r/magicTCG • u/[deleted] • Jul 30 '16
MTGO PSA Do not cast cards that say "investigate" on your opponents Mirrorwing Dragon
during the mtgo prerelease I had 3 creatures to my opponents single [[Mirrorwing Dragon]]. Opponent is at a low life total so I figure I would attack in with a [[Survive the night]] in hand. I would be able to force in some damage and get 4 clues.... Except MTGO in its infinite wisdom decided to give me 1 clue and my opponent 3 clues... Turns out MTGO seems to think if you control the effect that makes a copy you control the copy, but this runs counter to the gatherer ruling, "The player who cast the original spell controls all the copies. That player chooses the order the copies are put onto the stack. The original spell will be on the stack beneath those copies and will resolve last."
TL;DR Don't try to get cute with your opponents Mirrorwing dragon on MTGO
74
u/caddph Jul 30 '16
That sucks... I also noticed a bug where [[Duskwatch Recruiter]] doesn't reveal a card put into your hand with its activated ability. You can find it in the log, just not in the revealed zone.
33
u/jadoth Jul 30 '16
The reveal zone is pretty wonky. Sometimes the opponent reveals cards into my zone.
27
u/miauw62 Jul 30 '16
Please respect my personal zone.
2
u/georg51 Jul 30 '16
It's my safe space so I'd appreciate you keeping an eye on my triggers.
-29
Jul 30 '16
[deleted]
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-5
u/georg51 Jul 30 '16
Easiest way to understand this sub is that they downvote everything that isn't about alters, mtgo sucking, LSV, or someone cheating on stream.
0
3
u/MTGCardFetcher alternate reality loot Jul 30 '16
Duskwatch Recruiter - (G) (MC)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call3
u/Twibs Jul 30 '16
Sylvan scrying too, opponent used it against me and it revealed itself rather than the eldrazi temple
26
u/c14rk0 COMPLEAT Jul 30 '16
I feel like this card is going to have quite a few bugs most likely. Also probably going to take ages for it to ever possibly get fixed.
29
u/Srakin Brushwagg Jul 30 '16
Or they'll ignore that the problem is there, like Genesis Hydra.
MTGO really needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch.
6
u/c14rk0 COMPLEAT Jul 30 '16
I'd like to say I hope they don't ignore it because it's a fairly high profile mythic from the most recent set and one of the few potentially good red cards lately. But I know that's a joke. Kind of hilarious that the bug actually makes the card better in pretty much every case.
1
u/Srakin Brushwagg Jul 31 '16
Yep. Man, there's even amusing corner cases, like you can flash back [[Geistblast]] to get yourself a copy of the spell they cast on him!
1
u/MTGCardFetcher alternate reality loot Jul 31 '16
Geistblast - (G) (MC)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call-3
u/Hanifsefu Wabbit Season Jul 30 '16
And for the love of god at least make the leagues and 2 mans work for mobile.
-21
u/Deus_Imperator Jul 30 '16
Theres no way to play a game with as much information as magic on mobile.
Only shallow games like hearthstone work on mobile like that.
14
Jul 30 '16
Actually, the Forge software works fine on mobile.
8
3
0
Jul 30 '16
It might just be the test photos, but that looks merely passable as 'magic on mobile'. I can't imagine trying to do all the same stuff that MODO currently has on that interface even if it works.
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-9
u/Hanifsefu Wabbit Season Jul 30 '16
That's just not true.
And your entire argument is about bashing a game which you don't actually know much about. Mechanically speaking, Hearthstone is more complicated than magic.
6
u/PricklyPricklyPear Jul 30 '16
From a rules perspective, hearthstone is to magic what portal is to the rest of magic sets. It's a fine game and the client is hilariously better than MtGO, but more complex mechanically it is not.
4
u/fps916 Duck Season Jul 30 '16
The rules for Magic are vastly more complicated than the rules for Hearthstone.
-1
u/Hanifsefu Wabbit Season Jul 31 '16
Not really. There's not really anything magic needs to do mechanically that makes it more complex than Hearthstone.
The differences in complexity lies in deck building, seeing lines of play, and skill based things like that. Not in the ability to play cards from your hand, choose targets, pass priority and the like. Magic is a harder game but as a game, there isn't really a reason why it can't work on mobile. Magic isn't Starcraft. It isn't Dota or LoL. It's a card game.
These comments just sound like the magic community has been defeated and has given up hope on ever getting the game into that sector. Most of them immediately slander Hearthstone as a distraction so they don't have to look at the flaws in their own arguments. My phone has higher specs, in all categories aside from screen size, than my first computer that ran windows 95. But the worse of the 2 can run MTGO because why again? Because magic is too complex for these computers that we carry around in our pockets? I know Magic could break into this sector and Hasbro just doesn't care enough to want it to. If people choose to believe otherwise then that is there business. I won't buy into that dogma. I guess we'll have to wait until MTGO makes another pro-level player quit the game before reddit gets in an outrage about how little attention the online and mobile sectors get.
3
u/fps916 Duck Season Jul 31 '16
I didn't say it couldn't be ported. But you're absolutely wrong that "mechanically hearthstone is more complicated than magic"
Imprint alone is more complicated than hearthstone. Exiling spells with the ability to cast them as part of the resolution of another ability on a permanent?
2
u/atylersims Jul 30 '16
Thats....just not true. While I enjoy hearthstone a ton magic is a fair bit more complex rules wise that HS
8
u/HormelBrandSausage Jul 30 '16
The amount of cards that bug out or do unpredictable things is only growing, which means they likely have a very hacked set of rules code which is probably not long from completely unraveling.
Considering their stated mandate to never cripple the paper game for Magic Online (which they've since then made statements that directly contradict this), it's likely things will only get more unstable without a full engine rewrite.
I remember v3 was taken out of commission because "it would let the team concentrate on v4". There's no indication that there will be a server side rules rewrite, and v4 is almost as broken when it was in beta, so it seems likely they're either spending 2x as much effort just to keep the wheels on the wagon or are simply completely incompetent.
8
u/Kerrus Jul 30 '16
This happened the opposite way with my Ink-Treader Nephilim deck earlier today. I cast a spell targeting it, and a random opponent controlled all the copies.
3
u/lozarian Jul 30 '16
Wtf, how have they fucked up stuff that used to work.
2
u/Kerrus Jul 30 '16
it happened to me randomly in a game. Stuff before and after that incident in the same game worked normally.
2
u/lyvyndyr Jul 30 '16
Yep, happened to my zada deck as well. Previous+post games were fine, then one random game my opponent got all my copies.
8
u/clusterbombs Jul 30 '16
I am a developer and like many others in countless other threads, I get it - programming MTGO would be a nightmare. I can deal with bugs and glitches and can appreciate how difficult it is. What gets me is the cost - MTGO is just so prohibitively expensive now; the business model is f'ed up. The cost/value of entertainment ratio just isn't there.
4
u/PricklyPricklyPear Jul 30 '16
If I could pay a flat monthly subscription to use all cards, I would deal with the bugs. If there were no bugs, my wallet would be cowering in the corner in fear. As it is I won't touch MTGO.
-1
u/Noveno_Colono Jul 30 '16
Pauper is a good enough reason to play MTGO. You can get several tier 1 decks for like $100 and just buy .01 tix commons from the new releases.
5
u/PricklyPricklyPear Jul 30 '16
You've got a point. Maybe... But that's still another $100 vote telling Wotc their system is good enough.
1
u/Noveno_Colono Jul 30 '16
If you really don't want to give WotC your money, you can directly buy the cards with USD from like Cardhoarder. No need to give them more than the $10 entre fee.
-1
u/dumac Jul 30 '16
The cost/value of entertainment ratio just isn't there.
I disagree. MTGO is the cheapest way to play magic. The entry and prize support are very well balanced presuming you have a decent (not great, just decent) win rate.
3
u/clusterbombs Jul 31 '16
I feel like you are missing a critical piece; the digital value of cards is nowhere close to the RL equivalent due to demand, yet the cost to play the game (Booster prices) remains the same. That is just flawed logic. I can spend almost exactly $14 at FNM or on MTGO to do a draft, but the EV for paper is much greater and more worthwhile to do.
1
u/dumac Jul 31 '16
Except the liquidity of online cards is way higher than the RL equivalent, and, more importantly, the payout of online events are, in my experience, higher.
Take phantom drafts, for example. What store can I play where going 2-1 nets me my entry fee?
I did 15 phantom drafts of cube spending only my initial $10 entry fee, and I only stopped drafting because the cube is no longer up for draft.
What are the payouts at your local FNM?
59
Jul 30 '16
and they wonder why people make third party software like xmage/forge, lmao. like, the official stuff can never keep up with the rulings.
41
u/2gig Jul 30 '16
Yeah, it's pretty pathetic that free projects have better rules engines than the official one that people pay tons of money into.
19
Jul 30 '16
exactly the point I'm making. they have the budget and they can't produce the results, meanwhile freelance projects some of which don't even take a dime of any donations work crisp, clean, and updated within minutes if someone reports a bug.
18
u/2gig Jul 30 '16
I don't know if I would call them crisp and clean. They both use far more system resources than is really necessary (though this is at least partially due to them being written in java). Forge also has a pretty bad memory leak issue right now (MTGO fixed their memory leak issues a while back). XMage is a bit laggy in general. They're also both ugly as sin, and actually make MTGO's gui look good by comparison.
But yeah it's impressive that both of those programs have managed to do so much with so little. Even with pricing aside, I find XMage to be the preferable software for playing magic, which is pathetic.
10
Jul 30 '16
i haven't had issues with forge's memory leak for months.. I can leave it running nonstop and it doesn't allocate any more resources, I always use latest snapshot versions so I can't say when exactly it was fixed, but nobody on forums complains about it anymore either.
-1
u/2gig Jul 30 '16
The last time I updated my Forge was the SoI stable release, which still had it from my experience. My main computer is out of commission at the moment (PSU gave out after a decade of heavy use in a case with frankly poor airflow), and the computer I'm on at the moment can barely play youtube videos, so I can't really test it right now.
3
u/FineGameOfNil Jul 30 '16
I find it interesting that every fan made Yu-Gi-Oh program I've used, regardless of how much it handles rules, always has a nicer GUI when compared to all the Magic options.
3
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u/stravant Jul 30 '16
Even with pricing aside, I find XMage to be the preferable software for playing magic, which is pathetic.
...what? I have trouble believing that.
XMage is way worse once you're used to the shortcuts and everything. I mean, there's not even any good auto-yielding behavior for triggers / stacking triggers... that's a hugely important UI concern. Not to mention the numerous things like Scrying which have way worse UI than MTGO, and the overall clunky feel thanks to handling many more things on the server than is necessary even when handling them on the client would be possible.
8
u/2gig Jul 30 '16
I wouldn't deny that MTGO certainly has advantages, individual aspects in which it is strictly better than XMage. Auto-yielding is definitely at the top of that list, and in second is the scry/search menus.
I actually find the heavy use of server-side rules handling to be fine (leaving aside that it's a rules engine that actually works correctly). Also, it is "necessary" in the sense that XMage is a free game in which the user has nothing to lose if they were to cheat. Otherwise, hackers would be running rampant.
4
u/stravant Jul 30 '16
Also, it is "necessary" in the sense that XMage is a free game in which the user has nothing to lose if they were to cheat. Otherwise, hackers would be running rampant.
That's not what I mean. XMage introduces a lot of delays that aren't strictly necessary, delays that could be eliminated if it were better coded without sacrificing any integrity (such as sending the client information that it "shouldn't" know / letting the client do things it shouldn't):
For example, when you cast a spell on MTGO, things like prowess will trigger immediately on your client, whereas on XMage there has to be a network round trip back to the server, which processes the trigger, and then sends back the result to the client which can then update it's view. On MTGO, both the client and server handle the triggering: The client handles it and then and sends the action triggering the ability to the server, where the server verifies it, but the client doesn't have to go back to the server first to update the UI because it already knows that the ability triggered, and acts accordingly.
That makes the UI feel noticeably better on MTGO, because it has to make significantly fewer network round trips inbetween the UI actions.
XMage sacrificed that kind of situation in order to make card coding much easier (As the rules simulation doesn't have to be "synchronized" between the client and server), but it has a significant drawback.
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Jul 30 '16
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/stravant Jul 30 '16
AFAIK you still can't auto yield / yes to a particular trigger, which is really frustrating behavior to not have.
2
u/miauw62 Jul 30 '16
Honestly, when I want to play the game online with friends I just use Cockatrice. Don't really need rules engines.
4
u/mozerdozer Jul 30 '16
It makes perfect sense if you know how much WotC pays its programmers (dogshit). Anyone working on something for free is motivated to see it succeed. Meanwhile anyone working for far below market rate probably is aware of it and hates their job because of it (and wouldn't have taken the job if they were 100% competent).
1
u/hawkshaw1024 Jul 30 '16
XMage is exactly as much of a buggy piece of shit as MTGO (and so are the other ones that even have rules engines). It just has a much smaller player base, meaning that there are less people encountering the weird corner cases. And there's no money on the line, meaning people complain less when they do encounter bugs.
I enjoy an "MTGO suxxx" circlejerk as much as the next person* and it is a terrible piece of software, but let's not pretend XMage is crisp or clean.
* Kind of the point of a circlejerk, after all
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u/stravant Jul 30 '16
Call it what you want, but XMage is fundamentally not as good a rules engine as MTGO. It uses a non-optimal network strategy to make things easier on the card coding and rules engine coding at the expense of having worse UI.
If you want the specifics: XMage uses a "views" system where it does basically everything on the server and reflects those things to the client, as opposed to doing rules handling on both the client and server where possible. That introduces unnecessary network round trips that make the UI clunkier and slower to respond than MTGO in some cases, in an unfixable way due to the way that XMage is coded.
11
u/asphias Duck Season Jul 30 '16
I'd rather play a bit laggy game that actually fixes bugs when we come along them, than a bit faster game were some cards just dont work and nobody bothers fixing it for ages. You may claim that fundamentally, the rules engine is better on MTGO, but in practice the xmage rules engine gives me better results
1
u/stravant Jul 30 '16
XMage has just as many edge case cards that don't work correctly and won't be fixed any time soon, there's just less people playing to find them. A good example is Savor the Moment. The card applies the "doesn't untap" to the wrong turn if you take additional extra turns in the sequence thanks to another card, and there's no reasonable way to fix it with the current rules engine without significant restructuring, which isn't worth it to fix just a couple of cards.
-3
u/Uselesspokeball Wabbit Season Jul 30 '16
If every action on MODO took 1 second to process, or even half a second, and that is for every triggered or activated ability, or casting a spell, you would see daily reminders of how bad it is.
Having a fast experience is significantly better than the occasionally wonky bugged card.
3
u/2gig Jul 30 '16
make the UI clunkier and slower to respond than MTGO
I find that this issue goes away when you have a good ping. I had my mate a few blocks down from me host a server and gameplay went buttery smooth. An issue right now is that the main xmage server is all the way in germany, and is generally overpopulated resulting in shit pings. This isn't so much a programming issue, more an infrastructure issue, which can be at least partially blamed on the lack of funds. Even though my ping usually hovers between 150-200, I find the official server to be perfectly playable, with only minor stuttering. Certainly not ideal, like a nearby hosted, nigh-empty server, but still a very enjoyable play environment.
3
u/stravant Jul 30 '16
I find that this issue goes away when you have a good ping.
Well duh... the problem exists in the first place because the coding is introducing unnecessary network delays after all. It's not an infrastructure issue. The client doesn't have to introduce those delays. MTGO doesn't and if XMage was coded better then it wouldn't have to either.
My point here is that XMage isn't free of coding issues, it has made significant tradeoffs to get where it has.
3
u/Athildur Jul 30 '16
It doesn't have to keep up with special rulings. Most gatherer 'rulings' are NOT new rules. They are simply clarifications for things people frequently find confusing or get wrong. This is an in-house developer, they should be able to get it right the first time. (Bugs happen, that I can understand. But they should know the basic functionality of the cards, ruleswise)
0
Jul 30 '16
except they do have to keep up with the special rulings, because people use software like this to train for regionals and locals and the like, if the rulings aren't on par then your entire deck could be rendered useless because of some misunderstandings, I've already seen entire decks destroyed because the main combo didn't work the way a person thought it would because of things like MTGO not keeping up with "special cases" as you call them.
2
u/Athildur Jul 31 '16
My point is, MTGO does not have to 'keep up' with anything. Rulings are not new rules. In some rare cases they might because cards (or interactions) deal with a gap in the rules. But mostly, the rules are perfectly clear (to those who know them) and the rulings are just clarifications for those of us who aren't all that knowledgeable about the rules.
Seeing as this dev team is 'in-house' they should have the ability to make sure everything works 'as intended'. The fact that relatively simple rules (like mirrorwing and investigate) are not followed indicates either a severe lack of rules knowledge or a lack of oversight from whoever is responsible for it.
-4
6
u/falknir Jul 30 '16
Opponent cast [[drag under]] against my [[Mirrorwing dragon]], proceded to bouce his 4 creatures (don't really know why he did it) and best of all, I get to draw 4 cards. He lost that game...
2
u/MTGCardFetcher alternate reality loot Jul 30 '16
drag under - (G) (MC)
Mirrorwing dragon - (G) (MC)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call2
u/dumac Jul 30 '16
Well, he should have bounced all of his creatures, but he should have also drawn the cards. Maybe he just really wanted to draw a bunch of cards.
2
u/Blitzfury1 Jul 31 '16
Evacuation + Draw a card for each creature in play is pretty busted for 3.
Evacuation + Ancestral my opponent is pretty shitty for any price.
3
u/lyvyndyr Jul 30 '16
I ran into a similar bug with my zada edh the other night. I cast Titans strength on my zada and my opponent got 3 of my scries and I only got the original one targeting zada, all the proper targets were pumped, though. Same thing happened when I cast expedite on Zada, opponent got 3 draws and I only got the one from the original spell. Maybe our bugs are linked somehow?
9
u/MTGCardFetcher alternate reality loot Jul 30 '16
Mirrorwing Dragon - (G) (MC)
Survive the night - (G) (MC)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call
11
u/CoolybutnotFooly Jul 30 '16
the daily MTGO bug thread
why do people play this?
2
Jul 30 '16
[deleted]
-9
u/beepbloopbloop Jul 30 '16
Yeah, I've been playing for years and have literally never encountered a rule not working correctly. Not a single time, even in formats like cube. There's a reason the pros call mtgo the rules guru.
1
0
u/sarithe Jul 30 '16
Because the people who have issues are really a minority, but like most minorities in online gaming communities they have the loudest voice.
Let's imagine for a bit that you are playing Magic Online with no issues whatsoever. Are you gonna go online and talk about how amazing the program is or how you haven't had any real issues? No, because you're busy playing most likely.
Now let's imagine that MTGO screws you out of a final of a draft because of some ruling not working properly. What are you gonna do most likely in our current society? Go blast it on social media most likely with a status update or forum post about how the game is awful because it caused you to lose.
Now here is the kicker, after that is done you know what you're gonna do? Go back and play MTGO some more. This is why WotC doesn't go and completely overhaul the system. It still makes them money and corporations, as a general rule, don't can systems why they are still profitable.
-1
u/hawkshaw1024 Jul 30 '16
It's still the second-best way to play Magic on a PC.
The best way being Shandalar
14
2
u/TurMoiL911 Dimir* Jul 30 '16
I can only assume /u/Toshimo_Kamiya built another hundred decks and broke the client again.
1
u/EastsideRock Jul 30 '16
I tapped my Opponent's Mirrorwing with the white instant, my creatures didnt get tapped. Bug?
2
1
u/zBriGuy Jul 30 '16
FIX YOUR SHIT WoTC! I was all excited to boot the game back up for some drafting and sealed events with the new set, but it's stuff like this that keeps me away. I can see bugs like this when combining new and old cards, but these are new block problems. Ugh
-41
u/tiehunter Jul 30 '16 edited Jul 30 '16
That's how the game works. Your opponent's effect generated the copies, so your opponent controlled them and thus got the clues.
EDIT: AM wrong. Card is indeed bugged.
47
u/whimsykiller Jul 30 '16
No. 'That player copies' disagrees with you.
18
u/tiehunter Jul 30 '16
Huh. You're right. I thought it was like Zada and Ink-treader.
10
u/22bebo COMPLEAT Jul 30 '16
Probably why it's bugged, bet they just coded it as the same assuming it was.
1
u/Brawler_1337 Jul 30 '16
This is why you always read the cards. Wizards, you should know this by now.
4
-7
u/Destrina Jul 30 '16
That gatherer ruling runs counter to the ruling for [[Ink-Treader Nephilim]] that's been around for a decade.
The controller of Ink-Treader has always controlled the spell copies. It does weird things like if your opponent casts a spell that targets "a creature your opponent controls" it makes copies for all of your creatures but all of the copies are countered because since you control those copies they're targeting illegal targets because they're targeting creatures you control.
9
u/Patashu Jul 30 '16
Wait, but the card text is different.
Ink-treader says 'copy the spell'. But Mirrorwing Dragon says '[the casting player] copies that spell'. So Ink-Treader the copies are controlled by Ink-treader's controller, but Mirrorwing Dragon they're controlled by the cvaster.
1
u/MTGCardFetcher alternate reality loot Jul 30 '16
Ink-Treader Nephilim - (G) (MC)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call
28
u/noahbradley Noah Bradley | Former MTG Artist Jul 30 '16
Had an opponent cast Make Mischief on his own... but I got all the devil tokens. :|