our help identifying the game's bugs and instead of apologizing for the inconvenience, you really should be making an effort to make us whole. We lost rewards and all we get from support tickets is that issue should now be resolved, let us know if you're still having issues. Well it's not resolved unless you grant us what we should have relieved as rewards. We spend time, we spend money, some of us not much and some a lot. Either way, we're customers and we're not getting the product we're paying for.

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BenRamaPhoenix

Seriously though, the new code for keeping hand from going over 6 cards is well....out of hand. It has broken Soooo many previously useful cards (Etali, Chaos wand, exclusion mage...)  Same with hexproof. The fact that Isolate (and many other now less useful cards) no longer sees GR as a valid target, is a problem. Im not spending another dime on this game until we see a fix for this hot mess. 

Kinesia

"I don't see what @Kinesia is talking about. Looks more like they are lighting a lot of fires and ignoring them for months, then creating a host of new fires that they ignore, repeat."


Yeah, I understand, but you're seeing the current state not the background processes... As of the last few patches there are a bunch more things that can be done on the fly without releasing a new build. NONE of these affect gameplay and would be largely invisible but they are clear longterm process improvements, like M19 being craftable after a month... That's the first set that didn't need a new build to activate that.
The Masterpieces in Ixalan being missing, that was fixed without a new build.
I saw a few others too, but those 2 stick on the top of my head.

There are long term plans happening in how they solve some problems.

But, yes, sure they are still making mistakes, there is still a huge backlog of bugs, new ones being introduced, and a constant push to stay up to date on sets. The amount of work involved in this is mindblowing, in terms of complexity this tiny underfunded game is one of the most complicated things on the market.

And from my work in a similar industry I can actually see the process improvements without them having to say them. Things they were having to handhold are now better setup, there will be less day to day maintenance in future which opens the way for more improvements. It's like having a really good sysadmin, they automate most of the job so they can actually plan ahead for more potential risks and make sure they never happen, so the best ones are invisible. Some of that has been happening here.

It's like a stock market graph with a solid upward trend, but period where it dips WAY below the upward line, it's getting better and better, but some people only see the down spikes and others compare it to things other than where it was a year ago. This is still better than before and it's still getting better over time.

The communication completely sucks, but Brigby explaining the bits and pieces of communication is a plus there. Saying "we can't answer that because..." is way better than the old silence.

Sarahschmara

Oof. Active communication and acting on feedback is probably the easiest way they could mollify the community. 

That and giving us an opportunity to earn packs from the current set. 

These are both very easy things to do that just aren’t being done. I think most of us would be patient with coding snafus if we were getting access to new content and clear communication. 

Mburn7

Sarahschmara said:

Oof. Active communication and acting on feedback is probably the easiest way they could mollify the community. 

That and giving us an opportunity to earn packs from the current set. 

These are both very easy things to do that just aren’t being done. I think most of us would be patient with coding snafus if we were getting access to new content and clear communication. 

I (and others) have been trying to get that point across a lot over the past few months.  We will tolerate a buggy and frustrating game as long as we are being kept in the loop by the devs.

It should be said that we would also tolerate no communication as long as the game works properly, but that seems much more difficult at the moment.

I have also heard a rumor that the devs are actually not allowed to communicate with us on the forums.  I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it is certainly troubling if it is true.  All we want is some information.

Sarahschmara

Mburn7 said:

Sarahschmara said:

Oof. Active communication and acting on feedback is probably the easiest way they could mollify the community. 

That and giving us an opportunity to earn packs from the current set. 

These are both very easy things to do that just aren’t being done. I think most of us would be patient with coding snafus if we were getting access to new content and clear communication. 

I (and others) have been trying to get that point across a lot over the past few months.  We will tolerate a buggy and frustrating game as long as we are being kept in the loop by the devs.

It should be said that we would also tolerate no communication as long as the game works properly, but that seems much more difficult at the moment.

I have also heard a rumor that the devs are actually not allowed to communicate with us on the forums.  I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it is certainly troubling if it is true.  All we want is some information.

We’ve been trying to get this point across since I joined the forums. It’s a bit like talking to a brick wall. 

Yeah, the rumor that the devs can’t even look at the forums is pretty disturbing. No wonder they keep focusing on things we don’t actually care about!

ManiiNames

Part of the communication issue is probably the French (Hibernium) to Portuguese (Octagon) swap.  Hibernium was also a pretty big operation with several hundred employees.  Octagon only has twenty-five or so in total.  Admittedly Hibernium worked on several projects at once, but Octagon does too.  

The game is complex, and many small errors come though.  Fit and finish is pretty poor.  Here’s an example from the iOS App Store, failing to even clean up the editing notes.  The first line in the version notes says:  “Can we get the following translated”.

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Brigby

tfg76 said:

Brigby Have you considered the option of simply removing Sphinx's decree from the game somehow?

Part of me feels like we have actually brought this up before, and the response was that there are technical limitations to restricting just an individual card. Having said that though, I'll pass that inquiry along to the team, just in case I'm mistaken.

Thuran said:

Brigby very appreciated brigby, its important to at least hear the concerns addressed

But, while on the subject; why did you send us feedback forms at all for duel decks, when the feedback was clearly completely ignored?

While I personally haven't seen all the individual feedback comments (there were over 1,100 participants that provided comments), my assumption is that the team derives the reasoning for their actions based on the majority of players' responses.

It can be a challenging task to try and design content that appeals to everyone. Regardless though, I've passed along this thread to the team, and they'll review the feedback to see if any further adjustments can be made.

Sarahschmara said:

Mburn7 said:

-snip-

I have also heard a rumor that the devs are actually not allowed to communicate with us on the forums.  I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it is certainly troubling if it is true.  All we want is some information.

-snip-

Yeah, the rumor that the devs can’t even look at the forums is pretty disturbing. No wonder they keep focusing on things we don’t actually care about!

Well let's nip that rumor mill in the bud, shall we? We do not restrict or ban our development team from posting in the forum. That is purely a rumor, and not factual information.

While they may not post as frequently as I do, as I am the primary hub for communication between our two teams, they are welcome to post in the forum; they certainly review the comments players have been making. In fact, there have been times when Daiane has been quicker than I am, on identifying an issue players have been discussing, and relaying it to their development team.

As @ManiiNames mentioned, it's plausible that it might also be a case of language barrier. We are incredibly grateful that Oktagon is willing to communicate with us in English, as the vast majority of people in Brazil speak Portuguese. It takes time to carefully craft together an informative, public-facing message, and I can imagine that doing so in a foreign language would take even longer. This is why they likely rely on me for quick replies, so that they can focus more on compiling the feedback from behind-the-scenes.

stikxs

It seemed like for a time there around DOM that things were shaping up and sunshine & rainbows were here to stay, but then M19 got here and we started back downhill again. The set is almost out of the primetime spotlight and we've only had it's event (which was a decent go at trying some new things with PW ability additions) twice. And then we start finding issues with cards and the legacy/std exploit, which I think they were rather quick to fix (justifiably as it would be super bad for pvp) but along with fixing it broke so many other things and reverted so many previous fixes back. That seems like a serious version control issue. And then they surprised us with duel decks, and seemingly all the beta players felt it was a pretty great event. Accordingly, it was hit with the nerf bat so hard I'm surprised Parker Bros. hasn't filed a lawsuit. Like @Laeuftbeidir said, I'm sure we all want the game to be great, and I have no problem supporting the devs in this (though I can't drops hundreds on the game like I'm sure some do). I did pick up the chromium pack when he came out, and I really want to get the legacy bundle, but I have a really hard time justifying it when things keep trending as they have been...