Dude, Twin combo isn't that hard to do. Its 60 clicks with exarch to get them down from 20. It should take 3 minutes at most. Its your responsibility to play your deck, and there is never any obligation to concede. If you are going to lose to the clock, its your fault. I've lost to the clock before, and I damn sure considered it my fault. This guy's opponent freaking misplayed.
It's not hard to rip 20 slips of paper off of your pad and write "1/4 Exarch" on them. I don't hear anybody complaining that it's hard. I'm complaining that it's unnecessary.
I mean, think for a second. Is your claim that finishing the game with Splinter Twin only takes 60 clicks and up to 20 minutes an advertisement for this program? Can you not see how someone would look at the situation as say "what the heck?"
And MTGO's clock system is actually MORE fair than paper magic's, because it punishes the slow player rather than both players. In paper, if my opponent plays a durdly deck slowly and we go to time, we draw. In MTGO, I get a win, and the player at fault gets a loss.
I don't know if I really buy that. It assumes that in a paper tournament you can't call a judge on your opponent if you notice them slow playing, or don't trust your judges. I consider the chess clock a necessary evil because we can't access an impartial human intelligence that can process information and make decisions. The downside is, it gets us into situations like this one, where one player is help up by the program's "slow play." Splinter Twin was not a "durdly deck." It was a solid tempo/control deck that could often win via a simple combo. This is evident by most paper games ending in a handshake when the Twin hits the field; the other player knows the game is over and moves on. This is often with a lot of money on the line. Are these players chumps who don't know how to play to their outs? No, they understand how to play the game and aren't going to waste time arguing with it. The only difference in MTGO is that there's a program inbetween the player.
I can see why people are reluctant to concede just to save time, but to maintain an exaggerated sense of nobility about it or pretend the problem is with the players and not with the program is very weird. Imagine your keyboard was missing multiple letters; would you be okay with people calling you out for misspelling? Or would you be more likely to say "give me a break, here, I'm using inefficient tools?"
MTGO's combo treatment shouldn't be changed, and this is from a guy that runs this combo in modern, and plays a bunch of click intensive decks casually. If you choose to run such a deck, make sure you know how to play it and make sure you budget time for the process. People can make mistakes in executing a combo, just like OP's opponent did. This program has enough issues without trying to implement a system that knows when you are trying to execute a combo.
Now this last point I can get behind. There are a lot of problems with MTGO. After hearing this conversation, though, and noticing that even though Splinter Twin is banned in Modern that there are new infinite combos being printed all the time, I would rephrase it as "this program has a lot of issues, including the lack of a feature that allows you to repeat a sequence.
I never make people play out their combos unless they're already showing themselves to be a super slow player. But it's not really a jerk move to do that.
I do have a similar story though but I was on the other end of a misclick. I don't remember the exact card as it was at least a year ago. But was playing some 8 man and one of the cards I played didn't trigger the way I expected it to. I 'thought' it was bugged as I had never played the card before. Basically it would have dealt the final damage to my opponent. But instead he was down to 1. I told him the card was bugged, that it didn't ask me who i wanted to target, and asked him to concede. He did (he didn't say anything in chat; he simply conceded).
On a sidenote: I compltely agree with the person who said that mtgo players seem to being the slowest ccg players on earth. I play a few other card games online (hearthstone and shadow era.) And it's amazing how much slower the average MTGO games takes vs. those games. I like to think it's because of all those pros who tell people to take their time and make the right play (but it's probably just people who can't make quick decisions).
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'We are goblinkind, heirs to the mountain empires of chieftains past. Rest is death to us, and arson is our call to war.' - Goblin Chieftain
In reference to the most recent post, in my view Magic is a much more complex (and fun) game than many other competitive online games, such as Hearthstone, so it is not surprising to me that Magic play tends to be slower. Personally, I prefer to play against someone who takes time with their meaningful decisions than to play against someone making blatant mistakes. There is a middle ground, though, and I too do not enjoy playing against someone who takes a long time with every turn even when their decisions are relatively easy, but I suspect that some of this is due to getting used to the interface.
Sure, I get that Online and Paper are different worlds, but this is one of the differences that doesn't seem to add anything...
I agree. Online should be changed to handle loops. But, right now it doesn't.
Sure it does. 3x Oblivion Ring with no other nonland permanents is a loop, because all the choices are forced, and it automatically draws the game on MTGO.
Twin combo is not a loop, because all the decisions are voluntary.
I don't expect an opponent to concede in that situation. If they want to in order to save time, great, but it isn't fair to expect them to. Nothing wrong with playing to your outs, which in this case include the opponent making a mistake in executing the combo or timing out.
Two more things:
1. The mtgo clock is SO much better than the IRL system. The IRL system is a joke in terms of fairly distributing time, as the judges aren't really capable of enforcing slow play reliably, and even if they did it still wouldn't really fix the problem given how loose the rules are there. mtgo is perfect in this regard IMO.
2. Magic skill includes your ability to play at a given pace. Playing well quickly is a skill and should be rewarded as such. Playing slowly is a weakness and should be punished. On MTGO that happens, as a fast player gets justifiably rewarded in the form of not timing out, or having more time to tank in a key situations, or execute a long combo turn. IRL rarely is speed rewarded, which is unfortunate.
You are referring to only the situation where the game enters a repeating sequence of events with no way to stop. By rule (104.4b), such a game is a draw. When the game gets into a state where a set of actions could be repeated indefinitely (a "loop"), paper rules allow for taking shortcuts (716.1b):
The shortcut rules can be used to determine how many times those actions are repeated without having to actually perform them, and how the loop is broken.
These shortcuts in Magic Online are not supported, therefore you have to manually play out the loop.
I don't know if it was the morally wrong thing to do, but sitting on the other side of it, I would be annoyed. I play Mystical Teachings in the pauper league online because I think it is the best deck. I'm also a fast player so I can afford to play the deck. Unfortunately my computer is really slow sometimes. I lose around 1 out of every 10 matches because my computer freezes. You can argue I should get a new computer and I don't disagree. But it's also really annoying when I've got the game locked up and my opponent is making me go through repeated turns of Evincar's Justice buyback or is spending minutes allowing Curse of the Bloody Tome to mill him. It's an issue that isn't even caused by my slow play as when my computer doesn't freeze I'm generally ahead on clock. It only happens when my computer freezes. So the real question-is it fair to make me go through the motions just on the off chance my computer freezes? Just because it's within the rules doesn't mean it's not annoying. My match loss has everything to do with the interface not my actual play. But I understand where opponents are coming from and just accept the fact that I'm going to get random match losses.
2. Magic skill includes your ability to play at a given pace. Playing well quickly is a skill and should be rewarded as such. Playing slowly is a weakness and should be punished. On MTGO that happens, as a fast player gets justifiably rewarded in the form of not timing out, or having more time to tank in a key situations, or execute a long combo turn. IRL rarely is speed rewarded, which is unfortunate.
By extension, "magic skill" includes living in an area that has a reliable internet connection that you can afford? Or at all? I find it weird and oddly insulting that "magic skill" is equated with "obviously if you knew what you were doing you would play quickly, noob" when I have literally stared at my computer for a minute and a half waiting for it to respond to my command, and have more than once lost multiple picks in a draft because my ISP is a POS and because MODO thinks it's 2001, the process of rebooting the program when my ISP has a few random seconds of outage takes 3-5 minutes.
Now, if I were really really good at Magic maybe I could muster the political resources to fight Mediacom and get the best company in my region into my particular zipcode, but because I suck at Magic, my ISP sucks, so I don't the proper connection to make decisions quickly, so it bothers me that people are so unsportsmanlike as to say, "if you can't click 50+ times to win this game, I don't have time for you"
Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but also: yes, my local government is actually fighting with a big internet company because it's trying to get around its monopoly and actually let the little guys that actually provide reliable service to compete in my area. My laptop is far from a gaming machine, but my phone is up-to-date, and when I go to the park across the street, I can't get a signal for *****, so I'm pretty sure it's a combination of geographical factors and bad networks. My point is, how can you tell, in 2016, where everyone has wifi but much of the wifi is bad, whether your opponent is tanking or just suffering from a bad connection? Everyone gets the same 25 minutes... wow, such a equitable system! (if you assume that 25 minutes is the same when spent parsing a complicated board state vs. actually just f2-ing/-f6-ing/f8-ing/those days that fate just screws you and you have to decide whether to lose now or lose after your opp has given you some info) Except I've actually spent losing games waiting for MODO to realize that I've passed the turn so that I can get a tiny tiny bit of information about what my opponent's playing by turn 5 after six minutes (!)
So my question is, assuming you aren't literally a wizard: how can you tell if your opponent is playing quickly, given the fact that you're interfacing with them via an internet connection of undetermniable reliability? You claim that the IRL judges are incapable of enforcing slow play reliably, but in my experience, I'll take an actual person who actually has experience with actual people and can tell when someone is stalling to manipulate the clock or simply gathering information over a computer. Until we have the sort of AI that can navigate me across town without getting confused, I trust a real, trained individual to make a decisions over a computer that, 50% of the time, just watses one player's clock restarting because of a crappy connection even thought that player's decision is just "f6." When you claim MTGO is "perfect" you ignore the very real problem of imperfect technology, and insult the judges by assuming they can't read body language and make a decision that's best for the game.
If internet coverage and the state of the MTGO software were some blissful utopia you might have a point, but come on... we live in a world where I can tell Siri to schedule a haircut in a neighboring state and it's done in a sentence, but if I want to mulligan to 5 it's a three-minute process of mandatory clicks. And you're trying to tell me MODO is better at dealing with slow play than an actual human judge? You are either seriously delusional, or you live in the 24th century and Brent Spiner is probably voicing your computer...
I can only speak to my own experiences with MTGO, which I have been playing a ton of over the past year, but for me it has worked very smoothly with minimal technical problems. And my internet connection is relatively weak. So from a personal standpoint I absolutely stand by the assertion that the MODO clock implementation is infinitely better than the IRL version (i.e. one that is nearly nonexistent).
Perhaps its unfair that I can afford to pay for a faster internet connection from a reliable provider and decent computer. It gives me a competitive advantage in some situations.
Clearly, the solution is to eliminate the clock and have real judges observing all MTGO tournaments. If someone's taking too long and its not their fault, they should just let the judge know its a technical issue, not slow play.
Sorry, I know this reply is somewhat late, but I just had to opine. I DO think you're a jerk, and a pretty big one at that. I could understand if you were in the finals of a PTQ or a MOCS, but to do that in a Cube draft just demonstrates that you're an angle-shooting loser with no life and no consideration for others. Peace, and God bless.
Also, shut up about taking advantage of people's putative slowness online. Most of the time, what scumbags like you are trying to do when you make someone go through an infinite loop is get them to misclick, not time out. You're hoping that your opponent will fidget mid combo, or that his or her MODO lags. People like you are cancerous, and I wish they'd update MODO's interface or rules so that a lowlife like you couldn't get away with this.
I can't stand players that whine in general, about losing to anything, whether it be by clock, life, cards in library, poison, combos, net decks, etc.. If you're that much of a brat about losing in a card game, I can't imagine what life must be like when you're facing real life struggles outside of Magic. Just STFU and play.
I think there is a big difference in giving your opponent the chance to make a poor play and hoping that your opponent will click the mouse incorrectly. I don't want to win a game because my opponent's computer lagged and he hit the hot key for "ok" twice.
Time is a resource that both players should be aware of and you should never feel obligated to scoop because your opponent's time is running low and it looks like he is probably going to beat you. You most likely have some combination of outs that will turn the game if there was more time.
Infinite combos are a different story. If you can't break up the combo then you should admit that your opponent has played that game better than you and scoop.
To answer the OP's original question, yes, I think it is the wrong attitude. Additionally I think it is petty to force your opponent click his mouse perfectly in an imperfect environment with the hopes of running out the clock because you have no chance of winning through your own skill.
I have been on both ends of a game like this. When my opponent has demonstrated the infinite combo (3-4 repetitions), I will scoop regardless of what is on the clock.
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It's not hard to rip 20 slips of paper off of your pad and write "1/4 Exarch" on them. I don't hear anybody complaining that it's hard. I'm complaining that it's unnecessary.
I mean, think for a second. Is your claim that finishing the game with Splinter Twin only takes 60 clicks and up to 20 minutes an advertisement for this program? Can you not see how someone would look at the situation as say "what the heck?"
I don't know if I really buy that. It assumes that in a paper tournament you can't call a judge on your opponent if you notice them slow playing, or don't trust your judges. I consider the chess clock a necessary evil because we can't access an impartial human intelligence that can process information and make decisions. The downside is, it gets us into situations like this one, where one player is help up by the program's "slow play." Splinter Twin was not a "durdly deck." It was a solid tempo/control deck that could often win via a simple combo. This is evident by most paper games ending in a handshake when the Twin hits the field; the other player knows the game is over and moves on. This is often with a lot of money on the line. Are these players chumps who don't know how to play to their outs? No, they understand how to play the game and aren't going to waste time arguing with it. The only difference in MTGO is that there's a program inbetween the player.
I can see why people are reluctant to concede just to save time, but to maintain an exaggerated sense of nobility about it or pretend the problem is with the players and not with the program is very weird. Imagine your keyboard was missing multiple letters; would you be okay with people calling you out for misspelling? Or would you be more likely to say "give me a break, here, I'm using inefficient tools?"
Now this last point I can get behind. There are a lot of problems with MTGO. After hearing this conversation, though, and noticing that even though Splinter Twin is banned in Modern that there are new infinite combos being printed all the time, I would rephrase it as "this program has a lot of issues, including the lack of a feature that allows you to repeat a sequence.
I do have a similar story though but I was on the other end of a misclick. I don't remember the exact card as it was at least a year ago. But was playing some 8 man and one of the cards I played didn't trigger the way I expected it to. I 'thought' it was bugged as I had never played the card before. Basically it would have dealt the final damage to my opponent. But instead he was down to 1. I told him the card was bugged, that it didn't ask me who i wanted to target, and asked him to concede. He did (he didn't say anything in chat; he simply conceded).
On a sidenote: I compltely agree with the person who said that mtgo players seem to being the slowest ccg players on earth. I play a few other card games online (hearthstone and shadow era.) And it's amazing how much slower the average MTGO games takes vs. those games. I like to think it's because of all those pros who tell people to take their time and make the right play (but it's probably just people who can't make quick decisions).
Sure it does. 3x Oblivion Ring with no other nonland permanents is a loop, because all the choices are forced, and it automatically draws the game on MTGO.
Twin combo is not a loop, because all the decisions are voluntary.
Two more things:
1. The mtgo clock is SO much better than the IRL system. The IRL system is a joke in terms of fairly distributing time, as the judges aren't really capable of enforcing slow play reliably, and even if they did it still wouldn't really fix the problem given how loose the rules are there. mtgo is perfect in this regard IMO.
2. Magic skill includes your ability to play at a given pace. Playing well quickly is a skill and should be rewarded as such. Playing slowly is a weakness and should be punished. On MTGO that happens, as a fast player gets justifiably rewarded in the form of not timing out, or having more time to tank in a key situations, or execute a long combo turn. IRL rarely is speed rewarded, which is unfortunate.
These shortcuts in Magic Online are not supported, therefore you have to manually play out the loop.
By extension, "magic skill" includes living in an area that has a reliable internet connection that you can afford? Or at all? I find it weird and oddly insulting that "magic skill" is equated with "obviously if you knew what you were doing you would play quickly, noob" when I have literally stared at my computer for a minute and a half waiting for it to respond to my command, and have more than once lost multiple picks in a draft because my ISP is a POS and because MODO thinks it's 2001, the process of rebooting the program when my ISP has a few random seconds of outage takes 3-5 minutes.
Now, if I were really really good at Magic maybe I could muster the political resources to fight Mediacom and get the best company in my region into my particular zipcode, but because I suck at Magic, my ISP sucks, so I don't the proper connection to make decisions quickly, so it bothers me that people are so unsportsmanlike as to say, "if you can't click 50+ times to win this game, I don't have time for you"
Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but also: yes, my local government is actually fighting with a big internet company because it's trying to get around its monopoly and actually let the little guys that actually provide reliable service to compete in my area. My laptop is far from a gaming machine, but my phone is up-to-date, and when I go to the park across the street, I can't get a signal for *****, so I'm pretty sure it's a combination of geographical factors and bad networks. My point is, how can you tell, in 2016, where everyone has wifi but much of the wifi is bad, whether your opponent is tanking or just suffering from a bad connection? Everyone gets the same 25 minutes... wow, such a equitable system! (if you assume that 25 minutes is the same when spent parsing a complicated board state vs. actually just f2-ing/-f6-ing/f8-ing/those days that fate just screws you and you have to decide whether to lose now or lose after your opp has given you some info) Except I've actually spent losing games waiting for MODO to realize that I've passed the turn so that I can get a tiny tiny bit of information about what my opponent's playing by turn 5 after six minutes (!)
So my question is, assuming you aren't literally a wizard: how can you tell if your opponent is playing quickly, given the fact that you're interfacing with them via an internet connection of undetermniable reliability? You claim that the IRL judges are incapable of enforcing slow play reliably, but in my experience, I'll take an actual person who actually has experience with actual people and can tell when someone is stalling to manipulate the clock or simply gathering information over a computer. Until we have the sort of AI that can navigate me across town without getting confused, I trust a real, trained individual to make a decisions over a computer that, 50% of the time, just watses one player's clock restarting because of a crappy connection even thought that player's decision is just "f6." When you claim MTGO is "perfect" you ignore the very real problem of imperfect technology, and insult the judges by assuming they can't read body language and make a decision that's best for the game.
If internet coverage and the state of the MTGO software were some blissful utopia you might have a point, but come on... we live in a world where I can tell Siri to schedule a haircut in a neighboring state and it's done in a sentence, but if I want to mulligan to 5 it's a three-minute process of mandatory clicks. And you're trying to tell me MODO is better at dealing with slow play than an actual human judge? You are either seriously delusional, or you live in the 24th century and Brent Spiner is probably voicing your computer...
Clearly, the solution is to eliminate the clock and have real judges observing all MTGO tournaments. If someone's taking too long and its not their fault, they should just let the judge know its a technical issue, not slow play.
Man i wold love to see some sort of a chess clock implemented in paper magic, its one of a few things mtgo actually does better
Time is a resource that both players should be aware of and you should never feel obligated to scoop because your opponent's time is running low and it looks like he is probably going to beat you. You most likely have some combination of outs that will turn the game if there was more time.
Infinite combos are a different story. If you can't break up the combo then you should admit that your opponent has played that game better than you and scoop.
To answer the OP's original question, yes, I think it is the wrong attitude. Additionally I think it is petty to force your opponent click his mouse perfectly in an imperfect environment with the hopes of running out the clock because you have no chance of winning through your own skill.
I have been on both ends of a game like this. When my opponent has demonstrated the infinite combo (3-4 repetitions), I will scoop regardless of what is on the clock.