Well, it's been 8 days since I joined in trashing V4, and a lot has happened since. Not to the actual beta client, but to my impression of it. The Beta Spotlight got me to try it out again, and I hated it. Then, over the weekend of prerelease events, I figured I should give it another shot if we're really being forced to move over to V4 this summer.
And now I wouldn't want to go back to V3 for the life of me.
Yes, you read that right.
My initial problem, as mentioned in that other post, was the phase bar, which is horizontal in V4. No, I'm still not sure that it's the better solution, but playing with V4 for a couple of days sure has made that easier. I now know exactly which phase I'm in at all times - though that's not to say that they couldn't have made it even easier using colored text for certain phases or magnifying the label of the active phase. Still, two days of playing and I'm over that problem.
My other nitpick was that I found the cards to be, well, uglier in V4. Now I don't really care one way or the other. The thin card text could be a lot more awesome, but I'm guessing that anti-aliasing has performance costs.
The third problem I had was with popups and windows. It's still extremely annoying that during trade, the 'chat' popup actually COVERS the 'Confirm' button for the trade, and since bots will chat to you incessantly during a trade, you'll find yourself clicking the popup away 3-4 times to be able to confirm your trade. An easy fix would be to move popups to another corner.
New windows still pop up all over the place, and I find myself with 4 windows suddenly open after a number of games / trades, but at least I now know what the windows are and why they're there.
Finally, I haven't found a way to go to my collection and make cards untradable there. Instead it seems that I have to go to the 'active trade binder' and do it there, which is annoying as hell because it contains hundreds and hundreds of cards. V3 handled this a lot better.
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And ... that's basically it. Almost everything else is superior in V4 - I just wasn't able to appreciate that before. I've come to notice a TON of cool little things about V4; from cards actually sliding across the game interface when moving between zones, so you know where they went, to everything grouping up nicely if identical (such as tokens). I play a fairly complicated deck (Junk Enchantments) which has a lot of triggers, and it really runs like a dream once you know what's going on. Trading is infinitely faster and better, and the deck editor is a LOT more powerful.
Yeah, I felt I owed Wizards this post after trashing V4 so much only a week ago. I was an idiot. I'm not going back to V3. And no, they're not paying me to write this.
Use your other binders to keep cards out of your active trade binder. I'm not sure if I like the mechanic because I'm used to the "highlight" mark excess of 1 tradeable et, but I understand why they wanted the "drag and drop" feel.
Trading is still a bit clunky in V4. I'm interested to see what changes they make in the next couple of weeks because I still do mass trading in V3.
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My big problem with V4 is memory leaks. I'm not sure how a company actually releases a product with so many considering if you have one in any college computer science course you should automatically fail the assignment.
I've heard a lot about memory and performance in general. But even on my 5 year old desktop pc, v4 has always been more stable (v3 would often crash during trades) and a LOT faster.
Interestingly, they've just updated the client with more of that 'stickiness' they keep on touting - but this time, it's in a really useful way: In-duel windows now remember their placement, meaning that you can place the stack window etc. where you want, and it'll stay there across games and login sessions. Good move.
so i'm right, or what are you trying to say?
Nobody ever said that the new phasebar doesn't do the job. It's just a downgrade from the old solution for no actual reason.
Why change stuff if you don't have to, especially if you give people nothing in return?
I'm saying I felt the same way, but now I don't. I agree the new phasebar is probably not the best solution, but a week ago I thought it was a dealbreaker. Now I'm using it intuitively.
Why change stuff if you don't have to, especially if you give people nothing in return?
Not sure if you're saying that the new phasebar doesn't give anything in return or that v4 doesn't. The former is true, the latter isn't.
In short, what I'm saying here is that I'm happy to report that the new phasebar, which seemed completely impossible to use to me a week ago, is now not even an annoyance. So someone else might take some solace from that and learn to love v4 like I did. I'm serious when I say that I probably couldn't go back now.
I'm pretty sure there is an option in v4 to remove the "red zone"
You can choose to remove the red zone when not in combat. Nifty. Removing it altogether and simply have attackers intrude slightly on the opponent's space would probably be better though.
Here's the truth. Both clients are bat***** awful. You're literally comparing trash to other trash. Is v4 better than v3? Maybe. Is it significantly better? Not even remotely. Both programs still look like the stone age, have terrible interfaces, and if they were as good as hearthstone or solforges interfaces would rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for WotC. Instead WotC isn't getting its ***** together and making a high caliber client that looks like it was made in 2014 instead of 1995.
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I am actually O.K. with a horizontal phase bar. It's no better or worse than a vertical phase bar and since it appears above your hand, it actually takes up less useable space.
What I really wish Wizards would move to is an itemized deck list. We are all familliar with card numbers and the name of the card with a hover over picture of the card in question.
Other clients have this and it's fairly intuitive.
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My Modern decks: B/R/G Living End G/R/B G/R Tron R/G U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
Here's the truth. Both clients are bat***** awful. You're literally comparing trash to other trash. Is v4 better than v3? Maybe. Is it significantly better? Not even remotely. Both programs still look like the stone age, have terrible interfaces, and if they were as good as hearthstone or solforges interfaces would rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for WotC. Instead WotC isn't getting its ***** together and making a high caliber client that looks like it was made in 2014 instead of 1995.
I don't disagree with the desire for something better, but wishing for Hearthstone doesn't make sense. Magic is infinitely more sophisticated as a game than Hearthstone, and it requires an infinitely more sophisticated UI. DotP gets away with what it does because of the limited number of cards it contains. You don't create 120 Wolf tokens in Hearthstone, or reveal a library of potentially 400 cards, or attack with a gazillion creatures. MODO needs to be able to do that, to be able to create new zones arbitrarily, move cards around in any way imaginable, add new rules on top of a *vast* compendium of rules and add new mechanics on top of 20 years' worth of existing ones. A modular UI will never be as compartmentalized and neatly arranged as Hearthstone; it has to rely on dynamically created UI elements like windows, scrolling lists and so on.
Keep making demands, but making them within paradigms that make sense.
I hate the look of the beta client, basically everything pizzap indicated. I started playing MtGO 4-5 months ago the beta but it was horribly awful and I even have trouble watching youtube videos of others playing with the beta client. V3 is fine in my view.
I am actually O.K. with a horizontal phase bar. It's no better or worse than a vertical phase bar and since it appears above your hand, it actually takes up less useable space.
Actually, it is significantly worse from a space perspective. In v3, the phase indicator and the stack share space. This was a really smart design decision -- so smart, in fact, that most people don't even consciously realize that the names of the phases disappear when a spell is on the stack. The v3 phase indicator is located at the left side of the screen, reducing the horizontal space available for the battlefield and hands. But the battlefield rarely fills up horizontally, so this isn't usually an issue.
In v4, the phase indicator doesn't share space with anything, which means the stack has to pop up over the battlefield. I think we can all agree that the battlefield is usually much more important than the phase indicator, so having the stack partially obscure the battlefield is worse than having the stack partially obscure the phase indicator. Furthermore, the v4 phase indicator is located near the bottom of the screen, reducing the vertical space available for the battlefield and hands. Unlike horizontal space, the vertical space is at a premium, since it is used in every game.
In short, it is a really poor place to put the phase indicator. This is one of the two major UI design issues I still have with the client (the other being the inability to pop out or otherwise expand the graveyard). At this point, though, the performance issues are much more urgent than the design issues.
I am actually O.K. with a horizontal phase bar. It's no better or worse than a vertical phase bar and since it appears above your hand, it actually takes up less useable space.
What I really wish Wizards would move to is an itemized deck list. We are all familliar with card numbers and the name of the card with a hover over picture of the card in question.
Other clients have this and it's fairly intuitive.
I'm a horizontal convert too. Hated it when I first started using it, but now in its new location I use it a lot more to move stops mid game as reminders et.
What are you talking about 'itemized decklist' ?
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The phase slider moves too slowly. It might result in accidentally skipping certain steps/phases such as the 2nd main phase. There's no longer a sound effect announcing certain/phases like in v3.
I don't care about hearthstones gameplay, strategy, etc. etc. I care that it has a UI that is vastly superior to modo. Same with solforge, which was a kickstarter funded operation that had around $450,000 donated to build the UI from scratch. Hasbro is a billion dollar corporation. So they have the resources to make a kickass UI that should be able to handle anything magic is capable of within reason. As for creating 120 wolf tokens, that is a very rare corner case. Library of 400 cards? What format are you playing that you somehow reveal your library and is has over 400 cards in it. Computers are capable of INCREDIBLE things if you have savvy programmers who know how to build a client, which WotC clearly doesn't have otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. As it stands WotC is losing money by not making a great client (I, personally, refuse to put any money into modo anymore because the clients are that bad. I'm excited for vintage masters but I won't be playing it at all sadly because of how *****ty the clients are or soon to be client when they force everyone to convert from *****bag #3 to *****bag #4.) But sure keep on playing magic online and keep giving money to a corporation who won't fix the problem as long as you continue to give them money no matter how *****ty the client is.
You can also tell how bad v4 is when the vast majority of streamers use v3. Hell I refuse to watch streams that do happen to use v4 as it is a gigantic eyesore and the UI is clunky as ****.
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I am actually O.K. with a horizontal phase bar. It's no better or worse than a vertical phase bar and since it appears above your hand, it actually takes up less useable space.
What I really wish Wizards would move to is an itemized deck list. We are all familliar with card numbers and the name of the card with a hover over picture of the card in question.
Other clients have this and it's fairly intuitive.
I'm a horizontal convert too. Hated it when I first started using it, but now in its new location I use it a lot more to move stops mid game as reminders et.
What are you talking about 'itemized decklist' ?
As to the topic of itemized deck lists one can simply look at how deck tags work on this forum.
Almost everyone playing Magic or anyone that has looked at net deck is familiar with this format. It saves a load of space instead of graphical cards regardless of card sizing options. Just hovering over the name of the card comes up with a large pop-out of the card in question. This would be really good for deck building.
As to the position of the stack, it is problematic. In the,area with the exile and revealed zone might be a better place to put the stack.
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My Modern decks: B/R/G Living End G/R/B G/R Tron R/G U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
I'm not by any means saying that V4 is amazing or has no kinks in it, but I am saying I think people will like it more than they think.
This was exactly my original point as well. I'm prepared to wager that the majority of players who actually use v4 for a week will never go back to v3.
As for creating 120 wolf tokens, that is a very rare corner case. Library of 400 cards? What format are you playing that you somehow reveal your library and is has over 400 cards in it.
Let's say 200 then, and call it a Battle of Wits deck.
But this reveals that you actually don't know a whole lot about *why* MODO will necessarily have a more modular, and therefore "worse", design than Hearthstone. It's not about what is likely to happen in a given format, it's about what the game potentially allows to happen. So, you can put 400 cards in a deck, or you can have 100 tokens on the battlefield. Good, now you need dynamically scalable cards as well as completely dynamic placement of the cards on the table. Hearthstone doesn't need any of this; in fact, it is completely rigid in terms of matching the table layout to the maximum values of the game (max number of units, max number of cards in hand, etc.)
Go on bashing MODO, there's plenty to bash, but don't bring Hearthstone into it. You might as well argue that Starcraft II is a much better designed game than MODO.
What I really wish Wizards would move to is an itemized deck list. We are all familliar with card numbers and the name of the card with a hover over picture of the card in question.
Other clients have this and it's fairly intuitive.
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As to the topic of itemized deck lists one can simply look at how deck tags work on this forum.
Almost everyone playing Magic or anyone that has looked at net deck is familiar with this format. It saves a load of space instead of graphical cards regardless of card sizing options. Just hovering over the name of the card comes up with a large pop-out of the card in question. This would be really good for deck building.
As to the position of the stack, it is problematic. In the,area with the exile and revealed zone might be a better place to put the stack.
Like this? (You can hide, move, sort the individual fields).
ATTACHMENTS
Decklist Img
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Yeah Cardfather, how do you set it up to do that? I guess I am going to have to poke around a bit more.
I haven't really messed around with MTGO for quite a while. I think the last time I really competitively played with it other than Momir was during the original Mirrodin/Kamigawa blocks.
I dunno, I put some time in today and thought V4 was fine barring the Exile zone. No way to tell how many counters are on suspended permanents if they aren't in the forefront. Problematic if you are planning your plays around suspend creatures.
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My Modern decks: B/R/G Living End G/R/B G/R Tron R/G U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
I'm not by any means saying that V4 is amazing or has no kinks in it, but I am saying I think people will like it more than they think.
This was exactly my original point as well. I'm prepared to wager that the majority of players who actually use v4 for a week will never go back to v3.
As for creating 120 wolf tokens, that is a very rare corner case. Library of 400 cards? What format are you playing that you somehow reveal your library and is has over 400 cards in it.
Let's say 200 then, and call it a Battle of Wits deck.
But this reveals that you actually don't know a whole lot about *why* MODO will necessarily have a more modular, and therefore "worse", design than Hearthstone. It's not about what is likely to happen in a given format, it's about what the game potentially allows to happen. So, you can put 400 cards in a deck, or you can have 100 tokens on the battlefield. Good, now you need dynamically scalable cards as well as completely dynamic placement of the cards on the table. Hearthstone doesn't need any of this; in fact, it is completely rigid in terms of matching the table layout to the maximum values of the game (max number of units, max number of cards in hand, etc.)
Go on bashing MODO, there's plenty to bash, but don't bring Hearthstone into it. You might as well argue that Starcraft II is a much better designed game than MODO.
Unless V3 ceases to exist, I highly doubt you are correct that anyone would want to use V4. If you have looked at twitter or the MTGO Wizards forums, there is maybe 1 out of the 1000s of people who were ok with V4 and I really believe that 1 person either had to be a troll, held at gunpoint, on a ton of drugs, or was going against the grain for the effect of it.
I personally found V4 to be extremely annoying. The only real improvements about it was that finding your tickets and QPs is easier and the status bar in the classifieds is less glitchy. Sides that, trading is way slower, the memory leak issue is a real thing, the sounds are very annoying, you cant zoom in on cards during games, the clock during events goes up instead of down which is incredibly pointless, it looks overall crappy, etc. I could talk all day about how bad V4 is but all the negatives that have been said a billion times by everyone else speaks for themselves so its rather senseless to go into more detail about it.
Its fine if you are ok with the new client, but to be ignorant and be in bliss about it is not going to impress or be helpful to anybody.
You can twist and turn it as long as you want, no matter which one you like more, both are pretty terrible in general no matter which one is actually better in your point of view.
Um, wtf? Twist and turn it? I've said from the beginning that I don't think either is actually a *good* interface? What are you, king of the strawmen? Christ, it's like, if I don't preface every single post with "yes, don't worry, I still think v4 is ALSO suboptimal", you think I'm praising it as the pinnacle of software development.
Quote from JaceTheMindFoo »
The only real improvements about it was that finding your tickets and QPs is easier and the status bar in the classifieds is less glitchy.
See, this is just factually untrue, but you were being lazy and probably trying to make a statement. There are dozens and dozens of improvements, from the stacking of similar cards to the quicker access to getting a game going - they just don't fit with your hyperbole. I recognize what you're doing, because I did the same before switching. So I know it's the easier, lazier path to take.
Also, yes, you can zoom in on cards during games. Of course you can. You do it the exact same way you have done it since v3.
Unless V3 ceases to exist, I highly doubt you are correct that anyone would want to use V4.
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Its fine if you are ok with the new client, but to be ignorant and be in bliss about it is not going to impress or be helpful to anybody.
Ah, cool, YOU get to be king of the strawmen. This is exactly what I meant with needing to preface every post of mine with "yes, I DO think v4 could also be better." This thread, summed up, is "I found v4 to be better than I expected, and better than v3". Your contribution equals "that opinion automatically means that you're ignorant and completely uncritical of v4, and also, your opinion sucks because minority". Both of which are hallmarks of the distinguished 13-year old demographic. Your opinion has been noted though, talk to you later.
You can twist and turn it as long as you want, no matter which one you like more, both are pretty terrible in general no matter which one is actually better in your point of view.
Um, wtf? Twist and turn it? I've said from the beginning that I don't think either is actually a *good* interface? What are you, king of the strawmen? Christ, it's like, if I don't preface every single post with "yes, don't worry, I still think v4 is ALSO suboptimal", you think I'm praising it as the pinnacle of software development.
Quote from JaceTheMindFoo »
The only real improvements about it was that finding your tickets and QPs is easier and the status bar in the classifieds is less glitchy.
See, this is just factually untrue, but you were being lazy and probably trying to make a statement. There are dozens and dozens of improvements, from the stacking of similar cards to the quicker access to getting a game going - they just don't fit with your hyperbole. I recognize what you're doing, because I did the same before switching. So I know it's the easier, lazier path to take.
Also, yes, you can zoom in on cards during games. Of course you can. You do it the exact same way you have done it since v3.
Unless V3 ceases to exist, I highly doubt you are correct that anyone would want to use V4.
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Its fine if you are ok with the new client, but to be ignorant and be in bliss about it is not going to impress or be helpful to anybody.
Ah, cool, YOU get to be king of the strawmen. This is exactly what I meant with needing to preface every post of mine with "yes, I DO think v4 could also be better." This thread, summed up, is "I found v4 to be better than I expected, and better than v3". Your contribution equals "that opinion automatically means that you're ignorant and completely uncritical of v4, and also, your opinion sucks because minority". Both of which are hallmarks of the distinguished 13-year old demographic. Your opinion has been noted though, talk to you later.
Its not a strawman, its a fact. Go look at the MTGO Twitter and the Wizards message boards and find out how many people think V4 is remotely playable. You may find the token person who likes it, but generally speaking, people find it to be garbage. I dont see how you can argue that reality, since we are not living in the world where the opinion of V4 vs V3 is remotely varied.
If you like V4, great, but it is very likely that you will find many people that will disagree with you and for very good reasons. People have standards and do not want to waste their money if their standards are not met. Many people have enough will power to vote with their wallets instead of posting walls of text that WotC doesnt read/care about to send the message to the company. Posting rants on how much better you think V4 is over V3 isnt going to change anybodies mind, especially when its done in a condescending way.
Yeah Cardfather, how do you set it up to do that? I guess I am going to have to poke around a bit more.
I haven't really messed around with MTGO for quite a while. I think the last time I really competitively played with it other than Momir was during the original Mirrodin/Kamigawa blocks.
I dunno, I put some time in today and thought V4 was fine barring the Exile zone. No way to tell how many counters are on suspended permanents if they aren't in the forefront. Problematic if you are planning your plays around suspend creatures.
The button right above it where it says display, just change it to list view. Also don't forget you can upload your text file decklists to the new client just like in the old one, you just don't need a .dek file or anything like that anymore.
If I use a zone like Exile a lot I like to dock it somewhere. Widescreen monitor really helps there. I've tried moving the chat window around, but one thing I don't really like is when I want to chat with someone not in the game I either have to deal with a pop up window or reduce my play space. I find myself w/ the chat hidden a lot more in V4 than in V3. I keep the play by play open a lot more in V3 though, so in that regard I assume that means I can tell easier what's going on in the V4 client.
I go back and forth on the stack in the middle of the screen. I miss the arrows that point to the target a lot.
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Poor Boreez is arguing with two different ends of the spectrum of players and trying to talk them down. One side uses Hearthstone as an example of a good UI even though it wastes an unbelievable amount of play-space with cartoon like graphic that make the game look like Farmville. The other end of the spectrum, voiced by SteB wants a stripped down look that is reminiscent of Cockatrice. I point this out because it shows what WotC (who have honestly not done as good a job with v4 as they should have) has to deal with when creating a new interface for the players. The UI has to be scalable, realiable, and as customizable as possible while maintaining the first two requirements. V4 has it's problems, not the least of which is the massive memory leak, but so far it is much more reliable and is very scalable. It can handle vastly more cards on the field than any other game I have seen, and maintains their interactions clearly.
JacetheMindFoo: looking to twitter and message boards for a honest read of the opinions of people playing the game is absurd. It is a known phenomenon that it is the people who are unhappy about something who are the most vocal and the most likely to make their opinions heard, it come as no surprise to me that forums and twitter are skewed to the negative. I expect that wizards own marketing data is a more accurate representation of the player base.
The fact of the matter is that most MTG players are Geeks by nature, and we geeks tend to be obsessive about the things we love to the point that we react very negatively to change. I myself shouted "**** off" at the TV when I found out who the new Doctor would be on Doctor Who. My wife thought it was hilarious, but I kept saying foul things to the TV as a got my coat and went for a walk too cool down. Most of us, like the OP, eventually give up our irrational holds on past comfort and find the positive in the new thus becoming comfortable again*. Some freak out, rant wherever anyone will listen, and refuse to accept the change on some kind of principle. I expect there will be some of those people who will quit the game, but since MTGO is adding more and more accounts every hour of every day I suspect they and the rest of us player will live without them.
*I still utterly refuse to accept Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, and do not plan on watching the show. Who knows if I will keep that up, but right now I am still in Geek denial.
EDIT: I think they may be really working on the memory leak issue because I have had the beta UI open for hours, watched a couple of games and did some deck building and it is still really responsive. I have to see if this keeps up.
And now I wouldn't want to go back to V3 for the life of me.
Yes, you read that right.
My initial problem, as mentioned in that other post, was the phase bar, which is horizontal in V4. No, I'm still not sure that it's the better solution, but playing with V4 for a couple of days sure has made that easier. I now know exactly which phase I'm in at all times - though that's not to say that they couldn't have made it even easier using colored text for certain phases or magnifying the label of the active phase. Still, two days of playing and I'm over that problem.
My other nitpick was that I found the cards to be, well, uglier in V4. Now I don't really care one way or the other. The thin card text could be a lot more awesome, but I'm guessing that anti-aliasing has performance costs.
The third problem I had was with popups and windows. It's still extremely annoying that during trade, the 'chat' popup actually COVERS the 'Confirm' button for the trade, and since bots will chat to you incessantly during a trade, you'll find yourself clicking the popup away 3-4 times to be able to confirm your trade. An easy fix would be to move popups to another corner.
New windows still pop up all over the place, and I find myself with 4 windows suddenly open after a number of games / trades, but at least I now know what the windows are and why they're there.
Finally, I haven't found a way to go to my collection and make cards untradable there. Instead it seems that I have to go to the 'active trade binder' and do it there, which is annoying as hell because it contains hundreds and hundreds of cards. V3 handled this a lot better.
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And ... that's basically it. Almost everything else is superior in V4 - I just wasn't able to appreciate that before. I've come to notice a TON of cool little things about V4; from cards actually sliding across the game interface when moving between zones, so you know where they went, to everything grouping up nicely if identical (such as tokens). I play a fairly complicated deck (Junk Enchantments) which has a lot of triggers, and it really runs like a dream once you know what's going on. Trading is infinitely faster and better, and the deck editor is a LOT more powerful.
Yeah, I felt I owed Wizards this post after trashing V4 so much only a week ago. I was an idiot. I'm not going back to V3. And no, they're not paying me to write this.
Trading is still a bit clunky in V4. I'm interested to see what changes they make in the next couple of weeks because I still do mass trading in V3.
I had the same anger issues until last weekend.
I'm saying I felt the same way, but now I don't. I agree the new phasebar is probably not the best solution, but a week ago I thought it was a dealbreaker. Now I'm using it intuitively.
Not sure if you're saying that the new phasebar doesn't give anything in return or that v4 doesn't. The former is true, the latter isn't.
In short, what I'm saying here is that I'm happy to report that the new phasebar, which seemed completely impossible to use to me a week ago, is now not even an annoyance. So someone else might take some solace from that and learn to love v4 like I did. I'm serious when I say that I probably couldn't go back now.
You can choose to remove the red zone when not in combat. Nifty. Removing it altogether and simply have attackers intrude slightly on the opponent's space would probably be better though.
Currently Playing:
Retired
What I really wish Wizards would move to is an itemized deck list. We are all familliar with card numbers and the name of the card with a hover over picture of the card in question.
Other clients have this and it's fairly intuitive.
My Modern decks:
B/R/G Living End G/R/B
G/R Tron R/G
U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U
R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
I don't disagree with the desire for something better, but wishing for Hearthstone doesn't make sense. Magic is infinitely more sophisticated as a game than Hearthstone, and it requires an infinitely more sophisticated UI. DotP gets away with what it does because of the limited number of cards it contains. You don't create 120 Wolf tokens in Hearthstone, or reveal a library of potentially 400 cards, or attack with a gazillion creatures. MODO needs to be able to do that, to be able to create new zones arbitrarily, move cards around in any way imaginable, add new rules on top of a *vast* compendium of rules and add new mechanics on top of 20 years' worth of existing ones. A modular UI will never be as compartmentalized and neatly arranged as Hearthstone; it has to rely on dynamically created UI elements like windows, scrolling lists and so on.
Keep making demands, but making them within paradigms that make sense.
In v4, the phase indicator doesn't share space with anything, which means the stack has to pop up over the battlefield. I think we can all agree that the battlefield is usually much more important than the phase indicator, so having the stack partially obscure the battlefield is worse than having the stack partially obscure the phase indicator. Furthermore, the v4 phase indicator is located near the bottom of the screen, reducing the vertical space available for the battlefield and hands. Unlike horizontal space, the vertical space is at a premium, since it is used in every game.
In short, it is a really poor place to put the phase indicator. This is one of the two major UI design issues I still have with the client (the other being the inability to pop out or otherwise expand the graveyard). At this point, though, the performance issues are much more urgent than the design issues.
I'm a horizontal convert too. Hated it when I first started using it, but now in its new location I use it a lot more to move stops mid game as reminders et.
What are you talking about 'itemized decklist' ?
You can also tell how bad v4 is when the vast majority of streamers use v3. Hell I refuse to watch streams that do happen to use v4 as it is a gigantic eyesore and the UI is clunky as ****.
Currently Playing:
Retired
As to the topic of itemized deck lists one can simply look at how deck tags work on this forum.
Example:
Almost everyone playing Magic or anyone that has looked at net deck is familiar with this format. It saves a load of space instead of graphical cards regardless of card sizing options. Just hovering over the name of the card comes up with a large pop-out of the card in question. This would be really good for deck building.
As to the position of the stack, it is problematic. In the,area with the exile and revealed zone might be a better place to put the stack.
My Modern decks:
B/R/G Living End G/R/B
G/R Tron R/G
U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U
R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
This was exactly my original point as well. I'm prepared to wager that the majority of players who actually use v4 for a week will never go back to v3.
Let's say 200 then, and call it a Battle of Wits deck.
But this reveals that you actually don't know a whole lot about *why* MODO will necessarily have a more modular, and therefore "worse", design than Hearthstone. It's not about what is likely to happen in a given format, it's about what the game potentially allows to happen. So, you can put 400 cards in a deck, or you can have 100 tokens on the battlefield. Good, now you need dynamically scalable cards as well as completely dynamic placement of the cards on the table. Hearthstone doesn't need any of this; in fact, it is completely rigid in terms of matching the table layout to the maximum values of the game (max number of units, max number of cards in hand, etc.)
Go on bashing MODO, there's plenty to bash, but don't bring Hearthstone into it. You might as well argue that Starcraft II is a much better designed game than MODO.
Like this? (You can hide, move, sort the individual fields).
I haven't really messed around with MTGO for quite a while. I think the last time I really competitively played with it other than Momir was during the original Mirrodin/Kamigawa blocks.
I dunno, I put some time in today and thought V4 was fine barring the Exile zone. No way to tell how many counters are on suspended permanents if they aren't in the forefront. Problematic if you are planning your plays around suspend creatures.
My Modern decks:
B/R/G Living End G/R/B
G/R Tron R/G
U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U
R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
Unless V3 ceases to exist, I highly doubt you are correct that anyone would want to use V4. If you have looked at twitter or the MTGO Wizards forums, there is maybe 1 out of the 1000s of people who were ok with V4 and I really believe that 1 person either had to be a troll, held at gunpoint, on a ton of drugs, or was going against the grain for the effect of it.
I personally found V4 to be extremely annoying. The only real improvements about it was that finding your tickets and QPs is easier and the status bar in the classifieds is less glitchy. Sides that, trading is way slower, the memory leak issue is a real thing, the sounds are very annoying, you cant zoom in on cards during games, the clock during events goes up instead of down which is incredibly pointless, it looks overall crappy, etc. I could talk all day about how bad V4 is but all the negatives that have been said a billion times by everyone else speaks for themselves so its rather senseless to go into more detail about it.
Its fine if you are ok with the new client, but to be ignorant and be in bliss about it is not going to impress or be helpful to anybody.
Um, wtf? Twist and turn it? I've said from the beginning that I don't think either is actually a *good* interface? What are you, king of the strawmen? Christ, it's like, if I don't preface every single post with "yes, don't worry, I still think v4 is ALSO suboptimal", you think I'm praising it as the pinnacle of software development.
See, this is just factually untrue, but you were being lazy and probably trying to make a statement. There are dozens and dozens of improvements, from the stacking of similar cards to the quicker access to getting a game going - they just don't fit with your hyperbole. I recognize what you're doing, because I did the same before switching. So I know it's the easier, lazier path to take.
Also, yes, you can zoom in on cards during games. Of course you can. You do it the exact same way you have done it since v3.
Ah, cool, YOU get to be king of the strawmen. This is exactly what I meant with needing to preface every post of mine with "yes, I DO think v4 could also be better." This thread, summed up, is "I found v4 to be better than I expected, and better than v3". Your contribution equals "that opinion automatically means that you're ignorant and completely uncritical of v4, and also, your opinion sucks because minority". Both of which are hallmarks of the distinguished 13-year old demographic. Your opinion has been noted though, talk to you later.
I don't always use V4 but when I do, afterwards I take an aspirin and just lie down for a moment
p.s. Notice that my hand size says 7, but only 6 cards are displayed.
That is a great feature!
Its not a strawman, its a fact. Go look at the MTGO Twitter and the Wizards message boards and find out how many people think V4 is remotely playable. You may find the token person who likes it, but generally speaking, people find it to be garbage. I dont see how you can argue that reality, since we are not living in the world where the opinion of V4 vs V3 is remotely varied.
If you like V4, great, but it is very likely that you will find many people that will disagree with you and for very good reasons. People have standards and do not want to waste their money if their standards are not met. Many people have enough will power to vote with their wallets instead of posting walls of text that WotC doesnt read/care about to send the message to the company. Posting rants on how much better you think V4 is over V3 isnt going to change anybodies mind, especially when its done in a condescending way.
The button right above it where it says display, just change it to list view. Also don't forget you can upload your text file decklists to the new client just like in the old one, you just don't need a .dek file or anything like that anymore.
If I use a zone like Exile a lot I like to dock it somewhere. Widescreen monitor really helps there. I've tried moving the chat window around, but one thing I don't really like is when I want to chat with someone not in the game I either have to deal with a pop up window or reduce my play space. I find myself w/ the chat hidden a lot more in V4 than in V3. I keep the play by play open a lot more in V3 though, so in that regard I assume that means I can tell easier what's going on in the V4 client.
I go back and forth on the stack in the middle of the screen. I miss the arrows that point to the target a lot.
My Modern decks:
B/R/G Living End G/R/B
G/R Tron R/G
U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U
R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
JacetheMindFoo: looking to twitter and message boards for a honest read of the opinions of people playing the game is absurd. It is a known phenomenon that it is the people who are unhappy about something who are the most vocal and the most likely to make their opinions heard, it come as no surprise to me that forums and twitter are skewed to the negative. I expect that wizards own marketing data is a more accurate representation of the player base.
The fact of the matter is that most MTG players are Geeks by nature, and we geeks tend to be obsessive about the things we love to the point that we react very negatively to change. I myself shouted "**** off" at the TV when I found out who the new Doctor would be on Doctor Who. My wife thought it was hilarious, but I kept saying foul things to the TV as a got my coat and went for a walk too cool down. Most of us, like the OP, eventually give up our irrational holds on past comfort and find the positive in the new thus becoming comfortable again*. Some freak out, rant wherever anyone will listen, and refuse to accept the change on some kind of principle. I expect there will be some of those people who will quit the game, but since MTGO is adding more and more accounts every hour of every day I suspect they and the rest of us player will live without them.
*I still utterly refuse to accept Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, and do not plan on watching the show. Who knows if I will keep that up, but right now I am still in Geek denial.
EDIT: I think they may be really working on the memory leak issue because I have had the beta UI open for hours, watched a couple of games and did some deck building and it is still really responsive. I have to see if this keeps up.
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!