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Cool.
Any particular reason we have to wait so long for a bug fix?
Cool.
Any particular reason we have to wait so long for a bug fix?
Essentially, shipping releases is a pretty complicated process that involves a lot of coordination. We keep them pretty tightly to a schedule. The December holidays were certainly a big gap there. #wotc_staff
This issue should be fixed with the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty release, by the way. #wotc_staff
Most problematic card for the software team? Most problematic card for the QA team?
Probably the most notorious card for us to implement was [[Explore the Vastlands]], the backside of [[Wandering Archaic]]. It literally took weeks to work out the kinks on this card - and to add insult to injury, it's such a strategically worse card than its other face that it feels like it was a waste of our time. Managing the control flow of the "each player" loop was very much like pulling teeth for our semantics processing...
For QA, I'd say something like [[Thief of Sanity]] and/or [[Underworld Breach]] would be the biggest problem child. Essentially every action permission mechanic (e.g. MDFCs, Mutate, Disturb, etc) needs to be vetted through "well what happens if you get to cast your opponent's cards, and what if they're face down?". And there have been many bugs with conferring an alternative cost with non-mana payments over the years; I think we're finally through the woods with them though. #wotc_staff
Hey, your team does a good job maintaining Arena's game logic. The infinite complexity of MTG card interactions is insane, it's impressive the game works as well as it does.
Any chance we could get a rundown of how the software and design tools work under the hood? Or anecdotes about some particularly squirrely bugs? It sounds like working on Arena would make for a really fun programming story.
Why thank you! While we still have never found a good opportunity to give an in-depth article about its workings (and it's one of those topics where's it's very hard to avoid going down endless digressions!), we did do a video with Gavin Verhey's Youtube show, Good Morning Magic, a few months ago that discusses this very topic, featuring yours truly! Here it is. Also I'm usually open to answering ad-hoc questions (at least ones that I have good answers to!). #wotc_staff
Looks like the predictive discount from Vine Gecko is acting up, possibly in combination with the Skydiver's minimum-1 kicker. That can definitely cause you to lose priority of it's your only meaningful action. I'll look into it tomorrow. #wotc_staff
