The Reason "Deck Tracker" Should be banned

[Shadowcran]

A few days ago, I saw a post about "Deck Tracker", a program designed to keep track of your deck while it's playing and also to accumulate various statistics and also keep track of opponent's played cards.

I tried it out and for the first three matches(all vs AI) , I thought "This is pretty nifty". Then, on the 4th Playthrough, it started to do something else. This is the reason for it to be banned/forbidden.

On that 4th Playthrough it started to show me, immediately after I ended my turn, what I would draw next. That's a bit unfair but what else it did is a lot worse. It started to show me what my opponent just drew, slightly before they even drew it. I'll explain:

Your deck stats are on the right side of the screen, the opponents on the left. Your deck side is full as it already knows what's in that deck. As a card is drawn, it's total is shortened by 1(like if you had 2 Extract and drew 1, it would then be 1). On that 4th playthrough, It would shorten one right after your turn was over and yes, the one shortened was what you drew next.

On the other side, the deck is smaller as you're accumulating their deck contents as they play it. If a new card was played, it would show up on their list. However, on the 4th Playthrough, it would pop up right before they drew it.

This, obviously, creates an unfair advantage that is actually a cheat. Imagine, in Online Poker, you KNEW you were going to draw that Flush way in advance before the last card is dealt. You'd bet the farm, wouldn't you?

I immediately uninstalled the program and notified DWD, Scarlatch and anyone else I thought I could reach and told them I'd give them a day to say something about it or fix it. I got nothing. So now I'm informing people myself.

For the other games this cheat tracker uses, if you play them, notify them for me.

[Lars]

You didn't tell us which deck tracker you used, presumably so others won't get the idea to use it to cheat, which is fair enough. One party you didn't mention contacting about this is the developer of the deck tracker itself.

Assuming what you posted here is true, they must of course be notified that this functionality is not even remotely okay. Unless of course if they're willing to get into all sorts of nasty legal mud with DWD they should have a big interest in removing the features provide actual advantages (outside of card counting).

One other thing I feel I have to point out by now Shadowcran is you making posts with accusations like these without providing a shred of evidence of foul doing has become a recurring theme. I saw you do this on the Duels boards, and I've seen you do it here as well.

I don't like saying that I don't believe you, but it is strange to see all these elaborate posts suggesting exploits and cheats, but never anything firm to evidence it with. I think I have suggested some easy to use third party programs that let you record footage, if you wish with heavy compression so the file sizes are very small. I would love to see this deck tracker tool actually showing you what your opponent is drawing, as it sounds frankly absurd to include in a publicly available deck tracker client.

[Shadowcran]

I am on disability. I cannot afford video and how would you use screenshots? 100 chained in a row? I can't even get broadband where I'm at.

I've an idea though. Why don't you do it? I promise the thing does as I said so you won't be wasting time doing it. You can put it on video.

I only know of the one deck tracker. I can't link you to it as that's a nono but it's on page 3 of the Eternal reddit in a thread with deck tracker in the title.

[Lars]

Allright, I'll practice my google fu a bit then and see what I can do. :)

Edit: Allright, found it, and also found your reddit post about this which confirmed from another player that it does happen, at least in Gauntlet. I'm going to check it out myself later today.

What I will say is that despite the downvotes you got on that reddit post, if it is true that this tracker lets you cheat in Gauntlet mode, that alone is reason enough to disallow this tool. Anyway, more later.

[Shadowcran]

Originally posted by Lars:

Allright, I'll practice my google fu a bit then and see what I can do. :)

Thanks. I wish I could afford all that and a better computer.

If truth be known, I'd bet 90% of users of this don't even realize it does that. I wanted the tracker to do only what it said as that would be helpful. I was ready before that 4th time to do a thread encouraging others to give it a try.

Then I recalled players who still had good board position(as far as they knew) suddenly quitting when I drew a card that would win me the match as I drew it. I was scratching my head at that. As I play a lot, it happened many times. However, overall this wasn't all the time so I can safely say 90% probably didn't know.

Yes, I probably play more than anyone else as it's a phenomenal CCG most haven't even noticed yet and I've free time galore. It's either play or veg in front of a TV. If I get reduced to that, do me a favor and just come perform a mercy kill.

[Lars]

Oh, you posted while i was editing my last post, check the previous post. :)

And I concur, Eternal is in my book the sexiest F2P online CCG right now, its very good.

[Shadowcran]

I bet WoTC are regretting how they treated Magic Duels. Eternal can steal a lot of people from there.

Thing is, about the tracker, is I'm not really doing anything PVP outside of winning 1 match or doing a quest. After a set is released(like in Duels) I take a month before I even consider seriously playing PVP. All I want to do is explore new options, the new cards, new combos, and find hidden gems(which I always do). This is more fun to me than grinding up to Masters again. The only deck I consider "Ready for PVP" is a Xenan Lifegain/Killers deck I perfected due to just loving Lifegain mechanics. Hidden Gem in that, combined with using Sandstorm Titan with it, is Slimespitter Slug.

I do Gauntlet up to 2500gp, then Forge, and back again. I'm so used to Forge it's far better for getting cards than draft. I only need 17 more legends to having a full collection x 4. Then I guess I'll save up and keep the premiums I gain.

[Captain_Narol]

I come from Magic Duels and I found a new home in Eternal, it's so much better and generous !

WOTC's loss, and I hope many will do the same as Eternal really deserves more attention.

I just wish they add Sealed mode tournaments, Draft mode is already great and the best way to spend your gold but I prefer Sealed.

[Shadowcran]

If enough people want it and say so, it'll probably happen. They DO listen. I can't say the same for most game developers.

[done87]

no wonder my spider sense been tingling, why it feels like people know what im playing?

[Shadowcran]

Originally posted by duhone87:

no wonder my spider sense been tingling, why it feels like people know what im playing?

Yeah, I know the feeling.

Thing is, after a while you will notice what others will play often as most players netdeck. I don't as that would actually ruin my own fun, in effect cutting off my own nose to spite my face. When you see the same decks over and over, you get a feeling for what they'll play next. But a feeling is not knowing which is what the tracker is doing.

[Lars]

First video of my tests should be up in about 15 minutes. Colour me surprised. And frankly, quite disappointed.

[Lars]

My video editing is amateurish at best but you should be able to easily see what is going on here, all the same.

Edit: You may want to use the pause button to read the text before it fades for example.

https://youtu.be/ePH4zDviCNE

[KnightLurker]

If the accusations are true, I hope its only the case with games against the AI.
Never played Magic Duels, but thought about it. I play Cockatrice to tune decks, then buy the singles I need for tournament play, in real life.
I like Eternal. While it takes a lot from Magic, its different enough to make it unique.
I'm not a big fan of netdecking. I see it all the time in Shardbound. My theory has always been, if you're not playing for stakes, brew your own deck! You may just find something that crushes the meta. Its tougher in Shardbound due to the low card pool. But in Magic and Eternal, that should never be an issue.
Hence, I won't use and will shame anyone who would use a program that counts cards.

[Shadowcran]

Originally posted by Lars:

My video editing is amateurish at best but you should be able to easily see what is going on here, all the same.

https://youtu.be/ePH4zDviCNE

Only just woke from nap. Thanks for doing that. Amateurish? I know so little about such things you would be better off getting a child of 5 with an old Kodak camera to do it than me.

I quit that reddit. I had enough of ridicule. Plus, going on that site was actually TAKING AWAY from my skills. Yeah, I noticed I was getting steadily worse listening to their advice.

You won't believe this, Lars, but I found hackers in Duels but couldn't do video to prove it. Finally someone actually caught a guy on video(odds are very long to ever find someone doing video finding something.)with blatant cheating. I had been ridiculed for informing about that and by their staff no less.

Another thing I noted about the ridicule. It was the same ones in Duels that do it here in Eternal. The very exact same ones.

[Captain_Narol]

In Magic Duels, there is at least a well-known cheater identified by the community that uses a
very visible hack and probably a lot more of them using more subtile cheating tools, but WOTC and Stainless games never did anything about it, probably because they see the game as cheap stuff for low-value casuals...

I hope the devs of Eternal will be more reactive and fix quickly the breach making this hack possible, as it's very annoying.

Thanks Shadowcran for bringing the issue and Lars for making the test and video to confirm it, you're honorable people.