Magic The Gathering: Arena Dev Tracker

Originally posted by jasonsavory123

Can I ask why this approach to creating rules was chosen and simultaneously we don’t have a larger card pool? If the rules are generated by reading oracle rules text, why is pioneer, modern, legacy etc not available ?

I could understand the smaller card pool if rules were manually implemented as functions or equivalent, but this threw me for a loop as something that seems too complex for the limited card pool the game started with.

Originally posted by jmorganmartin

We got a Bug-Atog!

Thanks! It is fascinating.

What about [[Blazing Torch]]?

It was a new-to-Arena card affected by the same bug. It makes sense that you wouldn't write a specific test for this new card with (basically) the same effect as Ninja's Kunai, and it makes sense that you don't re-test every old card. But, you also said that all new cards are tested by the human QA team.

Was Blazing Torch overlooked by human QA because it was on the rotating bonus sheet? Pure speculation on my part, but perhaps they didn't have as much (or any) time to test with those cards because they were late add-ons to the set, or something like that?

Originally posted by space20021

The rules engine was not coded by hand, but generated from machine learning and NLP...?

That's a bold move

Originally posted by DeeBoFour20

Interesting read. I appreciate the transparency as well. I understand bugs like this can slip through and it's not reasonable to manually test some draft chaff from 4 sets ago.

Can you elaborate on the problem with the "emergency ban" system? I've seen people on here saying that's it bugged. Apparently a WotC employee made some statement to that effect. I think a lot of people got upset that there was no immediate remedy to stop people from cheating for multiple days while you're working on a patch.

Originally posted by Crystal__

Now I have the irresistible urge to test the behavior of [[Toralf's Hammer]] pre-bug. Does it deal 3 damage for each permanent you control? Only for each equipment you control? Only for each attached equipment? Only 3 damage regardless? Would it magically unatttach all other equipped equipment you control? Would MTGA collapse trying to unnattach permanents without Equip ability? So many questions!

Originally posted by RealisticCommentBot

similar for multiple serra paragons , though it is at least relevant in some way in that case as you can only use it once per turn per serra paragon

Originally posted by ghalta

Well, we don't want to make a separate action for each Falco you have out - we just have one action for "you're casting a particular card using a Falco ability" - we don't keep track of which ability-on-a-Falco is responsible, as it's irrelevant (and if it were displayed, perhaps misleading to a player!).

Back when rune decks were a thing, and I had multiple [[Runeforge Champion]] on the field, Arena would make me pick which one's ability I was using when I wanted to case a rune for (1) instead of its casting cost.

That seems like a very similar situation. I haven't played that deck in a long while, as it has fallen from standard. Were both changed so that the player didn't have to pick? If not, why were they handled differently?

Originally posted by EmTeeEm

Hi Ben! Thanks for the write-up. I love behind the scenes stuff like this.

While we've got you here, could you answer a question I've had for a while: were Boons invented to help the card parser? They kind of confused me because they seem like a thing Alchemy and Arena were already doing for delayed triggers, but with adding the words "You get a boon with..." to everything.

It is just something I've been wondering for a long time, since it seems like it didn't add anything Arena didn't already do, otherwise.

Originally posted by HotTakes4HotCakes

They likely still have to go through each individual one and check or tweak it.

But when you really think about how card text is written, how standardized it is, and that it has been written that way consistently (more or less) for years now, it's really not all that surprising they can do that.

In a sense, the cards are already written in code. You have an official rule set that explains the order of operations and defines specific functions for specific text, then you have card text that is written methodically to adhere to it. It's all structured logically so the results are seldom in question.

Compare that to some other digital only card games where they don't care very much about the consistent logic of the text. The cards were programmed to work as intended, doesn't matter if the player gets it.