How to deal with Sphinx’s Decree?!?

Froggy

My comment seemed to have stirred up a debate on cheating. Please understand that I in no way intended to tell players they would be cheating if they used the card (since busted, I don’t use it and I haven’t actually faced it yet). I know it does not go against the programmed rules and so “does not count”. It’s just very sad to see that game warping bugs can be permitted to exist and nothing is done about it. Literally nothing at all. The result is an annoyed player base, poor game experiences and poor player response (to wit, the discussion that followed my post). Yet the devs could remove the card from the game while they fix it (they can - just like they accidentally did in the past with cards disappearing from player libraries, not to mention the so-called beta run for DD).

My point really is that it is inexcusable that this card is busted in its entirety and it is being permitted to remain in play. That is the problem here.

If a card is so busted that it is meta warping it gets a nerf. But the devs messed up the card after it was working fine and I’m sorry so say, it is now meta warping (players suggesting to run non-spell decks against a white walker “just in case”???).

Geez... Remove the card already while you fix it.

GrizzoMtGPQ

Just going to remind us all that this exists:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/72035/sphinxs-decree-shouldnt-exist

bk1234

Laeuftbeidir said:

-> tl;dr:

Don't run spells against a white or colorless walker. If you do run spells, win before Greg can cast too many cards.

I tested it in a deck without spells last week in story and still had the freeze. 

And the freeze I had in HoD was with my hyper aggro left node deck. 

All of those other strategies deserve consideration. The best I’ve see son far is iWill. 

Sarahschmara

Froggy said:

My comment seemed to have stirred up a debate on cheating. Please understand that I in no way intended to tell players they would be cheating if they used the card (since busted, I don’t use it and I haven’t actually faced it yet). I know it does not go against the programmed rules and so “does not count”. It’s just very sad to see that game warping bugs can be permitted to exist and nothing is done about it. Literally nothing at all. The result is an annoyed player base, poor game experiences and poor player response (to wit, the discussion that followed my post). Yet the devs could remove the card from the game while they fix it (they can - just like they accidentally did in the past with cards disappearing from player libraries, not to mention the so-called beta run for DD).

My point really is that it is inexcusable that this card is busted in its entirety and it is being permitted to remain in play. That is the problem here.

If a card is so busted that it is meta warping it gets a nerf. But the devs messed up the card after it was working fine and I’m sorry so say, it is now meta warping (players suggesting to run non-spell decks against a white walker “just in case”???).

Geez... Remove the card already while you fix it.

Agreed! 100%

The devs should fix it. They are the ones that broke it, after all.

And for goodness’ sake, put a message in game warning players not to use it. Having the game freeze is a very unpleasant surprise and there are a lot of missed opportunities to communicate with the players. That’s why we have these large communities on slack and discord. 

I consider myself a fairly well-informed player but I still learn new “common knowledge” all the time. Think about the vast majority of players that aren’t active in the community... and think about how intimidating we all must seem sometimes.

And, yeah, I absolutely admit that I have a reflex reaction when it seems like folks are about to start pointing fingers at each other—that tends to turn ugly real quick and it scares me when our mostly lovely community turns into an angry mob. 

Tilwin90

For me it is unacceptable that such a high priority bug (BLOCKER) is not an incentive for the release process to be updated to a proper system that allows hotfixes.

Using time and effort as justification here is absolutely inexcusable and this should receive TOP priority. New features, minor bug fixes and improvements are all utterly useless if there are bugs out there rendering the game completely unplayable and unstable.

I am surprised the support team treats this problem so casually as if it is a minor issue. How many weeks since it has been reported with 0 efforts to get to the community and come with a short term fix?

(I know I sound super pissed here, in all honesty I haven't even joined HoD yet but I keep a close eye on the TP9 community and it is amazing to see a group so organised in the struggle to protect against this bug and at the same time depressing that the joined efforts of Oktagon and D3 are inexistent in this matter. Thumbs up to Bianca and the rest of the leaders for being so helpful in this direction with the limited resources available to reduce from the damage caused by this awful bug) 

bk1234

Tilwin90 said:

(I know I sound super pissed here, in all honesty I haven't even joined HoD yet but I keep a close eye on the TP9 community and it is amazing to see a group so organised in the struggle to protect against this bug and at the same time depressing that the joined efforts of Oktagon and D3 are inexistent in this matter. Thumbs up to Bianca and the rest of the leaders for being so helpful in this direction with the limited resources available to reduce from the damage caused by this awful bug) 

I'm passing the credit here on to @NickBKK and @Dodecapod

Kinesia

There are gradients in everything including bad sportsmanship.

Magic is totally about stopping other people doing things and this card SPECIFICALLY is about that! But it's like it got ironically super-charged and went from "The other player can't play spells" OR ANYTHING ELSE EVER!

It's an "Un"-version of itself!


In terms of sportsmanship though, it's the difference between jostling your opponent so you can kick the ball before them versus directly kicking them in the leg to make them fall down and then kicking them in the face so they are out of the game.

While you can physically do such things in the real world it doesn't mean you should.

I mean... Are we a society that wants to play this game together in mostly friendly competition, or are we a "win at all costs, lets actually hunt down and kill the other players so we are the only ones that get rewards!" type of club?


Saying that being able to do something makes it fine is the opposite of any society that got around to deciding it needed a legal system.

fiirst

@Brigby
@Tombstone

Could you please asked Dev to make other happy bug to alleviate SD problem.

Demolish was disappeared from Card Collection once. We propose to treat SD this way to minimize bug in upcoming standard event until you can figure it out.

ref. link https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/70552/bug-missing-4-cards-post-ixalan

FindingHeart8

I'll throw my 2 cents in...my general take on this summarized:

On the topic of running sphinx's decree:

Is it cheating to run it? No, I think for the most part we all agree here that it isn't.  Responsibility for broken cards is the developers and the developers alone.  Until we receive a paycheck and benefits from Octagon, we are their customers and hold no responsibility for glitches on their end.

Is it poor form/sportsmanship to run it?  If you know, yes...it most definitely is.
No amount of strategy, luck, good cards can get around the game being frozen, and intentionally utilizing a glitch that deprives another player of any possibility of victory is a dirty move, especially when it robs them of rewards/coalition points that they might otherwise might have achieved.

You can win a lot of fights if you bank on groin shots for victory, but it is not an honorable way to win.

Brigby

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to let you all know that this issue with Sphinx's Decree should be fixed in the upcoming 3.0 update, which is anticipated to be released sometime in early/mid November.

UweTellkampf

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to let you all know that this issue with Sphinx's Decree should be fixed in the upcoming 3.0 update, which is anticipated to be released sometime in early/mid November.

Dear Brigby, 

what else can you tell us about 3.0?

Yours, curious,
everyone

bk1234

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to let you all know that this issue with Sphinx's Decree should be fixed in the upcoming 3.0 update, which is anticipated to be released sometime in early/mid November.

In the meantime, is there a way to remove it from the game @Brigby -- RtO having a white node means it's going to be everywhere this week, and since the nodes are color locked, there aren't a lot of ways to counter it. 

Also can you confirm that B4T will not be run in the meantime (this card is used in the AI decks for that event). 

NDZahmbie

There are likely many players that have lost significant rewards because of Sphinx Decree crashes in major events... 150 mana jewels for me last HoD... 

Removing spells gets around the problem, but there are likely less informed players that will be impacted by this going forward until more urgency is put toward this...

Not a great way to welcome and appeal to the newer user base @Brigby

Sarahschmara

NDZahmbie said:

There are likely many players that have lost significant rewards because of Sphinx Decree crashes in major events... 150 mana jewels for me last HoD... 

Removing spells gets around the problem, but there are likely less informed players that will be impacted by this going forward until more urgency is put toward this...

Not a great way to welcome and appeal to the newer user base @Brigby

Please announce the issue ingame so that everyone can be informed. 

bk1234

So we are playing RtO this weekend -- first we should thank D3 and the devs because we asked for a Standard coalition event and we got it. It's been a very long time since we played this event and I've had a blast building decks all week....

However -- I'm not looking forward to playing a PvP event this weekend. 

Last weekend I lost 59 places worth of rank, 110 Mana Jewels (pink) and 50 Mana Crystals (gold) to one freeze from Sphinx's Decree. I got off lucky -- many players in TP9 had several freezes. 

Now we know it will be several weeks before this card is fixed. 

With RtO, it's going to be worse -- RtO is a node-locked event. That means on our white node, we will be playing all white decks. Instead of playing intermittent white decks, at the very least, 20% of the decks we face could contain SD. 

What's even worse -- one of the objectives for this node is Take 30 or More Damage -- so it's not like we can get in and aggro through it. We have to wait it out, and the AI casts a lot of cards in white between full life and 30 damage. 

The options to get by it are few -- and mostly only available to top players as they involve niche PW (Sorin) or mythic and rare cards -- even fewer than the list posted in the SD thread this weekend -- because that list was legacy. 

The way I see it, there are only 2 choices: 

1. Pull the card from game -- obviously the best solution -- pull it out, disable it, whatever, but don't make it available to be played. 

or 

2. Make the weekend event PvE -- but not B4T (because that event has SD in its encounters). 

In addition, support is being very closed off on tickets for compensation, even for players who are providing hard, battle log evidence of losses. This is truly unfair to players who lost huge rewards from this event. At some point support needs to treat us like customers and try a little hard to recognize our achievements instead of shutting us off. 

GigaGuess

I'll second "Disable It," myself.

Juggernaut

I agree with the OP. 

There are many cards that aren't working correctly/at all, and this is annoying. However, SD is flat out ends a match with a loss and that's wrong and unfair.

Please remove/disable the card until it can be fixed.

Irishme

Would be great if it was just removed for the time being.  It’s not a critical card in any deck.  It’s not going to be a game changer if it was gone for a week or two.  

EQReed

I'm in agreement.  Disable/remove/whatever the card until the bug is fixed.

bk1234

Irishme said:

Would be great if it was just removed for the time being.  It’s not a critical card in any deck.  It’s not going to be a game changer if it was gone for a week or two.  

Well even if it had been a critical card before, it's not now -- because no one can use it unless they specifically put it in their decks to troll people.