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Ciprian Maricon posted:They are discussing leaked cards on social media. That they happen to be closer to the source of the leak than you or I doesn't somehow make it suddenly extra bad and evil, its not like discussing leaks is some sort of crime until X degrees of separation and suddenly its morally defensible. It not their responsibility or yours to go "hmmm oh boy, let me consider how far removed from the original leak these card images are so I can know whether I can ethically discuss their impact on my children's card game" WotC's reasoning (and I'm not saying whether or not I agree with it) must be that the 3-monthers knew exactly where the leaks were coming from (and I'm pretty sure I figured it out also) because they were talking to other people who they knew had inside information. It's like if I'm an employee (judges aren't employees) of a company, my friend is on some secret project, and shares the details of that project with me for months. Then one day one of the other people the NDA'd person shared details with goes and tells everything to some news organization. My boss is probably now pissed at me for knowing about the leak for a while and not saying anything. Angry Grimace posted:Aren't the random members of the group only banned like three months If you're dedicated enough to Magic to be a level 3 judge, three months is a long time.
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Dec 23, 2015 18:46
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GoutPatrol posted:wizards, hire this man at 60% of the market rate A generous offer for Wizards.
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Dec 23, 2015 18:56
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Snacksmaniac posted:A generous offer for Wizards. Can we not be so hasty to demonize wizards here? We haven't heard their side of the story. Maybe the grossly below-market wages are a tax scheme and the employees are being paid massive sums under the table?
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Dec 23, 2015 18:58
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BJPaskoff posted:WotC's reasoning (and I'm not saying whether or not I agree with it) must be that the 3-monthers knew exactly where the leaks were coming from (and I'm pretty sure I figured it out also) because they were talking to other people who they knew had inside information. It's like if I'm an employee (judges aren't employees) of a company, my friend is on some secret project, and shares the details of that project with me for months. Then one day one of the other people the NDA'd person shared details with goes and tells everything to some news organization. My boss is probably now pissed at me for knowing about the leak for a while and not saying anything. Bolded the relevant part of the post. At no point in time has leaks been something that Wizards has required their consumers to report, nor is it something judges have been expected to report. Just straight up banning a bunch of people out of the blue for something that was never communicated to them to be something they would be punished for not reporting is just another great example of Wizards consistency in enforcing DCI rules. Or even making them.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:00
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They're actually overpaying their employees because 80% of their market rate salary is paid in "love of the game" and "privilege of working at WotC".
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Dec 23, 2015 19:01
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BJPaskoff posted:WotC's reasoning (and I'm not saying whether or not I agree with it) must be that the 3-monthers knew exactly where the leaks were coming from (and I'm pretty sure I figured it out also) because they were talking to other people who they knew had inside information. I don't see why its their responsibility to report leaks to WOTC. Should I have reported it when someone told me they "knew" FOW was going to be a Judge foil? I mean its just stupid, the whole spoiler leak thing is harmless and WOTC are trying to pin down exactly what makes this case a transgression but all of the other times people see leaks and don't report them are fine. Ciprian Maricon fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 19:07
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Problems leaks present to WotC: marketing has to adjust their schedule
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Dec 23, 2015 19:11
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jassi007 posted:Doesn't even need to be a total strike. No reason l1's can't keep supporting their local stores and just have l2's & 3's not sign up for a couple GP's. The big get would be for judges to fail to show at the PT. WOTC would put employees in the role, but it'd be the whole NFL ref strike all over again. Quality would just be awful. Rashad Miller as head judge
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Dec 23, 2015 19:11
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Cynic Jester posted:Bolded the relevant part of the post. At no point in time has leaks been something that Wizards has required their consumers to report, nor is it something judges have been expected to report. Just straight up banning a bunch of people out of the blue for something that was never communicated to them to be something they would be punished for not reporting is just another great example of Wizards consistency in enforcing DCI rules. Or even making them. There are no explicit DCI rules they have to follow; wizards doesn't actually need an explicit policy in place to give a DCI suspension. That's your consistency: refardless of the morality of it, wizards' policy is "we can ban you at any time for any reason." The dirty not-so-secret about magic is that the consumer doesn't have any recourse if WotC decides to ban them for, say, wearing a hearthstone t-shirt in a feature match. There's a difference between whether an action makes sense from WotC's perspective (eg banning everyone in the judge chat who, if we take WotC on their word, knew about multiple leak sources and said nothing) and whether it's morally right. I'd hazard a guess that if anyone had knowledge of multiple leaks and the source thereof, and didn't tell wotc as soon as they suspected the truth, wotc would ban them for not going to them sooner, presumably in an attempt to scare people into reporting leakers ASAP. Is that reasonable? I dunno, probably not. This reaction seems more likely to stop people from reporting leakers altogether than to get the leakers reported sooner. It's a bad move; not because of the ambiguous morality of the situation (knowing about leaks and not reporting them seems like an arguably good reason for wotc to get mad, since the leakers are, though unquantifiably, making the marketing team have a harder job; the idea that it's not reasonable to report the leaks, and that not reporting them would have no consequences, seems a bit more out there than wotc's response) rather because, practically, the message from this ban is likely to deter the exact wrong thing. Jen X fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 19:15
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There's a legitimate argument, mind, that it's unfair to the judges since they didn't have any expectation of being banned if they didn't do what wotc wanted. The problem is that "unfairness" isn't a thing wotc cares about, and never will be, because they value the ability to ban people for unforseen actions (eg crackgate guy) more than they do the illusion of a rigid policy
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Dec 23, 2015 19:18
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this is it. this is our lump of coal isnt it?
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Dec 23, 2015 19:19
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Can we have a thread agreement that whenever someone posts "I think it's dumb and bad that wizards did [thing]", we just pretend that five people responded "Whoa whoa whoa! There is no legal grounds under which Wizards can be prosecuted for doing as many dumb bad things as they want!" wuthout actually making those posts? Thanks.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:19
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The market rate for employees is whatever people will actually work for and its apparently really hard to get a job there (see: Melissa De Tora's contract expiring without being renewed). As much as I'd like to bag on them for it, there's no actual reason for them to pay employees any more than they do.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:20
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Angry Grimace posted:The market rate for employees is whatever people will actually work for and its apparently really hard to get a job there (see: Melissa De Tora's contract expiring without being renewed). Not exploiting people? Other companies with lower profit margins pay their employees more than they need to because they actually value them.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:23
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ThePeavstenator posted:Not exploiting people? Other companies with lower profit margins pay their employees more than they need to because they actually value them. For the most part this is totally inaccurate, actually.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:25
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There are tangible benefits, like higher worker productivity, higher work quality, and decreased turnover. Businesses that do it are in the minority but it does happen.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:29
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ThePeavstenator posted:Not exploiting people? Other companies with lower profit margins pay their employees more than they need to because they actually value them. like you do realize this is a problem with capitalism in general, not just wizards. they pay what they do bc they can get away with it, like all businesses
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Dec 23, 2015 19:31
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full communism now, is the correct answer to fixing wizards
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Dec 23, 2015 19:32
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e: ^^^ actually, this is the correct answer. tbh, thats only a problem with poorly regulated capitalism.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:33
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mandatory lesbian posted:full communism now, is the correct answer to fixing wizards
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Dec 23, 2015 19:33
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always be capitalists
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Dec 23, 2015 19:33
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They should pay the programming people more just so MTGO isn't as lovely otherwise it doesn't really affect anyone.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:34
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by all accounts MTGO literally just prints money for them so sadly the bare bones staff they have is all they're gonna have for the foreseeable future and the really terrible thing is that i'm gonna redownload it to play the Time Spiral Flashback draft, thereby perpetuating a terrible system
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Dec 23, 2015 19:36
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GoutPatrol posted:wizards, hire this man at 60% of the market rate Lmao.
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Dec 23, 2015 19:42
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I will say that MTGO has improved quite a bit. I don't really notice the RAM issue at all anymore. But it got fixed really incrementally so there never was a moment where we all said "hey they fixed it!"
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Dec 23, 2015 19:52
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The problem is that they're near Seattle, a.k.a. Amazon and Microsoft country (and I think there's a Google branch there too?). Under-paying your software employees in an area like that just gets you underperformers or fresh grads that don't have experience actually maintaining systems, irrelevant of their programming proficiency. This is why MTGO's problems always seem so bizarre -- they're mostly symptoms of poor architectural design. And the real problem is that, if WotC has little-to-no high quality talent, their less qualified talent isn't being mentored proficiently, which just makes everything worse as time goes on. It's utterly baffling that this extremely popular nerd game has an absurdly bad web client.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:15
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I would switch out of paper and into mtgo if the client was halfway decent.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:17
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Dungeon Ecology posted:e: ^^^ actually, this is the correct answer. properly regulated capitalism is still capitalism.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:19
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Procrastinator posted:It's utterly baffling that this extremely popular nerd game has an absurdly bad web client. Actually it has several absurdly bad web clients, it's just that two of them are actual Hasbro products and should have every resource required to succeed, and the others are fan projects. It also has a very good single player game that came out in literally 1997 and is vastly more playable than anything more recent.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:19
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Snacksmaniac posted:They should pay the programming people more just so MTGO isn't as lovely otherwise it doesn't really affect anyone. Giving the guys they already have a raise probably isn't going to make MTGO not a poo poo product. They need to hire actually good programmers and give them the new improved wages to make it work. They also probably need more people on the team than however many they have right now.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:30
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Cernunnos posted:Giving the guys they already have a raise probably isn't going to make MTGO not a poo poo product.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:31
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Outside of software development, is there really any evidence of WotC underpaying people? I mean it's my understanding that most game (including like video game) companies tend to be more towards the bottom end of the payscale for IT stuff. Also regardless of the rightness of the bannings, it seems WotC could've handled the situation better either way. Although it's hard telling what actual effect this will have besides getting dudes on the internet pissed off which is their natural state anyways so idk.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:47
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Cernunnos posted:Giving the guys they already have a raise probably isn't going to make MTGO not a poo poo product. My understanding is that the big problem isn't necessarily the programmers they have, its that they have to build it off of an increasingly aging architecture while simultaneously making sure every card works properly AND constantly adding new cards because WOTC's release schedule is pretty aggressive.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:49
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On the flip side, Wizards paying their programmers poo poo ensures that the best talent gravitates to companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, who actually produce things that matter in the IRL, so society is better off.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:54
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Angry Grimace posted:My understanding is that the big problem isn't necessarily the programmers they have, its that they have to build it off of an increasingly aging architecture while simultaneously making sure every card works properly AND constantly adding new cards because WOTC's release schedule is pretty aggressive. There are much more complicated systems maintained much better than mtgo in the marketplace. Steam somehow manages to still update and roll out new features while maintaining compatibility with tens of thousands of entirely separate computer programs. Valve also expends a great deal of effort obtaining quality staff to do so (and those quality staff developed an architecture that is much simpler to maintain because the lovely architecture is an effect of bad staff, rather than itself a cause of mtgo being awful), rather than taking anyone with a pulse and a willingness to accept below-average pay.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:55
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What happened was that wotc got the dregs of the seattle development community that were layed off ms and wherever during the first dotcom crash. Then, anyone with vision went along with gleemax and got pushed out when it failed. So now you have the ultraconservative half of a bunch of people who were not any good at software to begin with who have been there long enough to be in charge. Thus an insular and slow moving hierarchy with predictable results.
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Dec 23, 2015 21:27
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When do we get the article which states what wizard did well/not well in the past year? Like what was made right and made wrong. I would love to read how wizards made an "honest" mistake of printing abominations like Jace, flipwalker and promise how "we would definitely balance jaces next time (but obviously break it, i mean how can they not push jaces?)". I would also like to see how they did theros enchantments really well (they did not). Also: I was browsing through Craigslist and saw a posting for a collection of thousands of cards for $200. So jump on the chance since collections go for way more. I drive to the ladies house, introduce myself and start going through the boxes - there literally were thousands, most commons & uncommons, but a lot of rares & mythics. I agree to the terms and buy the cards. She walks me to the door & tells me about the cards. They were her grandsons collection, who used to play- (mind you that I am mostly thinking in head about what I just bought & how I am going to organize them between what I keep & what I trade on Pucatrade, so all of the pieces are not really coming together in my head, not until about half an hour ago). She told me her grandson is 12, played heavily for 4 years, then decided he was over it. She then told me that he told her he "wanted to get back into it." The boys grandmother told him that he's not to, that they are selling them. She then tells me that the cards are going to pay for the family of 5 (I am guessing grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, and kid) to see the new Star Wars flick. I say good bye, thank her for selling me the cards & go on my merry way. Half an hour ago, all of the moving parts just came together. For 4 years, a kid, from ages 8 to 12, spends money (allowance, gift, trade, etc...) to gather a collection. He parents/grandparents see his disinterest over time and sell it for a mere $200, when he most likely spent $400 or more (he had to have). He not only loses his hobby, but the time, energy, and money that went into it doesn't go back to him. Instead, they thoughtlessly and greedily used the money on the family. He's 12, he has no choice to oblige. I do feel guilty now for buying the collection. I think they parents/grandparents should have given him 1 chance (1 or 2 nights) to build 3 - 4 decks to keep him into the hobby, then ditched the rest. I understand I do not know the whole story: he could have an actual card addiction, where it affected his grades, home life, social life, etc... But it got me thinking about my own perils. I remember my own mother once getting mad at the 15 year old me for not cleaning my room, then taking a 5000 count box and tossing it into a garbage bag. She later rescinded and I reorganized the cards (my mother, years later, apologized). Is it strictly ignorance that pushes a parent to act so thoughtless. Or is it the parent/child relationship of dominance? I began playing in winter of '93- Black Lotus was a $100 card. As I saw it grow in price, I kept bugging my dad (who has made a lot of money in the stocks) to buy a few, as an investment. He just laughed, called the game a trend. He now wishes he listened to me. I ask this to any of the parents/grandparents out there: Do you keep an open mind in your children's hobbies? How to you express respect and understanding when scholastic/family/friendships/etc... deteriorate when a card game goes from a hobby to an addiction? I hope you are fair and do not trash their game (literally and figuratively). Anil Dikshit fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 21:50
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Angry Grimace posted:My understanding is that the big problem isn't necessarily the programmers they have, its that they have to build it off of an increasingly aging architecture while simultaneously making sure every card works properly AND constantly adding new cards because WOTC's release schedule is pretty aggressive. Everything I've heard about MTGO dev is that they have one team doing something that should be separated among 2 or 3 teams. Like there's no reason you should be taking people away from network stability troubleshooting to test rules code for a bunch of new cards every set, but apparently they just have one MTGO team that does everything and never has time to properly focus on major improvements because they're in constant deadline panic. They still treat MTGO like a novel little side-project that they're doing in-house with a small team when really it should be spun off into a whole department of its own with like 3x the staff. And the backend probably ought to be redone from scratch but that's such a gargantuan task now that they're never going to do it. Fuzzy Mammal posted:What happened was that wotc got the dregs of the seattle development community that were layed off ms and wherever during the first dotcom crash. Then, anyone with vision went along with gleemax and got pushed out when it failed. So now you have the ultraconservative half of a bunch of people who were not any good at software to begin with who have been there long enough to be in charge. Thus an insular and slow moving hierarchy with predictable results. And this. Whenever they do manage to hire someone who's actually skilled and driven and willing to take sub-standard pay for the chance to work on the game they love, that person inevitably gets frustrated by the culture and quits before managing to really change anything for the better. See: Jon Loucks.
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Dec 23, 2015 21:51
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kizudarake posted:When do we get the article which states what wizard did well/not well in the past year? Like what was made right and made wrong. Jace isn't broken, it's a beautiful baby and Magic deserves more cards like it, not less What they should actually apologize for is making a lovely standard around the cool, fairly powered card
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Dec 23, 2015 21:54
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TheKingofSprings posted:Jace isn't broken, it's a beautiful baby and Magic deserves more cards like it, not less drat right.
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Dec 23, 2015 22:04
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