MTGO 3.0 Beta

[schild]

Ok.

Is there something wrong with me?

This interface is total dogshit. And slow as hell.

Why? Someone PLEASE explain why.

[eldaec]

I think they decided that the non-dogshit one they were toying with didn't have the proper dogshit feel of mtgo. Brand values ftw.

EDIT: Even the official wotc board community don't like the interface, and they spend at least half their time asking for price rises, prize reductions, and worrying that the secondary market might prevent wotc being profitable. Seriously.

[Margalis]

MTGO V3 has been a total clusterfuck. Let me briefly count the ways:

1. No new rules engine, each card is still programmed in by hand with custom code.
2. They have redone the interface a couple of times, which is warning sign.
3. In addition their main interest in the interface has been a "fantasy theme" rather than usability.
4. Similarly they put a lot of emphasis on 3D avatars and other trappings like that.
5. Buehlers post basically said they were dissapointed with the end result.
6. It has taken forever, another warning sign.

They just don't seem to get it. For the most part people don't care about "fantasy theme" or awesome 3D avatars that you only see in the non-spreadsheet view between matches. Just giver us something functional that looks clean, it doesn't have to look awesome it just has to work.

[Trippy]

MTGO V3 has been a total clusterfuck. Let me briefly count the ways:

1. No new rules engine, each card is still programmed in by hand with custom code.
2. They have redone the interface a couple of times, which is warning sign.
3. In addition their main interest in the interface has been a "fantasy theme" rather than usability.
4. Similarly they put a lot of emphasis on 3D avatars and other trappings like that.
5. Buehlers post basically said they were dissapointed with the end result.
6. It has taken forever, another warning sign.

They just don't seem to get it. For the most part people don't care about "fantasy theme" or awesome 3D avatars that you only see in the non-spreadsheet view between matches. Just giver us something functional that looks clean, it doesn't have to look awesome it just has to work.

It's been ages since I've played MtO (I beta tested the original). What are the problems with the current interface? Is there any point to replacing it given how badly the rewrite has gone?

[Margalis]

I don't have any major problems with the card/deck interface. It could use improvement but blowing up and starting over seems odd, especially given that they have focused on the theme rather than utility.

I think that is their primary problem, the priorities are just wacked out. Who cares if it looks like fantasy or not?

[Morat20]

I actually paid 10 bucks, got a starter deck, and tried it. Man, those starter decks suck. I can't decide what to do from here -- try to trade away useless cards, buy another starter or two, or purchase some boosters.

I won 2 out of three games, which wasn't bad given the fact that I was forced to put together a three color deck (white/blue/green) just to get 60 cards -- no real theme, just small and large creatures. I'm not used to not having variety -- I've got a huge box of the stupid cards somewhere out in the garage.

[Raging Turtle]

Eeew starter decks. 

Try a League.  It's like a sealed deck tournament that lasts a month, adding a booster each week.  Perfect for new/budget players.  If you were a serious player before, I'd recommend trying the Time Spiral Leagues; if not, 9th edition is a good education (avoid blue!).

[eldaec]

I actually paid 10 bucks, got a starter deck, and tried it. Man, those starter decks suck. I can't decide what to do from here -- try to trade away useless cards, buy another starter or two, or purchase some boosters.

I won 2 out of three games, which wasn't bad given the fact that I was forced to put together a three color deck (white/blue/green) just to get 60 cards -- no real theme, just small and large creatures. I'm not used to not having variety -- I've got a huge box of the stupid cards somewhere out in the garage.

Traditional advice is to either play a league (you'll lose a lot, because leagues *are* competitive, they are only attractive to new players because you get a lot of limited format games per $), or buy some tickets for the store and trade them for commons/uncommons from the bots in the marketplace to improve your pre-con deck.

The 'building on a budget' column on www.magicthegathering.com spews out deck concepts each week that can be had for < 20 tix.

Don't purchase boosters unless you want them for limited play or leagues. Buying singles from bots is much more cost effective for casual room constructed.

[Morat20]

Eeew starter decks. 

Try a League.  It's like a sealed deck tournament that lasts a month, adding a booster each week.  Perfect for new/budget players.  If you were a serious player before, I'd recommend trying the Time Spiral Leagues; if not, 9th edition is a good education (avoid blue!).

I played unlimited until a little past the Dark expansion. I was good, but not great -- I'm so far out on the latest rules (I got a bit freaked when someone tossed a creature out face-down, and I'm a little hazy on the suspended rules) but I don't mind learning by losing.

Why avoid blue in 9E? What are the costs for a league -- how does it work, etc?

[eldaec]

A legue is a sealed tournament, you buy a the relevant tournament pack, boosters, and tickets, make a deck from that and then get matched against random peole in your league who are also looking for matches. Each week you can add an extra booster. Normal leagues last 4 weeks. You always get to keep the cards you open, and if you play at least 5 matches per week then thanks to the one-point-for-a-loss rule, you will usually win some number of additional boosters at the end of the league.


If you need to know which packs to buy for any tournament of any sort you just try to join, and the system will then give you the list of junk you need.

[eldaec]

Back to v3, I went through an excercise of identifying all the wasted space on the new UI duel screen. This is what I came up with....



/sigh

[eldaec]

New elf blog below. Headlines...

 - Leagues won't be available in v3.0. Will be patched in later.
 - Nor will 3d avatars, spreadsheet mode only.

Also announced elsewhere, launch is now expected after Future Sight, but still before the end of June.

Premier Events are not yet in the Beta test, but they are close. We don't want to ship with out them.

Leagues are not yet ready and probably won't be ready by launch. We know they're very popular and in particular we don't want to run a release event without them. One reason why it's not quite as painful to ship without them is that we overhauled the premier events functionality since we had to rewrite all that code anyway and we now have access to some new formats that can accommodate some of the players who prefer to play in league-like formats. (I'll see if I can twist Scott Larabee's arm to get him to explain this in more detail.)

The avatar rooms do not work correctly. This is not a high priority for us and we've already decided not to spend time on it before launch. Games will be accessed via spreadsheet mode at launch.

The home page should do a better job of getting you quickly into a game. After you log in it currently takes several clicks along a menu structure to find the room you want and go there. We know we can do better than this from a usability point of view and we will do better (I'm imagining big buttons that say "Play Now" and "Draft Now"). However, is it worth slowing down the launch in order to figure out precisely the best way to use that page, do the redesign, and then implement it? Probably not ... esp. when that redesign would benefit from feedback from all of you.

The free trial server is being worked on and probably will be ready for launch. Obviously one of the big things we're hoping to do with V3 is to recruit more players and grow the community. The free trial server is a big part of that.

EDIT: This was Randy B, not elf, my bad.

[Margalis]

New elf blog below. Headlines...

 - Leagues won't be available in v3.0. Will be patched in later.
 - Nor will 3d avatars, spreadsheet mode only.

Also announced elsewhere, launch is now expected after Future Sight, but still before the end of June.

LO fucking L. How do these guys spend their time? No leagues and no 3D avatars? What did they do for the past few years exactly?

[Raging Turtle]

I'm usually something of a Magic fanboi... but everything I'm reading makes me think they just spent years and who know how many thousands of dollars creating something that's not even better than the original (which they've put off fixing because 'it'll be better in 3.0!')

Someone needs to lose their job over this bullshit.

[tazelbain]

Maybe WotC and the FBI should trade notes.

[Margalis]

I suspect Wizards corporate culture is largely to blame. Reading between the lines they've never treated MTGO seriously - they farmed out the original development and kept a skeleton crew to update it that was incapable of improving it or fixing problems, they didn't staff up or hire qualified people. They didn't even have a dedicated digitial division.

Now they do with Randy Buehler in charge, but he doesn't seem very tech savvy in general. It seems like they've had a really hard time going from cardboard to electrons, they are genuinely clueless on how to get things done software-wise.

[naum]

Good Gates, what a fiasco.

I am guessing no Mac/*nix client in v3.0 offing either…

Though v2 runs just dandy in a Parallels window…

[eldaec]

To be fair to the specific team coding v3, from what I call tell it is a team of something like three people. And they have to maintain the existing client at the same time.

I think that has a lot to do with this whole debacle.

[Morat20]

To be fair to the specific team coding v3, from what I call tell it is a team of something like three people. And they have to maintain the existing client at the same time.

I think that has a lot to do with this whole debacle.

Jesus, I think we could probably find -- and this is ignoring the actual game developers who post here entirely -- a dozen or more people just here capable of putting together something better. It's not that hard. Interface, avatars, league play -- all that's the easy shit. The only slightly complex part is handling the actual gameplay, which wasn't really designed with computers in mind and, if you did it right, you'd want to make it extensible for new card concepts and gameplay changes.

[eldaec]

The only slightly complex part is handling the actual gameplay,

Oh shit, they aren't changing any of that!

They didn't want to have to reprogram the last 5 odd years of cards, so they just copied in the duel engine, even the pre-existing and known card bugs are staying in v3.

[Morat20]

The only slightly complex part is handling the actual gameplay,

Oh shit, they aren't changing any of that!

They didn't want to have to reprogram the last 5 odd years of cards, so they just copied in the duel engine, even the pre-existing and known card bugs are staying in v3.

So why did they revamp it again? If you're just changing the front end -- five people, a year max -- 18 months if WOC is iffy about what they want, and you have to play prototype/critique with them a lot. And that's for something slick, secure, and extensible.

[Margalis]

Because they don't know what they are doing. Seriously that is the answer.

The have bigtime server scalability issues. They could have easily addressed those while leaving the client mostly untouched. All they really did on the client was a graphics overhaul anyway. They didn't touch the hard part. (The rules engine)

They should have done the server and client upgrade in two different phases, each one taking a year max.

[schild]

They should have...

STARTED OVER.

Everything associated with the service is total shit. it's a goddamn crime to charge full price for that subpar bullshit.

[eldaec]

So, turns out that giving fileplanet subscribers access was a spectacular failure as a load testing strategy. FP subscribers didn't want to play magic. Magic players didn't want to subscribe to FP. A standoff ensued alongside much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the official forums.

Anyway, outcome is that non-subscribers can claim a beta account though FP as of tomorrow (monday).

Bring on the suck!

[Margalis]

They seem to think that MTGO V3 is going to appeal to new audiences. (Because of the "fantasy themed" graphics) It is really odd - what the hell are they doing over there. V3 might lure back some old players but MTGO is pretty much strictly for people who played cardboard first, it isn't a general purpose game.

Shutting out actual magic players in favor of random FP subscribers was beyond dense - par for the course in this case.

[eldaec]

For what it is worth, I actually think MTGO could attract non-cardboard players, and could support a following of a similar size to a small mmog (reportedly the server only supports around 5k concurrent users atm). Of course, that would require proper marketing and a professional looking product..... ho hum.

[tazelbain]

At their price-point, they are barking up the wrong tree.

[schild]

Already uninstalled the beta and regular client on my computer. I may reload the main client on my new computer. I'm not sure yet. I am pissed to hell with how shitty their programming is.

[Margalis]

So I'm not in the beta or a FP subscriber but I downloaded the client and played around with it a bit offline.

HOLY SHIT. Schild you were not kidding, what the fuck is wrong with it? In the collection view if you click on one of the symbols at the top it takes a full second for it to toggle! Jesus fucking Christ, these guys are even more incompetent than I though. Clicking on a fucking button takes a full second? I've seen web pages more responsive lol.

[schild]

IGN is more responsive.

[Margalis]

Pretty much everything is hideous. The textures are awful and make text hard to read, the tabs and clickable things act really weird in that when you click on them the switch positions, simple things like mouseover menus and tooltips work on and off, I already got it to crash once just clicking in the collection view, and the wasted space everywhere is horrible.

They went through multiple UI designs and this is what they came up with - lol.

[eldaec]

So, it turns out nobody told FP that non-subscribers should get access today. Ho hum.

[eldaec]

Beta accounts now going to anyone who registers at FP.

You don't have to give them a real email address.

Worth getting one just to read the    boards. Seriously.

[Raging Turtle]

Lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I imagine?

[eldaec]

APPARENTLY the new UI isn't pretty.

I especially enjoy the odd dev post of 'but you told us the last UI was rubbish because it was insufficiently fantasy themed.

heh.