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

ZW2007- said:

Wait a minute, I bet this is just a simple language barrier misunderstanding. Anyone on here speak Portuguese? 

I do. But unfortunately I don't think that's the case. But if devs want I am available to talk with them and explain our concerns.

What about bad phones? My old phone supported the game, but animations was kidna much slower. It takes 5-6 seconds just to match gems and take mana. Do you deal with FPS, not server-side TPS?

@Brakkis said: "Looping is a part of this game and taking steps to alleviate it should be done on a card by card basis for the most blatant offenders. You threw a nuke at it."

I agree totally with that statement, and if this LPS severely hampers normal gameplay, then that nuke may end up blowing up in their faces, as a lot of people will stop spending money on a totally broken game, and perhaps even more people will leave the game for good and go play something else that isn't broken.

Wafflesauce said:

[...]
Does that mean Apex of Power/Days Undoing/Behold the Beyond might exile my hand, and then not draw cards?
My 4th Approach of the Second Sun might only do 7 damage?
Blue Sun Zenith might not give mana to cards?
Dream eater may not bounce a creature?
Plague Wind may not kill all creatures?
[...]

This is a concern! 

In addition:
I don't understand how the video should ease our voices regarding this issue. Its a loop preventing system and yet it prevents just normal cards from behaving as they are intended, no matter if they get played within a loop or not.

Think about the new players experience. A new player, who doesn't yet really know how some of the cards work, is presented to this situation. When cards say "this effect does X" and the player plays that card and the card does Y, just because the card takes too much time to get to X, the app will be gone from that new players phone (and mine too) in no-time.

I can understand why this is being implemented though. The voices which became loud for a infinite loop prevention system surely caused this LPS to be coded. And maybe they are missing manpower to implement a more complex system which could prevent real infinite loops and nothing else. 
But I think we all agree than we would rather have none of such systems than the proposed LPS right here. I don't mind a switch in the metagame, the LPS will surely be a cause for that. But I do mind when cards dont behave as they should. 

longtime lurker first time poster here by the way I wanna give a shoutout to the man @Brigby here, he does a great job with us custumer. Without you this mess would be even worse.

It seems that this comment may be a little late, but I will make it anyway.

The explanation provided clarifies the following point:

What is being touted as a "loop preventer" is instead a runtime timer with a hard stop at the end.

Now infinite loops have long(in fact, infinite) runtime.  It does not follow that every process with long runtime is therefore an infinite loop. (This is a logical fallacy called arguing from the specific to the general, in fact)

Let me give you an example of a non-loop process with long runtime in MTGPQ.


The player uses Huatli 2 (green/white).  The first loyalty ability has been activated.  Also, the following are in play:

Haazda Marshal
Ajani's Welcome
Path of Discovery, and optionally;
Divine Intervention
next
Loyalty ability 3 can be activated, and  in your hand are Foundry of the Consuls and Skittering Invasion.

You activate ability 3, partly filling Foundry.  Your gem match completely fills it, triggers Marshal and adds some mana to Invasion.

Now the long run starts.  As every token enters the battlefield, gems are slowly converted, loyalty is slowly added, some mana(and loyalty) is gained due to matches and +2 HP are slowly added.

When the circus is over, the next card has been filled.  I choose "Yes" and the action starts again, only five times over instead of four.

This process takes excruciatingly long.  And you know what?  I didn't write the code for those cards and planeswalker, you people did.

You could easily have made resolution of this process be rapid, i.e. gems convert instantaneously, HP counts up (without a big "+2" fanfare, just an accounting given at the resolution of the spell).

This deck cannot loop unless heavily tampered with.

And this is only one of hundreds to thousands of possible decks.

I suggest you give this partial deck build  to your QC department.  I also suggest you get them an assortment of mobile phones popular with the player base (in all price ranges and with various connection methods), not a hot stuff gaming PC. Then let them play and find out what we're talking about.

I understand the problem with the prominence of certain loops (which are mostly non-infinite, but make the game tedious).  The number of cards involved here is small, and minor changes can make such a loop too chancy to attempt.

I understand that it is difficult to admit, often even to oneself, that one has made a gross blunder in any endeavour.  May I suggest in any case that the development department step back and ask themselves, "Is this really the best way to solve this particular problem, or will unwanted effects drown out any benefit derived herefrom?"

MTGPQ, it seems to me, has always attempted to stay true to the basic philosophy of Magic: The Gathering (They have not always completely succeeded, but the attempt was there).  In this change, however, this tradition is being broken with and you have lost a great deal of my respect with this doubling down.

(My last sentence was not aimed at Brigby, who is simply the messenger for the company, but rather at the company itself and specifically the programming and quality control sections thereof.)

LordDorwin said:

It seems that this comment may be a little late, but I will make it anyway.

The explanation provided clarifies the following point:

What is being touted as a "loop preventer" is instead a runtime timer with a hard stop at the end.

Now infinite loops have long(in fact, infinite) runtime.  It does not follow that every process with long runtime is therefore an infinite loop. (This is a logical fallacy called arguing from the specific to the general, in fact)

Let me give you an example of a non-loop process with long runtime in MTGPQ.


The player uses Huatli 2 (green/white).  The first loyalty ability has been activated.  Also, the following are in play:

Haazda Marshal
Ajani's Welcome
Path of Discovery, and optionally;
Divine Intervention
next
Loyalty ability 3 can be activated, and  in your hand are Foundry of the Consuls and Skittering Invasion.

You activate ability 3, partly filling Foundry.  Your gem match completely fills it, triggers Marshal and adds some mana to Invasion.

Now the long run starts.  As every token enters the battlefield, gems are slowly converted, loyalty is slowly added, some mana(and loyalty) is gained due to matches and +2 HP are slowly added.

When the circus is over, the next card has been filled.  I choose "Yes" and the action starts again, only five times over instead of four.

This process takes excruciatingly long.  And you know what?  I didn't write the code for those cards and planeswalker, you people did.

You could easily have made resolution of this process be rapid, i.e. gems convert instantaneously, HP counts up (without a big "+2" fanfare, just an accounting given at the resolution of the spell).

This deck cannot loop unless heavily tampered with.

And this is only one of hundreds to thousands of possible decks.

I suggest you give this partial deck build  to your QC department.  I also suggest you get them an assortment of mobile phones popular with the player base (in all price ranges and with various connection methods), not a hot stuff gaming PC. Then let them play and find out what we're talking about.

I understand the problem with the prominence of certain loops (which are mostly non-infinite, but make the game tedious).  The number of cards involved here is small, and minor changes can make such a loop too chancy to attempt.

I understand that it is difficult to admit, often even to oneself, that one has made a gross blunder in any endeavour.  May I suggest in any case that the development department step back and ask themselves, "Is this really the best way to solve this particular problem, or will unwanted effects drown out any benefit derived herefrom?"

MTGPQ, it seems to me, has always attempted to stay true to the basic philosophy of Magic: The Gathering (They have not always completely succeeded, but the attempt was there).  In this change, however, this tradition is being broken with and you have lost a great deal of my respect with this doubling down.

(My last sentence was not aimed at Brigby, who is simply the messenger for the company, but rather at the company itself and specifically the programming and quality control sections thereof.)

Excellent post, mate. Thanks for taking the time to write it. Unfortunately, I think it was a waste of your time because I can guarantee you what their response would be, if they even bothered to give you one, mich less actually read your post. They would just explain this away with a gentle reminder of the fact that with this update, there will no longer be animation for any loyalty accrued past the upper limit of 30.

It’s a pretty awful feeling, realizing that the people whose livelihoods depend upon you are so out of touch with reality that they don’t realize how badly their decision will affect their players AND SUBSEQUENTLY THEMSELVES.

Yeah not sure about this, i feel like the devs should pick up one of the popular game players here and ask them for advice. They should have never done this without asking at least 1 of the players in the game. Im sure any one of them would have said NO.

KageTora said:

[...]
As a side note and for curiosity's sake, what are the actual chances of the developer being changed over something like this?

You raise a very interesting topic here. I'm actually very curious who has visibility AND input on the long-term strategy, changes, new card material, release schedule, backlog etc.
- Is it Oktagon or D3? 
- Does Oktagon have a dedicated requirements team or is it the actual developers "figuring it out"?
- How big is the Oktagon team to begin with? What about D3 (working on MTGPQ)?
- Is there a product manager? Is (s)he Oktagon or D3?

Because if the strategic choices are handled by D3 actually, then changing Oktagon will achieve little. Pure outsourcing is very nasty to begin with, but it wouldn't surprise me in this context.

James13 said:

Some very vocal players asked them for this.

Some players asked for a timer with a hard stop?  I stopped following the loop discussion after the problem with Divine Intervention/Murder Investigation was removed by fixing Divine Intervention, so I didn't see that.

Even so, any competent programmer should immediately have seen the problem with such a "solution" and thought of something else, not run straight to his keyboard.