3.3 Release Notes *Updated (4/3/19)

Wafflesauce

I just realized that this also means that was an extremely rare scenario may happen more frequently:

• It may be a strategically wrong choice to make a match 5.

Imagine that you're playing any walker that has -2 or -3 to a color, but there is a 5 match of said color. Say you're playing Elspeth, and there's a black 5 match.

Outside of hitting an activated gem or destroying a support, whose position could not be guaranteed after the match, it was always the correct move to go for the match 5, no matter what the color, as there was no downside.

Now with the timer added in, you only have 10 seconds of cast time during your "real" swap of the turn, which may not be enough time to cast everything you had planned.

This scenario is not uncommon, and will affect the "average player" more often, likely leading to confusion and frustration, because it doesn't happen frequently to them.

Making your customers frustrated is never a good thing.

tfg76

I just tested a game with Huatli 2 in RT. Playing four cards (Path of Discovery, March of the Multitudes x2 and one other), took a full 90 seconds. No loop involved, yet this would break after a couple of tokens were created. Seems ridiculous.

Volrak

I'm looking forward to many aspects of the version 3.3 update, but I have some feedback about loop prevention.  (Of course, since the feature is not yet released, there is a chance my ideas could change after trying it out.)

On the AI side, loop prevention impacts three potential problems, only one of which is really an infinite loop.  #1 is infinite loops which would truly go on forever if not interrupted; #2 is non-infinite loops which take a long time, but eventually run out of steam and may or may not win the game; and #3 is slow non-loops, i.e. no actions are actually repeating, but the resolution is just slow by some standards.  Using the existing "Card Visual Aid = Off" setting or further speeding up animations can address #3 but cannot effectively solve #1 and #2.  Further, #1 and #2 are very rare.  Catching problem #3 in the net of this change when problem #3 has an alternative solution is undesirable, because this solution makes an AI seen by many as already too easy even easier.

Suggestion: The change could be limited to the stated objective (which is #1), as well as extreme instances of #2, by increasing the timer far beyond 18 seconds.

On the player side, infinite loops are what I would call user error.  If the player makes a deck which loops with no win condition, I would say they kind of get what they deserve.  This philosophy maybe comes from a programming background - if you make a program with an infinite loop, then guess what - it's going to loop indefinitely until you break out of the program.  (As an aside, it may also be surprising to learn that testing and identifying truly infinite loops is an activity I've at times seen players actually derive entertainment and enjoyment from.)  I don't see that a timer on player-side loops solves any problems, but it does introduce negative side-effects:

• Most importantly, it eliminates a large and intriguing swathe of deck design space, which is dear to the hearts of many players.
  
• (Potentially) players with less powerful devices may be put at an unfair disadvantage.
  
• (Potentially) a new avenue of trolling may be opened up, which is to set a deck for the AI which populates the board with many ongoing effects which cause the player's turn to be slow and stuttering, as can happen, potentially stopping players' turns short after very few actions have occurred.

Suggestion: The timer should not apply to player turns.

Jain

Besides the emotion of mere surprise, not mad, as we are talking about a digital handheld series of colourful interactions, I don't feel the need to be hateful at all.

@BrigbyThank you for being patient, you do a very good job at communication constructively and staying in control of your own emotions. Thank you for being there for us when things are communicated, even after very important bed- time. It shows your love for the community and trying to make a success out of providing an awesome experience both in the game and in the community. Now let's talk improvement. 

Perhaps this is a superfluous post, perhaps it's useful. Something with 2 cents. 

My dense version:
Involve us in fixing loops, don't build time prisons. 

My TLDR:
By definition a game is a series of meaningful choices. Magic (and MtgPQ) is a consecutive switch between deck building, testing, deck tweaking, match playing, resource acquirement and acquiring more possibilities for step 1. I optimise these as best as i can.

As a player I try to find optimal ways to do this.

I understand and feel that infinite loops make this harder to optimise, as it unpredictably disrupts the flow of my gameplay. But only if greg bothers me with an infinite loop. When I run into an infinite loop, I optimise by quitting, healing pw and moving on. I bow to the builder and reconsider my own deck strategies. I would like a more elegant way that quitting play to optimise. You have introduced waiting for X seconds, so that I can grab control quicker and feel that quitting is a lesser form of optimisation.

But the cascade is that in doing so you also mess with optimisations that did work for me. Like more guaranteed wins by building extremely effective loop decks with say: Sarkhan, he loops through draw and library destruction to make beacon bolts of 75+ damage. That gets me to my resource acquirement fast, which I very much like. The timer will slow this process down by
1. Stopping the deck in its tracks when it does what i designed it to do.
2. Decreasing the likelihood of me winning the match, thus having to play more matches. 

And it does so for any strategy I devise to quickly and surely win a match to acquire resources. The win is less loops I get stuck in, the loss is that many of my quick wins become slow wins. So in trying to make the game quicker, you made the overall experience slower. 

I can only make meaningful choices, If the choices I make mean something towards the optimisation of my play experience.

As a player I want to be able to make meaningful choices with regard to infinite loops, so that i can get unstuck when trying to win and Greg is looping me into nothingness. 

Let's review all the possible solutions

1. Add timer all turns so the turn will not exceed the timer because of loops.
2. Limit the amount of repeated steps (keyforge https://www.keyforgegame.com/ uses this to limit loops)
3. Adjust the looping possibilities (banning cards or tweaking cards (ban terms like gains full mana towards gains half mana)
4. Increase the value of non looped decks. (Boost cards that don't fit loops, not sure)
5. Find creative ways to punish looping. (Add indestructible supports that deal damage on casting stuff for both ends, make cards that we can use to punsh greg for looping (whenever opponent casts a spell, deal X damage where X is the number of cards cast this turn.)
6. Maybe give us the tools to fix it with you(cards that let me win when the other guy loops, polls in voting for solutions, handing out prize crystals for best anti loop ideas, community card design matches with your name on it to fix loops)
7. Give us a button: "report loop" that appears after 30 seconds of greg's turn, on click the match finishes, My pw gets healed for free and no charge for the node. Leaves you with input in what to fix and we feel there's a communal effort to improve. 

I would like to state that I don't see why anyone would get super-mad about a creative game with high quality content that seeks to improve. 

All I would like to ask is for you Brigby to try and change habits of problem solving by leveraging the thing we all have in common here: intricate knowledge about the game. Involve us like before, and we'll have fun together fixing these cool anomalies. I think all the salt will disappear very quickly if you do.

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Brigby fruit flies are way more attracted to the dead/rotting smell of vinegar than honey which has a natural preservative. Check out the vinegar and dish soap fruit fly home remedy.

Why do I mention this? Because our anger kept you up. Honied comments would not have done that. This whole idea sucks. The Devs need to engage us more. Us, the core, here. That’s the answer.

Furks

I like all the new stuff but like most people I'm worried about the timer. Here's my 2 cents... 

If you want the game to be less 'loopy' you should stop designing cards that can loop. Just adding a mechanic on top that restricts things is frustrating. 

In a way I agree with the notion that the game should be faster paced with shorter turns. But the way you do that is by not giving us the tools to loop over and over. This means adjusting individual cards and adjusting their 'loopy' effect. In a lot of cases this can be done by adding an 'at the end of your turn' clause.

For instance, path of discovery could read: "at the end of your turn, explore X, where X is the number of creatures you sommoned this turn".


As for the upcoming change, I'm concerned about how animations/performance affects the actual timer. Can I break my opponent's combo just by changing the settings on my phone? Will a specific deck be allowed more actions based on how powerful the users phone is? Can I thwart my opponents in a pvp event using these outside effects on the game? A timer just seems like exactly the wrong approach, at a bare minimum it should be an 'action limit' so that it's consistent and not affected by anything else  

Volrak

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

Because our anger kept you up. Honied comments would not have done that.

Brigby can speak for himself, but in his place, I'd be far more inclined to put more time into answering a large volume of comments that were respectful, than an equal volume which were vitriolic.

Thuran

@Brigby

You mentioned that its too late to stop the patch going live, but...

Are you seriously willing to tell us that its impossible to implement a day 1 hotfix which adds in a single digit to change the number in the timer from 18 to 180???

Would be a decent solution that hits loops, but ignores almost all normal turns. 

RithPrimeval

My 2 cents:

In Magic: the Gathering there are a number of different archetypes: aggro, control and combo (or a mix of those - see midrange/control combo/etc). These different styles appeal to different kinds of players. 
I myself was an aggro/midrange player to the core.

When I discovered Mtg puzzle quest, I started out by playing aggro decks because that was my play style in paper. With low level (and thus low hp) pw's and story opponents, I was fairly successful beating down my opponents before they got me to 0. But the higher my pw lvl went, the harder it was to be successful with aggro decks. My opponents had way more hp, and with this life buffer, their more powerful cards took over in the longer games.
So I slowly made the transition to control decks and found that with the right mix of cards I could win a long game vs almost every normal opponent. Just pack enough removal, card draw, mana gains and resilient threats and you got yourself a robust control deck.
I was very successful as a control player but games started to take ages, especially versus other control decks with similar robust card contents. So I looked to combo's as a way to win matches more quickly.

It's incredibly important to note that it's way more difficult to assemble a combo deck here in mtgpq, compared to paper. You need a combination of very specific cards that work together for the combo and (especially pre-crafting) no targeted way to acquire them.

But as I made the discovery of combo's and actively searched for new ones, I found that I absolutely loved this style of play. And, to unlock some of the combo's I read about or encountered in games against me, combo cards became my targets, my chase cards. We're a year or two later now, and chasing specific standard or legacy combo enablers is what kept me playing this game. I reckon that for a lot of players it's what they enjoy and why they spend time and money on this game. It's also what allows me to play fast games instead of long grindy matches. Yes, the one critical turn takes a bit longer than average, but my overall match time is significantly lower. Which is a really important factor when considering the combination of this game with real life! 

This 18s rule is basically giving the finger to a whole demographic of players that like to play combo decks. It's forcing me to revert to a playstyle that I had outgrown. It's gonna cause matches to be more grindy again and take up much more time than before, causing me to play less events. It's gonna render a lot of the cards, that I spent a lot of effort on to get them (and time and money), useless or at least lose a chunk of functionality or value. It's taking away the second most important drive I had in this game (first one being the awesome people in my coalition/alliance).

It sucks.. 

[Deleted User]

I think a loops are a healthy part of this game. Please just let that sink in a bit. I have my reasons but some have prev pointed it out - mainly consistently and efficiently getting dailies done, high life bosses, creativity, etc. 

However, i do agree that something needs to be done about sitting through AI loops. Because clearly its that bad feeling from losing on legacy events or TotPs from a loop deck and not getting the full reward i imagine. TG doesnt hold as much weight since you can quit with no real detriment.

Player side loops are acceptable, i personally feel; but, AI loops should be limited a bit but not to the extent of an "easy button."

While it is true that cards should be limited in their ability to loop when creating new sets; i dont believe it should be severely crippled or completely erased. After all, there is definitely a group of players and future players striving for this goal of looping. Looping is as relished as it is a hated feature of this game. (Fyi: i left a different card game because it wasnt satisfying, it didnt have that fast, thrilling, loop capability because everything was so well balanced.. it was super mundane and meh. Still fun but missing that extra POW)

As an aside, if i hadnt known about loops i would be fine... but its like food. You eat anything; then, as you experience more and mature, you seek more refined/pretentious foods. As a simple example, what started off as simple hamburgers at fast food chains becomes specialty handcrafted burgers.. and its hard to go back.. 

[Deleted User]

RithPrimeval said:

My 2 cents:

In Magic: the Gathering there are a number of different archetypes: aggro, control and combo (or a mix of those - see midrange/control combo/etc). These different styles appeal to different kinds of players. 
I myself was an aggro/midrange player to the core.

When I discovered Mtg puzzle quest, I started out by playing aggro decks because that was my play style in paper. With low level (and thus low hp) pw's and story opponents, I was fairly successful beating down my opponents before they got me to 0. But the higher my pw lvl went, the harder it was to be successful with aggro decks. My opponents had way more hp, and with this life buffer, their more powerful cards took over in the longer games.
So I slowly made the transition to control decks and found that with the right mix of cards I could win a long game vs almost every normal opponent. Just pack enough removal, card draw, mana gains and resilient threats and you got yourself a robust control deck.
I was very successful as a control player but games started to take ages, especially versus other control decks with similar robust card contents. So I looked to combo's as a way to win matches more quickly.

It's incredibly important to note that it's way more difficult to assemble a combo deck here in mtgpq, compared to paper. You need a combination of very specific cards that work together for the combo and (especially pre-crafting) no targeted way to acquire them.

But as I made the discovery of combo's and actively searched for new ones, I found that I absolutely loved this style of play. And, to unlock some of the combo's I read about or encountered in games against me, combo cards became my targets, my chase cards. We're a year or two later now, and chasing specific standard or legacy combo enablers is what kept me playing this game. I reckon that for a lot of players it's what they enjoy and why they spend time and money on this game. It's also what allows me to play fast games instead of long grindy matches. Yes, the one critical turn takes a bit longer than average, but my overall match time is significantly lower. Which is a really important factor when considering the combination of this game with real life! 

This 18s rule is basically giving the finger to a whole demographic of players that like to play combo decks. It's forcing me to revert to a playstyle that I had outgrown. It's gonna cause matches to be more grindy again and take up much more time than before, causing me to play less events. It's gonna render a lot of the cards, that I spent a lot of effort on to get them (and time and money), useless or at least lose a chunk of functionality or value. It's taking away the second most important drive I had in this game (first one being the awesome people in my coalition/alliance).

It sucks.. 

This. So very much this.

[Deleted User]

starfall said:

Thuran said:

Fortunately, the cycling combo ignores the timer altogether, since you never match a gem to go infinite.

So you can still manage dumb speed objectives in pve...in legacy

Oktagon probably think they've nerfed cycling to the point where it's not degenerate 

Goodness.. do i have to go back to that tedious work for fast games.. tell me it isnt so.. 

Its been soooooooo long and i never missed the hand and finger pains

Tilwin90

@Brigby
I have absolutely NO displeasure with you and I get your position. Out of everyone from the team, you give the best impression and do the best job at keeping the community at bay, the information as structured as possible and the rioting bursts happening around here as under control as possible. And it's normal for us to notice this, you are the only interface we have with the team. It's in human nature to demonize people and organizations they don't know or understand.

But I couldn't help but notice some of the techniques you are using, though I have nothing against techniques as long as they serve their purpose and are done in good will. The one approach I have my struggles with is with the moments of utter silence and vagueness - giving the impression that something is coming but with no real information. For this release this was felt the most. I felt like the taglines "things are more complicated than they seem", "the process is more complex behind-the-scenes" and the ultimate "WOTC needs to approve things" trump card felt more like justifications than anything else. 

I remember the Sphinx's Decree situation that kept us facing endless freezes because a hotfix somehow was impossible at the time. And that was a huge blocker defect happening in production. Waiting for weeks to fix that was an utter disaster - and it's part of recent history.

The levels situation could have been approached must quicker and more towards the community - even if it meant for the time being pretending you guys need input from the community (though again, I assume everyone is in good will here, so I am going to assume such a "coming towards the community" would be relevant). It lead to a much bigger riot in my opinion than it had to be, but that's another story.

The timer situation.... honestly, it filled the glass for me, and not only did it spill a bit, but splashed its contents all over the floor! We started a discussion about loops MONTHS AGO, yet instead of sharing insights on the topic and getting more feedback from everyone here, the approach was to stay silent, and then put everyone in front of the consummated situation. And the moment the response here came - "well, probably nothing we can do about this timer thing before the release, it's a bit late" - was just pure insulting. You can't keep silent, make a very inconvenient decision, put it in front of the users the last minute with no reversal options and ALSO expect everyone to stay calm and friendly about it. It's wrong at too many levels, sorry, and if you genuinely believe this was the best that could be done here (though I'm convinced you personally don't!), I rest my case.

I am not addressing all this with respect to you alone. You are part of a team, of a grander scheme, and I totally get that behind the silence, lots of talks and meetings are happening, trying to align, decide what is the best approach, what can be done in the shortest term, how it impacts future decisions, what are the current priorities, what's a real emergency and what it's not ("these users who know nothing about application they are using but here they are, making a scandal out of each insignificant detail"), and of course how to approach the community. Plus many many other things.

But again, it's bad decision after bad decision, and the moment this keeps happening repeatedly there is definitely something very wrong with the process. You can blame it on the community once or twice for being overly sensitive, but not every single time. And of course there are arguments and justifications for each and every one of these issues, but the truth is that they shouldn't have happened in the first place. Not this often, not this big, not this relevant! 

Hope this wasn't insulting or rude, I really tried my best to be as rational and objective as possible here.

Machine

Most of the updates look great. I love the guild animation. I hope that will be added to the current five guilds too. There are two concerns, however:

1) The timer issue seems like a turn in the wrong direction. Playing control decks is the core of this game for most players. I don't know how it will turn out once 3.3 hits the game, but I feel it may be the end for a lot of players. There are games where the AI keeps comboing for 40 minutes and still there's no end to the match. For those situations, I can imagine having a way to stop the loop would be great. But for players, it's just plain stupid. UNLESS, there's some kind of way to stop your own combo once THE PLAYER decides to stop the loop, usually when the board state is in such a way that the game can be won from there.

2) @Brigby: Is the card XP gain issue in the RT event fixed in 3.3? Right now, I'm not playing with any unmastered cards in RT as not to get screwed over even more. Which brings me to 3)

3) No news about the XP system??? That's the single most topic we've been complaining about.

andrewvanmarle

So, 18 seconds for your turn to progress??? that s a really bad way to fix one of the minor  "issues" of the game.

As stated above, I'd rather concede to a loop!

thare are so many combinations that are not infinite that will not play out in that time. and what about long-not infinite chains?

Bad decision!!!

Bil

 Better late than never, i can't help joining the party and my playmates.

  This 25 second (... 18 seconds ...) fix is the most absurd and appaling thing ever ... 

   I'm just trying to imagine how stressful the game can become if i have to rush through all the manipulations ... Just to be able to play my deck effectively.
  I also try to imagine the frustration i will endure if my turn is shut down just before casting a critical card ... And loose a game because of it ... 

   Its even more ironical when the endless animation problems haven't been solved despite the terrible effect they already have on the game. Well ... Now they will not only be boring, they will just ruin our build perspectives.
  The Turns will remain slow ... But they will be so short that none will be able to complete them properly. 
  
  Before, we occasionaly felt frustrated because of an endlessloop that prevented us from playing our deck once in a while ... Now we will be constantly frustrated because a stupid timer will prevent us from playing our deck on each and every turn ... By design!?

   The lot of good things in this patch definitely look peanuts compared to the lethal blow you're about to inflict to this game.

Mburn7

starfall said:

andrewvanmarle said:

So, 18 seconds for your turn to progress??? that s a really bad way to fix one of the minor  "issues" of the game.

As stated above, I'd rather concede to a loop!

The longer this discussion goes on, the more I become intrigued by people who think that they should be able to win games against decks that far outclass their own.

Eh.  The same thing happened when people complained about the cycling nerf.

Nobody likes losing, especially when its losing to a 2 hour long loop (see Nexus of Fate ban in Arena for an example).  I get that.  Its not about being able to beat significantly better decks, its about the appearance of having a chance against significantly better decks.  If I get 1 turn and then have to put my phone down for an hour while I slowly lose, that is not fun.

Gunmix25

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. Quick heads up that I spoke with the team, and they mentioned that the first Match-5 in a player's turn will add an extra 10 seconds to the timer. Each additional Match-5 following this will yield diminishing returns on the amount of seconds added.

@Brigby
If you want to convince us... have the devs or you make a couple of short videos showing known but legal loops in action with this timer and post here in the forum a link to them. As it is now, existing resolvement in seconds for various cards. Many take a certain amount of time to do so because of animations; of which the devs have added more with this new set. 

If I swap 5 and cast days undoing.  I have essentially burned that extra time up before it resolves... so in essence the extra time is pointless as far regular combos or straight up casting.  

What should have occurred is a combo counter.  When a combo loop of cards repeats 3 times in succession,  a counter begins and if it triggers 3 more times in succession without any other combos occurring then the turn ends. This counter resets if a different combo breaks the counter.
Combos playing off other combos that many may consider looping cannot be affected and allows for MTGPQ to maintain creativity in building powerful combo effects.  But this counter would be useful in shutting down combos like the old neha loop using two cards over and over to trigger ID; but if ID was not on the field the loop doesn't break.  A loop counter looking for repeated cards playing over and over and over would be far more useful and productive in catching endless loops rather than supress the rest of the games design for legitimate combos.