8th Trials - Suggestions and Feedback

[Vangelios]

 The concept of voting is good, I'm afraid of someone making an account just to vote,
then need to have a filter, perhaps forum activity or minimum limit of post (even though very young members voted for me, example propheon)

[Zso_Zso]

perhaps public voting (like in the last brawl) with TrO discretion to accept or ignore specific votes would eliminate the possibility of vote-stuffing by noname accounts.

I would also support splitting phase-2 into in-element and off-element battles. In the in-element section the defending master could play against all challengers, while the off-element would have the defender masters facing each other (as now) and the challengers facing other element challengers.
The in-element part could be round-robin: all plays all others within elements, points decided by final position / total game-wins etc.
The out-of-element could be a single-elimination tournament mixing all challengers against each other and all masters against each other (2 separate tournaments)

[Zawadx]

Reopening this for suggestions for next Trials.

[ddevans96]

My only issue with last Trials was shards being restricted too much. They had 3 heavy restrictions on them - while shards are definitely still not balanced, it seemed excessive to me personally.

EDIT: Turns out I basically said the same thing earlier in this thread.

[ARTHANASIOS]

I would like to bring an issue that appeared during the last War and was not properly solved imho;
 Antimatter Vs Dimensional Shield
(http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-1-246/(life-sld-)-arthanasios-3-1-(light-sld-)-acsabi44/) (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-5-250/(light-sld)-shinki12345-3-0-dawn_to_dusk-(partial-sub)-(life-gen)/)

* My thoughts about the measures that must be taken whenever the Antimatter & Dimensional Shield bug appears in a match-up is that one of the following should take place:
 - The current game should be treated like any other legal desynch (following the respective rules).
 - The current game should be treated like a voided one (a.k.a. draw).
 - The whole match-up (a.k.a all best-of-X matches) should be treated like a voided result (a.k.a. draw).

* Aletrnative solution:
 - Dim Shield ought to be banned from special events like Trials/War till this bug is fixed.

* Why to ban Dim and neither Antimatter nor Scorpion?
 From all the 3 cards included in the desynch bug (Forest Scorpion & Antimatter & Dimensional Shield), Dim Shield is the really buggy one,
 so if we have to ban one of the 3 cards we are obviously have to ban the one that causes the bug.

* More accurately:

 1) Forest Scorpion is NOT buggy because we have the same result regardless the creature.

 2) Antimatter is NOT buggy because it does bypass every other shield, even those that offer full DR in either numerical (Diamond Shield, Hope) or percentage (Fog, Dusk) ways. The only shields that block it are Gravity Shield (because of the hp>5 factor and only if the antimattered creature has more than 5 hp) and Wings (because of the airborne factor and only if the antimattered creature is non-airborne) and both of them because they have a creature-based factor (hp in case of Gravity Shield, passive skill in case of Wings). Dim has no creature-based factors, so Antimatter ought to bypass it in every case.

 3) During past BLeagues/CLeagues, we had shields to be banned due to bugs (more accurately, Emerald Shield and Reflective Shield were banned due to a Purfiy bug); it has happened in the past, so it can happen again. (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/league-archive/elements-pvp-league-22012-announcements/msg524227/#msg524227)

[Higurashi]

* Aletrnative solution:
 - Dim Shield ought to be banned from special events like Trials/War till this bug is fixed.

Hehehe. Can't blame you for trying.

Warmasters decided the attack bypass is not an intended feature, but this is contested by the fact that your own AM'd creature will bypass Dims if you play against AI. Not sure why the decision was made as it was.

[ARTHANASIOS]

My point is not to ban Dim (though I think the meta would had a positive benefit from such a ban) but to solve the Antimatter vs Dim issue. However, that does not mean I am going to let people think it is Antimatter's fault or creature's fault when it is 100% Dim's fault (it is just coded wrong), especially when we have treated reflective shields with a harsh way in the past.

The solution I personally prefer is those mentioned in the beginning:

- The current game should be treated like any other legal desynch (following the respective rules).
 - The current game should be treated like a voided one (a.k.a. draw).
 - The whole match-up (a.k.a all best-of-X matches) should be treated like a voided result (a.k.a. draw).

We must understand that both Antimatter and Dimensional Shield are two overpowered and overused cards and it is just a matter of time to have this sort of bug occur once again during any form of competitive PvP (Trials, Wars, Tournies, BL/CL, PvP Events). I just used Trial's suggestion and feedback because they are about to start, but the sooner we have a global ruling about this issue the better for all of us.

[serprex]

I didn't have internet access while dim bug was relevant, so I wasn't involved in the ruling, however...

CuCN: life v light has run into the antimatter/dim shield bug
CuCN: on one side the attack goes through, and on the other side it's blocked
CuCN: (for serprex) after testing we concluded that it's actually supposed to be blocked

s: On dim testing: it may be relevant which player is "master" as to whether the hp reset happens or not

ie ruling was made on testing, I'm unsure if that testing was complete enough. iirc, the testing was done by CuCN & deuce in PvP, so ruling didn't refer to PvE behavior

Banning dims sounds swell

[iancudorinmarian]

I tested it with deuce by playing a duel where I had creatures and he had dim shields and antimatter.
I saw the attacks going through, and he didn't.
Every time my turn started, I saw his HP reset to what it would be without the negative attacks.
This is why we concluded that the attacks did not actually go through.

Also found this in that topic. I guess it's fixing automatically.

Also, ARTHA, anitimatter is by no means overused. Seriously. Dim shield, on the other hand, is. But I still wouldn't agree banning cards just because they -might- cause bugs in combination with other cards.

For example, some time ago, reflective/emerald shield got banned because they did cause bugs with purify, that wasn't a good decision either imo.

[Higurashi]

If the AM+Dim bug reliably causes desynchs, that's a problem. However, that is not my experience. Please let me know if yours is different.
We can't finish matches based on conjecture after the first few turns. Even if we know that it's supposed to bypass Dims, we don't want to reduce matches to math.

[Vangelios]

do tests to see if it is true, however appear to be a bug more of the antimatter instead dim shield

Higurashi what do you mean "What your  we don't want to reduce matches to math." without dim shield ETG is just math?

[deuce22]

CuCN and I tested the AM dimshield bug. It was pretty clear what the intended effect was supposed to be, thus the final decision.

to sum up briefly, what I think I remember:
Bug works when u use it vs AI. But if AI were to use it against you, it doesn't work. So if you play against a real opponent, one player will see one effect and the other will see a different effect. For one player, the HP constantly reset as if the creature did not bypass the shield (even tho it appeared to do so and poison marker was added), and for the other player the creature never bypassed the shield and the HPs never reset after each turn. Thus, it was determined that the effect of AM to bypass shields is a bug.

I'm sure someone will be confused by this, so if you have questions, then just test it out yourself.