MTGO V4

[Montolio]

I posted this on ClassicQuarter.com and thought I would put it on themanadrain too to share my thoughts.
Last night I played my first Vintage DE on V4 and what an experience compared to V3.
First off I will readily admit I didn't prepare on V4 as many of you did before V3 going dark.
I went in blindly so they say.
No big suprises here as I know it is pretty bad overall.
I wanted to talk about some of the things that I saw both positive and negative.
I also want to say that I realize many of the things I will cover here are probably me not knowing where things are on V4 versus the function not being there at all.
Lets start with the postive (there are only a few)
1. I like the summoning sickness swirl.
2. Attack Zone is solid.
3. When you finsih your round the countdown clock is helpful (ie: 1:30 until your round starts).

Negative
1. My foils are garbage now. I have spent a fortune on my cards and half of them don't appear as foils at all (SOR is a regular). The ones that do look abysmal.
2. When I finished a round in DE I have to hit "Return to Details" to get out of my ended game state. The finished game also never finished or went away. I was informed by an ORC that it may be lagging and to log out. I had to do this every single round to ensure that I wasn't stuck in flux and missing my next round. Really bad here as I felt insecure after every match that I was going to miss out if i didn't log out and back in.
3. When moving cards around in my hand as I always do(organizing things) the cards became blurred when overlapping each other. I don't know if this is a lag issue. All i know is that one time I made a critical error by clicking on the wrong land which could have cost me big time. The card that I moved was blurred and it looked like i was clicking wasteland when I was indeed clicking Workshop. Not happy as this happened alot, until I just stopped organizing my cards in my hand for fear of an error.
4. Was difficult to find chat to talk to an ORC (Once i figured this out it wasn't a big deal). However having to open and close mulitple windows to get there has been well documented already. If you don't have dual screens this will be a nightmare.
5. Clicking on cards to get them into play is finicky. I found that I would have to click cards 2 and 3 times to get them into play sometimes. Really weird.
6. Art is so bad on some of the duals. Just look like shit.
7. When buildling a deck I couldn't find my unhinged promo lands. This is way harder then it should be.
8. Loathe the fact my binder is gone.
9. The Stack was a freaking nightmare. I have learned how to stack my tanglewire trigger on V3 so I don't have to think about it. I have to learn it anew on V4 now. At one point in a game I had 2 Tangle Wire on the talbe and then my oppoent played an Energy flux. Imagine the amount of triggers with about 12 Artifacts on the table. If I had of stacked one card wrong I could have lost that game (no joke). I also couldn't read the card that was behind the first card on the stack. I have since been informed that by pressing the mouse wheel or Z while hovering over the card will show the card. The stack was the worst feature for me in that DE.
10. Cannot see my rating which is just a plain lazy omission.
11. Things just felt really clunkly overall. Game play seemed sluggish.

That is my short list of things that i noticed. I am sure you guys can debunk some of my complaints but this was not a pleasant experience for me.
I can wihtout a doubt say that WOTC has forced an inferior client on us. I don't know why loyal customers like all of us are should be subjected to an unfinished, unpolished client.
I feel we deserve a reason why this was so rushed that we had to shut down V3.
This is completely unacceptable imo.

[Zherbus]

They've done away with rating and personally, I hope that's good riddance, but I also they somehow integrate planeswalker points.

Foils always lagged the shit out of v3 for me. I disabled them, and the only foils I kept are largely just left over from 4 or 5 years ago. V4 does nothing for the foils at all. I have to squint just to tell if something IS foil. If they want foils to actually be special, they should probably think about making them look that way.

I agree the stack is a mess. Ask anyone who's had to deal with Flusterstorm on a multi-spell stack.

A few positive things to add:

Drafting is way better. You can build your deck on the fly and see who is passing to you and who you're passing to.

I am warming up the the neat features in deck saving. I can give them deck boxes which is meh. But I can also do practice hands and stuff, which is a minor thing, but solid.

You can search the classifieds, now known as the trade tab, by your friendslist. Meaning if you click the option and search for 'Mana Drain', you can see who on your friends list is selling it. That's great for people who have a collection of bots they frequent (and have credit at) added to their friends lists.

And some more negatives:

The graveyard NEEDS to pop out. It'd be very helpful if Revealed and Exiled did too. It's super inconvenient to have to paw through the graveyards with it's slow-ass scroll button. Playing Dredge is a nightmare.

Things that weren't a problem for me:

Finishing the round/match requires a 'return to lobby' and I'm okay with it. I had to get used to it though. That goes for all the deckbuilding stuff. In the end, you pretty much do things like we did on v3 (show all versions, etc).

Selecting cards to play wasn't ever really an issue for me. A simple click seems to always work for me. However, I do often have a display bug when I re-order my cards. One of them gets all phantom on me and I have to move my cards around some more to fix it.

[kikoo]

Agree with pretty much everything. Despite its numerous faults, V3 was at least nice and smooth to play on, and in the end that is what matters the most. Playing on V4 is simply tedious and unfun. It's obvious that they just had to push the client out the door so they could tell their higher-ups, who presumably have no idea what's actually going on, that their new client is now done! The people responsible for the program are fully aware that the client is a big step back from V3, but they would obviously rather let all MODO players suffer with this pile of garbage than lose their jobs. I'll try and add some more things to your list:


+ The attack with everything option is nice.

- Cards are center justified. This makes poor use of the space on the board, and makes the cards smaller than they have to be. It also means you have to move your mouse further when moving from hand → board. In the long run this adds up to a lot of wasted time.

- Clocks are placed extremely awkwardly. You have to move your eyes a long distance to compare them, whereas this was easy to do when they are just stacked on top of each other in V3.

- Why is the deck editor background white??? This is just painful to look at, considering most other colors/backgrounds in the client are black or some shade of grey.

- When you Thoughtseize/Duress someone their cards are stacked on top of each other instead of placed side by side. Another bad, pointless change.

[Zherbus]

From my understanding, the cost, monetary and technical resources, of developing sets for two clients was always a factor. With M15, they had to make a call on whether or not to support both. Especially if M15 is to have a new card frame.

As a community, we might keep our top concerns known. Worth is very receptive of feedback. For example, he was asked in a stream chat a few days ago about making these zones pop out, especially the graveyard. He said that is on the top of the heap for features to fix/implement.

They now have their full resources devoted to v4 and we really need to give them feedback on what's important. Stack management, zone 'pop outs', and foil effects are among the top. But the largest is the memory leaking. That HAS to be fixed first and foremost.

[Montolio]

Another positve feature I forgot to add about V4 is with Phyrexian Metamorph.
After having cast Metamorph the card you chose will identify it is a Metamorph in addition to the card you copy.
The Metamorph is identified by having what looks like two cascading tombstones on the top right corner of the card.
When you scroll the card it shows both the Metamorph and the copied card. Nice touch.
On V3 you couldn't tell what the copied card was.
This comes into play for example when you have a Mishra's Factory on the table and you copy it with a Metamorph.
Your opponent wants to bounce your non-Metamorph Factory to your hand but couldn't easily identify which was the Metamorph as they were identical in everyway.
Now you can easily tell which is actually the Metamorph which is how it should be.
Small thing but I liked it.

[Shock Wave]

But the largest is the memory leaking. That HAS to be fixed first and foremost.

This above all. It's absolutely ridiculous.

[H]

I heard from someone that ultimating Liliana of the Veil will crash your client.  I don't play online to confirm though, but I figured I'd share the information.

[Montolio]

You guys hear that cube drafting yesterday put all the cards into your collection instead of it being a Phantom draft.
So to everyone's surprise that they got all these bombs cards in their collection, led to a suspension of trading on their accounts.
This issue hasn't been resolved fully yet 24 hours later as I understand it.
I mean seriously WOTC. This is really bad.

[Thecheese]

You guys hear that cube drafting yesterday put all the cards into your collection instead of it being a Phantom draft.
So to everyone's surprise that they got all these bombs cards in their collection, led to a suspension of trading on their accounts.
This issue hasn't been resolved fully yet 24 hours later as I understand it.
I mean seriously WOTC. This is really bad.

Man, why did I miss this

[Coopes]

Played my first daily on v4 last night, i will say it was not as bad as I expected. My biggest issue was the game crashed 3 times during sideboarding, and I'm fairly content that it is what caused me to lose the one match I did last night.

- Memory Leak causing crashes
- Can't pop out graveyard
- All my stops/yields weren't set for the first game ( I guess this might just be because it was my first time on v4 ? )

[Zherbus]

- All my stops/yields weren't set for the first game ( I guess this might just be because it was my first time on v4 ? )

As a warning to everyone, the last time they did a big update to the client it reset all of my stops. Make sure you check those things before you start playing every time it updates.

[rickster]

Another positve feature I forgot to add about V4 is with Phyrexian Metamorph. After having cast Metamorph the card you chose will identify it is a Metamorph in addition to the card you copy. The Metamorph is identified by having what looks like two cascading tombstones on the top right corner of the card. When you scroll the card it shows both the Metamorph and the copied card. Nice touch. On V3 you couldn't tell what the copied card was. Now you can easily tell which is actually the Metamorph which is how it should be. Small thing but I liked it.

I'm pretty sure clone type cards on V3 had a tiny symbol on the upper left of the card. it didn't show on the battlefield, but it did show when you made the card bigger. but yes the V4 feature is much better

I heard from someone that ultimating Liliana of the Veil will crash your client.  I don't play online to confirm though, but I figured I'd share the information.

my opponent ultimated liliana last night and did not disconnect

it was interesting that you got to see your opponent move cards around in the piles as opposed to seeing nothing until they make the piles final

[MTGFan]

It's nice to know that a company making multiple millions every year can expect you to spend $1000+ on digital cards to play your favorite format online... and then they subject you to forced usage of shoddy software.

And everyone here will still keep coming back and logging 10+ hours on their servers every week, spending money on their digital cards, and playing in their online tournaments.

I guess Vintage on MODO is what you'd call an "inelastic good" and the situation Wizards has Vintage players in as "over a barrel".

[thecrav]

Played my first match since v4 became the only MTGO. Draft went off without a hitch. I conceded game one, then could never go to sideboard. My game was "still in progress" so the round couldn't proceed. The entire pod had to file for comp.

I took a screenshot for my case. The round timer was over twelve hours when I left for work today.

[Shock Wave]

Played my first daily on v4 last night, i will say it was not as bad as I expected. My biggest issue was the game crashed 3 times during sideboarding, and I'm fairly content that it is what caused me to lose the one match I did last night.

I've submitted over 4 incidents to MTGO support regarding the sideboarding crashing. Their expert advice was to update and/or reinstall my display drivers, check connectivity to the MTGO servers, to reinstall the client. They have refused to document any of my 4 sideboard crash scenarios as a bug. Truly pathetic support.

I've figured out that the only work around to the sideboard bug is to quickly disconnect during sideboarding and then reconnect. If you're fast enough, you can get online in time to sideboard and submit.

[Coopes]

Played my first daily on v4 last night, i will say it was not as bad as I expected. My biggest issue was the game crashed 3 times during sideboarding, and I'm fairly content that it is what caused me to lose the one match I did last night.

I've submitted over 4 incidents to MTGO support regarding the sideboarding crashing. Their expert advice was to update and/or reinstall my display drivers, check connectivity to the MTGO servers, to reinstall the client. They have refused to document any of my 4 sideboard crash scenarios as a bug. Truly pathetic support.

I've figured out that the only work around to the sideboard bug is to quickly disconnect during sideboarding and then reconnect. If you're fast enough, you can get online in time to sideboard and submit.

...man, that is really sad. well, thanks for the heads up at least.

[rickster]

It's nice to know that a company making multiple millions every year can expect you to spend $1000+ on digital cards to play your favorite format online... and then they subject you to forced usage of shoddy software.

And everyone here will still keep coming back and logging 10+ hours on their servers every week, spending money on their digital cards, and playing in their online tournaments.

I guess Vintage on MODO is what you'd call an "inelastic good" and the situation Wizards has Vintage players in as "over a barrel".

You can spend very little money if you follow market trends and avoid limited events. But it takes time to build your collection. If you want to play vintage now you're forced to pay real money.

[Kowal]

I've been running on V4 since I bought in to the online stuff.  I tried the V3 and I found it jarring aesthetically, so I just decided to put up with the memory leak issues of the V4 client.

The problems I've experienced are occasional crashes (usually related to memory leak, but not always) and I did experience the sideboard bug once.  For what it's worth, customer service was extremely gracious and polite and refunded the entry fee of that event with minimal fuss.  I haven't had any issues with the stack or playing cards from my hand, so I can't speak to that.  I also don't rearrange my cards in hand, so whether or not that feature is messed up hasn't bothered me.

It was mentioned above that people dislike the white background in deck building mode.  I appreciated it - the contrast makes it much easier on my lousy vision.  Dark cards on dark backgrounds make for strained eyes.  It would be neat to have the option to replace that background with a color, or use those realm cards as an image background if they're in your collection.  I would prioritize this very low on the totem pole, given the extreme need to fix the horrific memory leak issues and other bugs.

I haven't taken a look to see if they fixed this yet, but one thing to note is that at least when I was running TPS in the dailies, Necropotence didn't exile the cards face down in V4.  They were exiled face up.  I had to cover up that part of the screen with my hand so I wouldn't feel like a cheater.

[Smmenen]

I haven't taken a look to see if they fixed this yet, but one thing to note is that at least when I was running TPS in the dailies, Necropotence didn't exile the cards face down in V4.  They were exiled face up.  I had to cover up that part of the screen with my hand so I wouldn't feel like a cheater.

I've noticed this as well.  I did my first streaming last night, and my opponent set aside cards face up, although I couldn't see them.   At first, I thought that maybe the rule had changed on this, and the controller could look at the face down card. 

Someone should fix this.  Until then, how lucky to play Necropotence. 

[yugular]

I think this topic touches the area so I have to mention that Worth (mtgo big boss kind of) was interviewed in a podcast a while ago and he talked about V4 and other mtgo related topics there. You can find the podcast here: http://manadeprived.com/pairings-round-5-worth-wollpert/

[Shock Wave]

Check out the latest embarrassing stuff from MTGO.



How does this sort of stuff get through QA? Unreal.

[Smmenen]

Lol. Time to build 4 thirst decks.

[Coopes]

Lol. Time to build 4 thirst decks.

I believe it was changed today, or is going to be shortly.

Also, you 100% know it's a Shockwave match when the clock is 13 minutes vs 21  

[The Atog Lord]

Well, I had already been enjoying Control Slaver on MODO. MODO-Only Unrestricted Thirst? Sounds great!

[Smmenen]

Wasn't thirst for knowledge something along the line of "Card that most deserved to get restricted, ever"

exactly.  i'd be crazy not to be playing them on modo.

[hashswag]

On that note, can you report deck construction cheating somewhere?

[conboy31]

Usually people just tweet at their favorite account or scapegoat (@mtgworth, @MagicOnline, @mturian, etc) and they always see it.

[thecrav]

Played my first match since v4 became the only MTGO. Draft went off without a hitch. I conceded game one, then could never go to sideboard. My game was "still in progress" so the round couldn't proceed. The entire pod had to file for comp.

I took a screenshot for my case. The round timer was over twelve hours when I left for work today.

This round was still going when I logged in last night. Amazingly, I wasn't even the last person to drop.

[bactgudz]

Shops is being underrepresented right now likely due to the tangle wire bug (it only taps half as many perms as it should).

[boggyb]

http://lrcast.com/the-1-for-1-inaugural-episode/

Marshall Sutcliffe interviewing John Loucks right after having left Wizards as a designer working on MTGO. Some very interesting insights into the innerworkings of Wizards and MTGO. Fair warning, it's geared to be a personal interview, so spends a good deal of time on John's life and career. (John is Marshall's good friend and former co-host.) Definitely worth a listen!