ChaosJim
Member
First, let me introduce myself (if you already know me, you can skip to the second paragraph). My name is Jimmy O’Brien, and I’ve loved Pokémon since I first heard about it. I thought the way it used a game to connect players would change video games forever. I had already tried my hand at Magic (I enjoyed it but was bad). The news of a Pokémon Online Game was awesome, and I got really into it. I played feverishly, getting 2nd at the 2000 East Coast Super Trainer Showdown, and took a number of years off to return in 2008 to become a World Championship Semi-Finalist.
For a long time there had been Apprentice, an online TCG client that was originally used for Magic: the Gathering. It had serious connection issues, you needed to know your opponent’s IP in order to play. Eventually, other options arose like Redshark and PlayTCG. Meanwhile, Magic had Magic: the Gathering Online (MTGO). Many Pokémon players thought we could only hope for something like that. Eventually though, Pokémon grew enough that Pokémon Trading Card Game Online arose. For many of us long time fans, we had finally come to see what seemed like the best we could hope for.
PTCGO was a work in progress, but we, the fans, were happy to help by playing a large number of games, and detailing problems we encountered for those trying to improve the game. I personally put in hours not only to actually playing games (which I obviously enjoyed), but trying to figure out what was broken about the game, and becoming a member of the PTCGO community (which surprisingly was a little different than the PTCG community I knew).
Five months ago, Jason Klaczynski, one of the most respected players in our community, made a post on the PTCGO forums (seen here http://www.pokemontcg.com/forums/fe...suggestion-bug-report-from-experienced-player ). Basically, over the course of 5 pages people chime in to agree with Jason and help revise his concerns. These aren’t the only issues with PTCGO, there are in fact meta-issues, but I’d like to look back on Jason’s 20 points to see what has actually been accomplished in 5 months.
Then I’ll add some points of my own as to why I’m concerned PTCGO will not grow:
1) Fix the lag – Simply put, the game runs just as slowly as before. This could be because the game is flash based, but this should have been seen as an issue before reaching the public on their home PCs.
2) Counteroffer bug – Counteroffers don’t work for many people still.
3) My Wanted bug – Most people do not have their ‘wanted cards’ save, still.
4) Offline trade notification – Then and now, it only shows trade offers accepted in the order that they were made. We asked for a notification showing which offers were accepted, and we haven’t received it.
5) Duplicate card bug – Perhaps Jason misnamed this, but the game will let you make trade offers for cards that are not in circulation (Promo Litwick before it was available for example)
6) Waiting for opponent to acknowledge cards – hasn’t been improved.
7) Slowness of powers – powers that are ‘as many times as you like during your turn’ still take a long time to perform. This is good for no one.
8) Time glitches – sometimes the clock runs extra, sometimes it doesn’t give people a loss for using all of their time.
9) Animation of shuffling your hand into your deck – still slow.
10) Confirm trade offers that receive nothing – Why let people make the mistake of giving their cards away? It really looks like you just don’t care about them.
11) Immediate placement of lone basic – still the program immediately places it for you, giving the player going first an unfair advantage that doesn’t occur in real life.
12) Bench display bug – still not fixed
13) Facedown card bug – still not fixed
14) Public search offer – has never worked for me or anyone I’ve asked
15) Theme deck cost – this might’ve been fixed, but really, is probably the least important thing possible. I tried to check, and the shop wasn’t working correctly.
16) Add a rematch button – no comment
17) Multiple possibility trade offers – this actually seems a little more difficult to implement cleanly than many of the other suggestions, but I’ve seen no indication that we are moving in this direction.
18) Disconnected Time – while “fixed” from 5 minutes down to 30-60 seconds as Jason asked, it doesn’t always keep that time correctly.
19) Punish idling – isn’t in effect, I’ve accidentally forgotten games were going and people conceded to me. This is unfair.
20) Simplify entering codes – it still takes far too long, and way too many clicks.
Those were twenty helpful comments, basically none of which were implemented over 5 months. What makes it worse? A handful of highly used cards simply do not work. What is even worse still? Cards like Victory Medal, Tropical Beach, and Tropical Wind (which competitive players use in tournaments and practice with) can’t be used, and there has been no announcement on if or how they plan to distribute these cards.
Allowing a secondary market for digital cards was a big issue, an argument was made that it would grow the game, and the counterpoint was, “it is our policy that these cards cannot be sold.” While the legal language was ambiguous and the penalties were harsh, we players eventually just thought, “things will get better.” Five months later, despite our best efforts as individuals and a community, things have not gotten better.
We were promised, in particular, a new, shinier version of PTCGO at the beginning of the year. February has started, and I haven’t seen an indication of this. The worst bug of all has surfaced instead: people are missing cards out of their collection. In particular, Ultra-Rare cards. PTCGO has no record of these people trading these cards away, but they claim they cannot verify that these cards were on someone’s account to begin with. Video proof is apparently insufficient. When customer service was unhelpful, and Electrified Games was contacted about it, Randy Buehler notified a player that Electrified Games’ contract came to a natural conclusion and was not renewed and could not help. So, while people lose their collection, bugs aren’t fixed, and there is no indicator of when things will really get better: what should we do?
I’ve been basically avoiding PTCGO since early December, hoping the shiny version in the beginning of 2012 would draw me back into a game I spent so much time and effort on. Instead, I think we need to figure out as a community (with Pokémon) what to do moving forward. We are experiencing an unacceptable status quo, with no improvement in sight.
For a long time there had been Apprentice, an online TCG client that was originally used for Magic: the Gathering. It had serious connection issues, you needed to know your opponent’s IP in order to play. Eventually, other options arose like Redshark and PlayTCG. Meanwhile, Magic had Magic: the Gathering Online (MTGO). Many Pokémon players thought we could only hope for something like that. Eventually though, Pokémon grew enough that Pokémon Trading Card Game Online arose. For many of us long time fans, we had finally come to see what seemed like the best we could hope for.
PTCGO was a work in progress, but we, the fans, were happy to help by playing a large number of games, and detailing problems we encountered for those trying to improve the game. I personally put in hours not only to actually playing games (which I obviously enjoyed), but trying to figure out what was broken about the game, and becoming a member of the PTCGO community (which surprisingly was a little different than the PTCG community I knew).
Five months ago, Jason Klaczynski, one of the most respected players in our community, made a post on the PTCGO forums (seen here http://www.pokemontcg.com/forums/fe...suggestion-bug-report-from-experienced-player ). Basically, over the course of 5 pages people chime in to agree with Jason and help revise his concerns. These aren’t the only issues with PTCGO, there are in fact meta-issues, but I’d like to look back on Jason’s 20 points to see what has actually been accomplished in 5 months.
Then I’ll add some points of my own as to why I’m concerned PTCGO will not grow:
1) Fix the lag – Simply put, the game runs just as slowly as before. This could be because the game is flash based, but this should have been seen as an issue before reaching the public on their home PCs.
2) Counteroffer bug – Counteroffers don’t work for many people still.
3) My Wanted bug – Most people do not have their ‘wanted cards’ save, still.
4) Offline trade notification – Then and now, it only shows trade offers accepted in the order that they were made. We asked for a notification showing which offers were accepted, and we haven’t received it.
5) Duplicate card bug – Perhaps Jason misnamed this, but the game will let you make trade offers for cards that are not in circulation (Promo Litwick before it was available for example)
6) Waiting for opponent to acknowledge cards – hasn’t been improved.
7) Slowness of powers – powers that are ‘as many times as you like during your turn’ still take a long time to perform. This is good for no one.
8) Time glitches – sometimes the clock runs extra, sometimes it doesn’t give people a loss for using all of their time.
9) Animation of shuffling your hand into your deck – still slow.
10) Confirm trade offers that receive nothing – Why let people make the mistake of giving their cards away? It really looks like you just don’t care about them.
11) Immediate placement of lone basic – still the program immediately places it for you, giving the player going first an unfair advantage that doesn’t occur in real life.
12) Bench display bug – still not fixed
13) Facedown card bug – still not fixed
14) Public search offer – has never worked for me or anyone I’ve asked
15) Theme deck cost – this might’ve been fixed, but really, is probably the least important thing possible. I tried to check, and the shop wasn’t working correctly.
16) Add a rematch button – no comment
17) Multiple possibility trade offers – this actually seems a little more difficult to implement cleanly than many of the other suggestions, but I’ve seen no indication that we are moving in this direction.
18) Disconnected Time – while “fixed” from 5 minutes down to 30-60 seconds as Jason asked, it doesn’t always keep that time correctly.
19) Punish idling – isn’t in effect, I’ve accidentally forgotten games were going and people conceded to me. This is unfair.
20) Simplify entering codes – it still takes far too long, and way too many clicks.
Those were twenty helpful comments, basically none of which were implemented over 5 months. What makes it worse? A handful of highly used cards simply do not work. What is even worse still? Cards like Victory Medal, Tropical Beach, and Tropical Wind (which competitive players use in tournaments and practice with) can’t be used, and there has been no announcement on if or how they plan to distribute these cards.
Allowing a secondary market for digital cards was a big issue, an argument was made that it would grow the game, and the counterpoint was, “it is our policy that these cards cannot be sold.” While the legal language was ambiguous and the penalties were harsh, we players eventually just thought, “things will get better.” Five months later, despite our best efforts as individuals and a community, things have not gotten better.
We were promised, in particular, a new, shinier version of PTCGO at the beginning of the year. February has started, and I haven’t seen an indication of this. The worst bug of all has surfaced instead: people are missing cards out of their collection. In particular, Ultra-Rare cards. PTCGO has no record of these people trading these cards away, but they claim they cannot verify that these cards were on someone’s account to begin with. Video proof is apparently insufficient. When customer service was unhelpful, and Electrified Games was contacted about it, Randy Buehler notified a player that Electrified Games’ contract came to a natural conclusion and was not renewed and could not help. So, while people lose their collection, bugs aren’t fixed, and there is no indicator of when things will really get better: what should we do?
I’ve been basically avoiding PTCGO since early December, hoping the shiny version in the beginning of 2012 would draw me back into a game I spent so much time and effort on. Instead, I think we need to figure out as a community (with Pokémon) what to do moving forward. We are experiencing an unacceptable status quo, with no improvement in sight.
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