None of what is in that blog post was unknown to the majority of people voicing their displeasure.
We all knew it didn’t start until you made the first gem match
We all knew it paused any time something that is disabled by the Card Visual Art feature pops up
We all knew it wouldn’t prevent our creatures from attacking.
Once again, a blog post has been put out that treats your players as if they are unable to read or grasp the implications of mechanic changes. However, all it really does is give the players a sense that it is Oktagon that isn’t reading, or grasping the overall negative effect those changes are going to have.
Yes, it’s a turn timer because the cast step is the only functional part of a turn where a timer would matter. There’s no directing which creature or target your creatures hit so once the attack phase starts your turn is effectively over anyhow. Forcing a timer on the player before they’ve even made a match would be asinine. So obviously, the only place to put the timer is during the cast phase where cards are actually played. Thus, given that that is the only part of the turn where we actually do anything meaningful and it’s timed, it’s a turn timer.
That video being used includes none of the cards that would combo with March of the Multitudes. So sure, if that is the only thing happening, you can dump out your tokens and that’s it. Now go ahead and try to run a simulation with combo’s involved. Drop in a Path of Discovery. Or throw in Verdant Sun’s Avatar. Chain it in to a gem converter or two. Put out a creature that individually buffs the other creatures in play. There are a myriad of cards that can be combo’d with March and each of them would make the video showcase as laughable as we know it would be. That’s just one example.
You see, we’ve all come to know what is counted as Card Visualization and what isn’t based on that fancy feature that didn’t do what we had actually asked for in the first place. Gems converting, loyalty and mana trails, cards being drawn, cards being discarded, none of these cause a pop up that would pause the timer and they aren’t disabled by the Card Visual Art feature (they are what we wanted disabled btw, as that appears to have been unclear).
There were extremely few infinite loops within the game, a very rarely were they encountered. If I lose to an extreme combo deck that overwhelms me then props to the person who put it together. They obtained the cards and they built that deck. Losing happens. You can’t win every match. If they put together a deck that infinitely loops and is never going to actually kill me then again, props to them. I’ll have to quit out and I’ve lost that match. That could very well have been their intention but most often, I see they’ve put a stop-gap card in there so they can manually stop the combo when they’re ready. Greg’s just not smart enough to not cast those prompt cards.
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.
The video just show how narrow minded the developers/game"designers" are. They just show the comboesque turn that come in mind… So it must work for everything else.
This will ruin our experience with the game. Please stop this while you still have time. It’s an announced tragedy! The more you explain the worse it gets.
If they follow the playbook from the XP system in update 3.2, we’ll probably get 2 weeks of radio silence now, and then they’ll explain to us why we’re all wrong about the timer again.
But above all things, THIS is my biggest irritation:
”If there’s an extra match, the timer stops, adding a little more time, but doesn’t reset, since the game is still in the casting step. If the automated actions pass the time limit, the step will end and start the next one - the step, not the turn. The combat step then starts and runs normally, until its countdown ends. The same happens for the end actions at the end of the turn.”
So this is not a Loop Prevention System at all! That’s just the name branding of something that IS in fact meta warping.
Sorry, but in Sparta they would have a line for it:
”This is MADNESS!!”
Jokes aside, you seriously gotta be kidding. Do away with this train wreck of an idea. Save yourselves the trouble.
I’ve been in the “let’s not overreact, let’s wait and see” camp with regards to the timer implementation, but I’m gonna add my voice to the chorus here. This is a bad idea. This is going to thwart a lot of regular decks and drastically devalue a lot of good cards. It’s going to be insanely frustrating to lose matches that would otherwise have been won because a timer cut off our interactions; it’s going to be painful to have to spend more time slogging through daily events like Training Grounds and Trial of the Planes because we can no longer bring our most powerful creations to them. Perhaps this will be good for players with less defined collections, but for those who have devoted the time and resources to obtaining most of the cards, this… really sucks.
I strongly suggest that the timer, rather than stop a turn immediately, simply makes available a button labeled “End Phase”. If pressed, the player can then put a halt to their ongoing actions and proceed to the next extra swap, or to combat, or to the end of the turn. If unpressed, let things continue as they normally would.
This would address the actual problem that led to this ill-conceived idea; a player who has accidentally created an unbreakable loop, or one who created a long-lasting loop that has run enough times to provide a victory but will keep going and going anyway, can use the button to advance the game rather than having to kill it. The AI could get their turn broken at the timer, or perhaps be given a longer timer to avoid giving players undeserved wins. Whatever. What the AI does is not important to most of us.
I recognize that it may be too late to stop this from going forward in 3.3, but you’re going to lose a lot of player participation and enthusiasm because of this change. We’ve been without a new set for four months, it’s finally here and all we’re talking about is this design decision. It’s overshadowing any excitement we may have had about the arrival of new cards, new planeswalkers, and other new features with this release.
Listen to your players. Make your first and only priority patching away this mistake as soon as possible, before too much damage is done.
I’d like to thank Oktagon for preparing this video for us and proving it to every single, vocal, pitchfork-carrying doomsayer in the forum… that we were right.
I mean, you’re introducing a loop-prevention system… And you can’t even play your whole hand, with no loop involved at any point? Do I need to say more? This is utterly ridiculous. I mean, you sure as hell are gonna prevent loops, that’s for sure - you’re just gonna take almost every thing else down with it in the process. And that’s sad considering loops are only around because YOU can’t balance cards.
Sure, you picked four Marches, and that’s a card that takes a bit of time… But think about it. There was no drawing involved, no other card-related effects, no cascades, nothing. And you can’t even cast four cards. What gives? At this rate, 75% of decks will become completely unuseable. And all of that for what? So that the useless, ineffective AI can become even worse? So people with crappy cards can beat better decks? So you can fix your own mistakes in the most indirect, roundabout, unreasonable way?
A bad decision will remain a bad decision no matter how much you try to explain it or showcase it. Same with bad mechanics.
Between this and the appalling lack of coalition events - thanks, Oktagon, for killing this game for me, after I devoted so much time and effort into it. I had already adhered to the “not another dime” movement, but with this not even that is going to cut it. This game might just become unplayable for me.
There’s still time left to stop the car before it hits the wall. We all know you’re rushing because you are late on releasing the new expansion set. But don’t be surprised if the players jump off the car before the crash and there’s no one left to play with the new set.
I’m a FTP player and I’m considering on investing less time in the game. I don’t think any paying player will invest any money in the game for a while !
What’s the point of releasing the new expansion set if there’s no one left to buy cards ?
4 full Marches is 48 tokens.
And you have 42.
Meaning it stopped the effect of the spell half-way…
So you’re telling me that the “LPS” will cut off a spell in whatever step it is in?!?
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?
I could have sworn that the original 3.3 notes said that when the timer ran out, the next action would be completed afterwards. Those have been edited to only refer to this thread.
I thought at first that the only thing we learned is that there is a timer on every step, and not just the cast.
But the fact that it ends a spell wherever it is…
This is even worse than I expected.
@Brigby I will clarify something that other players have talked about but maybe isn’t that clear for someone that doesn’t play the game as much as we play.
The video shows a player casting 4 March of the Multitudes, what was expected to happen today is that that player would end with a 48/48 token stack after everything was casted. What ended up was a 42/42 token stack, meaning that the LPS prevented the last spell to fully resolve.
This is unacceptable! This is a shame. How are we supposed to play our decks without knowing what’s is going to happen after casting a simple spell. This is even worse than what I have thought. I didn’t thought it was possible to a spell effect was cut in the middle just because the time was up.
I still can’t figure out the need for this timer. I have been playing for a little over a year and have never run into this so called problem. Looking at that video the timer is going screw up a lot decks. If I don’t have the freedom to build the kind of decks I want because of the timer then what is the point.
That is actually one of the most important aspects of Magic - the deck building aspect of it. The creative outlet. In fact, this freedom to be creative was the very thing that had me hooked about PQ. To me, this completely kills that, because you never know what’s going to work or what’s going to be cut short by this unnecessary, arbitrary turn timer. Because no matter what anyone says, that’s exactly what it is - a turn timer.
Thanks for explaining how this moronic system is even worse than I feared, making a not even loopy hand play crippled and unpredictable.
I’m not a whale, but over the last couple of years I have spent more on this game than any other game in my life. Until/unless this ridiculous feature is removed, my days as a paying customer, and maybe as player, are over. How’s that for feedback.