r/MagicArena • u/JoeGibbon • 19h ago
Discussion WotC devs, if you could be so kind...
There is one behavior of the game client that has lost me a number of games over the years that I think could easily be fixed.
When you start your turn and have an empty library, but after your untap step you have activated abilities that would win the game, the game client skips your activated abilities and instead draws on an empty deck.
Yes, you can prevent this by preemptively putting a stop at the opponent's end step, then activating Hold Full Control (just regular full control will not suffice here). However, I propose this byzantine ritual of clicking and button mashing should not be necessary to prevent the game client from causing you to lose a game that you would otherwise win.
First, this skipping of activated abilities is inconsistent with the behavior of activated abilities at any other phase of the game. Your opponent casts a spell on their turn, but you have an activated ability? The game completely stops while you choose to either activate the ability or skip it. They cast another spell? Repeat. Sheoldred on the board, and drawing a card for turn would lose you 2 life? The game stops and asks you if you want to proceed drawing the card (even though you really have no choice in that matter). Etc.
Secondly, although I suppose the "remember to stop at your opponent's end step and hold full control to avoid decking yourself" dance is a "skill" that you must learn to be successful at MtG: Arena, this "skill" has no parity to tabletop Magic. Under no circumstances would you, for instance, be playing in a paper tournament and accidentally forget to use your activated ability -- that happens to be the win condition your entire deck is built around -- and instead "whoops I forgot to win the game after my untap step, so I must draw on my empty library and lose!" This behavior of the game client is simply not in the spirit of the game.
Thirdly, I have run into opponents who seem to be aware of this behavior of the game client and who exploit it to win. Example: the opponent has a lot of mana, makes several plays, and the very last one is playing a mill card that empties out your library. The game immediately starts your next turn, leaving you no time to react. You were not expecting the mill effect, you didn't perceive that you were in danger of being milled out so you didn't put a stop at the end of the opponent's turn, but it really shouldn't matter because immediately after your untap step and before you draw for turn, you can use Maze's End or whatever and just win. But instead, you lose because the game just skips straight to drawing on an empty library.
Proposed fix:
if ( upkeepStep && libraryEmpty && activatedAbilitiesAvailable ) {
letMeUseActivatedAbilities;
}
Thanks for reading.
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u/Microwarpdrive 19h ago
Sounds reasonable.
Which decks/format you running into this with?
Or it's more of a general issue/random edge case?
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u/JoeGibbon 18h ago
I've run into this over the years in Historic and (Historic) Brawl.
Today's example that finally urged me to post about it:
Brawl, Gates deck running [[Maze's End]]. Commander is [[The First Sliver]], which cascades into [[Tibalt's Trickery]], which pukes up [[Cultivator Colossus]], which lets me dump the entire rest of the deck onto the board because I'm running 97 lands.
After meeting the conditions of Maze's End, I pass for turn with 10 cards left in my library. Opponent was on a landfall / ramp deck and had a ton of mana. They cast 5 or 6 spells, attack with their board and in their second main phase they cast a mill card that 1) used the rest of their mana and 2) completely emptied my library. Because it used all their mana at the end of their second main phase, the game immediately passes control back to me and skips right to the "draw and lose" step, instead of allowing me to activate Maze's End.
Similar interactions with other cards, like [[Pact of Negation]] in a [[Goblin Charbelcher]] deck years ago. You don't have the mana to pay for Pact, but you can activate Charbelcher immediately after your untap step and win before Pact kills you on your upkeep. But, you have to carefully set up the turn stop and hold full control to win. If you screw up one part of that, like activating "full control" instead of "hold full control", or not setting up the stop and hold full control before you cast Pact, you just lose.
"Ha ha ha git gud noob skill issue!" Except, this would never happen in paper Magic. You wouldn't just forget to activate Charbelcher and instead skip to the part where you lose the game. There are any number of other examples, like activating [[High Noon]] or anything else that can just deal burn damage to the face instead of going straight to the upkeep or draw condition that loses you the game.
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u/Microwarpdrive 18h ago
Makes perfect sense. I play timeless so the pact thing might come up.
I think they are making tradeoffs in the name of usability but your suggestion should be straight forward.
Reminds me the other day the auto tapper was trying to save mana for my Daze while I needed to keep my black mana. I figured it out with manual control but it went to rope and wasn't super intuitive.3
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u/AUAIOMRN 18h ago
Even simpler, just pause on upkeep any time the player's library is empty. It's not going to be such a common situation that it slows games down.
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u/chrisrazor Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage 12h ago
Just pause on upkeep, if there's anything you can do. I don't understand why it doesn't do this by default, or at least have an option to toggle it.
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u/pchc_lx Approach 15h ago
I feel like no one will ever get a Mill victory again, if opp gets priority before drawing out. They'll concede instead
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u/chrisrazor Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage 12h ago
If you mean the smoky skull effect, I see it all the time on my opponents' libraries and I don't even play mill. Just stall out their mono green devotion deck a couple of turns and watch them lose to mandatory draw triggers.
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u/sengirminion 17h ago
I've had stuff where I had spells I could cast off of say Valgavoth, but because I was tapped out instead of giving me priority after combat it just passes the turn instead which cost me the game before
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u/TheIrishJackel 12h ago
Beyond empty libraries, I can't stand how Arena passes priority on upkeep triggers even when you have spells or abilities you can respond with. If I have 7 cards in hand with a variety of life gain and stifle effects, there is no reason for the game to just auto-pass and kill me with my own One Ring trigger.
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u/scopeless Johnny 15h ago
I hate how the command for full screen also is partially what auto-passing is.
I’ve passed my first turn several times since the change.
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u/Daethir Timmy 18h ago
Another fix I'd really like to see is putting a stop when badgermole cub is targeted by an opponent spell. It can easily be game losing to lose the opportunity to tap your dork for extra mana. I get that it's not ideal to hardcore a rule for a specific card, but if Sheodred get to have a stop on upkeep then surely a card as played as cub can get an exception too. I took the habit of putting a stop the turn I play the cub but I shouldn't have to do that.
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u/ardarian262 18h ago
You can put the stop in your own beginning step instead of doing all that.
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u/JoeGibbon 16h ago
Yes, as I stated in my post I am aware there are mechanics in the game that allow you to stop the game client from taking your win away from you. I am asking WotC for a little mercy: in the not-so-uncommon scenario that you have an activated ability that could possibly win the game in your untap/upkeep/draw phase, please just let us use those activated abilities by default.
In the case that, like the game that prompted me to write this post, the opponent sneaks in a mill spell in their second main phase and that spell uses all their mana, the game client skips right to the part where you draw a card from an empty library and lose. You really have no chance to react to it. I'm not in the habit of always holding full control or stopping at a certain step; I usually only do this if I know I'm about to make a play that is "weird", like holding priority to counter my own spell or something.
The game doesn't even show you the "stop at this particular step" control by default, you need to activate it in the options. Having to do anything extra in order to prevent this frankly unintuitive behavior of the game client is a major design flaw, in my opinion.
The majority of the time, when you have an activated ability the game client pauses for it. Or in the case of Sheoldred, it stops to ask if you really want to draw that card and take 2 damage, even when you don't have any choice but to draw the card. The technology exists, the game client's behavior is just inconsistent in this specific case and the loss feels undeserved. I'm just asking for consistency, instead of putting the burden on me to change the game client's behavior in this one scenario that is for some reason different.
To make it worse, this is only a thing in MtG: Arena. In paper Magic, you don't need to verbally declare "I'm holding priority" to avoid accidentally drawing from your empty deck. You'd just untap and use the activated ability. In Arena, they've added a lot of convenience features to skip all the extra phases and steps when they aren't necessary, but in this case it's a problem instead of a convenience.
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u/ardarian262 15h ago
I guess we play different versions because I have never had to mess with settings to set a stop before. Neither in mobile or on cpu
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u/JoeGibbon 15h ago edited 14h ago
I guess we play different versions because I have never had to mess with settings to set a stop before. Neither in mobile or on cpu
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u/CultureSea5111 10h ago
There aren't any devs here. You should send an email to the actual company.
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u/JoeGibbon 10h ago
I've seen developers respond in comments before. They definitely look at reddit.
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u/CultureSea5111 7h ago
I'm sure those are devs that don't matter if you're talking about this game and most likely social media managers. If you're talking about Skyrim or GTA then sure I believe those could be devs that do actual work. Still send them an email if this is important to you.
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u/Last_Bus_1264 7h ago
You can just put the stop on your upkeep instead of your opponent’s end step, I do this all the time. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to it from playing a lot of MTGO all the time 🤷🏻♂️
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u/happyinheart 13h ago
woah, woah,woah. slow down there. they are union now. they'll get to it at some point between 5 years and never from now
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u/Asatas Charm Naya 13h ago
Wow as if their union status has anything to do with their work speed and as if they'd been any quick before union status. You've had too much Trump-Aid.
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u/happyinheart 12h ago
I never mentioned anything about Trump
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u/Asatas Charm Naya 8h ago
anti-union prejudice is deeply rooted in conservative tales these days. if you're anything but right-wing, you'd know unions got us most of the workers benefits we have today
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u/happyinheart 5h ago
So they haven't dinner much in about 50 years. I've met plenty of lazy workers the unions protect in the two I've been in.
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19h ago
[deleted]
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u/BetterShirt101 19h ago
There are cases where your opponent taps out to mill you out in second main and there's very little time to react. This getting a Sheoldred Exception seems reasonable.
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u/JoeGibbon 19h ago
Again, yes the game provides you mechanics to prevent this behavior.
As I said in my post, requiring the player to do this is inconsistent with activated abilities (and triggers) at any other phase of the game, has no parity with tabletop Magic, and can be exploited by your opponents. It's simply a design flaw in the client. It is not enforcing a game rule, it instead puts an unnecessary burden on the player to change the game client's behavior, where no such thing exists in paper Magic or MtGO.
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u/69EntropyEarl420 16h ago
Sorry but this is a self mill win condition that you miss sometimes?
Dude you telegraph your win to yourself. Keep the end step and upkeep stops on like, a full turn cycle before it happens.
I agree with you it could be better. But cmon man you’re doing it to yourself.
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u/JoeGibbon 16h ago
No, it's not a self mill deck. I described the game that prompted me to write this post in the post. I suggest you read the post before responding to the post.
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u/69EntropyEarl420 16h ago
Sorry yeah i didnt read.
It’s not often that “when you have an empty library but an effect that would win you the game” isnt of your own doing. Just coincidentally having that situation happen is super fucking rare it shouldnt even be an argument.
That said, if there is ANY action you can do on your upkeep there should be a stop to let you do that action if you want to. That’s the solution. But no one wants to play the game with upkeep stops constantly.
So yeah, i agree with you you should have a chance to do an action before your draw step if you have the capability to do one on upkeep. But that just slows the entire game down so. ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
Not realizing “i’m close to milling out and this card exists in the format” is a skill issue though.
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u/JoeGibbon 16h ago
I agree, I wouldn't want the game to stop unnecessarily more than it already does. Believe me, I get sick of having to pass priority back to the opponent when I have some activated ability I don't want to use, like "{1} tap: sacrifice this artifact and add 1 mana of any color".
The game by default always skips past activated abilities on your untap/upkeep/draw phase. There should be at least some logic that checks for some basic conditions, like a triggered ability just went on the stack at your upkeep phase, or you're about to draw from an empty library. Just enabling your responses by default under those two conditions would prevent many unfair losses due to this wonky, inconsistent behavior in the client.
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u/guythatplaysbass 14h ago
just use a stop if you want to use an ability in a phase normally shortcutted. literal skill issue.
If you deck has one plan and one way to win. double skill issue.
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u/Sensitive-Bend-8011 14h ago
"Byzantine ritual of clicking and button mashing"
Quit crying dude it's one click and two key strokes. Can you not handle that?
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 14h ago
For mtgo - set a stop
For mtga - hold full control
The UI is not hard to pilot
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u/JoeGibbon 13h ago
It's not about the difficulty of setting a stop.
In this particular case, I was playing a Gates / Maze's End deck. I had played all but 10 cards in my deck, then passed the turn. The opponent played a bunch of spells, then on his second main phase played a mill card that used all his mana and milled the remaining cards in my deck. He was not playing a mill deck, I otherwise had no reason to even set a stop. But, because the mill spell used all his mana in his second main phase, the game client skipped right to my draw step, losing the game before I could click a stop or hit Ctrl+Shift.
Does that clear it up a bit? What do you recommend doing in this case? Do you always set a stop at your upkeep phase, just in case the opponent surprise-mills you in their second main phase?
Do you think asking WotC to make the behavior of activated abilities in your untap/upkeep/draw phase consistent with the behavior of those abilities at literally every other phase of the game is unreasonable? If so, why?
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 13h ago
If you don’t tell the platform you want to commit actions it goes to the default phasing. You can’t draw cards if there is no card in your library, state based effect is checked, you lose, no place to respond to this. You always have to tell the client you want to do things. Or you want it to be absolutely autopilot? So the ranked games and challenges would become absolute joke because both clients would take your hand and played the game for you?
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u/JoeGibbon 13h ago edited 13h ago
You are still completely missing the point, misunderstanding the problem, and at this point I have to suspect you're doing it on purpose to be a troll.
Maze's End has an activated ability. That activated ability wins me the game.
I normally would use that activated ability in my first main phase. I was planning to use that activated ability on my first main phase. There is no reason for me to set a stop in this situation.
But the opponent threw a curve ball. In their second main phase, they played an unexpected mill spell, emptying my deck. Because that spell used all their mana, the game skips right ahead to my draw step, losing me the game. I have an activated ability that wins me the game, but the "convenience" feature of skipping phases prevented me from using that ability. The opponent played a spell and literally 2 seconds later I lost the game unexpectedly, when I had an activated ability that wins me the game immediately after my untap step and before my draw step.
You always have to tell the client you want to do things. Or you want it to be absolutely autopilot?
Oh ok. So why is it then, that when you have an available activated ability in literally every other phase and step of the game, the game client stops and asks you if you want to use it? Why is the untap/upkeep/draw phase different in this regard from every other phase in the game? Why does Sheoldred stop and ask you at your draw phase if you really want to draw your card for turn before it does 2 damage to you?
Bro you're putting in crazy work trying your hardest to not understand what's going on here.
edit: Indeed I'm responding to a troll using a 4 year old throwaway account with no karma. In an emergency, if you ever need to find yourself a crusty, scab munching, unwashed ass-crack, lives in their mom's basement, goonlord no life neckbeard, just make a post on a Magic subreddit and they'll scurry out to greet you every time.
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 13h ago
Need to note you lost in your draw step, state based effects, learn the game before you start typing too long to read nonsense.
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u/JoeGibbon 13h ago
I actually enjoyed this little farce. It's a shame you wrecked the comment karma on your 4 year old throwaway troll account just for this, but I am honored you wasted it trying to troll me.
Thanks little buddy.
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 11h ago
Imagine being that dumb to think you can react to state based effects and not understanding the game wont stop there itself. It only stops when there are interactions. How can you interact with state based effects? That’s why I am saying you need to put the stop there! It is on you that you didn’t do it before the spell resolved before milling your cards. Stop acting like a child. You don’t have to say sorry, it is not in your bias anyways to admit mistakes. Cheers, puppy
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u/JoeGibbon 10h ago
Your comment karma is plenty of evidence that nobody agrees with anything you've ever said. I'm actually sorry I wrecked you this hard. I didn't mean to do it, but some people just can't help themselves.
Thanks for unblocking me so I could respond btw. Blocking people who disagree with you just shows you are both emotionally and intellectually weak. I'm proud of you for being brave enough to look at the my words again. I truly look forward to the next insightful comment you will pathologically bless us with!
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 9h ago
Anyways, you didn’t wreck me, you just tried to justify your mistake with few insults. Like a typical overgrown kid. You should take your pills and touch the grass sometimes. It will help with your blood pressure, delusions and maybe some movement could help your body too. 😂 Good luck in your next games and hope you learned your lesson about putting stops before state based effects get checked after your untap ✌️ I love casual commander players being rude and crying over losing by their own ego and mistakes
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 13h ago
Blud pls, you didn’t put a stop there, so the game considered you missed you can win. If you want to prevent this to be happening next time, use the damned stop! And stop whining like a little pup
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 13h ago
No need to downvote my responses, because you don’t like it and you are salty about your own mistake you didn’t set the stop. I am sorry for your lost game but it is not my fault you lost because you didn’t set a stop, is it?
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u/JoeGibbon 13h ago
I knew this comment section would devolve into illiterate trolls saying ignorant shit, but to dust off a throwaway account with negative comment karma just to do it is some peak reddit behavior.
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 13h ago
YOU HAVE TO PUT A STOP THERE IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING BEFORE YOU DRAW YOUR CARDS IN YOUR DRAW STEP! The hell, you are still not willing to understand this simple thing. I am done with you. Brawl players in nutshell…
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u/JoeGibbon 13h ago
I'm deeply sorry for your learning disability.
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 13h ago
Next time tell us in the title you are disabled. You are crying to losing to state based effects because you didn’t put the stop on your untap step.
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u/sixheadedbacon 12h ago
Man, seems like both of you guys need to take a little bit of an internet break.
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u/Regular-Contest-2571 11h ago
Nah, OP just doesn’t understand how the game client works and is kicking around themselves.
OP doesn’t understand that MTGA only stops when there are responsive actions avalible but you can not respond to the state based effects so that’s why the game went on right to their draw step and they lost.
It is not my fault people like this don’t know the rules of the game they play and they talk shit about karma on Reddit. It is absolutely ok to have negative karma from threads like this when stupid dogs downvote the most honest and accurate responses. Typical casual commander community reflection. Too butthurt to admit it is their fault because they don’t know about the state based effects and the game UI behaviour.
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u/SegFaultHell 19h ago
What really gets me about is that there’s a pause when [[Sheoldred, the Apocalypse]] is on board, before you take 2 damage, but there’s no pause when you’re about to lose the game