Huge respond time using fetcher cards (lands, creatures etc)

[Alanaris]

Hello
It's been years I didn't really play, but recently came back to my account and doing at least some solitaire vintage matches. One oof the reason I mostly stoped playing mtgo was the fact that it's almost impossible to play with someone (and annoying as well in solitaire) due to the huge respond time selecting cards when using fetcher cards. I had this issue when my PC was brand new a couple years ago (so performant) and I still have the issue today. All effects are disabled, I run the game with the minimum possible and still....
If as example I play any land fetchers for getting more than 1 card (i.e.Explosive Vegetation or Farsight with Threshold) it takes between 45 (having just started the PC/Game) and 90(!!) seconds (after a couple of solitaire runs) to select a card. The LAST card is always quick; but the first ones have this respond time until the cards are marked "green" (selected). The same thing happens with any creature fetcher cards as well (like Congregation at Dawn). As I run fat 5-color decks (around 250 cards) I absolutely need those fetchers of course. You can imagine that it is impossible to play 1vs1 that way, imagine the other player needs to wait almost 5 minutes if I only play 1 card.... I won't do that pain to anybody Even playing Solitaire I have the time to prepare a coffe, go to toilet or feed my cats in between every card pick from the spell.
I had this issue on my last 3 PC's I used in the last couple of years. I remember when I played a lot (yeah that was 20 years ago) there were no issues and we often played double/trople headed dragon format in the clan back then. I remember that I have this issue since an version upgrade of the game (also long ago). Is there any solution to accelerate this or solve the problem or am I condamned to play Solitaire for the eternity?

Thanks for any advice or help

 

[Firedrake]

The excessive lag appears to have started about the time Ikoria was released, so I originally blamed it on the then-new Companion functions. Seems there was a post shortly thereafter from someone at Daybreak mentioning with all the new mechanics, almost every mouse click required both decks to be searched entirely for any possible actions. This kicked big decks right in the cajones. Prior to Ikoria, we used to play 1400- vs. 1400-card decks with no such lag (or crashes). The crashes started shortly thereafter, and the "fix" was to cut maximum deck size down to 600. That has minimized the deck size crashes (short of Traumatize or Living Death effects with 300+ card decks). Now most crashes seem to be attributed to unnecessary excessive "triggers," from folks who still seem to like crashing their own games. I've seen posts on a few boards suggesting capping a single trigger's iterations at somewhere between 20 and 40, but the cryhards don't want to adapt their playstyle to the game, but rather the other way around. ("Overkill is bush." - Anon-A-Mouse).

We still play 500-600 card decks, but set your clock at maximum if you do a lot of searching, and avoid cards like Traumatize, Living Death/End, Tunnel Vision, et. al. And try to be sure your opponent is like-minded, rather than surprising them with anything over 300 cards.

GL !

 

[Bryan]

It's obvious that there is code in the game that is scanning every player's deck. This explains how the performance gets worse as the number of cards at the table goes up. It's easily noticed by playing back a replay from a 60 card format vs a game of multiplayer commander.

I used to play big decks in the modern room. It's a waste of time to even try now.

I can confirm that cards that search for more than one card, like cultivate, are the worst offenders while playing big decks.

 

[Alanaris]

We still play 500-600 card decks, but set your clock at maximum if you do a lot of searching, and avoid cards like Traumatize, Living Death/End, Tunnel Vision, et. al. And try to be sure your opponent is like-minded, rather than surprising them with anything over 300 cards.

GL !

I used to play big decks in the modern room. It's a waste of time to even try now.

I can confirm that cards that search for more than one card, like cultivate, are the worst offenders while playing big decks.

Thanks Firedrake & Brian for your returns!

I love fat decks, not just because there are way too many cards I love, but also for the versatility. It's also a challenge, fun and an art to build fat decks that actually run in a reliable way and have several ways to get the board running. I also like that they aren't boring to play because each game can have it's completely own way of developping, even that basically the core remains the same. I used to play 500 card decks befpre, but am now a bit more reasonable with half of this - maybe just because my "old" deck files became obsolete and couldn't be used/imported to the game anymore, and I simply don't have the courage to spend x hours to build a new big deck and testing/modding it for another x hours.

I sometimes watch some of the rare vintage games being played (I only see the same 2 or 3 players playing from time to time, or just opening a game that never finds another player) and I also know that my "vintage" deck probably would be a bit difficult to play. It's rather than "vintage an "antique" deck, my most recent cards are probably 10th Edition, and using really old expansions, Invasion, Odyssey, Time Spiral... So I suppose I would have a hard time against cards from expansion of the last 15 years - not to say that I am not familiar with most recent game mechanics nor know most of the cards

Still - I recently met a guy who is (physically) playing MtG what made me reconnect to the game as he didn't believe that a fat deck can actually run perfectly (or almost). He was quite surprised to see how quick my mana and board developped (in solitaire mode) and seeing what I was able to put out between round 8 to 10/12 with the possibility of an annoying infinite loop when the deck really shows it's guts. I don't want the deck to be too annoying, so most really powerful cards are only 1 in the deck. Still with the different ways to fetch....

I started playing with Beta and spent way too much back then buying blister packs in numbers before switching to MtGO when it was available due to the lack of buddies still playing. Same story everywhere, people growing up, getting married, kids, demanding jobs and other leisures. I still regret having sold my 45k physical cards, loved spending time in testing new stuff/decks. At least I kept save my 2 main decks (hey physical cards, so only 60-70 cards to be able to shuffle). And no, I didn't have a Black Lotus.

Well for the moment I will just keep on amusing myself in my Solitaire games

Thanks again and have fun playing!

 

[Firedrake]

"Prismatic is not about well-oiled machines. It's about the fun of the same deck playing out a different way each time, seeing bizarre combinations of cards that would normally never see play, and throwing all your favorite cards into one superdeck..." -Doug Beyer, (Former?) Magic Senior Creative Designer.

I was (am?) an old Prismatic Singleton player who just enjoyed playing a variety of cards in one deck. These days, I enjoy taking Cubes (a Vintage Cube, Artifact Cube, Live the Dream Cube, whatever), jamming all the cards into one deck, trimming down to around 350 nonlands (mostly by removing the ones I don't own, like any P9) / 250 lands for a 600 card deck, and play. No fine-tuning / curation. No trying to make them all work together. Build your strategy on the fly, not in the lab. You will surprise yourself at how creative you can become. After all, in these type games, there is no entry and nothing [money, prizes, ratings] on the line. Winning is secondary to playing an interesting game.

The same can be done with Blocks or sets. Have one now that's almost all LotR (no The One Ring), and another that's just my Sealed pools from the last four releases (so a limited number of Rares). Mostly Singleton but for lands. Do you have to work at making them work? Well, yeah... that's kinda the idea. But...

"The play is the thing." Why waste your time playing Solitaire when you can do your "testing" in actual games?

Look me up and you can beat up on me with your finely-curated monstrosities. ;^)