Point of No Return

Machine

@Brigby:

I'm writing this message to you, a liaison between us, the community, and the developers, because I'm feeling the Point of No Return for me is coming dangerously close. And by that I mean that I'm about to quit playing this game.

Last weekend's coalition event (Battle of Four Tribes p1) I started with two CONSECUTIVE freezes on node 1.1 and 2.1. I was so pissed that I had to quit playing to come to my senses. Now, one coalition event later (Battle of Four Tribes p2) I'm on a perfect streak after nodes x.1 and x.2. I'm playing against Elendra and after a fight of about 20 minutes, my Etrata the Silencer attacks, exiles an opposing creatures, gets disabled and the game... freezes. My second creature didn't attack, so the game froze mid-combat.

I've been playing this game for almost three years now. I consider myself a very dedicated player, trying to collect all the cards and planeswalkers, trying to master all the cards that I have and (as a coalition leader) try to motivate the players in my team to get the best out of them. It doesn't matter how many fancy features this game has, it doesn't matter how many cool cards one has, it doesn't matter how many cool planeswalker one has... it all doesn't matter if the most important event in the week, the coalition event gives you bugs and freezes over and over again. We're not only competing with other coalitions for the highest scores and rewards, but we're also battling our team mates for the top spots in our coalition. NONE of this matters, not even how well that I'm trying to do my best, if this game is unstable. All the fun is sucked away.

I highly suggest to stop wasting resources on features no one asked for (LPS, the new player profile, etc) and give the highest priority on fixing these damn game freezes and crashes. It seems this game is sinking deeper and deeper in bugs and I can no longer justify spending my time on this game if I'm fighting against a force I can't beat.

Do what's right, make this game stable, design a freeze and crash prevention system or however you want to call it, or that's it for me. I never thought I would stop playing this game before the game died by itself, but these increasing freezes are utter garbage.

Thanks for listening and I sincerely hope that this plea for help is taken seriously.

Edit: sending tickets to support and receiving the same questions over and over again without any improvement to the game are not helping either...

Narcoticsagent

Man if I didnt suck at writing I could have written this exact post. Etrata freeze on elenda and otherwise perfect score. 3 years of play time. 15000 orbs short of every craftable card in the game. I just wish they'd make the game run right and stop introducing things we dont want or need like LPS or player levels at least until I  can go more than 10 games without a freeze. 

Mark_Tedin

Meanwhile, the forum is flooded with nerf topics. After LPS and bugs, now we need to have our best cards unused.

Please oktagon, work on a crash prevention system !

Barnabes

Agreed.

I have been unable to complete more than a couple of matches throughout the event without a crash. If I try to complete goals, the game takes long and crashes. If I try to overwhelm the opponent, the game crashes because of repeated animations and cascades. 

It it no longer feels like a game, more like attempting to diffuse a bomb. 

Mburn7

I agree with this post as well.  I've come dangerously close to quitting a few times over the last few months.  I've been playing this game almost since the beginning, and I have never seen it function worse than this.  Cards don't work properly, or when they work properly it isn't what the card says.  Almost any action causes a freeze, and an increasing number of cards will now as well.

Unknown

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soultwist

Machine said:

 I'm playing against Elendra and after a fight of about 20 minutes, my Etrata the Silencer attacks, exiles an opposing creatures, gets disabled and the game... freezes. My second creature didn't attack, so the game froze mid-combat.

I had this happen EXACTLY the same.  Talk about wanting to throw your phone.

Mburn7

soultwist said:

Machine said:

 I'm playing against Elendra and after a fight of about 20 minutes, my Etrata the Silencer attacks, exiles an opposing creatures, gets disabled and the game... freezes. My second creature didn't attack, so the game froze mid-combat.

I had this happen EXACTLY the same.  Talk about wanting to throw your phone.

Same thing happened to me as well.  Exact same sequence.
It was weird, though, since Etrata had been running without problem for a while before that (and in my rematch after that)

ertaii

I had the exact same issue in node 2.3 with Erata attacking. I took screenshots, reported the issue. I also got an issue where a "destroy" card tried to cast, allowed me to select my creatures (yes with an S) (including etrata) but did not cast or cancel. I took screenshots too and added it to the support ticket. I asked for compensation because otherwise I did a perfect score, like I did in the previous installment of this event.

Can you guess what the support team answered ? Thanks for  reporting but go tiny kitty yourself anyway.

Gilesclone

I suspect this is why we’ve had 3 PvE coalition events in a row.  They can say, “but you didn’t lose any individual points “.

Gabrosin

Wow.  I also ran Etrata on that node and didn't run into this problem, now I feel particularly lucky.

Being able to guarantee that a game as complex as this one will never crash or freeze is a tall order, but it should at a minimum be possible to register an error as it occurs and use the existence of that error to ensure that a player doesn't lose a charge from something outside their control.  If players find a way to abuse this system intentionally, they can always be discovered and banned.  Yes it would suck to have to redo a game you may have been winning to overcome a game error, but it's far better than having to accept a loss that costs your team points.

jtwood

FWIW, when I filled out the recent survey, I basically said that making this game stable was more important than anything else they could do.

When I chat with friends about this game I say "It's a load of fun, but it's so buggy that if it wasn't for the MTG IP, this game would have died on the vine."

Basically... +1 to this

Brigby

Hi @Machine

First off, I want to thank you for writing up your experience and feedback. You didn't have to do that, yet your drive to want to see the game improve for everyone compelled you enough to be vocal about this topic, and I sincerely appreciate the time you spent in doing so. This is especially true since you're one of the early veterans, having joined back in 2016.

Secondly, I can understand the frustration that you share with other players. When playing a game, the only thing you really want to worry about is how to defeat your opponents and nothing more. I totally get that, and it's certainly not a notion that is lost on the rest of our team either. We enjoy playing the game, and we want to see the game run as smoothly as possible too. As @Gabrosin mentioned though, this is definitely a complex game.

While our work is certainly not over, our team has already been taking steps to optimize the game, be it directly or indirectly. (In my opinion, Power Saving Mode and Card Visual Aid were two steps taken that offered an indirect improvement. Less visuals to process inevitably means less stress on the game) I know that there are some anticipated back-end improvements planned for the future as well, however since I'm not a developer, I can't say for certain whether those would specifically impact this issue or not. (Aka, I would take that comment with a grain of salt)

Having said that though, I will continue bringing this topic up in meetings to see what kind of resources we will continue to have devoted to this avenue moving forward, and where we can improve upon to make sure this topic gets all the attention it deserves.

PS. I'm digging the Ulquiorra forum picture! Would've loved to learn more about his character in the anime though.

Dropspot

After this event we had more than 3 players asking to have a break in our group.

The game play is seriously compromised. We used to have one bug or another and kinda understood that and tried to determine what was causing and play around it. But now it's almost unplayable, anything can cause a freeze. There is no way to determine what is causing the freezes since there are so many causes. 

I completely agree with @Machine here, there is no point in adding new content if we can't have a stable game. 

Opperstamper

Hi @Brigby,

So what about the meantime? I can assure you there are lots of players with the same sentiment, just less vocal. If we mention it here we get little to no reply, if we turn to CS we get thanked for putting in the ticket and that's it. They're always sorry that there's nothing they can do for us. 

I agree it's a complex game, and can take a while to get things sorted out. The other part of @Gabrosin's post is what I like to see addressed. Why do players and teams suffer from it, while there is nothing they can do to prevent it? 2 freezes is a lot, and 30 points from a single player can be the difference between first or fifth place for the whole team. I can provide screenshots of situations like that and very close to it.

We would definitely be more understanding if we get a fair chance to hold the points we would have otherwise lost from a freeze.

ManiiNames

Our coalition lost two members after this past weekend's event.

Mburn7

Brigby said:

Hi @Machine

First off, I want to thank you for writing up your experience and feedback. You didn't have to do that, yet your drive to want to see the game improve for everyone compelled you enough to be vocal about this topic, and I sincerely appreciate the time you spent in doing so. This is especially true since you're one of the early veterans, having joined back in 2016.

Secondly, I can understand the frustration that you share with other players. When playing a game, the only thing you really want to worry about is how to defeat your opponents and nothing more. I totally get that, and it's certainly not a notion that is lost on the rest of our team either. We enjoy playing the game, and we want to see the game run as smoothly as possible too. As @Gabrosin mentioned though, this is definitely a complex game.

While our work is certainly not over, our team has already been taking steps to optimize the game, be it directly or indirectly. (In my opinion, Power Saving Mode and Card Visual Aid were two steps taken that offered an indirect improvement. Less visuals to process inevitably means less stress on the game) I know that there are some anticipated back-end improvements planned for the future as well, however since I'm not a developer, I can't say for certain whether those would specifically impact this issue or not. (Aka, I would take that comment with a grain of salt)

Having said that though, I will continue bringing this topic up in meetings to see what kind of resources we will continue to have devoted to this avenue moving forward, and where we can improve upon to make sure this topic gets all the attention it deserves.

PS. I'm digging the Ulquiorra forum picture! Would've loved to learn more about his character in the anime though.

Brigby, thank you for this heartfelt response.  While we know you aren't responsible for much other than keeping the forums in line, its easy to forget since you are often our only contact with the dev team.

But you need to make sure they really understand what is going on here.  The game, as it is right now, is unplayable.  Any card or ability that targets something has the potential to freeze the game.  Any ability triggering has the potential to freeze the game.  Matching supports has the potential to freeze the game.  Converting gems can freeze the game.  Pausing the game or minimizing the game or checking the battle log can freeze the game.
There is not a single action that can be done in this game that does not have the potential to freeze the game.

I don't know if anyone in Oktagon has every played MTGPQ on an actual mobile device (all of their videos are clearly done on computer emulators), but if you guys at D3 do play you know what I'm talking about.  And the fact that we only hear from Oktagon directly every 2-3 months to get a generic "we're working on it" response is not helping matters, and neither is the whole XP system debacle or the fact that we haven't gotten a new coalition PvP event since M19.  If I hadn't been playing this game for close to 4 years now I would have quit months ago.  Something needs to change.

bobby_2613

Mburn7 said:

But you need to make sure they really understand what is going on here.  The game, as it is right now, is unplayable.  Any card or ability that targets something has the potential to freeze the game.  Any ability triggering has the potential to freeze the game.  Matching supports has the potential to freeze the game.  Converting gems can freeze the game.  Pausing the game or minimizing the game or checking the battle log can freeze the game.
There is not a single action that can be done in this game that does not have the potential to freeze the game.

What is completely crazy is that (finger crossed) some of us almost never have any freeze. I think I can count to 3 the times I've got a freeze.  Ok, to be honest, if I know there's a problem with a card, I usually try not to use it (ex: sphinx decree) but other than that nothing. 

(Note: I'm not saying the freeze don't need to be their top priority.  It should.)

I wonder though if there would be a problem with some mobile OS.  I mean, I'm on a Galaxy S7, that's not the new shiny phone. But sometimes, I often hear people on Android not having problems. Am I wrong?  Is there many people out there on Android having freeze? Probably.  But if the problem lies on the hardware it might be even tougher to find a fix.  Anyways, in any case, I hope they'll fix it soon.  So everybody would enjoy this great game again.

Mburn7

bobby_2613 said:

Mburn7 said:

But you need to make sure they really understand what is going on here.  The game, as it is right now, is unplayable.  Any card or ability that targets something has the potential to freeze the game.  Any ability triggering has the potential to freeze the game.  Matching supports has the potential to freeze the game.  Converting gems can freeze the game.  Pausing the game or minimizing the game or checking the battle log can freeze the game.
There is not a single action that can be done in this game that does not have the potential to freeze the game.

What is completely crazy is that (finger crossed) some of us almost never have any freeze. I think I can count to 3 the times I've got a freeze.  Ok, to be honest, if I know there's a problem with a card, I usually try not to use it (ex: sphinx decree) but other than that nothing. 

(Note: I'm not saying the freeze don't need to be their top priority.  It should.)

I wonder though if there would be a problem with some mobile OS.  I mean, I'm on a Galaxy S7, that's not the new shiny phone. But sometimes, I often hear people on Android not having problems. Am I wrong?  Is there many people out there on Android having freeze? Probably.  But if the problem lies on the hardware it might be even tougher to find a fix.  Anyways, in any case, I hope they'll fix it soon.  So everybody would enjoy this great game again.

I'm on a fairly new LG G6, and I certainly have less freezes than a lot of other people.  But I do get soft locks on occasion from the same things that everyone else does.  It just doesn't seem to happen quite as often.

My old phone used to freeze every 2-3 matches if I didn't restart the app in between them (it was an android too, but a very old android)

Of course, if you need to buy a brand new phone every 2 years just to play a game that still indicates it is a poorly programmed game, just in  a different way.

Unknown

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OmegaLolrus

starfall said:

My two year phone contract is up in a few months, should I ask what the minimum spec is for playing this game so that it is functional and doesn't lag?

I've got a Samsung Note8 (which I have not treated well, poor thing), and I have a relatively small number of problems. I think I've had one serious problem in the last week (even that, I put the phone down, went to the bathroom, and came back and it was okay).

Only time I've run into any slowdown is when I've got more than half the board energized, adapted, or some such. Even then, it's very playable, just a few seconds of lag for animations. For my daily stuff (RT, TG, TG, and a few games on the side to play with whatever I'm fiddling with), I can't remember the last time I had a huge problem.