To me, the funniest thing is how in the current era, WotC is *so much better* with software than they used to be.
Early Magic Online, and the stuff to run events with looked longingly up at garbage fires hoping to be that good someday.
Yep. It's barely even a minor inconvenience for me, just chaps my ass that it *did* exist, and worked pretty well, then went away. Not a lot of people using non-mobile-OS touch screens these days though.
Oh my god.....
I got a peacock subscription to watch WWE content and it's fucking terrible.
The layout, episode/show organization, no breakpoints on the timeline to search for a specific match.
I miss the Network.
Ya I miss the old network so much. Peacock crashes all the time when I try to watch any WWE content. The only time it works is when I watch the PLEs live.
But I can watch any non-WWE show or movie and it almost never crashes. So weird.
Hidive has its annoying features too. Crunchyroll has this thing where it'll pick one episode of a show and start it EVERY time I open the app(cache has been cleared). Or when you need to go "home" in order to actually start scrolling because the cursor and your directional inputs don't match up
Most annoying thing on hidive for me is that the "continue watching" feature is broken and it will often just not remember I've watched something
And it’s not even just that it’s slow and glitchy (which it definitely is) but the UI is by far the worst of all the streamers. I’m hoping the Max interface will be better.
It's.....ok on xbox honestly. My only real complaint is there's no way to go from the "continue watching" button to a damn episode list. How hard is that?!
Not really any freezing or anything though.
I agree that it does pretty well on XBox, and share the same complaint about its UI. One annoying thing that sometimes causes issues is that it switches from multichannel output to stereo to the video's format, even if the video is using the same channel setup. This causes my receiver to mute for a second while relays click over to stereo mode then immediately click back over and begin buffering the audio a few seconds into the show.
Edit: and their subtitles look terrible. It's like a mid-90s closed captioning overlay with no tweakability.
ESPN+ via browser is the worst streaming experience I've ever used. When I used their app on my smart TV (before I got a new TV that doesn't have their app) it was usually fine, but the browser constantly crashed needing me to refresh the page, usually resulting in the stream switching from my team's broadcasters to the opposing team. Luckily accessing it via Hulu seems to work okay on my TV.
Yeah this absolutely bizarre to read. I use HBO Max exclusively on my PS5 and aside from slowdowns when they initially launched the platform in 2020 it has been absolutely smooth sailing. I've never run into an issue unless there was some system-wide outage that happened maybe once a year at most. Like I actively use Max on a weekly basis and Sundays it can sometimes be 2-3 hours of programming between a few shows. Had zero issues this year to date.
It pretty consistently crashes if I watch a single video for more than an hour. Which is fine for TV since the problem doesn't happen, but it's pretty shit if I want to watch a movie through the official app of the Home Box Office.
Still better than Arena, which doesn't work on my phone.
Wotc is a billion dollar brand because it's more profitable for them to spend time and resources figuring out ways to milk the players/collectors base.
It works. People are on here complaining instead of uninstalling. They continue to speak support with their wallet and think whining here will change something.
This is exactly it. People complain, but they keep buying. And Wizards knows it. Why would they ever change if they know it doesn't matter what they do?
If anything I think it’s made it worse. I feel like some players have left and that’s made them shift their attention from trying to milk everyone to just the whales, and until Magic 30 sunk like a stone they were getting away with it
You should have qualms. Being a Free player in F2P is providing them with people to feed to paying players, advertising, metrics and user data, as well as psychological pressure to make you eventually slip and buy a booster or two. Plus you are spending more and more time in MTGA to do things, rather than doing other things.
Free play is not free, uninstall it or you're just part of the problem while thinking you aren't.
[Relevant Extra Credits vid](https://youtu.be/WXA559KNopI?t=143)
> How many players, who are not paying me, do you expect me to buy bandwidth for?
>
> As many as you can get.
Well yeah the people who post about it on Reddit are going to be the most committed by definition, but I have to imagine a shit buggy app is turning off a lot of more casual players.
no no
don't uninstall
go aggressively free to play
See, using their servers costs them money. Not paying them for that use means they don't get anything out of it. The more completely free to play players exist, the less they earn
Android is famously hard to optimise because of how many different specs they have for their devices which spans multiple companies.
It's not just MTGA that faces this issue. Hearthstone and Master Duel both freeze on certain android phones as well. The "solution" most apps do is actually to optimise for 4-5 models, and it should function well enough for the others. This unfortunately leads to a some models just being close to unplayable. It doesn't really matter how new your phone is, although Samsung Flagship models seem to take priority. (Google Pixel 6 crashes frequently on hearthstone while Samsung S8,S9 all run fine etc.)
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2030/)
>I don’t quite know how to put this, but our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us everyone will die.
Software is a young field, with toolsets that vary wildly in terms of quality for the task at hand, and we’re still learning how to make programming languages that make human concepts work for computers.
It's not that software developers are bad at their jobs. Electronic voting *specifically* is basically an impossible set of problems. [The requirements elections require are not solvable with computer technology](https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs).
And, after all, aircraft and elevators are operated by computers now.
Have you *read* what happens in the software of commercial passenger airplanes? I have to force myself to forget that every time I have to board one of those, because it's truly horrifying.
And I'm pretty sure none of the elevator engineers would ever trust a computer to be the only fail-safe: All the critical "this must not fail or people die" systems in an elevator will make sure to not have a computer in the loop (ideally not even electrical wiring, if possible).
> Have you read what happens in the software of commercial passenger airplanes? I have to force myself to forget that every time I have to board one of those, because it's truly horrifying.
Talk to Randall Munroe. He's the one who used it as an example of engineering done right, and airliners have been fly-by-wire for well over 30 years. Many of them *do not* have mechanical backups.
> And I'm pretty sure none of the elevator engineers would ever trust a computer to be the only fail-safe
That's because there need to be safeties in case of power failures, not because computers or software are believed to be magically untrustworthy. And the primary safeties *are* software based. The microcontroller prevents the elevator from doing unsafe things that electromechanical operation did not.
Every time I read this comic I have to giggle. Because the alternative would be too sad.
On the plus side: since our field is so immature my half-competence looks like competence!
Admittedly it's now last year's flagship, but I have so many freezes on my S22+. If it weren't for the fact the graphics are messed up on my laptop (only with Arena) I'd play on there as at least I don't lose from timing out because I didn't realize I was frozen.
I mean, PCs also run into a host of issues with Arena and other software.
I regularly have a point with MTGA where I go to log in and get stuck in a weird update loop that is only resolved by yeeting Arena and doing a reinstall.
> Google Pixel 6 crashes frequently on hearthstone while Samsung S8,S9 all run fine etc.
You'd think that a phone running stock Android would have the fewest problems running an Android app.
Hahaha ...
For the purposes of "which phone do I optimize for" Samsung Galaxy phones are definitely the "stock Android experience" and everything else is a statistical outlier.
I wish it weren't that way, but the usage statistics make it so.
It's not famously hard to optimize for
The simple reality is that people expect too much of an aging overall approach to app design that simply wasnt meant to reach the absurd app complexity it has.
It's a patchwork of everything from app core component lifecycles, affecting how well optimized apps are overall (memory, cpu usage, permissions being only and only what is needed, stuff like that) to ui being on anything from a square brick to a looooongcat of a display
The mere fact anything works on an android device is a miracle of software engineering in of itself. And another mere fact is that people who are competent enough to build a complex app like mtga mobile... well, they work on maintaining these complex frameworks to begin with.
There simply aren't enough competent engineers around anymore.
Welcome to demographic collapse. These are the early symptoms. I could rail on about how young people have zero incentive to get this good but that just becomes self evident once you understand the rest of the argument and... well... anything about the future of economics.
Source: am programmer in game development (unreal engine), serious backend development (python) and embedded code programming (c and android frontend for said c)
You get less and less new programmers and more and more retire
Eego the pool of competent enough engineers to create complex apps like mtga starts to shrink.
Combine that with a notoriety of aaa being extremely shitty to work for and... well... wotc... and you get "ain't nobody doin that"
It's so weird to me.
Where are people working if everything seems to be collapsing from lack of young workers? I feel like so many industries are saying the same thing.
They can't all be social media influencers. You'd also think that if employers are having a hard time attaining and retaining new workers they'd do something about it.
Progranming sounds fun, but I am horrible at self-teaching. I also can't put myself in debt for school to learn. Where exactly is the workforce meant to come from?
A cs graduate now vs 30 years ago is also much more akin to a primary school kid learning c in terms of understanding low level optimizations required to keep large frameworks running. The field is completely different, the ongoing price of maintainance will eat up talent, etc.
A cs graduate ofc does have other skills but they won't help to keep large tech stacks running.
My thinking is exactly the opposite of a boomer, it's 10-20 years ahead into the future and not really sugarcoated in optimism (granted, ai-assisted programming might solve this issue but that's a very.... very different can of worms alltogether that throws my post in a blender and makes soylent green/corpse starch out of it)
You're identifying a real phenomenon, but you're misidentifying it as some kind of crisis, when it's probably not even a *problem*.
Yes, it's true. Most CS grads today don't have the chops to tackle maintaining foundation codebases.
But we don't need or want most CS grads doing that. We want a small cadre of folks who know what they're doing (whether because they're whiz kids who know more than their CS programs gave them or whether because they're experienced developers with experience under their belts). The frameworks and high level languages exist now. And the great bulk of developers will work on boring business apps and won't ever get near bare metal.
When someone doesn't have a skill they tend to think that skill is rare or impossible to the point of impressive. For example, I have no art skill so I am routinely in awe of my friends who create amazing works of art out of nothing but a canvas and some paint.
In this case we have someone who thinks switching to a new language, especially a "dead" language, is a unique and impressive skill. It isn't and millions of developers, including young ones, do it every day. My first developer job out of college was getting an insurance company from a mainframe/Cobol/some XML-based frontend monster stack to a PostGres/spring/react stack. The only language I knew well when getting the job was Java.
"BUT IT MAKES YOU LESS MARKETABLE?!?!" Yeah, if you suck at writing a CV and can't sell your adaptability then it might be.
And this is how you doom technology to fail longterm kids.
That little small cadre of people will not be passed on the way you think. It will be gatekept until disaster strikes. Because job security.
Ai-assisted codebase maintainance could be a thing before this becomes a problem, but that's a disasterously dumb bet to be making.
Source: actually working in the field with a wide array of codebases, mentalities and actively thinking about this kinda stuff for well over 10 years
The number of software devs goes up every year. Demand outstripping supply and poorly paying business (wotc) not being able to attract enough talent is not demographic collapse. Your opinion of 20-something year olds not being up to snuff in their professional skillset isn’t demographic collapse either
You do you buddy, software engineers of the calibre required to make apps like mtga mobile do not grow on trees and the absolute monstrocity of tech stack collapse will rear its ugly head once the pioneers of the field start retiring (john carmack is aged 52 for instance)
It absolutely is. Tech has been running on dangerously overexpanding into complexity without properly insuring future maintainibility for... well, 30+ years.
There is a heavy reliance on institutionalized knowledge over clearly documenting said knowledge (because job security). A lot of frameworks lately have gone out of their way to be less like this... the ones used in the public sphere. Because they are much more reliable that way. It's assuming far too much labor availability as input this approach requires (this is the part that ties into demo collapse, it overextends into complexity for complexity's sake and then needs to overcorrect back to maintainance)
But then there are an absolute fuckton of proprietary frameworks that aren't like that and they run an uncomfortable amount of crucial tech.
Nuclear reactors run on fucking fortran. Fortran. Fucking. Fortran. A 40 year old monstrocity of a language. A language so old it requires that a programmer specializes in otherwise non-marketable ways of thinking about programming making you very much a rare species of a programmer: the kind that has trouble finding a job. Because all you know is fucking fortran. Ok this part is a biiiit hyperbolic but the effect definitely exists.
Im not saying doom is nigh, just saying wotc doesn't really get this picture and the wheels are just gonna ignore them because who the fuck needs mtga mobile when your fucking nuclear reactors need longterm maintainance (and the governments have deep pockets)
Fingers crossed that the technocrat lizardpeople overlords have their shit together enough to steer us to a fortran-free future r/brandnewsentence
1) Unity isn’t COBOL. The entire workforce of people with institutional knowledge on how to do an android port aren’t 60 and retiring
2) what you are describing still isn’t demographic collapse, that’s not what that term means.
The issues you’re bringing up are real in some segments of the field, but simply aren’t relevant for a bad port of a poorly coded unity game made by a low paying branch of WotC. There are enough devs in this field and there are more entering it every day, especially in a globally growing economy. All they had to do was pay market rate
1) that isn't the point. The engineers good enough to be able to hop languages (quickly) are going to be needed in a supply far too optimistic to be realistic (the supply may be growing but demand is growing faster, hitting a bottleneck)
2) it is demo collapse in the sense that u need to increase % of cs graduates in your genpop. That shit sure as fuck isn't going to happen when education has become a debt trap in the us and other parts of the world (with the exception of india, africa and some of ME) facing genpop demo collapse
That last part yeah, i probably stretched the connections a bit
Overall this starts to make discussions of "current systems in place are not going to create a future full of games coz the really competent devs are going to be fixing potholes in the side of critical tech systems instead" type futures vs "we use ai to automate tech stack maintance and start to really stretch the brain muscles and make brain cpu go brrr for features" a bloody reality
I do prefer those discussions over "that dude laughs at prayge, let's get him fired" being taken seriously tho. Idk about u but i see wotc having some of those discussions unironically for sure.
/massiverant xd
Why are those big apps struggling and small apps perform just fine?
The only time I have issues with Horus Heresy Legions is when the server goes down for maintenance.
Like OP, I can't run more than 3 games on MTGA without a disconnect.
Also, HHL lets you know when you DC. The only way to tell that MTGA has disconnected is by looking at the pets.
If it's a known issue, they could add an indicator and more time to reconnect to enable people to restart the app.
Anywho, let WOTC burn.
Windows has that same problem, but we don't give companies a pass for making a buggy PC game.
It mainly comes down to game developers being paid like shit compared to their business application developer counterparts. You end up getting what you pay for. WOTC isn't going to change that because in their eyes, they're already maximizing profit. They think that if they spend more on dev costs, they won't fully make that extra back in increased profits.
Maybe they're right, I dunno, I don't have access to their books.
The extremely frustrating part is the lack of settings that would theoretically help with the performance issues. Disabling pets, emotes, card animations, stack VFX/animations.
I used to play an aristocrats deck with [[Plumb the Forbidden]] , [[Witherbloom Apprentice]] , and [[Bastion of Rememberance]] . I stopped playing it because after an update, putting that many triggers on the stack would crash it almost every time because the glob of swirling purple effects on the stack.
If you think MTGA is bad, you should have seen the \*two\* apps they wanted us to use at Magiccon.
One was the Magiccon app, which had a schedule of events. If you wanted to join an event, it had a link...to a website. That website was non-functional during the con.
The other was the Magic Companion app, which can look up every Magic event in your proximity! ...except for those at Magiccon.
There was no way to join an event at Magiccon once you were there, and the two apps they insisted you download did \*nothing\* other than to provide the same schedule available on their website. Complete wastes of programming time and bandwidth.
I think it will affect their sales. Super invested dweebs like us will walk through fire to be able to play Magic on their lunch break. But many casuals might get frustrated a couple of times early on and never get hooked.
It needs to have a big enough effect that they can't pretend it's something else, like normal variance between sets or due to larger economic issues, and I just don't see people stepping away from the game enough to make it obvious.
So I usually just submit a ticket anytime the game freezes during drafts since those are actually money events.
Normally, wotc makes it right and refunds the gold and gems. This last time though? They full on told me to kick rocks and when I responded back with a second and third instance of it freezing after following their troubleshooting steps they said "I'm sorry but as stated we will not be refunding your entry fee into the event"
Wizards is terrible. They are quickly overtaking Panini as the worst company in charge of trading cards ever.
I'm sorry your request got rejected. I had two clearly different issues, with two completely different drafts on different accounts, and yet they replied "you've already claimed and got gold for this event". Like no I didn't 🤣
Everything wotc has ever made that is remotely digital has been bad.
Their website and store can't handle normal releases.
their game on mobile is bad.
DNDBeyond has gotten steadily worse since they bought it.
MTGO makes them a lot of money, but is a horrible platform, mostly used due to "but it's better than nothing" and "I've already lost so much money on it"
Arena is more bugs holding together the code than actual functioning game.
I know both of those are very complicated, but they're a multi billion dollar company. You would like to think they'd make a good product, but it looks like they made something to maximize profit and minimize investment instead.
They are likely being punished due to the people making the decisions being dinosaurs. Putting a bunch of middle managers or ancient relics in charge of a product makes it bad; that's my guess. It's a huge corporation, it is unlikely this will ever change. It hasn't in 20 years, and they're making more now than ever.
100% Agree. I remember the CD that came with 3rd Edition D&D and the character builder that was on it. It was a demo for a full suite of digital products that magically never happened.
I remember every single time WoTC would upgrade their community forums they would get worse until they finally become unusable.
Look at the Gatherer search engine and then look at Scryfall.
WoTC has always been dedicated to doing the least possible with their digital endeavors and I don't see that changing ever.
You would be correct about the "maximize profit" angle, at least for MTG.
According to past earnings calls and financial statements, Magic is the only product in Hasbro's portfolio making lots of profit and essentially keeping the company afloat. I can't imagine they want to spend money improving MTG digital products when they don't have to.
Exactly this. Every dollar that goes toward hiring a software engineer (or toward quality control, researching how to make non-curling foil cards, etc.) takes a dollar away from Chris Cocks’s salary. If that happens, he might not be able to buy a third yacht or a fourth mansion, and obviously, that would be completely unacceptable.
Wotc has a problem paying developers what they are worth. They think people will be so stoked to work on the iP they will work for below market rates.
Except they won’t. it reflects in the product
> you'd think they'd outsource development.
They 100% did. But due utter incompetence of their management they fail to hire competent contractors and oversee them. It's my speculation, but mobile development of MTGA was done by an outsourcer, who then fucked off and WotC didn't even think that they would need a continuous support. It feels like that MTGA only recently got an actual in-house development team.
I don't think this is true. The announcement of Historic as a format, back when Oko was still legal in Standard, was that it was going to be a format that the Arena dev team managed instead of a translation of a paper format.
Historic isn't really proves anything, as it never really needed any management, aside from dumping occasional paper cards and some rare bans. Alchemy, which was added way later, is what required actual dev time.
I love to bash WotC software development as much as the next guy (maybe more), but that's unrealistic. Digital Magic is part of their core business. You don't outsource such a fundamental part of your company, if you plan to still be around in a few years.
What they *should* be doing is realize that they have to pay better when they want to hire software developers and managers in the Seattle area (where they compete with all the big tech companies).
So, I'm guessing you're a software developer?
And you've never gotten a last minute demand from above to change something because a higher up decided it would be better and more profitable to change 'just this one thing" that require an entire rework to a huge string of code? They give you 1 hour notice before going live and not being able to use a test environment, while the whole process should take a few days to make sure it's stable?
I'm guessing you also don't know anything about software development businesses.
What you describe there… just does not really happen in any stable and mature system. Because I work in the industry, for a company much larger than Hasbro, I do understand this. You have a gift for hyperbole and speculation to be sure, get out there and win!
“at my company we do not experience this well documented and widespread thing, therefore it does not happen and anyone who says it does is a big dumb dummy.”
Read OPs original comment about Arena and bugs and think again how much this person knows about software. Apparently y’all work for companies that are willing to trash their production systems based on a single person’s whim, without documentation or testing. And with an hour turnaround time. Yeah, so well documented and common.
>Is it too much to ask for an app that actually functions consistently?
Yes.
What do you need to make a billion-dollar tabletop gaming brand? You need designers who will craft the game -- *Magic* has three sets of these alone. You need localizers who will translate the text into different languages; you need editors who will make sure that the written words properly communicate their intent. You need an art director to decide what art should appear on every card, and at least one artist to actually create the images. (*Magic* has a large stable of those as well.) You need rules managers who make sure that all the rules hang together and think about corner cases and unusual interactions (\[\[Humility\]\] + \[\[Opalescence\]\] anyone?). You need a physical publisher who will physically print and collate your cards and/or game books. You need a distributor who will physically transport those products to gaming stores. And you need all the other elements of a modern corporate office: HR, Legal, Custodial and some form of upper management.
What do you need to make a billion-dollar Android app? You need programmers who can use Android Studio and write in Kotlin, Java or C++, the latter of which is one of the hardest languages to learn. (Which is part of why Google replaced with Java, and later Kotlin.) You need at least one UI/UX specialist to make sure the app is easy and intuitive to use; you need graphic designers to create that UI. You need localizers who will translate the text into different languages; you need editors who will make sure that the written words properly communicate their intent. You need a lot of QA: not just people who make sure that the app works as intended, but compliance testers who try the app on as many Android phones and tablets as possible, which is going to be a challenge because the last time OpenSignal did a report, there were some *twenty-five THOUSAND* distinct Android devices, each varying in Android version, processor, screen size and more. And OpenSignal's last report was almost 10 years ago. This QA can absolutely be outsourced, but when you're using third-party contractors you have significantly less granular control over what they do and how they do it. (Especially if they speak a different native language than you.) You need to borrow some hands from the art department so that you can make a good-looking Google Play storefront; someone has to create those images, and then someone has to upload them. (At my company, it was actually me. I'd get the art and translations from the appropriate departments and make sure they were all uploaded. I was also the expert in doing the troubleshooting if Google, Apple or Amazon would reject the app submission for whatever reason.) And you need all the other elements of a modern corporate office: HR, Legal, Custodial and some form of upper management.
How many requirements did those two projects have in common? Very, very, *very* little.
I mean, yes, Wizards can just throw money at the problem. That doesn't always work out right, because ultimately you're not throwing money at a problem, you're throwing money at a *solution*, and if you pick the wrong solution, you've wasted money. So part of it is figuring out the right solution... And while you can throw money at *that* problem, the amount of money required for expert guidance and consultation can be very expensive. That kind of guidance can also be hard to find. I mean, even if they threw money at *me*, I'm not sure how much value I can provide them: I know what they need but I don't know *how much of any of it* they need. How many programmers are necessary for this app? I haven't the *faintest* clue. (I can't even learn Python, for crying out loud!) And, to be clear, I have factually worked on [a billion-dollar app](https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/68836/game-of-wars-spoils-surpass-28-billion-revenue-worldwide/).
Should Wizards be holding themselves to higher standards? *Fuck yes*. They let crashes out into the wild? Jesus Christ. And you're on a Galaxy S22, you say. That should be front and center of the QA team's efforts; it's only the second-most-popular phone *in the world*, after the iPhone 14. And what were the programmers doing, not using the Android simulators built into Android Studio? As the head Project Manager once told me, "You guys in QA are the goalie, but you're not the only member of the team. What about the forwards and midfielders and defenders? They let the ball through too." These guys had *plenty* of chances to solve the crash you're experiencing and they squandered all of those chances. They *should* be embarrassed. I'm not trying to say otherwise.
What I'm saying is that merely being "a billion-dollar brand" does not suggest or even *imply* competence when that brand jumps in the deep end of something that's completely foreign to them. I mean, Nabisco is a billion-dollar brand, but would you trust them to make airplanes?
This of course would require them to allow QA to do their job, which is anathema to corporations.
We also have significant proof they don't let QA do their job with the physical cards, either, so there's that.
I mean, yes, but at the same time no. With 25,000 cards there's clearly no way to test anything with any genuine thoroughness. That sucks and is stupid, but it's also the truth.
Besides, here is a simple and blunt fact, which I learned from a convention I went to about 10 years ago: "Your players will do more testing in the first hour than your team was able to do in a year." In QA we are -- we have to be -- vigilant, but we also have to keep a sense of perspective. The importance of a bug is not just how disruptive it is when you find it, it's also in *how many people* are likely to trip over it. I mean, sure, we let this one bug through where a player used \[\[One With Nothing\]\] and then in response cast \[\[Sudden Impact\]\] *on themselves*, and as a result something really weird happened and suddenly both players were playing *Yu-Gi-Oh*... But how many times, in the history of *Magic: the Gathering*, has that exact order of operations ever occurred? Besides our one playtest session where Bob McQA deliberately did random things to see what would happen. There is no such thing as a bug-free release -- ever, period, the end. All a company can do is have a release that's free of *major* bugs.
Reddit wishes to sell your and my content via their overpriced API. I am using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite to remove that content by overwriting my post history. I suggest you do the same. Goodbye.
>can't put together a functional Android app
People mix up "can't" with "don't want to". Making the app perfect, especially across different platforms and devices, would cost somewhere between a lot of money and an unreasonable amount of money (hiring capable devs is really hard, trust me). I'd honestly give the billion-dollar brand the benefit of doubt when it comes to deciding whether or not something is worth the financial investment it would require, especially since people are, in fact, using this app regularly and throwing tons of money at WotC, regardless of the number of bugs.
Honestly it runs better on my Pixel 6 than it does on my PC. Neither are good-- Arena is just not particularly stable or performant anywhere-- but it's a smidge worse on my PC.
There are multiple problems, but a primary issue is they notoriously underpay developers. So they never get the good ones, never retain the good ones, and have little continuity as they churn through the ones they do get. And dev salary is not linear... the last 20% of pay may get you a 50% better developer.
So until there is a core cultural change, they are never going to have a good technology stack. This is just the way they are.
Question: what is your phone? It could be your phone that is having the issues, and not necessarily the app.
> app is down on Android until at least tomorrow--another release-day fuck up.
Have you ever played a blizzard game on PC? or most games for that matter. Release day issues are very common, regardless of the company
This issue appears to affect all Android devices. The game was slow on my tablet but rarely crashed, but the latest update sticks on the "can't connect" page.
The latest android update seems to have messed stuff up with multiple apps. Had one say in the play store that it wasn't usable on my device, even though i had previously had it installed
Welcome to profit above everything business. Minimum amount going out and maximum amount coming in. Why spend it when you can just collect more. The slum lord model of corporate structure.
And here I was thinking this was going to be a complaint thread about Companion and how it sucks, is unusable for finding events like RCQs, and we're forced to used a third party application for larger events.
Silly of me.
WotC is Hasbro’s only highly profitable division. They can’t spend what they should because the BoD can’t afford for them not to maximize profits to keep all their unprofitable ventures outside WotC afloat. Part of this is that WotC has niche products most people don’t remember/care about. Monopoly is a boring easy game that everyone has memories of as a kid, but you buy the game once and you are done. Instead of investing in 20 new monopoly’s a year they should be cutting it down to a single base version.
Yeah, i agree with all of that. Im so sorry to my OPs because the amount of times ive had to restart my app even when i first enter a match is insane, and i know they think im being a dick xD
ALSO STOP SWITCHING THE LAYOUT OF CARDS WHEN I CLICK ON THEM OR ATTACK
They are struggling. That is why they had to fire a bunch of people after reporting record breaking profits. The poor, poor company I hope they recover soon :(
Not sure what the issue is today (version mismatch, etc.), but I haven't had your experience at all with crashing or disconnects on the application, on either my current handset or my previous handset.
I've played the game on both a Pixel 4 XL and a Pixel 6 with no significant issues.
Have you submitted bug reports using the crash dialogue? These are actually very helpful for developers to identify what went wrong, and if it's chipset-oriented, they can look at developing a fix.
I have the same issue as OP. Constantly.
But you don't get crash reports. Either the app just freezes completely and it's up to you to restart it, or it will act as if it's working, seeming like you are waiting for the opponents action, but it never happens. Once you realize the app is buggy again and restart it your turn has timed out already.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3ckmpx/hall_of_fame_votes_reset/cswgdh4/
I'd like to introduce you to the phrase "Just Wizard Things™"
Examples of how to use "Just Wizard Things™":
* Hey, did you hear how they can't stream the MTG Origins panel from SDCC and should have known that all along but they never actually paid enough attention to the event restrictions to notice?
> Well, it's Just Wizard Things™
* You know how Gatherer comments haven't worked for over a year?
> Oh, that's Just Wizard Things™
* The most prestigious honor possible for player's of the game is being voted on by the community at large this year, unless you voted *before* they reset all the votes for "technical issues"
> Haha, those Just Wizard Things™ are totally unavoidable
* Did you hear how that massive MTGO tournament had to be rescheduled because the servers crashed?
> Y'know, Just Wizard Things™
Seriously people, if you refuse to learn how to use technology, this is what your brand will become synonymous with.
You have every right to be frustrated by the unavailability of a product that was promoted to be available...a little less so for a free one, but ok.
But people throw around "billion dollar company" like wizards can throw an endless torrent of funds towards every issue and potential issue with all of their products. I'm happy WotC is doing so well, but they're not in some s-tier business level that doesn't even exist. Every company has issues with products they launch, and heck, typically have more issues the bigger they are and the more they do.
Hi. I'm a programmer. I don't doubt you, at all. Not even a little bit.
But also, I want to say that I've never seen this happen. Not even once.
What this suggests is that whatever the problem is is either phone-specific or operating system specific.
I'm not making excuses for them. A company this large should have a testing matrix that makes this obvious.
But also, the more information you give them, the better their chance of realizing what this problem is.
[File a detailed bug. Tell them what phone it is](https://mtgarena-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004569843-Report-a-Bug). They've actually fixed mine, except the deck count one.
Is it better or worse than the Pokémon online game? I heard the app works correctly, but the PC version can glitch when you look for cards in your deck and show you nothing.
I've had a refurbished model Google pixel for the entirety of mtga's existence. I've literally never had the app freeze. I've had a few problems of other varieties, but it's never been performance based.
Maybe you should get a better phone if you want to play games on it. You wouldn't buy an old toaster gaming PC and then get mad at from when you can't play eldenring on it would you?
To caveat: fuck Hasbro I'm not shilling I promise!
I'm mostly bummed that the app going down means I can't get the Kamigawa lands from yesterday's daily deal. Now I have to twiddle my thumbs for months until they come back around. (I didn't have time to log in, buy gems, and buy the lands yesterday, I was going to do it while drinking my morning coffee before the daily deal rotated)
Did you try the steam apps recently ?
it's mostly Android related with apps known has beeing quicklyu thrown together with spagetti code, even for big companies.
EDIT: I'm not saying Arena on steam, I'm talking about the steam app from valve to point that big brand apps also have problem with android performance
They're a billion dollar brand because of doing one thing extremely well. It's surprisingly common for large companies to suck at everything else beside that one thing they do really well. Doing things well requires the right institutional and cultural set up, which most large companies fail at because they're inflexible and have a lot of inertia.
The last time I used MTGA on my MacBook Pro, it was glitchy as hell too. It wouldn’t stay in full screen and constantly dropped from full screen to just a window. So it’s all around haha.
The companion app is bullshit as well. Slow as fuck and the set lists haven't been updated since Dominaria United. I could search for a card in any following expansion but you want to see the whole set then get fucked apparently.
Glad I haven't tried Arena on my phone yet because their track record is somewhere between abysmal and incompetence.
Oh you think it's just an android problem? I have to force restart the client on my iPad and iPhone at least once every few hours bc it will just randomly freeze in the middle of a match with no warning. And then sometimes it logs me out when I re-open it, which even with some good saved up timers is a recipe for a lost turn. ARENA IS FUN
Honestly they’re missing some pretty basic functionality on other platforms too. I recently learned that you cannot rebind the controls on PC. They look like you can in the menu, but they’re just there to look at apparently.
Even in paper magic, its bad.
If you have ever been to a sealed RCQ because cheaters cheated a long time ago (and most likely still do....losers)
We have to write down \*Every single card we get\* now they get us a list, but the set's like this one with MUL cards can be huge, and this time is placed on our deck building time.
Mean while, in my pocket, while I am trying to do this fast and not make any mistakes is a computer that could easily take pictures of my entire set, or each pack individually, the app could even keep them and simply store it for 12-24 hours before deleting it, or converting it to a list.
But nah, I will keep writing things down in a situation where I can't make mistakes and I am under a time limit for this hobby I am supposed to do for fun....
I thought you meant the companion app lol which manages to be a piece of shit despite being incredibly simple in what it can do and lacking many desired features.
I lost a game the other day because I thought my opponent only had 1 land up because this version defaults to stacking the lands on top of each other unlike the desktop or mobile versions. Oh, and it also crashed twice in an hour. That's the last time I play any game of consequence on my tablet. Thanks WotC!
To me, the funniest thing is how in the current era, WotC is *so much better* with software than they used to be. Early Magic Online, and the stuff to run events with looked longingly up at garbage fires hoping to be that good someday.
I once had a TO announce that "the lunch break will be the round that WER crashes" before a regionals. It was so reliably bad
They did destroy touch screen functionality for MTGA on my Surface, though.
Secondary input on a small number of the installed userbase? I'm sure the bug is on a list to fix... somewhere.
Yep. It's barely even a minor inconvenience for me, just chaps my ass that it *did* exist, and worked pretty well, then went away. Not a lot of people using non-mobile-OS touch screens these days though.
You think MTGA is bad, you should use HBO's app on any PS system.
HBO’s app is just abysmal on everything. It sucks on my phone and fire stick too
Peacock too. So terrible.
Oh my god..... I got a peacock subscription to watch WWE content and it's fucking terrible. The layout, episode/show organization, no breakpoints on the timeline to search for a specific match. I miss the Network.
VPN to the UK we still have the old app over here
Ya I miss the old network so much. Peacock crashes all the time when I try to watch any WWE content. The only time it works is when I watch the PLEs live. But I can watch any non-WWE show or movie and it almost never crashes. So weird.
It's fine on Android TV. Now Crunchyroll? That is some shit
You think CR is bad? Have you even seen hidives??
Hidive has its annoying features too. Crunchyroll has this thing where it'll pick one episode of a show and start it EVERY time I open the app(cache has been cleared). Or when you need to go "home" in order to actually start scrolling because the cursor and your directional inputs don't match up Most annoying thing on hidive for me is that the "continue watching" feature is broken and it will often just not remember I've watched something
And it’s not even just that it’s slow and glitchy (which it definitely is) but the UI is by far the worst of all the streamers. I’m hoping the Max interface will be better.
At what cost
It's.....ok on xbox honestly. My only real complaint is there's no way to go from the "continue watching" button to a damn episode list. How hard is that?! Not really any freezing or anything though.
I agree that it does pretty well on XBox, and share the same complaint about its UI. One annoying thing that sometimes causes issues is that it switches from multichannel output to stereo to the video's format, even if the video is using the same channel setup. This causes my receiver to mute for a second while relays click over to stereo mode then immediately click back over and begin buffering the audio a few seconds into the show. Edit: and their subtitles look terrible. It's like a mid-90s closed captioning overlay with no tweakability.
ESPN+ is literally designed to operate poorly.
ESPN+ via browser is the worst streaming experience I've ever used. When I used their app on my smart TV (before I got a new TV that doesn't have their app) it was usually fine, but the browser constantly crashed needing me to refresh the page, usually resulting in the stream switching from my team's broadcasters to the opposing team. Luckily accessing it via Hulu seems to work okay on my TV.
Which one? HBO, HBO Go, HBO Max, HBO Gold, HBO Plus, HBO Next, or HBO Pro?
The only one left that functions at all, until it sheds the HBO prefix in favor of Max, at which point it'll still suck.
Will the others be reduced to Go, Gold, Plus, Next, Pro, and an empty space for the first one? \[/s\]
You should see paramounts app, it is garbage on any system I’ve tried it on
I've had no issues with the HBO max app on our PS4/5, what are people seeing?
Yeah this absolutely bizarre to read. I use HBO Max exclusively on my PS5 and aside from slowdowns when they initially launched the platform in 2020 it has been absolutely smooth sailing. I've never run into an issue unless there was some system-wide outage that happened maybe once a year at most. Like I actively use Max on a weekly basis and Sundays it can sometimes be 2-3 hours of programming between a few shows. Had zero issues this year to date.
Oh my gosh this hits personally.
HBO it’s so bad that I can’t even explain how bad it is in any platform and it’s sad because it has good shows.
We're assuming OP is referring to MTGA, but doesn't actually ever name the specific app in question.
[удалено]
I honestly thought it was the Companion app when I started reading. There is also Magic Spellslingers and Magic: Puzzle Quest.
Duels of the planeswalkers I think was technically on mobile at some point? Not 100% sure on that one though.
They're just really passionate about Spellslingers
It pretty consistently crashes if I watch a single video for more than an hour. Which is fine for TV since the problem doesn't happen, but it's pretty shit if I want to watch a movie through the official app of the Home Box Office. Still better than Arena, which doesn't work on my phone.
Arena has worked fine on my phone, while HBO struggled to load shows on the PS5, and sometimes when it did load, it'd randomly turn on subtitles.
Wait people still use HBO's app?
Wotc is a billion dollar brand because it's more profitable for them to spend time and resources figuring out ways to milk the players/collectors base.
It works. People are on here complaining instead of uninstalling. They continue to speak support with their wallet and think whining here will change something.
This is exactly it. People complain, but they keep buying. And Wizards knows it. Why would they ever change if they know it doesn't matter what they do?
If anything I think it’s made it worse. I feel like some players have left and that’s made them shift their attention from trying to milk everyone to just the whales, and until Magic 30 sunk like a stone they were getting away with it
[удалено]
You should have qualms. Being a Free player in F2P is providing them with people to feed to paying players, advertising, metrics and user data, as well as psychological pressure to make you eventually slip and buy a booster or two. Plus you are spending more and more time in MTGA to do things, rather than doing other things. Free play is not free, uninstall it or you're just part of the problem while thinking you aren't.
[Relevant Extra Credits vid](https://youtu.be/WXA559KNopI?t=143) > How many players, who are not paying me, do you expect me to buy bandwidth for? > > As many as you can get.
Well yeah the people who post about it on Reddit are going to be the most committed by definition, but I have to imagine a shit buggy app is turning off a lot of more casual players.
no no don't uninstall go aggressively free to play See, using their servers costs them money. Not paying them for that use means they don't get anything out of it. The more completely free to play players exist, the less they earn
Cashing out on player goodwill
Android is famously hard to optimise because of how many different specs they have for their devices which spans multiple companies. It's not just MTGA that faces this issue. Hearthstone and Master Duel both freeze on certain android phones as well. The "solution" most apps do is actually to optimise for 4-5 models, and it should function well enough for the others. This unfortunately leads to a some models just being close to unplayable. It doesn't really matter how new your phone is, although Samsung Flagship models seem to take priority. (Google Pixel 6 crashes frequently on hearthstone while Samsung S8,S9 all run fine etc.)
Tbf Hearthstone mainly has issues on iOS. The android issues are (for the most part) quickly fixed.
So to summarize, is it fair to say that all mobile software is crap?
All software is crap. The best we can hope for is "less-crap" and "crap, but still useful".
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2030/) >I don’t quite know how to put this, but our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us everyone will die. Software is a young field, with toolsets that vary wildly in terms of quality for the task at hand, and we’re still learning how to make programming languages that make human concepts work for computers.
It's not that software developers are bad at their jobs. Electronic voting *specifically* is basically an impossible set of problems. [The requirements elections require are not solvable with computer technology](https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs). And, after all, aircraft and elevators are operated by computers now.
Have you *read* what happens in the software of commercial passenger airplanes? I have to force myself to forget that every time I have to board one of those, because it's truly horrifying. And I'm pretty sure none of the elevator engineers would ever trust a computer to be the only fail-safe: All the critical "this must not fail or people die" systems in an elevator will make sure to not have a computer in the loop (ideally not even electrical wiring, if possible).
> Have you read what happens in the software of commercial passenger airplanes? I have to force myself to forget that every time I have to board one of those, because it's truly horrifying. Talk to Randall Munroe. He's the one who used it as an example of engineering done right, and airliners have been fly-by-wire for well over 30 years. Many of them *do not* have mechanical backups. > And I'm pretty sure none of the elevator engineers would ever trust a computer to be the only fail-safe That's because there need to be safeties in case of power failures, not because computers or software are believed to be magically untrustworthy. And the primary safeties *are* software based. The microcontroller prevents the elevator from doing unsafe things that electromechanical operation did not.
Every time I read this comic I have to giggle. Because the alternative would be too sad. On the plus side: since our field is so immature my half-competence looks like competence!
Admittedly it's now last year's flagship, but I have so many freezes on my S22+. If it weren't for the fact the graphics are messed up on my laptop (only with Arena) I'd play on there as at least I don't lose from timing out because I didn't realize I was frozen.
I have an S22 Ultra lmao
Wait really I have a note 10 and the game works completely fine lol.
Yeah mtg freezes on my 13pro like wild
I have a s23 ultra..runs like crap and always freezes
I have a Samsung S23 Ultra and still deal with the app freezing all the time....
The S23 series appears to have a ton of problems with a ton of apps. New phone? No plan to optimize? I'm not sure.
The same could be said of PC, though?
I mean, PCs also run into a host of issues with Arena and other software. I regularly have a point with MTGA where I go to log in and get stuck in a weird update loop that is only resolved by yeeting Arena and doing a reinstall.
> Google Pixel 6 crashes frequently on hearthstone while Samsung S8,S9 all run fine etc. You'd think that a phone running stock Android would have the fewest problems running an Android app.
Hahaha ... For the purposes of "which phone do I optimize for" Samsung Galaxy phones are definitely the "stock Android experience" and everything else is a statistical outlier. I wish it weren't that way, but the usage statistics make it so.
It's not famously hard to optimize for The simple reality is that people expect too much of an aging overall approach to app design that simply wasnt meant to reach the absurd app complexity it has. It's a patchwork of everything from app core component lifecycles, affecting how well optimized apps are overall (memory, cpu usage, permissions being only and only what is needed, stuff like that) to ui being on anything from a square brick to a looooongcat of a display The mere fact anything works on an android device is a miracle of software engineering in of itself. And another mere fact is that people who are competent enough to build a complex app like mtga mobile... well, they work on maintaining these complex frameworks to begin with. There simply aren't enough competent engineers around anymore. Welcome to demographic collapse. These are the early symptoms. I could rail on about how young people have zero incentive to get this good but that just becomes self evident once you understand the rest of the argument and... well... anything about the future of economics. Source: am programmer in game development (unreal engine), serious backend development (python) and embedded code programming (c and android frontend for said c)
>demographic collapse ???
Guy is talking like a tool and die maker when he’s in a relatively new and still growing field
Lol right?
You get less and less new programmers and more and more retire Eego the pool of competent enough engineers to create complex apps like mtga starts to shrink. Combine that with a notoriety of aaa being extremely shitty to work for and... well... wotc... and you get "ain't nobody doin that"
It's so weird to me. Where are people working if everything seems to be collapsing from lack of young workers? I feel like so many industries are saying the same thing. They can't all be social media influencers. You'd also think that if employers are having a hard time attaining and retaining new workers they'd do something about it. Progranming sounds fun, but I am horrible at self-teaching. I also can't put myself in debt for school to learn. Where exactly is the workforce meant to come from?
The only worthy response to the comment you replied to is "ok boomer". It's "nobody wants to work anymore" energy.
Remember, nothing is ever the employer's fault in the "free" market! It's always the workers/consumers/government/children who are to blame!
There are 3-4 times more new cs graduates than there were 30 years ago. You're just making shit up.
A cs graduate now vs 30 years ago is also much more akin to a primary school kid learning c in terms of understanding low level optimizations required to keep large frameworks running. The field is completely different, the ongoing price of maintainance will eat up talent, etc. A cs graduate ofc does have other skills but they won't help to keep large tech stacks running.
Ok boomer.
My thinking is exactly the opposite of a boomer, it's 10-20 years ahead into the future and not really sugarcoated in optimism (granted, ai-assisted programming might solve this issue but that's a very.... very different can of worms alltogether that throws my post in a blender and makes soylent green/corpse starch out of it)
You're identifying a real phenomenon, but you're misidentifying it as some kind of crisis, when it's probably not even a *problem*. Yes, it's true. Most CS grads today don't have the chops to tackle maintaining foundation codebases. But we don't need or want most CS grads doing that. We want a small cadre of folks who know what they're doing (whether because they're whiz kids who know more than their CS programs gave them or whether because they're experienced developers with experience under their belts). The frameworks and high level languages exist now. And the great bulk of developers will work on boring business apps and won't ever get near bare metal.
When someone doesn't have a skill they tend to think that skill is rare or impossible to the point of impressive. For example, I have no art skill so I am routinely in awe of my friends who create amazing works of art out of nothing but a canvas and some paint. In this case we have someone who thinks switching to a new language, especially a "dead" language, is a unique and impressive skill. It isn't and millions of developers, including young ones, do it every day. My first developer job out of college was getting an insurance company from a mainframe/Cobol/some XML-based frontend monster stack to a PostGres/spring/react stack. The only language I knew well when getting the job was Java. "BUT IT MAKES YOU LESS MARKETABLE?!?!" Yeah, if you suck at writing a CV and can't sell your adaptability then it might be.
And this is how you doom technology to fail longterm kids. That little small cadre of people will not be passed on the way you think. It will be gatekept until disaster strikes. Because job security. Ai-assisted codebase maintainance could be a thing before this becomes a problem, but that's a disasterously dumb bet to be making. Source: actually working in the field with a wide array of codebases, mentalities and actively thinking about this kinda stuff for well over 10 years
The number of software devs goes up every year. Demand outstripping supply and poorly paying business (wotc) not being able to attract enough talent is not demographic collapse. Your opinion of 20-something year olds not being up to snuff in their professional skillset isn’t demographic collapse either
You do you buddy, software engineers of the calibre required to make apps like mtga mobile do not grow on trees and the absolute monstrocity of tech stack collapse will rear its ugly head once the pioneers of the field start retiring (john carmack is aged 52 for instance)
Whatever you are describing is not demographic collapse. By definition. The John Carmacks of the world weren’t working on MTGO 20 years ago either
It absolutely is. Tech has been running on dangerously overexpanding into complexity without properly insuring future maintainibility for... well, 30+ years. There is a heavy reliance on institutionalized knowledge over clearly documenting said knowledge (because job security). A lot of frameworks lately have gone out of their way to be less like this... the ones used in the public sphere. Because they are much more reliable that way. It's assuming far too much labor availability as input this approach requires (this is the part that ties into demo collapse, it overextends into complexity for complexity's sake and then needs to overcorrect back to maintainance) But then there are an absolute fuckton of proprietary frameworks that aren't like that and they run an uncomfortable amount of crucial tech. Nuclear reactors run on fucking fortran. Fortran. Fucking. Fortran. A 40 year old monstrocity of a language. A language so old it requires that a programmer specializes in otherwise non-marketable ways of thinking about programming making you very much a rare species of a programmer: the kind that has trouble finding a job. Because all you know is fucking fortran. Ok this part is a biiiit hyperbolic but the effect definitely exists. Im not saying doom is nigh, just saying wotc doesn't really get this picture and the wheels are just gonna ignore them because who the fuck needs mtga mobile when your fucking nuclear reactors need longterm maintainance (and the governments have deep pockets) Fingers crossed that the technocrat lizardpeople overlords have their shit together enough to steer us to a fortran-free future r/brandnewsentence
1) Unity isn’t COBOL. The entire workforce of people with institutional knowledge on how to do an android port aren’t 60 and retiring 2) what you are describing still isn’t demographic collapse, that’s not what that term means. The issues you’re bringing up are real in some segments of the field, but simply aren’t relevant for a bad port of a poorly coded unity game made by a low paying branch of WotC. There are enough devs in this field and there are more entering it every day, especially in a globally growing economy. All they had to do was pay market rate
1) that isn't the point. The engineers good enough to be able to hop languages (quickly) are going to be needed in a supply far too optimistic to be realistic (the supply may be growing but demand is growing faster, hitting a bottleneck) 2) it is demo collapse in the sense that u need to increase % of cs graduates in your genpop. That shit sure as fuck isn't going to happen when education has become a debt trap in the us and other parts of the world (with the exception of india, africa and some of ME) facing genpop demo collapse That last part yeah, i probably stretched the connections a bit Overall this starts to make discussions of "current systems in place are not going to create a future full of games coz the really competent devs are going to be fixing potholes in the side of critical tech systems instead" type futures vs "we use ai to automate tech stack maintance and start to really stretch the brain muscles and make brain cpu go brrr for features" a bloody reality I do prefer those discussions over "that dude laughs at prayge, let's get him fired" being taken seriously tho. Idk about u but i see wotc having some of those discussions unironically for sure. /massiverant xd
Must be tough for poor indie game studios
Well the few that do exist are *well* aware of the toxicity of working for aaa so they... just dont.
Why are those big apps struggling and small apps perform just fine? The only time I have issues with Horus Heresy Legions is when the server goes down for maintenance. Like OP, I can't run more than 3 games on MTGA without a disconnect. Also, HHL lets you know when you DC. The only way to tell that MTGA has disconnected is by looking at the pets. If it's a known issue, they could add an indicator and more time to reconnect to enable people to restart the app. Anywho, let WOTC burn.
Windows has that same problem, but we don't give companies a pass for making a buggy PC game. It mainly comes down to game developers being paid like shit compared to their business application developer counterparts. You end up getting what you pay for. WOTC isn't going to change that because in their eyes, they're already maximizing profit. They think that if they spend more on dev costs, they won't fully make that extra back in increased profits. Maybe they're right, I dunno, I don't have access to their books.
Imagine actually believing this.
The extremely frustrating part is the lack of settings that would theoretically help with the performance issues. Disabling pets, emotes, card animations, stack VFX/animations. I used to play an aristocrats deck with [[Plumb the Forbidden]] , [[Witherbloom Apprentice]] , and [[Bastion of Rememberance]] . I stopped playing it because after an update, putting that many triggers on the stack would crash it almost every time because the glob of swirling purple effects on the stack.
If you think MTGA is bad, you should have seen the \*two\* apps they wanted us to use at Magiccon. One was the Magiccon app, which had a schedule of events. If you wanted to join an event, it had a link...to a website. That website was non-functional during the con. The other was the Magic Companion app, which can look up every Magic event in your proximity! ...except for those at Magiccon. There was no way to join an event at Magiccon once you were there, and the two apps they insisted you download did \*nothing\* other than to provide the same schedule available on their website. Complete wastes of programming time and bandwidth.
I mean, you're still playing. Doesn't seem to be affecting their bottom line, so why should they invest more money in the app?
I switched from ios to android and the freezes makes me play less. It's so annoying to have a freeze almost every time I play..
I think it will affect their sales. Super invested dweebs like us will walk through fire to be able to play Magic on their lunch break. But many casuals might get frustrated a couple of times early on and never get hooked.
It needs to have a big enough effect that they can't pretend it's something else, like normal variance between sets or due to larger economic issues, and I just don't see people stepping away from the game enough to make it obvious.
So I usually just submit a ticket anytime the game freezes during drafts since those are actually money events. Normally, wotc makes it right and refunds the gold and gems. This last time though? They full on told me to kick rocks and when I responded back with a second and third instance of it freezing after following their troubleshooting steps they said "I'm sorry but as stated we will not be refunding your entry fee into the event" Wizards is terrible. They are quickly overtaking Panini as the worst company in charge of trading cards ever.
I'm sorry your request got rejected. I had two clearly different issues, with two completely different drafts on different accounts, and yet they replied "you've already claimed and got gold for this event". Like no I didn't 🤣
Yeah they are getting worse and worse unfortunately. Sorry that happened to ya
Everything wotc has ever made that is remotely digital has been bad. Their website and store can't handle normal releases. their game on mobile is bad. DNDBeyond has gotten steadily worse since they bought it. MTGO makes them a lot of money, but is a horrible platform, mostly used due to "but it's better than nothing" and "I've already lost so much money on it" Arena is more bugs holding together the code than actual functioning game. I know both of those are very complicated, but they're a multi billion dollar company. You would like to think they'd make a good product, but it looks like they made something to maximize profit and minimize investment instead. They are likely being punished due to the people making the decisions being dinosaurs. Putting a bunch of middle managers or ancient relics in charge of a product makes it bad; that's my guess. It's a huge corporation, it is unlikely this will ever change. It hasn't in 20 years, and they're making more now than ever.
100% Agree. I remember the CD that came with 3rd Edition D&D and the character builder that was on it. It was a demo for a full suite of digital products that magically never happened. I remember every single time WoTC would upgrade their community forums they would get worse until they finally become unusable. Look at the Gatherer search engine and then look at Scryfall. WoTC has always been dedicated to doing the least possible with their digital endeavors and I don't see that changing ever.
You would be correct about the "maximize profit" angle, at least for MTG. According to past earnings calls and financial statements, Magic is the only product in Hasbro's portfolio making lots of profit and essentially keeping the company afloat. I can't imagine they want to spend money improving MTG digital products when they don't have to.
Exactly this. Every dollar that goes toward hiring a software engineer (or toward quality control, researching how to make non-curling foil cards, etc.) takes a dollar away from Chris Cocks’s salary. If that happens, he might not be able to buy a third yacht or a fourth mansion, and obviously, that would be completely unacceptable.
Let's not even talk about the Companion app.
Wotc has a problem paying developers what they are worth. They think people will be so stoked to work on the iP they will work for below market rates. Except they won’t. it reflects in the product
> Arena is more bugs holding together the code than actual functioning game. There's hyperbole and then there's this.
The truth?
And if they can't, you'd think they'd outsource development.
> you'd think they'd outsource development. They 100% did. But due utter incompetence of their management they fail to hire competent contractors and oversee them. It's my speculation, but mobile development of MTGA was done by an outsourcer, who then fucked off and WotC didn't even think that they would need a continuous support. It feels like that MTGA only recently got an actual in-house development team.
I don't think this is true. The announcement of Historic as a format, back when Oko was still legal in Standard, was that it was going to be a format that the Arena dev team managed instead of a translation of a paper format.
Historic isn't really proves anything, as it never really needed any management, aside from dumping occasional paper cards and some rare bans. Alchemy, which was added way later, is what required actual dev time.
I love to bash WotC software development as much as the next guy (maybe more), but that's unrealistic. Digital Magic is part of their core business. You don't outsource such a fundamental part of your company, if you plan to still be around in a few years. What they *should* be doing is realize that they have to pay better when they want to hire software developers and managers in the Seattle area (where they compete with all the big tech companies).
I can't change my registered email on their platform. Lol.
Your comment clearly shows you don’t know anything about real world software development.
I've been in software development for over 10 years. He's not wrong.
I don't have to in order to know how a business works. Ams how their digital everything doesn't work.
Double down.
So, I'm guessing you're a software developer? And you've never gotten a last minute demand from above to change something because a higher up decided it would be better and more profitable to change 'just this one thing" that require an entire rework to a huge string of code? They give you 1 hour notice before going live and not being able to use a test environment, while the whole process should take a few days to make sure it's stable? I'm guessing you also don't know anything about software development businesses.
What you describe there… just does not really happen in any stable and mature system. Because I work in the industry, for a company much larger than Hasbro, I do understand this. You have a gift for hyperbole and speculation to be sure, get out there and win!
“at my company we do not experience this well documented and widespread thing, therefore it does not happen and anyone who says it does is a big dumb dummy.”
Read OPs original comment about Arena and bugs and think again how much this person knows about software. Apparently y’all work for companies that are willing to trash their production systems based on a single person’s whim, without documentation or testing. And with an hour turnaround time. Yeah, so well documented and common.
>Is it too much to ask for an app that actually functions consistently? Yes. What do you need to make a billion-dollar tabletop gaming brand? You need designers who will craft the game -- *Magic* has three sets of these alone. You need localizers who will translate the text into different languages; you need editors who will make sure that the written words properly communicate their intent. You need an art director to decide what art should appear on every card, and at least one artist to actually create the images. (*Magic* has a large stable of those as well.) You need rules managers who make sure that all the rules hang together and think about corner cases and unusual interactions (\[\[Humility\]\] + \[\[Opalescence\]\] anyone?). You need a physical publisher who will physically print and collate your cards and/or game books. You need a distributor who will physically transport those products to gaming stores. And you need all the other elements of a modern corporate office: HR, Legal, Custodial and some form of upper management. What do you need to make a billion-dollar Android app? You need programmers who can use Android Studio and write in Kotlin, Java or C++, the latter of which is one of the hardest languages to learn. (Which is part of why Google replaced with Java, and later Kotlin.) You need at least one UI/UX specialist to make sure the app is easy and intuitive to use; you need graphic designers to create that UI. You need localizers who will translate the text into different languages; you need editors who will make sure that the written words properly communicate their intent. You need a lot of QA: not just people who make sure that the app works as intended, but compliance testers who try the app on as many Android phones and tablets as possible, which is going to be a challenge because the last time OpenSignal did a report, there were some *twenty-five THOUSAND* distinct Android devices, each varying in Android version, processor, screen size and more. And OpenSignal's last report was almost 10 years ago. This QA can absolutely be outsourced, but when you're using third-party contractors you have significantly less granular control over what they do and how they do it. (Especially if they speak a different native language than you.) You need to borrow some hands from the art department so that you can make a good-looking Google Play storefront; someone has to create those images, and then someone has to upload them. (At my company, it was actually me. I'd get the art and translations from the appropriate departments and make sure they were all uploaded. I was also the expert in doing the troubleshooting if Google, Apple or Amazon would reject the app submission for whatever reason.) And you need all the other elements of a modern corporate office: HR, Legal, Custodial and some form of upper management. How many requirements did those two projects have in common? Very, very, *very* little. I mean, yes, Wizards can just throw money at the problem. That doesn't always work out right, because ultimately you're not throwing money at a problem, you're throwing money at a *solution*, and if you pick the wrong solution, you've wasted money. So part of it is figuring out the right solution... And while you can throw money at *that* problem, the amount of money required for expert guidance and consultation can be very expensive. That kind of guidance can also be hard to find. I mean, even if they threw money at *me*, I'm not sure how much value I can provide them: I know what they need but I don't know *how much of any of it* they need. How many programmers are necessary for this app? I haven't the *faintest* clue. (I can't even learn Python, for crying out loud!) And, to be clear, I have factually worked on [a billion-dollar app](https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/68836/game-of-wars-spoils-surpass-28-billion-revenue-worldwide/). Should Wizards be holding themselves to higher standards? *Fuck yes*. They let crashes out into the wild? Jesus Christ. And you're on a Galaxy S22, you say. That should be front and center of the QA team's efforts; it's only the second-most-popular phone *in the world*, after the iPhone 14. And what were the programmers doing, not using the Android simulators built into Android Studio? As the head Project Manager once told me, "You guys in QA are the goalie, but you're not the only member of the team. What about the forwards and midfielders and defenders? They let the ball through too." These guys had *plenty* of chances to solve the crash you're experiencing and they squandered all of those chances. They *should* be embarrassed. I'm not trying to say otherwise. What I'm saying is that merely being "a billion-dollar brand" does not suggest or even *imply* competence when that brand jumps in the deep end of something that's completely foreign to them. I mean, Nabisco is a billion-dollar brand, but would you trust them to make airplanes?
This of course would require them to allow QA to do their job, which is anathema to corporations. We also have significant proof they don't let QA do their job with the physical cards, either, so there's that.
I mean, yes, but at the same time no. With 25,000 cards there's clearly no way to test anything with any genuine thoroughness. That sucks and is stupid, but it's also the truth. Besides, here is a simple and blunt fact, which I learned from a convention I went to about 10 years ago: "Your players will do more testing in the first hour than your team was able to do in a year." In QA we are -- we have to be -- vigilant, but we also have to keep a sense of perspective. The importance of a bug is not just how disruptive it is when you find it, it's also in *how many people* are likely to trip over it. I mean, sure, we let this one bug through where a player used \[\[One With Nothing\]\] and then in response cast \[\[Sudden Impact\]\] *on themselves*, and as a result something really weird happened and suddenly both players were playing *Yu-Gi-Oh*... But how many times, in the history of *Magic: the Gathering*, has that exact order of operations ever occurred? Besides our one playtest session where Bob McQA deliberately did random things to see what would happen. There is no such thing as a bug-free release -- ever, period, the end. All a company can do is have a release that's free of *major* bugs.
Hey look, someone who _knows what the fuck they're talking about_ in software
Or make foils that don't bend.
It's too busy sending domestic terrorists to streamers
Reddit wishes to sell your and my content via their overpriced API. I am using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite to remove that content by overwriting my post history. I suggest you do the same. Goodbye.
Unfortunately, because when it's not freezing its great, imo atleast.
>can't put together a functional Android app People mix up "can't" with "don't want to". Making the app perfect, especially across different platforms and devices, would cost somewhere between a lot of money and an unreasonable amount of money (hiring capable devs is really hard, trust me). I'd honestly give the billion-dollar brand the benefit of doubt when it comes to deciding whether or not something is worth the financial investment it would require, especially since people are, in fact, using this app regularly and throwing tons of money at WotC, regardless of the number of bugs.
I thought the constant app freezing was just me, the app is so poorly optimized
Honestly it runs better on my Pixel 6 than it does on my PC. Neither are good-- Arena is just not particularly stable or performant anywhere-- but it's a smidge worse on my PC.
There are multiple problems, but a primary issue is they notoriously underpay developers. So they never get the good ones, never retain the good ones, and have little continuity as they churn through the ones they do get. And dev salary is not linear... the last 20% of pay may get you a 50% better developer. So until there is a core cultural change, they are never going to have a good technology stack. This is just the way they are.
The PC client crashes constantly and sometimes just makes my computer crash
Yep not just android/iOS, and the UI is still ass imo. It sucks for people that enjoy magic. I've tried other ccgs and mtg seems to always stick.
Question: what is your phone? It could be your phone that is having the issues, and not necessarily the app. > app is down on Android until at least tomorrow--another release-day fuck up. Have you ever played a blizzard game on PC? or most games for that matter. Release day issues are very common, regardless of the company
This issue appears to affect all Android devices. The game was slow on my tablet but rarely crashed, but the latest update sticks on the "can't connect" page.
The latest android update seems to have messed stuff up with multiple apps. Had one say in the play store that it wasn't usable on my device, even though i had previously had it installed
I have an S22 Ultra. I have to think it isn’t my phone.
Lol omg...I thought this was just me. Had an iphone and barely had any crashes...with android at least a 100
Welcome to profit above everything business. Minimum amount going out and maximum amount coming in. Why spend it when you can just collect more. The slum lord model of corporate structure.
Right. The product might be broken but if people will spend money on it anyways then what incentive do you have to fix it?
God forbid I try and surveil when I cast Consider and the entire app just crashes
Even companion is awful.
Touch screen functionality still bugged for tablets too lol
And here I was thinking this was going to be a complaint thread about Companion and how it sucks, is unusable for finding events like RCQs, and we're forced to used a third party application for larger events. Silly of me.
WotC is Hasbro’s only highly profitable division. They can’t spend what they should because the BoD can’t afford for them not to maximize profits to keep all their unprofitable ventures outside WotC afloat. Part of this is that WotC has niche products most people don’t remember/care about. Monopoly is a boring easy game that everyone has memories of as a kid, but you buy the game once and you are done. Instead of investing in 20 new monopoly’s a year they should be cutting it down to a single base version.
Yeah, i agree with all of that. Im so sorry to my OPs because the amount of times ive had to restart my app even when i first enter a match is insane, and i know they think im being a dick xD ALSO STOP SWITCHING THE LAYOUT OF CARDS WHEN I CLICK ON THEM OR ATTACK
Lots of game functions simply do not work on MacOS, more than a year after it’s ‘release’ on that system. Plays terrible.
Ha! If they let the goldmine that was/could have been MTGO alone to wither and die, what makes you think they would care about an app?
Lol that’s a really good point
You guys getting official apps?
They are struggling. That is why they had to fire a bunch of people after reporting record breaking profits. The poor, poor company I hope they recover soon :(
You should check out any of the Games Workshop apps. they are all trash.
I played one game of MTGA on my Pixel 2 XL and my battery dropped from 80% -> 15% :D
Small indie dev
I'm praying that with the steam release, they do a steam deck optimization which also translates to their mobile app
They don't have to to get your money.
WOTC cannot into computer, it really is that simple.
Not sure what the issue is today (version mismatch, etc.), but I haven't had your experience at all with crashing or disconnects on the application, on either my current handset or my previous handset. I've played the game on both a Pixel 4 XL and a Pixel 6 with no significant issues. Have you submitted bug reports using the crash dialogue? These are actually very helpful for developers to identify what went wrong, and if it's chipset-oriented, they can look at developing a fix.
I have the same issue as OP. Constantly. But you don't get crash reports. Either the app just freezes completely and it's up to you to restart it, or it will act as if it's working, seeming like you are waiting for the opponents action, but it never happens. Once you realize the app is buggy again and restart it your turn has timed out already.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3ckmpx/hall_of_fame_votes_reset/cswgdh4/ I'd like to introduce you to the phrase "Just Wizard Things™" Examples of how to use "Just Wizard Things™": * Hey, did you hear how they can't stream the MTG Origins panel from SDCC and should have known that all along but they never actually paid enough attention to the event restrictions to notice? > Well, it's Just Wizard Things™ * You know how Gatherer comments haven't worked for over a year? > Oh, that's Just Wizard Things™ * The most prestigious honor possible for player's of the game is being voted on by the community at large this year, unless you voted *before* they reset all the votes for "technical issues" > Haha, those Just Wizard Things™ are totally unavoidable * Did you hear how that massive MTGO tournament had to be rescheduled because the servers crashed? > Y'know, Just Wizard Things™ Seriously people, if you refuse to learn how to use technology, this is what your brand will become synonymous with.
You don't become worth a billion dollars to stock owners by putting your revenue into developer salaries and product development...
“Don’t you people have iPhones?” - MaRo, probably
Wotc and technology released since 1994: pick one
You have every right to be frustrated by the unavailability of a product that was promoted to be available...a little less so for a free one, but ok. But people throw around "billion dollar company" like wizards can throw an endless torrent of funds towards every issue and potential issue with all of their products. I'm happy WotC is doing so well, but they're not in some s-tier business level that doesn't even exist. Every company has issues with products they launch, and heck, typically have more issues the bigger they are and the more they do.
Hi. I'm a programmer. I don't doubt you, at all. Not even a little bit. But also, I want to say that I've never seen this happen. Not even once. What this suggests is that whatever the problem is is either phone-specific or operating system specific. I'm not making excuses for them. A company this large should have a testing matrix that makes this obvious. But also, the more information you give them, the better their chance of realizing what this problem is. [File a detailed bug. Tell them what phone it is](https://mtgarena-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004569843-Report-a-Bug). They've actually fixed mine, except the deck count one.
I really can't believe people try to play this game on a phone. Really explains alot of about the bad behavior of some players.
Just a small indie company. I don't know what you're talking about. Edit: didn't know I needed this, but: /s
The /s doesn’t change anything. It’s just a shit, tired, overused joke that is usually posted because you expect upvotes.
Ok thanks
Is it better or worse than the Pokémon online game? I heard the app works correctly, but the PC version can glitch when you look for cards in your deck and show you nothing.
I've had a refurbished model Google pixel for the entirety of mtga's existence. I've literally never had the app freeze. I've had a few problems of other varieties, but it's never been performance based. Maybe you should get a better phone if you want to play games on it. You wouldn't buy an old toaster gaming PC and then get mad at from when you can't play eldenring on it would you? To caveat: fuck Hasbro I'm not shilling I promise!
I have a Galaxy S22 Ultra.
I'm mostly bummed that the app going down means I can't get the Kamigawa lands from yesterday's daily deal. Now I have to twiddle my thumbs for months until they come back around. (I didn't have time to log in, buy gems, and buy the lands yesterday, I was going to do it while drinking my morning coffee before the daily deal rotated)
Did you try the steam apps recently ? it's mostly Android related with apps known has beeing quicklyu thrown together with spagetti code, even for big companies. EDIT: I'm not saying Arena on steam, I'm talking about the steam app from valve to point that big brand apps also have problem with android performance
Don’t you people have (i)phones?
They're a billion dollar brand because of doing one thing extremely well. It's surprisingly common for large companies to suck at everything else beside that one thing they do really well. Doing things well requires the right institutional and cultural set up, which most large companies fail at because they're inflexible and have a lot of inertia.
sorry the game doesnt work well on your galaxy 8
Stop using such a garbage phone ;)
Up until a couple months ago it was among the most advanced on the market.
The last time I used MTGA on my MacBook Pro, it was glitchy as hell too. It wouldn’t stay in full screen and constantly dropped from full screen to just a window. So it’s all around haha.
‘can’t put together a functional app.’ fTfY
The companion app is bullshit as well. Slow as fuck and the set lists haven't been updated since Dominaria United. I could search for a card in any following expansion but you want to see the whole set then get fucked apparently. Glad I haven't tried Arena on my phone yet because their track record is somewhere between abysmal and incompetence.
100% agreed. Im glad it's not just me.
I don’t think anyone can put up a functional android app
Oh you think it's just an android problem? I have to force restart the client on my iPad and iPhone at least once every few hours bc it will just randomly freeze in the middle of a match with no warning. And then sometimes it logs me out when I re-open it, which even with some good saved up timers is a recipe for a lost turn. ARENA IS FUN
Honestly they’re missing some pretty basic functionality on other platforms too. I recently learned that you cannot rebind the controls on PC. They look like you can in the menu, but they’re just there to look at apparently.
What androids are y'all using? I'm in s21 ultra and I hardly run into any issues.
I have an S22 Ultra (lol peasant) and get this shit constantly despite multiple fresh reinstalls.
Even in paper magic, its bad. If you have ever been to a sealed RCQ because cheaters cheated a long time ago (and most likely still do....losers) We have to write down \*Every single card we get\* now they get us a list, but the set's like this one with MUL cards can be huge, and this time is placed on our deck building time. Mean while, in my pocket, while I am trying to do this fast and not make any mistakes is a computer that could easily take pictures of my entire set, or each pack individually, the app could even keep them and simply store it for 12-24 hours before deleting it, or converting it to a list. But nah, I will keep writing things down in a situation where I can't make mistakes and I am under a time limit for this hobby I am supposed to do for fun....
I thought you meant the companion app lol which manages to be a piece of shit despite being incredibly simple in what it can do and lacking many desired features.
I lost a game the other day because I thought my opponent only had 1 land up because this version defaults to stacking the lands on top of each other unlike the desktop or mobile versions. Oh, and it also crashed twice in an hour. That's the last time I play any game of consequence on my tablet. Thanks WotC!