MTGO discussion

[Barook]

Great video regarding the state of MTGO:

[yugular]

Tempest Remastered had a chance to be one, but they F-ed it up

I liked it. Actually loved it.

[ubernostrum]

Anybody up for a "pile into the last Legacy DE before the apocalypse" party?

[Meekrab]

Consider for a moment that Magic Online has been a thing for over a decade, meaning it has taken over 10 years for Wizards to get the client to where it is now. I played in the beta, and never really dived into it because you had to invest in a second collection that you actually don't own, at least now you can sell out to stores and get something back. From that time to now, I have never heard anyone say anything good about the program ever, and I don't think it is from lack of press because I cannot think of any real positive changes that weren't triggered from backlash for their terrible management of it. Magic Online represents the relationship between the community that plays the game (in paper and online) and the developer/ manager that runs it; a brilliant game run by idiots. But the worst part of it is that people put up with all of the bullshit that continuously gets shoveled into their faces just because they want to play the game, meaning Wizards has no incentive to change anything. I can't even think of any other game period where such a broken relationship exists. I can't think of any other dev team that could consistently be so incompetent for such a long time. Again, this has been going on for over 10 years, and when I think about all of the amazing video games that have been developed, released, and had sequels released within that time, even games made by indie developers that work on it in their spare time, and then compare that to the steaming pile of shit that is the magic online client (after years and years of 'refinement' might I add), how can I possibly justify supporting any of it? The whole situation would be tragic if it wasn't such a joke instead.

It's pretty simple in my eyes, WotC/Hasbro isn't a software company and they aren't managing MTGO like a software project because they don't know how. They pay below market rates for developers because "lol u get to werk on majik!", so they inevitably end up with passionate but underskilled employees, who then suffer burnout while churning out code that sucks. They have forced release cycles and the game has the most complicated rules of any game other than Calvinball, so players get game-ending corner-case bugs on a regular basis. I'm almost positive they have no one who has ever studied User Experience Design, because the GUI seems to be designed to inhibit your ability to reach game functionality. The management team seems to be perpetually absorbed in changing things like tournament payout for the sake of looking like they're trying to do something without any drive to fix the bugs, because that's actually challenging.

Ugh. I hate talking about MTGO because the problems are so obvious and won't ever be addressed until R&D takes a six month vacation from designing new sets.

[Darkenslight]

It's pretty simple in my eyes, WotC/Hasbro isn't a software company and they aren't managing MTGO like a software project because they don't know how. They pay below market rates for developers because "lol u get to werk on majik!", so they inevitably end up with passionate but underskilled employees, who then suffer burnout while churning out code that sucks. They have forced release cycles and the game has the most complicated rules of any game other than Calvinball, so players get game-ending corner-case bugs on a regular basis. I'm almost positive they have no one who has ever studied User Experience Design, because the GUI seems to be designed to inhibit your ability to reach game functionality. The management team seems to be perpetually absorbed in changing things like tournament payout for the sake of looking like they're trying to do something without any drive to fix the bugs, because that's actually challenging.

Ugh. I hate talking about MTGO because the problems are so obvious and won't ever be addressed until R&D takes a six month vacation from designing new sets.

Heh. Alternatively, they could, i don't know, pay Stainless Games to do it. Their handling fo the Duels series seems to be legit; get them to handle the UI design for making decks and things, get their internal dev team to handle the coding for the cards, and then you have a largely strong UI sense, and the coding directly from Wizards. Games can be handled pretty easily from there on in.

[menace13]

MTGO is a cash cow. MTGO is a hundred million+ dollar a year operation. The lack of funds isn't an actual reason, at all.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co...online/ctn7gdb

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co...online/ctn9ylt

MTGO is over a hundred million a year program. It accounts for between 33 and 45% of MTGs total revenue. WOTC finances care about MTGO even if the people in charge don't.

That is from us tracking their events with bot systems.

[Barook]

MTGO is a cash cow. MTGO is a hundred million+ dollar a year operation. The lack of funds isn't an actual reason, at all.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co...online/ctn7gdb

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co...online/ctn9ylt

I still wonder how much they could make if MTGO wasn't an abomination and the people in charge were not utter idiots.

Edit:

Meanwhile, Hearthstone makes a cool 240 million dollar a year

[Koby]

I still wonder how much they could make if MTGO wasn't an abomination and the people in charge were not utter idiots.

Edit:

Meanwhile, Hearthstone makes a cool 240 million dollar a year

The could make easily double that. There is a demonstrated population of players that want to play a program that wasn't designed by a college intern. The program lacks reachability. The event offerings lack a vision for the platform. The management continue to think it's a tool to get people to play more Paper events. The executives just want to see any growth, and while that's being achieved, there's no push to change the formula.

MTGO continues to underperform precisely because the core game is so good, in spite of how terrible the MTGO-code remains.

Best advice: stop paying WotC to play in MTGO events. Sell or hold your digital collections, but stop funding their intake.

[Julian23]

The way you describe it, MTGO would be a great thing for another company to buyout/lease and reap the rewards once they enter the market with a proper client.

[Koby]

The way you describe it, MTGO would be a great thing for another company to buyout/lease and reap the rewards once they enter the market with a proper client.

All the MTG digital games developed outside of WotC's offices have been more well-thought out and better designed than the crap Worth Wollpert and Gordon Culp have envisioned.

[Julian23]

I don't know who it was but in another thread about MTGO some programmer dude mentioned that the entire framework/program MTGO is built with/around is meant for creating non-entertainment software, e.g. office work stuff etc. and that it's one of the biggest jokes ever that WotC would develope a GAME based on that. Kind of like using Photoshop to create an animated movie: it's great at what it does....as long as you use it for what it is meant.

[Barook]

The way you describe it, MTGO would be a great thing for another company to buyout/lease and reap the rewards once they enter the market with a proper client.

Was Magic Duels also developed in-house? Because it's just as much of a buggy, badly-designed PoS as MTGO.

I don't know who it was but in another thread about MTGO some programmer dude mentioned that the entire framework/program MTGO is built with/around is meant for creating non-entertainment software, e.g. office work stuff etc. and that it's one of the biggest jokes ever that WotC would develope a GAME based on that. Kind of like using Photoshop to create an animated movie: it's great at what it does....as long as you use it for what it is meant.

It's based on Windows Presentation Foundation. Maybe somebody who is more knowledgable could go into details about this.

[Meekrab]

I don't know who it was but in another thread about MTGO some programmer dude mentioned that the entire framework/program MTGO is built with/around is meant for creating non-entertainment software, e.g. office work stuff etc. and that it's one of the biggest jokes ever that WotC would develope a GAME based on that. Kind of like using Photoshop to create an animated movie: it's great at what it does....as long as you use it for what it is meant.

I recall that thread too, and I recall being utterly confused as to why it's a problem to develop a game that isn't CPU or GPU intensive on the .NET framework. To me it seems like a great decision, since you automatically prevent tons of bugs simply by running managed code as opposed to native. MtG is not Quake, it doesn't need to run at 300 fps. The performance issues that do exist in MTGO are almost entirely caused by overworked staff writing crap code in order to get things done in time to get the next set out the door. The big speedup in the deckbuilding scene as a result of one recent update is evidence of that, it's possible to do things in a performant way using WPF and .NET, they just didn't.

[Lord Seth]

Was Magic Duels also developed in-house? Because it's just as much of a buggy, badly-designed PoS as MTGO.

Quick research shows that Magic Duels was developed by Stainless Games, same guys who made Duels of the Planeswalkers. Though was it really that bad? I saw someone playing it and while I only saw it briefly, it looked decent, and we had a conversation about how it seemed a lot better than MTGO.

[Barook]

Quick research shows that Magic Duels was developed by Stainless Games, same guys who made Duels of the Planeswalkers. Though was it really that bad? I saw someone playing it and while I only saw it briefly, it looked decent, and we had a conversation about how it seemed a lot better than MTGO.

I could play 5-10 minutes at best before getting fatal errors or disconnects. Fuck that.

[sjmcc13]

All the MTG digital games developed outside of WotC's offices have been more well-thought out and better designed than the crap Worth Wollpert and Gordon Culp have envisioned.

First we have the Micropose Game by Micropose
Then Magic Online by WotC
Battlegrounds was made by Secret Level
The Duels series are all made by Staneless Games, and published by WotC
Finally we have Tactics made by Sony

I never played Battlegrounds or Tactics so no comment there.

Duels tends ot work well for me, but I never bothered to play online, and I never really got in to the last 2 so I do not know how good they are, but they rest all seemed to have balance issues to me

Now the micropose game I love, and go back and play for a while once or twice a year...

[Darkenslight]

It's based on Windows Presentation Foundation. Maybe somebody who is more knowledgable could go into details about this.

OKay, I take it back. Whoever originally designed MTGO is nothing short of a genius. But its time is done.

[lordofthepit]

As someone for whom MTGO is only useful as a resource for new decklists, this start is auspicious, even if the MTGO committee did everything they possibly could to screw things up:



Hopefully, there be a lot of talented players battling it out with regularity in these events.

[BKclassic]

These "legacy daily swiss" events are retarded. I can't believe the dream is really over.

[supremePINEAPPLE]

"Soon" could finally be on the horizon when it comes to leagues. I honestly don't give a shit if dailies die if I can play in leagues instead. People who were testing them seemed positive about them so I'm cautiously hopeful that they may actually be coming.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/MTGO/art...ate-2015-08-17

EDIT: Legacy/Vintage leagues aren't happening at first (and there isn't mention in the article). Hopefully the playerbase can support leagues once they finish rolling the standard/modern shit out.