I seriously want to know why people decide to use which programs and what are the pros and cons of each.
I have used Magic Workstation and Lackey, and I will say Magic Workstation was beyond terrible where Lackey is a blast to use, and is easy. Yet it seems more people use Magic Workstation.
Why is that??
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I think the biggest reason for this inertia is just the fact that people don't like change. Another reason may be seccodes. Lots of people play more or less competitive and prefer mws, since mws has deck seccodes, wich identify the deck you are playing.
Iirc Lackey doesnot support seccodes, so you cannot know if your opponent is playing the same deck al through the matches you play in a tournament, and when you already are using one play application, you usually are not willing to use another one to do the same thing.
I'll elaborate a bit more this answer for the benefit of OP:
MWS's been around for a while and has a massive user base. This means that at any given time you connect you're likely to find an opponent /whatever the format you want to play is/. Other software might have certain benefits here and there when compared to MWS but their user base is significantly smaller. That minds that finding a game might not be so easy.
Besides, as buggy as MWS might be, it has tons of features and hard work behind, most things are intuitive, have shortcuts, there are even deep analysis and filtering tools. This software here might do this one feature better and that one there might do this other feature better, but MWS has all of them in a well-rounded and approachable way.
There are only two things that I think that MWS sorely needs: Get rid of the bugs and have a way to manage users (i.e. being able to report/block/befriend other users.) Other programs might be less buggy or have more user options and even have some shiny additional bells and whistles but at the cost of lacking dozens of features that MWS have. Not to mention that even though it's bland and not too attractive, MWS's UI is one of the cleanest and most intuitive and less ugly out there.
In short, for a new software to take over MWS, it needs to be everything MWS is AND then improve onto that. I'm afraid only a hypotetical MWS2 could do that.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
Yeah I stopped using MWS as much. I'm mostly using Cockatrice now, which IMO is better than MWS. MWS still has a better deck building engine (when it's not crashing when I'm trying to add the newest set or use the latest masterbase) as you can filter to different formats. But once it's time to actually play a game I prefer Cockatrice. The ability to play multiplayer EDH games are a plus as well as the ability to spectate game in progress are bonuses.
The reason I think everyone still uses MWS is that's it's the program that everyone is familiar with. It's easy to find a game on there. And quite frankly if the damn system wouldn't crash every time I try to add a new set or load the updated masterbase I would probably still be playing MWS. Another factor is that Magic-League still uses MWS so it's still the go to free program for tournament play.
Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
The reason I think everyone still uses MWS is that's it's the program that everyone is familiar with. It's easy to find a game on there. And quite frankly if the damn system wouldn't crash every time I try to add a new set or load the updated masterbase I would probably still be playing MWS. Another factor is that Magic-League still uses MWS so it's still the go to free program for tournament play.
Most of the persistent bugs occur while on-play, if you are experiencing crashes when updating the masterbase, doing a clean reinstall is a known fix.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
The fact that MWS isn't actively developed anymore really holds back the "free" community. For example there isn't proper support for PWs or mythics, nor any shot at integrated draft or tournament, nor support for secure server-based play. Not that you can easily tell them to go play something different when their current thing works "OK."
Well I'm definitely not the only one who's had that problem. Just take a look in the MBS patch thread.
That's what I'm saying. I suffered myself from it. I just had to wipe all traces of MWS from my computer and install again (I installed it into another folder as an added measure) and it's been working ever since.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
I've been using Cockatrice lately, and I find it to be absolutely fantastic compared to MWS. It has the same essential functions, plus multiplayer & spectator support, which gives it a huge plus over MWS in my book.
There are a few cons to Cockatrice, tokens only get names and P/T, you can't put ability text on there unless you want it to take up space in the P/T box. Plus there's no way to save token types like in MWS. It's really convenient when you can just right click, and find all the tokens you saved. Cockatrice does lag, but for me only when there's a mutliplayer game going on and there's some shenanigans happening (ie there's a lot card movement, like drawing twenty cards or attacking with a butt load of creatures, etc).
MWS has been buggy with me in the past, I have to run it in Administrator mode otherwise it will likely crash on me as soon as I connect to a game. :/
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I'm Just Bouncing this post since Its been over 1 year .... I would like to gauge if anything has changed ? Are people moving away from MWS to new Software ?
As I said several times.
While there is an opensource program that has ALL the features of MWS (mainly statistical analysis of deep decks / be easy to manipulate the database in the proper program) personally see no advantage in replacing it or to encourage my community of players doing the same.
At the moment a program was opensouce that supports:
- Multiplatform (various operating systems)
- Multi-game (various cardgames can be run)
- Draft and Multiplayer System
- Statistical analysis of deep decks
- Ability to manage personal collections (function useful for collectors)
- What allows easily manage the database of cards (no external program)
- Keep it simple, keep clean look and intuitive (as in the MWS / Play Table)
This program will replace the MWS VERY EASILY and I strongly encourage my community to change their program.
Makes no sense to replace a program (although well-known flaws) closesource by another program closedsource. Since this program "new" administration provides less flexibility than the MWS.
The people "insist" on thinking that it all boils down to a "gaming table" but not so. Users want more than a platform that provides a 1x1 game. Often these users are collectors, not players, sometimes they want to analyze statistically the deck that already has in real life or simply do not play Magic and want to build their own cards / or groan to play cards with friends ...
I have used Magic Workstation and Lackey, and I will say Magic Workstation was beyond terrible where Lackey is a blast to use, and is easy. Yet it seems more people use Magic Workstation.
Why is that??
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
It's a vicious cycle.
Iirc Lackey doesnot support seccodes, so you cannot know if your opponent is playing the same deck al through the matches you play in a tournament, and when you already are using one play application, you usually are not willing to use another one to do the same thing.
I'll elaborate a bit more this answer for the benefit of OP:
MWS's been around for a while and has a massive user base. This means that at any given time you connect you're likely to find an opponent /whatever the format you want to play is/. Other software might have certain benefits here and there when compared to MWS but their user base is significantly smaller. That minds that finding a game might not be so easy.
Besides, as buggy as MWS might be, it has tons of features and hard work behind, most things are intuitive, have shortcuts, there are even deep analysis and filtering tools. This software here might do this one feature better and that one there might do this other feature better, but MWS has all of them in a well-rounded and approachable way.
There are only two things that I think that MWS sorely needs: Get rid of the bugs and have a way to manage users (i.e. being able to report/block/befriend other users.) Other programs might be less buggy or have more user options and even have some shiny additional bells and whistles but at the cost of lacking dozens of features that MWS have. Not to mention that even though it's bland and not too attractive, MWS's UI is one of the cleanest and most intuitive and less ugly out there.
In short, for a new software to take over MWS, it needs to be everything MWS is AND then improve onto that. I'm afraid only a hypotetical MWS2 could do that.
The reason I think everyone still uses MWS is that's it's the program that everyone is familiar with. It's easy to find a game on there. And quite frankly if the damn system wouldn't crash every time I try to add a new set or load the updated masterbase I would probably still be playing MWS. Another factor is that Magic-League still uses MWS so it's still the go to free program for tournament play.
Most of the persistent bugs occur while on-play, if you are experiencing crashes when updating the masterbase, doing a clean reinstall is a known fix.
More like abandonware
Well I'm definitely not the only one who's had that problem. Just take a look in the MBS patch thread.
That's what I'm saying. I suffered myself from it. I just had to wipe all traces of MWS from my computer and install again (I installed it into another folder as an added measure) and it's been working ever since.
There are a few cons to Cockatrice, tokens only get names and P/T, you can't put ability text on there unless you want it to take up space in the P/T box. Plus there's no way to save token types like in MWS. It's really convenient when you can just right click, and find all the tokens you saved. Cockatrice does lag, but for me only when there's a mutliplayer game going on and there's some shenanigans happening (ie there's a lot card movement, like drawing twenty cards or attacking with a butt load of creatures, etc).
MWS has been buggy with me in the past, I have to run it in Administrator mode otherwise it will likely crash on me as soon as I connect to a game. :/
While there is an opensource program that has ALL the features of MWS (mainly statistical analysis of deep decks / be easy to manipulate the database in the proper program) personally see no advantage in replacing it or to encourage my community of players doing the same.
At the moment a program was opensouce that supports:
- Multiplatform (various operating systems)
- Multi-game (various cardgames can be run)
- Draft and Multiplayer System
- Statistical analysis of deep decks
- Ability to manage personal collections (function useful for collectors)
- What allows easily manage the database of cards (no external program)
- Keep it simple, keep clean look and intuitive (as in the MWS / Play Table)
This program will replace the MWS VERY EASILY and I strongly encourage my community to change their program.
Makes no sense to replace a program (although well-known flaws) closesource by another program closedsource. Since this program "new" administration provides less flexibility than the MWS.
The people "insist" on thinking that it all boils down to a "gaming table" but not so. Users want more than a platform that provides a 1x1 game. Often these users are collectors, not players, sometimes they want to analyze statistically the deck that already has in real life or simply do not play Magic and want to build their own cards / or groan to play cards with friends ...
This is
All Sources For MWS