Loop Prevention System - More Details *Updated (3/12/19)

nerdstrap

We all want fixes to broken and degenerate interactions. We don’t want a broken and degenerate fix. 

Dwayne

I'll come out of the woodwork to add my two cents, because I also believe that implementing a timer is a massive error in judgment and a misreading of the player base. I know your team put work into implementing this, but sometimes you have to take a breath, read the overwhelmingly negative feedback, bite the bullet, admit you made a mistake, and correct your mistake. 

For once, please listen! People haaaaate this! And this is much more serious than previous gripes I've seen on this board re: card mastery systems, duel decks, etc. This is on another level for sure.

(To add to that, a member of my coalition literally rage quit when he read about this timer. And I can pretty much guarantee you that he spent the most money of anyone in our coalition on this game.) 

Gilesclone

In a few days, the thousands and thousands of players that never use the forums will play games only to find that their favorite cards/best combos don’t work right any more.  

Most of them will never come here to complain.  But they will be angry.  Some will quit as soon as they realize it wasn’t a random bug.  Others will keep playing but they will still be angry.  Those players will be much more likely to quit the next time something goes wrong.

The damage this change will cause will be long lasting.

Stormcrow

So, a lot of people in this thread asking for videos showing the loop timer in action with specific card combos; I'm going to take a different approach.

@Brigby please tell Oktagon that if they can post a video in which they defeat the Exquisite Archangel battle in Revolt Against The Consulate and successfully meet the "Win in 7 turns or less" secondary objective while the loop timer is in effect, I will withdraw all of my complaints.

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Magic123

starfall said:

Someone is sitting at D3Go now thinking, "Look at all the engagement on our forum! We are doing something right!"

LOL

Brigby

Hi Everyone. Thank you all for the insightful and constructive feedback. I just spoke with the team this morning, and they will be changing the 18 seconds per phase to 90 seconds. 

This change will be a transitional adjustment, as the team will continue to monitor and work towards finding the right balance between solving infinite loop issues and maintaining player play styles following the 3.3 update.

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Thuran

THANK YOU!!!!

That makes me accept the feature

Just wish we didn't need to mobilise the entire forum in order to get heard....

nerdstrap

WOW!!!!

Gabrosin

Please pass along our thanks to the devs for listening on this issue and making a rapid change, @Brigby.

This doesn't necessarily solve the issue entirely, but it does limit the damage it can do in the short term.  Hopefully the next release will re-visit whether this timer is doing anything beneficial at all, compared to the other ways that this problem could be solved.

Now we can go back to complaining about the new leveling system!  Progress!

Fiddler

I've been keeping my head down waiting to assess the changes until after they came out. I've noticed the increase in the looping/combo play over the past half year in the meta; and it has been a minor annoyance. Its not my style of play because I get no particular enjoyment of watching cards cycle for five minutes.

But hopefully this nudge to 90 seconds will calm down the forum, which has been extra ridiculous lately. Now can we all go back to getting excited about the new card set? 

Gilesclone

@Brigby Thank you for making sure we were heard.  This is not a great solution, but at least it doesn’t wreck the game completely.

OmegaLolrus

I almost think 90 is too long now, but I don't want them to turn-this-car-right-around. I'd rather have it at 90 than 18, and I'm not even playing the decks that this change was supposed to mitigate.

Mburn7

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. Thank you all for the insightful and constructive feedback. I just spoke with the team this morning, and they will be changing the 18 seconds per phase to 90 seconds. 

This change will be a transitional adjustment, as the team will continue to monitor and work towards finding the right balance between solving infinite loop issues and maintaining player play styles following the 3.3 update.

Thank you for helping us fix a major issue before it happened.

90 seconds should be plenty of time for most decks to operate, and will just shut down infinite shenanigans decks.

Now, could you ask the team if they could make copies same-turn castable again?  Since now you don't have to worry about infinite turns?

OmegaLolrus

OmegaLolrus said:

I almost think 90 is too long now, but I don't want them to turn-this-car-right-around. I'd rather have it at 90 than 18, and I'm not even playing the decks that this change was supposed to mitigate.

Lousy computer not letting me edit my own post... What I mean is I'm cool with 90 seconds if it's the first step to an actual fix instead of a filthy, possibly puss-covered bandaid on the problem.

Looping is, I think, a huge problem. This was a solution to it that created a much larger, more frustrating problem.

Brakkis

OmegaLolrus said:

OmegaLolrus said:

I almost think 90 is too long now, but I don't want them to turn-this-car-right-around. I'd rather have it at 90 than 18, and I'm not even playing the decks that this change was supposed to mitigate.

Lousy computer not letting me edit my own post... What I mean is I'm cool with 90 seconds if it's the first step to an actual fix instead of a filthy, possibly puss-covered bandaid on the problem.

Looping is, I think, a huge problem. This was a solution to it that created a much larger, more frustrating problem.

You are the only one in this thread I'm seeing state that looping is a huge problem. How is that? Most of us consider it a very minor one at most. I face a loop deck maybe once every 100 matches, if that.

Well constructed combo decks that stack the field and put me on my toes are not loops.

Anyhow, to the topic at hand. I dont care if its 90 seconds or 1000. We don't need a timer. You know what would fix the majority of the possible loop decks? Nerfing blue. There, I said it. Blue is immensely overpowered in PQ. Theres all of what, one infinite loop that isn't blue? And it's more of a fringe case than the already fringe case of encountering infinite loops.

KageTora

I'm right there with Brakkis. 90 seconds is a whole lot better than 18 seconds, sure, but I'm still not taking it. We don't need nor want a timer. A timer will always be a limiting factor in our creativity, deckbuilding freedom and, to a certain degree, enjoyment. And that is key to this game - to me and many others. 

I only ever get the so called "looping" deck on TotP Green, and even then is one in every, I don't know, 50 games? How is a handful of people complaining about this being an issue, when so many others are literally not even seeing these decks?

Combo decks ARE NOT loops. Fast paced decks that crowd the field through conversion, draw, or both ARE NOT loops. They CANNOT be treated as such, specially when they're nothing more than a direct consequence of extremely poor card balancing.

OmegaLolrus

Brakkis said:

OmegaLolrus said:

OmegaLolrus said:

I almost think 90 is too long now, but I don't want them to turn-this-car-right-around. I'd rather have it at 90 than 18, and I'm not even playing the decks that this change was supposed to mitigate.

Lousy computer not letting me edit my own post... What I mean is I'm cool with 90 seconds if it's the first step to an actual fix instead of a filthy, possibly puss-covered bandaid on the problem.

Looping is, I think, a huge problem. This was a solution to it that created a much larger, more frustrating problem.

You are the only one in this thread I'm seeing state that looping is a huge problem. How is that? Most of us consider it a very minor one at most. I face a loop deck maybe once every 100 matches, if that.

Well constructed combo decks that stack the field and put me on my toes are not loops.

Anyhow, to the topic at hand. I dont care if its 90 seconds or 1000. We don't need a timer. You know what would fix the majority of the possible loop decks? Nerfing blue. There, I said it. Blue is immensely overpowered in PQ. Theres all of what, one infinite loop that isn't blue? And it's more of a fringe case than the already fringe case of encountering infinite loops.

Well, I my argument is thus: The goal of the deck is to get the get the loop started, and then just wait 'til it's over. You're not actually playing a game at that point. The actual game play and skill burned itself out with either: A - the first person who came up with this idea figured it out and everyone else net decked or B - you, the looper spent (as far as I can tell) a couple of months tweaking and working on the deck.

I see it quite a bit more than one of a hundred, I'd say... On the high end, one in five, on the low end, one in ten. It is literally no fun to sit there and watch the moronic AI sit there and cast spells in an endless loop until the game's over. However, to your point about blue, I can't think of a single one of those decks that I've bumped into and looped me from max health to zero in a turn without Blue Sun's Zenith. There was one that I honestly don't remember that took the AI's empty board to three creatures around 60/60 in one turn. That could have just been an absolutely horrid draw of cards. Usually, it's BSZ.

But (and there's going to be a lot of those), I've also played against a LOT of decks that had Blue Sun's Zenith where it isn't a problem at all. Where it draws maybe two cards, fires them off, I get hurt real bad, but I can have a shot at a comeback next turn. So I can't sit here and say that BSZ definitely needs to be nerfed. Sometimes I'd win, sometimes I'd lose, you pays your money, you takes your chances.

It might be, as you say, that Blue as a whole needs to be nerfed. I don't have a good enough feel for the entirety of the game to feel comfortable. Something is out of balance, and looping is either that something (in my opinion), or a big symptom of that problem.

And I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one saying that... Most of it's been couched in: "Yes, this is a problem, but an 18 second doesn't help." Perhaps I'm misreading.

BigSwifty

90 Seconds is better than 18 Seconds. While I am still not sold on the idea of a timer as a way to fix certain combo issues, I appreciate the fact that the team has taken action in response to feedback. So, thank you.