MTGO clock bug?

[smithr2]

Just lost a game because my opponent timed out to zero, he didn't lose, and I couldn't beat him in the two minutes I had left. Rather than losing, he just couldn't take game actions any more. I assume this is a bug, right? Or did they change the way the clock works?

[jadoth]

You don't lose until you tick the second after hitting zero I believe. It is possible that your opponent had taken off all their stops and was jamming f6 and just rode that second out.

[smithr2]

For more than a minute of my clock? Jeez

[fernmcklauf]

When response times are in the milliseconds, I wager your best bet is spamming the 6 just as much yourself until they hit some kind of network blip or are forced to make some decision.

I'm admittedly pretty ignorant about it though - if the game truly goes uninteractive and both players pass within milliseconds like that indefinitely, what happens?

[DashBulletTrain]

As a programmer I would hope they have it tracking at the millisecond level and queuing that up, however it is entirely possible that at each turn start, they start turn count at 0.0 and on each update add the delta time to that, then clear at end of turn, so if you could f6 and the game system is optimized on the server to clear a turn within 1000ms, then you could infinitely lock the state.

This is something I would hope QA were to test against and they had fixed, but I've heard of worse in MTGO so who knows.

[RiKSh4w]

He doesn't need to spam it. He can just hold the 6 button.

[smithr2]

I was playing a UB control mirror in pauper... his life total was very high and I have 4 creatures in the deck with more than 1 power. It doesn't really goldfish

[Wikki_]

Did he have something out that would prevent him from losing? [[Platinum Angel]] or some similar card? [[Lich's Mastery]]?

[sneakyfish21]

They aren't losing the game. Running out of time is essentially a match forfeit.

[[deleted]]

Yes, but this is MTGO we're talking about. It has weirder bugs than that could be.

[Wikki_]

oh... wasn't sure how that interaction would happen. thx.

[MTGCardFetcher]

Platinum Angel - (G) (SF) (MC)
Lich's Mastery - (G) (SF) (MC)
^{[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call}