The-Man-In-Black
Member
First, I'm sure I'm not the only person who suggested any of this. Sorry if some of these ideas are repetitive.
This posting was inspired by this post, which seems to hint at some kind of major overhaul coming to MTGO. Has any more info been released on this that I may be missing? If not, that would lead to my first suggestion: If there's some kind of major update coming, give us something to go on even if it's only screenshots. I've got a high end gaming laptop and everything still looks like a potato. The entire setup looks outdated for 2005, let alone 2025.
Hopefully, this update also addresses performance issues on the back end of things, because there's no reason this client should be lagging as much as it does.
But with that said, some improvements:
*Premium Cards*
Things have gone well past the days of "Regular" and "Foil". It would be nice to be able to filter down to specific types of premium cards. Extended art, borderless, etc. Especially when it comes to deckbuilding, I'd like to be able to use cards that have the same card art/frame styles, or at the very least as many as are available. If I'm building a deck around Ulalek, Fused Atrocity, for example, I'd like to be able to easily see what other cards are available with that animated bubbly animation. If I want to use this cool foil etched card in my deck, I'd like to see what other foil etched cards are available from other sets.
*Trading*
Trying to figure out what you do and don't have marked for trade can be a significant pain. First, why the hell does "Full Trade List" even exist? We can't edit it, so all this will ever lead to is new players accidentally trading cards away that they didn't intend to because they shared their full binder and don't know how trading on this archaic system works. Oddly enough, the solution IMO is even more archaic; the earliest versions of MTGO had the little button in the corner telling you how many of a card you own, just like the current setup. However, directly below that was another button where you could use up and down arrows to toggle how many you had for trade. Worked like a charm. Why can't we just go back to that?
*Filters*
Right now, If I try to filter by set, the sets are nowhere close to organized in any way that makes sense. Why aren't the sets just in alphabetical order with an option to manually enter a set's name, like every other search function on the planet? How is anyone supposed to find a specific set among a list of literally hundreds of sets that have been released over the years? The other options are at least in order, but there still needs to be an option so we can manually type what we're looking for.
*Pop-Out Windows*
During a game, if I open up the graveyard, exile zone, and revealed cards zone, I can pop out those windows and move them over to other monitors. With a 3 screen monitor, this is ideal as I can have the game full screen while having this information at a glance on other monitors. But I can't do this with the sideboard or the stack; the client forces me to keep them within the play area. We should be able to pop these out and move them to a place of our choosing like the other windows.
*In-game effects*
This mostly has to do with cards like Chancellor of the Annex and other cards that have a beginning-of-game effect that can easily be missed. If there's going to be some kind of in-game effect, maybe some kind of indicator like a hue around the play area. Maybe a white hue for white cards, green for green ones, etc. so we know to check the effects area. There's nothing more demoralizing than losing your first spell because you missed the brief notification that told you about the Chancellor of the Annex effect.
I'd also like to see the Storm count just be perpetually shown. As currently implemented, a popup of the storm count can give away the contents of your hand. This holds true especially in vintage where there are only a couple of viable Storm cards to begin with. The storm count randomly popping up out of nowhere is often a dead giveaway that my opponent is holding a Flusterstorm (or possibly a Tendrils in combo decks).
Another thing that needs tweaking is the placement of the "OK", "Draw Card" and "Reveal Hand" buttons on the left side. The way it's currently handled, if you're going to hit OK as your opponent is conceding, the placement of the buttons changes slightly and sometimes accidentally hitting the "reveal hand" button, giving your opponent all sorts of information. The "Draw extra cards" and "Reveal Hand" buttons should be a part of the "Won the game" popup in the middle of the screen at the end of the game, not as a replacement for the OK button on the left side.
*Themes*
Dreary, gray playmats? Really? Let us at least adjust the color. Ideally, let us replace it entirely with a picture of our choosing. Let us make our own playmats. They don't have to even be visible to the opponent (and in fact shouldn't be, if only to avoid the issue of players using offensive images as playmats). Ideally, I'd like to see us be able to theme the entire client to make it look more modern. Going back to the early versions of Magic Online, the visual aspects of the client were all handled locally and were easy to mod, leading to a community of people making custom themes. I'm not saying that we have to go back to that (though it would be nice), but maybe some selectable themes and personalization options would be great.
This posting was inspired by this post, which seems to hint at some kind of major overhaul coming to MTGO. Has any more info been released on this that I may be missing? If not, that would lead to my first suggestion: If there's some kind of major update coming, give us something to go on even if it's only screenshots. I've got a high end gaming laptop and everything still looks like a potato. The entire setup looks outdated for 2005, let alone 2025.
Hopefully, this update also addresses performance issues on the back end of things, because there's no reason this client should be lagging as much as it does.
But with that said, some improvements:
*Premium Cards*
Things have gone well past the days of "Regular" and "Foil". It would be nice to be able to filter down to specific types of premium cards. Extended art, borderless, etc. Especially when it comes to deckbuilding, I'd like to be able to use cards that have the same card art/frame styles, or at the very least as many as are available. If I'm building a deck around Ulalek, Fused Atrocity, for example, I'd like to be able to easily see what other cards are available with that animated bubbly animation. If I want to use this cool foil etched card in my deck, I'd like to see what other foil etched cards are available from other sets.
*Trading*
Trying to figure out what you do and don't have marked for trade can be a significant pain. First, why the hell does "Full Trade List" even exist? We can't edit it, so all this will ever lead to is new players accidentally trading cards away that they didn't intend to because they shared their full binder and don't know how trading on this archaic system works. Oddly enough, the solution IMO is even more archaic; the earliest versions of MTGO had the little button in the corner telling you how many of a card you own, just like the current setup. However, directly below that was another button where you could use up and down arrows to toggle how many you had for trade. Worked like a charm. Why can't we just go back to that?
*Filters*
Right now, If I try to filter by set, the sets are nowhere close to organized in any way that makes sense. Why aren't the sets just in alphabetical order with an option to manually enter a set's name, like every other search function on the planet? How is anyone supposed to find a specific set among a list of literally hundreds of sets that have been released over the years? The other options are at least in order, but there still needs to be an option so we can manually type what we're looking for.
*Pop-Out Windows*
During a game, if I open up the graveyard, exile zone, and revealed cards zone, I can pop out those windows and move them over to other monitors. With a 3 screen monitor, this is ideal as I can have the game full screen while having this information at a glance on other monitors. But I can't do this with the sideboard or the stack; the client forces me to keep them within the play area. We should be able to pop these out and move them to a place of our choosing like the other windows.
*In-game effects*
This mostly has to do with cards like Chancellor of the Annex and other cards that have a beginning-of-game effect that can easily be missed. If there's going to be some kind of in-game effect, maybe some kind of indicator like a hue around the play area. Maybe a white hue for white cards, green for green ones, etc. so we know to check the effects area. There's nothing more demoralizing than losing your first spell because you missed the brief notification that told you about the Chancellor of the Annex effect.
I'd also like to see the Storm count just be perpetually shown. As currently implemented, a popup of the storm count can give away the contents of your hand. This holds true especially in vintage where there are only a couple of viable Storm cards to begin with. The storm count randomly popping up out of nowhere is often a dead giveaway that my opponent is holding a Flusterstorm (or possibly a Tendrils in combo decks).
Another thing that needs tweaking is the placement of the "OK", "Draw Card" and "Reveal Hand" buttons on the left side. The way it's currently handled, if you're going to hit OK as your opponent is conceding, the placement of the buttons changes slightly and sometimes accidentally hitting the "reveal hand" button, giving your opponent all sorts of information. The "Draw extra cards" and "Reveal Hand" buttons should be a part of the "Won the game" popup in the middle of the screen at the end of the game, not as a replacement for the OK button on the left side.
*Themes*
Dreary, gray playmats? Really? Let us at least adjust the color. Ideally, let us replace it entirely with a picture of our choosing. Let us make our own playmats. They don't have to even be visible to the opponent (and in fact shouldn't be, if only to avoid the issue of players using offensive images as playmats). Ideally, I'd like to see us be able to theme the entire client to make it look more modern. Going back to the early versions of Magic Online, the visual aspects of the client were all handled locally and were easy to mod, leading to a community of people making custom themes. I'm not saying that we have to go back to that (though it would be nice), but maybe some selectable themes and personalization options would be great.