This is a copy of the email I just sent to Wizards ( wizardscusthelp@wizards.com ) after my formal complaint on the forum was ignored. If anyone else makes any similar complaints, I invite you to post what you have sent here also.
I wish to complain about the lack of support myself and the rest of the DoTP community have received from Wizards. I posted a formal complain about this in the DoTP section of the official Wizards forum, and made Wizards staff aware of it on September 15th. It has not even been acknowledged let alone addressed. This is disgraceful.
These are games with great potential, and with just a bit more effort from the developers they could be truly outstanding. They are currently let down by mis-codings, lack of rules knowledge by the programmers or no rules supervision, lack of testing and poor design decisions, some of which were made a long time ago and haven't been ammended.
The original DoTP (D9) has clearly been abandoned. It contains bugs and issues that I reported well over a year ago, some even further back than that, including some which were present at the release of the game. I bought two downloadable content expansions (DLC) in the hope that the bugs would be fixed over time. I submitted detailed and accurate bug reports to both Wizards and Stainless, and these were acknowledged. However only about half of these issues have been fixed, and the rest remain in the game to this day. This is an appalling way to conduct business, and I would like a refund for the game and both the DLC I bought, since they introduced yet more bugs, many of which haven't been fixed either. I can reproduce on request a list of these issues and can easily prove they still exist in the game.
We were given the impression that a renewed effort was going to be put into the new DoTP (D12). But it became apparent that this game too has large numbers of bugs and issues. Wizards created a thread in the DoTP forum specifically for reporting bugs. Myself and the rest of the community came forward with large numbers of reports. To begin with these were collected and updated by Wizards, but now that thread seems to have been abandoned as well as there have been no updates for some time and no reason given for this. The thread is here:
When the DLC was released, we were expecting some sort of patch to fix all the bugs that had been reported. But apart from fixing a few features, none of the hundreds of reported card bugs have been fixed at all. I have a personal list of bugs of which I can personally confirm and reproduce, which I have sent to Wizards and Stainless:
This contains over 40 problems, and this is just on the Xbxox 360 platform, just ones I have personally confirmed and only for offline play so doesn't count the huge number of online problems. I submitted these to Wizards as I discovered them, starting right after the release, and not a single one has been fixed. As a community we've asked again and again for information about when or if anything is going to be fixed and we've been told absolutely nothing.
The fact that the DLC got released before any fix (if there even is one planned) shows that Wizards obviously places a higher priority on getting more money in than fixing the broken product that people have already paid for. I understand that asking for information about future content is inappropriate, but I certainly don't think that's the case when we've paid for something with huge amounts of bugs of which none are getting fixed, to ask what's going to be done about it.
As a long time Magic player, I feel ignored and cheated by both of these products. I've held off from a complaint such as this for a long time to give Wizards the chance to act on all the great feedback the community have given. But there has been absolutely nothing, and no communication of any value either. I request either an explanation of the situation and the promise that these bugs will be fixed, along with a reasonable timescale, or else a full refund for D12 as well. Wizards have hidden behind the notion that they don't like to promise things in case they don't deliver them, but if they can't promise to fix bugs in a game which represents their product then they have no business releasing it in the first place.
I'd like also to raise several really bad "design decisions" that have been made. DoTP has taken some liberties with the rules of Magic, which I accept when they make sense, and one of these is to make choices on your behalf when they would appear to be obvious. For example, there are several life gaining artifacts in the game such as Angel's Feather which offer you the choice of gaining 1 life when a spell of a certain colour is cast. The game makes this choice for you, deciding that gaining 1 life is obviously a good thing. Up until D12 this was fine, but what wasn't considered is that a new card, Punishing Fire, in D12, can be retrieved from your graveyard if an opponent gains life. This means that the controller of the life gain artifact is forced to trigger the Punishing Fire because they cannot decline the life gain. It should therefore be clear that the choice of whether to gain life or not is not obvious any more, because it can have a detrimental effect. I request this be made optional.
Secondly, cards such as Garruk's Packleader, and Murder of Crows in the DLC which offer you the choice to draw a card under certain conditions make the decision for you too, forcing you to draw a card. This is a bad decision in general, simply because drawing cards can eventually lose you the game. They do indeed try to draw from an empty library, literally losing you the game because of an optional ability. It's particularly bad with Murder of Crows because you are then also forced to discard, triggering the new card in the DLC Liliana's Caress. So you are being potentially double punished for something which is meant to be an optional, beneficial ability. It should always be optional.
Thirdly, when a creature is enchanted with multiple Totem Armors, you should be allowed to choose which one gets destroyed instead, if you wish to save a creature from destruction. However the game makes this decision for you, choosing the one with the lowest converted mana cost. This is far from an obvious choice and should never be made for the player. Also, you are not given the option to regenerate if it's available, which would then save you from losing any Totem Armors. Please make this a player decision.
Fourthly, as listed in my bugs and issues list, the timing for gang blocking has been altered from the correct rules for no apparrent reason. I've officially asked Wizards whether this was an intended change, and they acknowledged the question, but over two months later they have yet to even admit that there has been a change, or that they intended such a change. So I've been ignored yet again.
If such forced decisions are to remain in the game, I would request please that a tick-box is added to the options, something like "auto decisions". Like auto resolve and simplified targeting, if it's turned on, the game makes these decisions for you. If turned off, you get a dialogue window asking you what you would like to do in these situation.
I sincerely hope you take what I have said into account, as an experienced Magic player with good rules knowledge. You should be able to check the validity of everything in my personal bug list with any rules expert in your staff, and see that the game has these things wrong. And this is to say nothing of the serious bugs which plague online play. Although I am now complaining, I still maintain my offer of help, and will be happy to do whatever I can to cooperate with Wizards and Stainless to see the game get fixed. I can make videos of my bugs, talk them through with anyone, give my opinions, whatever will help. As a community we've given a lot of effort and time freely into trying to get this game rebuilt and we feel wholly unappreciated and ignored.
If I do not receive a satisfactory response within a reasonable timescale, I shall be forced to consider other options such as going to Microsoft directly or other channels. I'll be posting a copy of this email onto the DoTP forum to make public my displeasure, which I have done so for a long time on there, and shall copy across any replies I receive unless asked to do otherwise.
Thank you for taking the time to read.
Yours faithfully
Robert Watts (robvalue on the forum)
I am a Rules advisor. Feel free to send me any questions as a private message!
I have written several guides to help new DoTP players here, move to the first post to start reading. They are also in Wordpress format here. The principles involved should still be useful for Duels 2013!
Find other DoTP players - a database of friendly players, find a match or post your name here to be added to the list! I'll add a D13 section if anyone would like.
Ask a rules question - ask anything about DoTP, Magic in general, or to check out if you've found a bug by asking if the rules are being followed.
Community thread for general chatter in the DoTP part of the forum!
Well I think that was certainly a thought out formal complaint, where you got across everything that needed to be said (I'm sure you could have written a much longer complaint ) without sounding rude or standoffish. You've made it a crusade to find the bugs in the games and to try and get them fixed with one hand, as well as helping people with the other, and I hope for that Wizards will at least give you (and us) a decent response because at this point, you seem to have more stock invested in this game then either Wizards or Stainless do.
The response, or lack thereof, will likely tell us what we can expect for the future of not only the game, but the "format", and if it is anything but a scheme for a quick buck.
This is a copy of the email I just sent to Wizards ( wizardscusthelp@wizards.com ) after my formal complaint on the forum was ignored. If anyone else makes any similar complaints, I invite you to post what you have sent here also.
I wish to complain about the lack of support myself and the rest of the DoTP community have received from Wizards. I posted a formal complain about this in the DoTP section of the official Wizards forum, and made Wizards staff aware of it on September 15th. It has not even been acknowledged let alone addressed. This is disgraceful.
These are games with great potential, and with just a bit more effort from the developers they could be truly outstanding. They are currently let down by mis-codings, lack of rules knowledge by the programmers or no rules supervision, lack of testing and poor design decisions, some of which were made a long time ago and haven't been ammended.
The original DoTP (D9) has clearly been abandoned. It contains bugs and issues that I reported well over a year ago, some even further back than that, including some which were present at the release of the game. I bought two downloadable content expansions (DLC) in the hope that the bugs would be fixed over time. I submitted detailed and accurate bug reports to both Wizards and Stainless, and these were acknowledged. However only about half of these issues have been fixed, and the rest remain in the game to this day. This is an appalling way to conduct business, and I would like a refund for the game and both the DLC I bought, since they introduced yet more bugs, many of which haven't been fixed either. I can reproduce on request a list of these issues and can easily prove they still exist in the game.
We were given the impression that a renewed effort was going to be put into the new DoTP (D12). But it became apparent that this game too has large numbers of bugs and issues. Wizards created a thread in the DoTP forum specifically for reporting bugs. Myself and the rest of the community came forward with large numbers of reports. To begin with these were collected and updated by Wizards, but now that thread seems to have been abandoned as well as there have been no updates for some time and no reason given for this. The thread is here:
When the DLC was released, we were expecting some sort of patch to fix all the bugs that had been reported. But apart from fixing a few features, none of the hundreds of reported card bugs have been fixed at all. I have a personal list of bugs of which I can personally confirm and reproduce, which I have sent to Wizards and Stainless:
This contains over 40 problems, and this is just on the Xbxox 360 platform, just ones I have personally confirmed and only for offline play so doesn't count the huge number of online problems. I submitted these to Wizards as I discovered them, starting right after the release, and not a single one has been fixed. As a community we've asked again and again for information about when or if anything is going to be fixed and we've been told absolutely nothing.
The fact that the DLC got released before any fix (if there even is one planned) shows that Wizards obviously places a higher priority on getting more money in than fixing the broken product that people have already paid for. I understand that asking for information about future content is inappropriate, but I certainly don't think that's the case when we've paid for something with huge amounts of bugs of which none are getting fixed, to ask what's going to be done about it.
As a long time Magic player, I feel ignored and cheated by both of these products. I've held off from a complaint such as this for a long time to give Wizards the chance to act on all the great feedback the community have given. But there has been absolutely nothing, and no communication of any value either. I request either an explanation of the situation and the promise that these bugs will be fixed, along with a reasonable timescale, or else a full refund for D12 as well. Wizards have hidden behind the notion that they don't like to promise things in case they don't deliver them, but if they can't promise to fix bugs in a game which represents their product then they have no business releasing it in the first place.
I'd like also to raise several really bad "design decisions" that have been made. DoTP has taken some liberties with the rules of Magic, which I accept when they make sense, and one of these is to make choices on your behalf when they would appear to be obvious. For example, there are several life gaining artifacts in the game such as Angel's Feather which offer you the choice of gaining 1 life when a spell of a certain colour is cast. The game makes this choice for you, deciding that gaining 1 life is obviously a good thing. Up until D12 this was fine, but what wasn't considered is that a new card, Punishing Fire, in D12, can be retrieved from your graveyard if an opponent gains life. This means that the controller of the life gain artifact is forced to trigger the Punishing Fire because they cannot decline the life gain. It should therefore be clear that the choice of whether to gain life or not is not obvious any more, because it can have a detrimental effect. I request this be made optional.
Secondly, cards such as Garruk's Packleader, and Murder of Crows in the DLC which offer you the choice to draw a card under certain conditions make the decision for you too, forcing you to draw a card. This is a bad decision in general, simply because drawing cards can eventually lose you the game. They do indeed try to draw from an empty library, literally losing you the game because of an optional ability. It's particularly bad with Murder of Crows because you are then also forced to discard, triggering the new card in the DLC Liliana's Caress. So you are being potentially double punished for something which is meant to be an optional, beneficial ability. It should always be optional.
Thirdly, when a creature is enchanted with multiple Totem Armors, you should be allowed to choose which one gets destroyed instead, if you wish to save a creature from destruction. However the game makes this decision for you, choosing the one with the lowest converted mana cost. This is far from an obvious choice and should never be made for the player. Also, you are not given the option to regenerate if it's available, which would then save you from losing any Totem Armors. Please make this a player decision.
Fourthly, as listed in my bugs and issues list, the timing for gang blocking has been altered from the correct rules for no apparrent reason. I've officially asked Wizards whether this was an intended change, and they acknowledged the question, but over two months later they have yet to even admit that there has been a change, or that they intended such a change. So I've been ignored yet again.
If such forced decisions are to remain in the game, I would request please that a tick-box is added to the options, something like "auto decisions". Like auto resolve and simplified targeting, if it's turned on, the game makes these decisions for you. If turned off, you get a dialogue window asking you what you would like to do in these situation.
I sincerely hope you take what I have said into account, as an experienced Magic player with good rules knowledge. You should be able to check the validity of everything in my personal bug list with any rules expert in your staff, and see that the game has these things wrong. And this is to say nothing of the serious bugs which plague online play. Although I am now complaining, I still maintain my offer of help, and will be happy to do whatever I can to cooperate with Wizards and Stainless to see the game get fixed. I can make videos of my bugs, talk them through with anyone, give my opinions, whatever will help. As a community we've given a lot of effort and time freely into trying to get this game rebuilt and we feel wholly unappreciated and ignored.
If I do not receive a satisfactory response within a reasonable timescale, I shall be forced to consider other options such as going to Microsoft directly or other channels. I'll be posting a copy of this email onto the DoTP forum to make public my displeasure, which I have done so for a long time on there, and shall copy across any replies I receive unless asked to do otherwise.
Thank you for taking the time to read.
Yours faithfully
Robert Watts (robvalue on the forum)
Good luck to you, did a similar one ages ago guarantee they will give you some incident number and will say they will pass this on to people higher on, still waiting from these so called higher people after 2 months, even though one of my questions got answered "due to the expansion been released" my others have not such as why there is hardly any support for the game
If they do fob me off, I will certainly be taking it further as I think I have a good case and plenty of evidence. This is their chance to step up to the plate, let's hope they do. I'd much rather see this resolved by them taking responsibility and communicating with us, but if they refuse to do that then they'll leave me no option.
I am a Rules advisor. Feel free to send me any questions as a private message!
I have written several guides to help new DoTP players here, move to the first post to start reading. They are also in Wordpress format here. The principles involved should still be useful for Duels 2013!
Find other DoTP players - a database of friendly players, find a match or post your name here to be added to the list! I'll add a D13 section if anyone would like.
Ask a rules question - ask anything about DoTP, Magic in general, or to check out if you've found a bug by asking if the rules are being followed.
Community thread for general chatter in the DoTP part of the forum!
If you love something so much you spend all of your day in its forums, logic dictates you spend 5 dollars to enhance your game. No, that is not how it is here. Instead, you fixate on the bugs and yet still cling on the game. When the developers care so little apart from making this good game, you are the only one with so much bitterness. And nobody else on this forum.
These noble and principles thingy is not my kinda thing. My motto is if you like it, pay for it pal. If you don't, you shouldn't even bother with it.
This is so confusing I will never understand this. I hope you find some clarity with your life.
If you love something so much you spend all of your day in its forums, logic dictates you spend 5 dollars to enhance your game. No, that is not how it is here. Instead, you fixate on the bugs and yet still cling on the game. When the developers care so little apart from making this good game, you are the only one with so much bitterness. And nobody else on this forum.
These noble and principles thingy is not my kinda thing. My motto is if you like it, pay for it pal. If you don't, you shouldn't even bother with it.
This is so confusing I will never understand this. I hope you find some clarity with your life.
Sign, internet. Someone tries to do something good, and someone feels the need to come and insult him.
How does this bolded statement not 100% conflict with your posting? you seem to not like robs post, then why are you bothering commenting on it?
Yes, like ALL games it has it's bugs. Sounds like to me you are spendning more time testing for bugs and diling complaints then playing the game it's self. You complaint will get filed into a black hole, I am sure.
I for one respect Rob for taking so much time to help further develop this game, even though most of it is being ignored. I think some of you forget what it's like to be passionate about something. The fact of the matter is, he has what it takes to stand up to a company and voice his opinion. He has determination to strive through what many wouldn't, and that's admirable. Just knowing Rob is doing this makes me feel better about playing this game, even if it's laden with bugs. It gives me hope that it could be polished one day. I suppose most of you have heard the squeaky wheel gets the oil? Same applies here, good luck Rob! Please keep us updated
Any developer and or publisher would do well to heed the voice of the community; afterall, the life of their product entirely depends on our willingness to purchase again in the future.
Awesome man, I got half a mind to do it myself, although mine tend to go unanswered....and once even got me banned from a website.
Honestly though, I would give these guys 7 days. If not I would contact Microsoft and Marketplace customer support/complaints. Not only them but I would use the Better Business Bureau as well to file a complaint.
) without sounding rude or standoffish. You've made it a crusade to find the bugs in the games and to try and get them fixed with one hand, as well as helping people with the other, and I hope for that Wizards will at least give you (and us) a decent response because at this point, you seem to have more stock invested in this game then either Wizards or Stainless do.
