MTGO Survey

[Barook]

Please take your time (about 5 minutes) to tell them how horrible the current experience is:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1839623/MTGO-Satisfaction-Survey-2014

Looks like Papa Hasbro finally got the wake-up call that there's some terrible wrong with MTGO, especially considering the Hearthstone bit.

[apple713]

Please take your time (about 5 minutes) to tell them how horrible the current experience is:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1839623/MTGO-Satisfaction-Survey-2014

Looks like Papa Hasbro finally got the wake-up call that there's some terrible wrong with MTGO, especially considering the Hearthstone bit.

they need to get a group of programmers like the ones who created hearthstone to help them or else MTGO will die out.

[Barook]

I agree.

Paying below industry standard to employ way too few programmers who also happen to be completely untalented isn't exactly the best business decision.

I see the survey as an reaction to catastrophic Q3 earnings regarding MTGO (announcement is next Monday), considering they're actually mentioning Hearthstone this time and asking specific questions about the last three months (aka V4).

[cdr]

They need to write MTGOv5 in a real language/framework like C/C++ and Unity. Hearthstone is Unity, possibly the biggest game client ever done in it. Unity makes cross platform porting pretty easy - Hearthstone could even port to web browsers / javascript like the Humble Mozilla Bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com/) games if Blizzard wanted to, though they'd have to slim it down a fair bit.

Writing a game client in .NET WPF is the biggest joke in history.

[Dice_Box]

So in the end, it will not be years of people asking them to get their act into gear that does anything but a better game? Guess it proves the rule, you go where the money is.

Losing players to a better designed platform has really driven some fear into them.

[Undomian]

I knew that I didn't think very highly of MTGO going into this survey, but actually having to express my thoughts on the client numerically makes me realize how bad it actually is.

[H]

So in the end, it will not be years of people asking them to get their act into gear that does anything but a better game? Guess it proves the rule, you go where the money is.

Losing players to a better designed platform has really driven some fear into them.

How often is there innovation without any competition? From a bottom line standpoint, why spend money to improve something if you are in the green? Of course, we know why, but from a blind perspective, it will take loss (or fear of potential loss) to drive action.

Chances are good that they have finally seen red with regards to MTGO, probably in it's growth (I can't imagine it would be in the red in overall profitability, since we know they pay the programmers peanuts and server costs can't be that high). I can easily see MTGO comping negative now and the survey is probably pretty spot on to the fact that it is a mixture of frustration with the client and competition (Hearthstone).

I think they should really be looking at adoption problems as well, because the chance for organic growth from paper to online is tremendous and I mean orders of magnitude large. I mean, with how much they are trying to make playing tournaments a comfortable and pleasing experience for everyone, the online experience is comparatively in the stone age.

[Tylert]

Why is the client bad? because of the game itself (Having to treat all triggers without being able to make a shortcut like in real life for example) or because of crashes and bad ergonomy?

If it's the game itself, I guess nothing can really be done. Magic is WAY more complex than Hearthstone and there's no way to say that your opponent doesn't want to react after one trigger or another.

[Dice_Box]

The client is bad because it is unstable and unintuitive to use. When they can not keep their own premium events from going down, you know there is an issue that needs resolution. The overall problem has been that they seam to be unwilling to invest the time and capital needed into MTGO and now that there is another option, people are taking it. This appears to have caused a stir. Bout fucking time from what I can tell.

[Tylert]

Your rant seems legit :)

[menace13]

I knew that I didn't think very highly of MTGO going into this survey, but actually having to express my thoughts on the client numerically makes me realize how bad it actually is.
IKR? The ball started rolling and I had to force myself to give anything a high grade. Variety of formats is the only one I can think of atm.

#ResignWorth

[mini1337s]

IKR? The ball started rolling and I had to force myself to give anything a high grade. Variety of formats is the only one I can think of atm.

#ResignWorth
I would say 50% of my responses were 3, 35% 1-2, 10% 4, 5% 5.
If I didn't have a Magic addiction, I'd wouldn't put up with the client.

[Barook]

I would say 50% of my responses were 3, 35% 1-2, 10% 4, 5% 5.
If I didn't have a Magic addiction, I'd wouldn't put up with the client.
I gave a few 3s where stuff was alright, some 2s and the majority of points 1s. The client is that bad and absolutely infuriating to use, especially since they made the client overall worse instead of better since I started using the beta 16 months ago. And the V4 client has been in development for 6 years now, with over two years of beta, and yet, it's still a steaming PoS.

That, alongside with continued string of low value MOCS promos (S&T was the only exception; fuck you, Mike Turian!) made me quit playing events with entry fees altogether for now until they get their shit together. No reason to feed them money if they don't deliver.

The management of MTGO is a joke. At the PTQ event last weekend (or the weekend before, can't remember), 3 people of the top 8 couldn't submit their draft deck and had to play with 80 cards decks. While that is already bad enough on its own for such a high-profile tournament, Mike Turian called the winner and tried to coerce him into forfeiting his price (a spot in the next Pro Tour) and to replay the Top 8. Of course the winner declined since their fuck-ups aren't his fault, but it just shows how unprofessional the people at the helmet truely are.


They need to write MTGOv5 in a real language/framework like C/C++ and Unity. Hearthstone is Unity, possibly the biggest game client ever done in it. Unity makes cross platform porting pretty easy - Hearthstone could even port to web browsers / javascript like the Humble Mozilla Bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com/) games if Blizzard wanted to, though they'd have to slim it down a fair bit.

Writing a game client in .NET WPF is the biggest joke in history.
Isn't that the reason why it can't be ported to other OS?

I imagine that a well-done client on a tablet could be a great experience and lots of fun - and that's coming from something who absolutely hates tablets.

To be fair, Magic is a game way more complex than Hearthstone. But I agree that MTGO should have been rewritten from scratch years ago. Instead they decided to be cheap and now it's going to bite them.

[mishima_kazuya]

"Don't get cheap on me Dodgson. That was Hammond's mistake."
- Dennis Nedry before he got killed by a dinosaur

[cdr]

Mike Turian called the winner and tried to coerce him into forfeiting his price (a spot in the next Pro Tour) and to replay the Top 8. Of course the winner declined since their fuck-ups aren't his fault, but it just shows how unprofessional the people at the helmet truely are.

TBF that's not actually true. I followed it when it happened, the guy actually asked Turian to call him. The MTGO guys also let the winner keep the the invite and prizes and gave out a second invite and prizes for the replayed T8.



Isn't that the reason why it can't be ported to other OS?

MTGO can't be ported because it's 100% written for Windows. WotC is Microsoft's bitch and always has been, there's a directive on high that demands only Microsoft products be used.

Hearthstone was written to be portable (Unity) and so Blizzard can port it to anything they want (tablets, consoles, web browsers, commodore 64) with a minimum of fuss.

[Barook]

MTGO can't be ported because it's 100% written for Windows. WotC is Microsoft's bitch and always has been, there's a directive on high that demands only Microsoft products be used.
I've never heard of that.

I wonder how much money they lose from not being able to join the mobile market.

[apple713]

MTGO can't be ported because it's 100% written for Windows. WotC is Microsoft's bitch and always has been, there's a directive on high that demands only Microsoft products be used.



they are going to lose a lot of money, because a lot of people who have money to invest in the game refuse to use windows. The only time i see windows computers is in offices. like 90% of friends / students have mac's

[cdr]

they are going to lose a lot of money, because a lot of people who have money to invest in the game refuse to use windows. The only time i see windows computers is in offices. like 90% of friends / students have mac's

They're losing a lot of money mostly because the product is garbage, but chaining themselves to Windows certainly didn't do them any favors.

They're using .NET, WPF, ClickOnce, etc - stuff Microsoft intended for corporations building internal enterprise apps. And they went and made a game client with it. Not only did they use beta-quality frameworks that were entirely tied to Windows, they used them for things they were never designed to be used for. If they had used standard game development tools not only would the client be way more portable, it would be way less bloated and buggy.

But hey, this is WotC, the company that has never produced a competent digital product in its existence.

[apple713]

They're losing a money mostly because the product is garbage, but chaining themselves to Windows certainly didn't do them any favors.

They're using .NET, WPF, ClickOnce, etc - stuff Microsoft intended for corporations building internal enterprise apps. And they went and made a game client with it. Not only did they use beta-quality frameworks that were entirely tied to Windows, they used them for things they were never designed to be used for. If they had used standard game development tools not only would the client be way more portable, it would be way less bloated and buggy.

But hey, this is WotC, the company that has never produced a competent digital product in its existence.

neither has their parent company, hasbro so that doesn't lend any help either. The reluctance to switch is a big numbers game and quarterly earning draws a lot of attention to losses / decreased earnings so this may be the motivation they need to get the attention of higher ups.

[Barook]

neither has their parent company, hasbro so that doesn't lend any help either. The reluctance to switch is a big numbers game and quarterly earning draws a lot of attention to losses / decreased earnings so this may be the motivation they need to get the attention of higher ups.
The problems are many-folded, though. Not only are the programmers and the client subpar, there also seems to be alot of meddling from managers inside Wizards who have no idea what they're doing.

The best thing would probably be acquiring a software studio with competent programmers who redo the entire client from scratch with little to no meddling from outside AND having them maintain the client afterwards instead of Wizards' current clown troop around Worth "No ice-cream for me!" Wolpert.

[Meekrab]

If they had used standard game development tools not only would the client be way more portable, it would be way less bloated and buggy.
No, it wouldn't. Crappy underpaid developers are going to produce "bloated" (whatever that word means) crappy buggy software no matter what tools they work with. Using .NET and WPF is not the reason MTGO allocates .9 GB of RAM and 66 threads just starting up and logging in to the servers (on my machine, your mileage may vary.) God help us all if the people who can't even make Oubliette give you your creature back when it leaves the battlefield suddenly have to deal with the actual pointers, native file system calls, and manual memory allocation you'd have in a C++ application. They'd honestly never have even shipped v4 if they tried to port their existing code to C++.

MTGO is crap because of the team responsible for it and the inadequate budget given to them, not because it uses some Microsoft libraries.

[caiomarcos]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think you can really compare Magic and Heartstone. Even Portal is many times more complex than Heartstone. You can compare stability, user interface, easy of use, interface learning curve etc, but the game itself is just as different as any other online game.

I played Heartstone once and couldn't get any fun out of it, and I don't see it happening any time in the future, no matter how good the client/platform is.

[Barook]

Magic is the far better game because Hearthstone is pretty luck-based and shallow, but Hearthstone provides a far superior experience to MTGO, simply because MTGO is so terrible.

[Lord Seth]

I feel I have to share this link (http://cardboard-crack.com/post/100143392736/in-the-year-2034).

[Koby]

Magic is the far better game because Hearthstone is pretty luck-based and shallow, but Hearthstone provides a far superior experience to MTGO, simply because MTGO is so terrible.

People play MTGO despite its programming because MTG is such a great game.

[Wanderlust]

If MTGO worked on my Mac Hasbro would have a lot more of my $ by now. Thank you for saving me from myself, great overlords.

[iamajellydonut]

If MTGO worked on my Mac Hasbro would have a lot more of my $ by now. Thank you for saving me from myself, great overlords.

If you have so much to offer and if you're so willing to shell out lods of emone to the point where Wizards ought to beg you to be a customer, then why haven't you just sucked it up and bought a capable five dollar toaster? It seems more that you're just making noise. I don't doubt that if Wizards made their product more accessible that they wouldn't see more players, but when there's a will there's a way. If your aversion to using mtgo was their faulty product, then I empathize completely. But you, and many others, are either lazy, cheap, or self-righteous. Take your pick.

[menace13]

self-righteous.
Would that be like telling people how they should spend their money, or nah?

[Wanderlust]

But you, and many others, are either lazy, cheap, or self-righteous. Take your pick.

I'm cheap, actually. You hit the nail on the head. I'd rather not shell out the extra $80 for Parallels or for a "toaster" (point me to a functional $5 windows laptop and I may jump, though. I don't think that exists.) But we digress - the overwhelmingly negative reviews of the platform have been a pretty big deterrent.

[Meekrab]

I find it amusing that there's such a large demand to run Windows on Macs that the software costs $80.

I don't think I've paid for non-game software in ages.

[Lord Seth]

I find it amusing that there's such a large demand to run Windows on Macs that the software costs $80.Parallels actually doesn't run Windows on Mac. Windows will run itself on a Mac. The problem is that you can only boot up your computer as one or the other, so normally you can't be using Mac programs at the same time as Windows programs. Parallels is a product that lets you run one while booting up in the other, allowing you to run your Windows programs and Mac programs simultaneously. You still need to obtain your copy of Windows separately before you can use Parallels.

[Meekrab]

So it's a virtual machine?

Those are free, man.

[Wanderlust]

I find it amusing that there's such a large demand to run Windows on Macs that the software costs $80.

Well, the only time in the past 12 years that I have ever thought about wanting Windows was for MTGO, and I clearly didn't even pursue it deep enough to learn that I would need to purchase a Windows license in addition to Parallels (or whatever VM). I'm glad to have been educated more here, though. I really do hope that Hasbro/WotC gets their act together regarding MTGO.

And... I will kindly duck out of this thread now as I have derailed it enough as is.

[Barook]

They sure have chosen a great time to run the survey, considering MTGO just completely shat itself.

[menace13]

They sure have chosen a great time to run the survey, considering MTGO just completely shat itself.
The best part is they tweeted the Std PTQ prelim will be on in 4 hours from the time of the tweet. That was 2 hours after mtgo started having log in and stability problems. It has been, what, 8 hours now?

#ImpeachWorth

[Lord Seth]

So it's a virtual machine?

Those are free, man.Something like WINE is free, yes. It's also highly unreliable. WINE and the like are great for running relatively simple programs, but try anything more complicated than I Wanna Be The Guy and prepare to be disappointed. You get what you pay for, after all.

[Barook]

Dear Mother of God, no wonder MTGO sucks so bad:

Take a 50% paycut to work at Wizards, but hey, those free draft sure make up for the hundreds of thousands $ you're going to lose! (https://twitter.com/WotcPurvis/status/522076859182235648)

I have no idea what a programmer earns (so anybody from the industry correct me if I'm wrong), but I did some research on Glassdoor.com while MTGO was down, because that did sound ridiculous.

Color me suprised - they aren't even that badly underpaid - just 5% below industry standard:

$114,379 base salary + $12,128 boni (126,507$ total)

But the point where it gets hairy is when you compare it to other companies where the actual talent they need goes, e.g. Google:

$169,784 base salary + $29,849 + $77,785 boni ($252,997 total)

So the 50% paycut when going to Wizards is suprisingly on spot. :eyebrow:

[Lord Seth]

Dear Mother of God, no wonder MTGO sucks so bad:

Take a 50% paycut to work at Wizards, but hey, those free draft sure make up for the hundreds of thousands $ you're going to lose! (https://twitter.com/WotcPurvis/status/522076859182235648)

I have no idea what a programmer earns (so anybody from the industry correct me if I'm wrong), but I did some research on Glassdoor.com while MTGO was down, because that did sound ridiculous.

Color me suprised - they aren't even that badly underpaid - just 5% below industry standard:

$114,379 base salary + $12,128 boni (126,507$ total)

But the point where it gets hairy is when you compare it to other companies where the actual talent they need goes, e.g. Google:

$169,784 base salary + $29,849 + $77,785 boni ($252,997 total)

So the 50% paycut when going to Wizards is suprisingly on spot. :eyebrow:This link (http://themeadery.org/articles/comprehensive-mtgo-reform) says "Entry-level salary for a software developer at WotC is in the ballpark of $60,000, compared to the Seattle starting average of about $100,000." However, it doesn't indicate where they got those figures from, so I'm not sure how accurate they necessarily are.

[Barook]

This link (http://themeadery.org/articles/comprehensive-mtgo-reform) says "Entry-level salary for a software developer at WotC is in the ballpark of $60,000, compared to the Seattle starting average of about $100,000." However, it doesn't indicate where they got those figures from, so I'm not sure how accurate they necessarily are.
Thanks for the link. Nailed some of the major problems pretty well.

The numbers I found where about senior software developer. Maybe that's where the difference comes from?

In the end, it puzzles me how a company like Wizards (with the backing of Hasbro) tries to save a few hundred thousand dollars a year by not paying competitive wages for good programmers while losing tens, if not hundreds of millons extra revenue they could make with a good client that makes people want to spend money on it.

Thinking the talent is going to flock around you, just because you're Wizards and hand out free MtG products, is so outlandish, it baffles me. It didn't work in the past and it isn't going to work in the future.

[Dice_Box]

Free MTG products? With that extra 40 grand I would just buy whatever I wanted that was MTG related.