Ignite rope

When I play Ignite Mage, in several cases I cannot go lethal because the rope time out.

While I have seen several opponents that in the same situation continue to Ignite even after the ropes end .... what is the technicality to play more ignites? tks

Sometimes, animations take longer than the time you actually need to play cards: casting multiple spells one after another increases this difference in time - therefore, there might be occasions in which it seems like your opponent's turn lasts more than yours, but it's just animations resolving.

However, some players have been using some simple yet effective trick to speed up in-game animations and therefore do more stuff in a single turn: casting more Ignites, for example. While I am not saying the opponent you met was a cheater, there are people who actively exploit this method, which (just in case someone who reads this comment think it's worth trying out) is totally against ToS and will get you banned sooner or later.

It's basically the same thing that happened a couple years ago with SN1P-SN4P Warlock.

So the animations in hearthstone have always had a bit of an issue where they can get desynced between the two clients, in fact, they aren't actually forced to be kept in sync at all, they just happen to be the same animations for both players... most of the time...

What you can do to seemingly "cheat" the rope is actually play your cards while other cards are animating, and they will sorta be "queued up".  If you successfully drag your fireball onto the opponents face hitbox, the spell will play, waiting until after your current animations are done to animate itself.

In this way, it can be better to draw first if you plan on drawing this turn.  Ignoring the already big strategic value of drawing first if you plan on drawing, it also gives you this animation queueing advantage.  Basically, if you draw last, your draw spell will have to wait for the rest of your spells animations to actually put the cards in your hand.

And as Avalon has said as well, there's some exploits, most of which are against TOS.

The harsh reality is that the animations can really sometimes limit how much can be done in a turn. Hence why top players tend to find workarounds to extend their natural turn timer. The most common method is to simply play as many cards as possible while the animation is playing, restart the game, and skip the animations altogether. But there's one famous chinese player who managed to use some kind of third party software to speed up the animation, since its all actually played out on our side, not server side.

(Using such software is likely illegal, but its kinda a grey area to me because we've been asking for animation skips for ages and I dont necessarily fault anyone for trying to find loopholes past these dreadfully slow animations)

Bottom line for me is that team5 really should avoid designing decks that tests APM skill because every time one such deck appears the whole argument about animation starts raging and people start noticing that the nicely made, very intricate animations which makes the game a joy to watch is actually a hindrance rather than something to be celebrated.

Video by Zeddy on the topic

Very interesting. How can you report if you suspect an abuse?

Quote From dapperdog

Bottom line for me is that team5 really should avoid designing decks that tests APM skill because every time one such deck appears the whole argument about animation starts raging and people start noticing that the nicely made, very intricate animations which makes the game a joy to watch is actually a hindrance rather than something to be celebrated.

I'd argue the animations are just part of the game's rules, and them being a hindrance doesn't make them problematic. Most game rules can be considered a hindrance, be it summoning sickness, only attacking once per turn, having finite mana etc. in the same way the animations are attributes of the cards, not ones that are stated explicitly on the cards, but valid attributes within the game nonetheless, and relevant in a game which imposes a finite turn timer. 

APM is consequently a relevant property of the game, even if you remove animations because of the turn timer and the fact humans take time to perform actions. That doesn't make HS better or worse for having it, just different. Bypassing that is essentially playing a different game, and hence cheating, no matter how one feels about hypothetically having an infinite loop.

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Quote From dapperdog

Bottom line for me is that team5 really should avoid designing decks that tests APM skill because every time one such deck appears the whole argument about animation starts raging and people start noticing that the nicely made, very intricate animations which makes the game a joy to watch is actually a hindrance rather than something to be celebrated.

I'd argue the animations are just part of the game's rules, and them being a hindrance doesn't make them problematic. Most game rules can be considered a hindrance, be it summoning sickness, only attacking once per turn, having finite mana etc. in the same way the animations are attributes of the cards, not ones that are stated explicitly on the cards, but valid attributes within the game nonetheless, and relevant in a game which imposes a finite turn timer. 

APM is consequently a relevant property of the game, even if you remove animations because of the turn timer and the fact humans take time to perform actions. That doesn't make HS better or worse for having it, just different. Bypassing that is essentially playing a different game, and hence cheating, no matter how one feels about hypothetically having an infinite loop.

Its hard to call this a cheating, because it has much to do with hardware and the fact that the most common 'cheat' is not something that requires a third party software or any coding experience at all. Also, the game clearly allows you to queue more actions than the timer theoretically allows (hence skipping your opponent's turn) so its not even to do with the game timers, its just players exploiting how the game is built, which consequently makes it hellish for their opponents at times.

If team5 wouldn't or couldn't address it because its too deep in the code, then do the next best thing: design your game to do without it. Its not like there's going to be a riot because we're not going to see anymore mozaki mages or test subject bs. I think the game is better off without it.

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Quote From dapperdog

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Its hard to call this a cheating, because it has much to do with hardware and the fact that the most common 'cheat' is not something that requires a third party software or any coding experience at all. Also, the game clearly allows you to queue more actions than the timer theoretically allows (hence skipping your opponent's turn) so its not even to do with the game timers, its just players exploiting how the game is built, which consequently makes it hellish for their opponents at times.

If team5 wouldn't or couldn't address it because its too deep in the code, then do the next best thing: design your game to do without it. Its not like there's going to be a riot because we're not going to see anymore mozaki mages or test subject bs. I think the game is better off without it.

I haven't looked into what exactly they do, so you can fill me in on the specifics, but from what I can tell they are either bypassing the animations involved in shuffling Ignite and drawing a card, or skipping the finite turn timer itself. Without doing one of those they cannot queue enough actions regardless of how many actions the game allows you to queue, and by meddling with either of those they are changing the time-based rules of the game (i.e. cheating).

If it's a repeat of the old Noz + Joust issue where you could use animations to skip your opponent's turn, then I thought they fixed that years ago by making sure your own turn timer doesn't start 'til the animations have stopped (far from a guarantee it hasn't reappeared, I know). Unless they only half-fixed that so it only actually applies to Noz's 15 second (give or take :P) time limit, in which case copying the same code over to normal turns should be pretty easy.

I personally wouldn't be the least bit sad to see APM decks disappear, but that is subjective and hence isn't a reason to remove them. At least not with such a minuscule sample of opinions. They'd need a convincing majority of players to really dislike them before there is a real case to remove them, and I'm not sure we have that. Now, if we want to instead discuss changing cards that are repeatedly central to problems (in this case Sorcerer's Apprentice), then there we have an over-abundance of evidence that something ought to be changed.

Hearthstone needs to add a button where you can toggle animations on and off. It's a huge issue in Battlegrounds too.

Let's say you're playing APM pirates and you happen to face a leap frog comp or bomb baron build u have to exit game which takes away from the fun of watching.

Just have a button that turns them off when you need it and we're  smart enough to know what's happening by the simple subtractions of numbers.

Quote From AngryShuckie

I haven't looked into what exactly they do, so you can fill me in on the specifics, but from what I can tell they are either bypassing the animations involved in shuffling Ignite and drawing a card, or skipping the finite turn timer itself. Without doing one of those they cannot queue enough actions regardless of how many actions the game allows you to queue.

I feel like I must be misunderstanding your question here... You can queue cards while other cards are animating as long as the card is in your hand, and every animation may get desynced by default by the simple difference between the person playing the card and the person watching the card get played.

Example off the top of my head, unless I'm incorrect, Fireball plays the start of the animation with the fire over your head while you hold the card out, and finishes the next part of the animation immediately after the target is chosen, while only then does the opponent see the card get played, fireball pops out, fireball heads towards target, and by the time it hits the target, the current turn player is already half a second into the next cards animation :/

Although I could be wrong about all of that, and every cards animations are different.  That being said, animations being able to be sped up due to an exploit, yeah, sounds like it's a problem, but you don't necessarily need to exploit the game to already notice the game never tried to sync up animations to begin with.

To those of you who are cheating... Grow up... Your big number you "earned" matters to nobody...

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Quote From AngryShuckie

I haven't looked into what exactly they do, so you can fill me in on the specifics, but from what I can tell they are either bypassing the animations involved in shuffling Ignite and drawing a card, or skipping the finite turn timer itself. Without doing one of those they cannot queue enough actions regardless of how many actions the game allows you to queue.

I feel like I must be misunderstanding your question here... You can queue cards while other cards are animating as long as the card is in your hand, and every animation may get desynced by default by the simple difference between the person playing the card and the person watching the card get played.

I hadn't expressed it particularly well, but I was working on the basis that the time it takes to actually draw each card* sets a limit on the number you can add to the queue. Really it limits the rate, but multiplying that by the turn time would gives a total number you can add to the queue legally (after adding the max 10 cards initially in hand).

If you reduce the card draw animation time to 0, that rate can be set arbitrarily large, and hence so can the number added to the queue. Or equally you can just have an arbitrarily long turn time.

* I'm not overly familiar with how APM-Ignite mage plays out, but I suspect if you play it honestly you'll have to watch the Ignites shuffle in before they can be drawn, hence the shuffling animation would also be involved in setting the rate. But again, I'm no expert on the specifics here; I'm just someone who has plenty of experience coding projecting his expectations onto the situation. I could be miles off.

good video here by Jack (top 1 wild Legend finisher during Snip-Sn4p times)

Apparently the top 1 Legend on all 3 servers is an ignite mage cheater. Complete disregard for any competitive integrity in wild.

Quote From Swizard

good video here by Jack (top 1 wild Legend finisher during Snip-Sn4p times)

Apparently the top 1 Legend on all 3 servers is an ignite mage cheater. Complete disregard for any competitive integrity in wild.

The bigger issue here is the fact that this deck even exist in the first place. There shouldn't be decks that can play out their entire deck in one turn, timer restrictions or not. In nearly every scenario where such a deck exists, it causes rages, talks about animations, timers, skipped turns, etc. Is team5 just looking at the win rates/play rates and washing their hands off this mess?

I dont condone uses of software to gain an advantage over others, but in this case its clear that team5 is having difficulties monitoring the game to remove these guys, so why not save themselves and trouble and change their design philosophy of how those cards work. Like, is there any reason why ignite doesn't just shuffle itself at the end of the turn instead? Would've made quest mage (prenerfed) more bearable; might even make the nerf to the reward unnecessary.

What helped me alot with APM decks is the config edit for vsync and targetframerate

dont trust videos or other pages 100% , variables changed during years and can change on new engine updates, people find better a value and other another value all is based on hardware , monitor , etc. etc. .

I was using 60 for targetframerate for years but an update ( engine update) make it fast but shit to view like blur , fortunately i fast discovered the edit was the cause , and changed targetframerate to 0 ( some say is max / unlimited ) and all fixed ( you know,  it works for me so i dont touch but is possible is not the best) .

So remember the cause of future problems can be the this.

Some people say to lock the file after edit,  i think is the worst thing to do .. for me variables stay without locking the file. I think the main reason of losing the variables is changing graphic settings .

TMYK : Once i read a guy tryng to explain why it works that for me make sense , if you try to improve game using low setting, the low setting use a custom targetframerate of 30 fps , using this variables you can keep graphic on low and override the 30 fps lock , other graphic settings probabily have other higher caps.

There is no official info if this is legal or illegal , but alot o pro players explained/used this trick for years , in battlegrounds was a gamechanger.

Here Pathra expains it.

The fact that animation runtime seems to be tied to framerate (from what I'm hearing) is a sign the devs don't know what they're doing...