Can we get a new way to show combos? 95% of them aren't actually combos
TappedOut forum
Posted on July 6, 2015, 2:40 p.m. by KillTheIslandUser
I think this is a legit issue that needs to tweaked or redone. While the feature is cool, and deserves to be there... people don't use it correctly at all. They will just unknowingly do Card+Card when suggesting things, but out of laziness do both in 1 bracket not 2 like I did. So can we get an actual combo command?
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Pestermite actually is a combo. Where as Crucible of Worlds, Lotus Cobra, and any fetch land is just synergy. So can we get an actual code for combos, that way less not-actual combos aren't just spammed on a card page?
Maybe even one for synergy, and get rid of the + thing entirely. I know we can't exactly educate people on the difference of combo and synergy, so there is still going to be screw ups there, but it would lessen it.
The reason I say this is because I just happen to look at some of them, mostly while looking for ideas for my karametra deck... but what I see... Karametra, God of Harvests + Mirari's Wake....... how is that a combo? How is that even synergy? Karametra is a ramp tool, as is mirari's, but they don't interact with each other on their own.
KillTheIslandUser says... #3
Yeah I noticed that too... I guess it just bothers the hell out of me more than it should... but lol some of those are just absolutely horrid and make me lose braincells. Also thanks for the quick reply femme
July 6, 2015 3 p.m. Edited.
Femme_Fatale says... #4
Epoch had pretty much set the guidelines of what the combase should be done, but everyone else pretty much just disagreed with him or decided that it should include something else or do this and that as well/instead ... it ended up as something that because of the community being unable to resolve at one point, it never got done. If Epoch and yeago just went ahead and finished it on their own without community feedback (maybe with some help from the other mods and myself) they might have gotten a more positive and cohesive response from the community.
Or it could be that they are still trying to slowly brew a method to get it to work, but it's being held back with more pressing matters. Like for example: How the community is behaving at the moment.
July 6, 2015 3:06 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #5
The project was kind of abandoned. In order to make it effective, we would need to clear all of the entries and control who has authZ to add combos. Otherwise we get schmucks who create useless entries that the system then picks up. It's a tragedy of the commons.
July 6, 2015 3:20 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #6
See, I wouldn't mind doing that ... when I get a job that isn't so far away.
Anyways, people have suggested that the combase be like the card database, in that you create a submission and then those with the admin status to access the combase would check these submissions. Of course, this would require a revamp of the portrayal of the submissions on the admin site for this to work, as if I remember correctly, one could not determine anything but whether or not something had been changed for the card submissions on the admin site.
July 6, 2015 3:24 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #7
@Femme_Fatale
"Femme_Fatale says... "Like for example: How the community is behaving at the moment.
huh? care to elaborate more on that?
@Epochalyptik
Atm, it doesn't serve much good anyways as is, so I don't see the harm of clearing it. There's probably enough people here who you trust who know the rules of the game to know if something goes infinite. Most combos are usually just knowing how the stack works anyways.
July 6, 2015 3:57 p.m.
First a disclaimer: One thing I would like to see less of is pouncing in this section of the forum with paragraphs of increasingly predictable whining and laments about how some feature wasn't up to some dreamed up specifications in your head. Nothing is perfect and that certainly includes this whole website. It is a work in progress. There is no other valid use for this section except the moving forward of that progress via constructive dialog.
KillTheIslandUser your post is interesting because it leads me to think that you may be onto something. People just use it as a shorthand to link many cards instead of as an explicit statement of a combo. Have you noticed this usage?
One thing I could think to do is to make it explicit, so people would have to type
[[combo:demonic tutor + phyrexian dreadnought]]
as for the data that's there, seems easy enough to toss out combos which were only submitted once, for example.
July 6, 2015 4:18 p.m. Edited.
KillTheIslandUser says... #9
@yeago
That's pretty much what I was thinking, and see a lot of. So many of the "combos" people post literally don't make sense. The thing I noticed though was they're shared colors of the deck.
IE: Some one is playing R/U/G delver and some one posted Daze + Spell Pierce to suggest counters that were better suited for the deck. Instead of going Daze and Spell Pierce are better blah blah.
Now granted, the whole system probably should revamped, but like epoch femme said, it's low on priority. I'm ok with this, I just thought maybe we could put something that makes it so you purposely put a combo on there. Granted people are gonna say what they want on combo vs synergy... ok what ev that's another battle for another day. It's more of a cleaning up the quality of life update I'm asking for. I understand this site is still always updating, and that's to be expected. It wasn't to long ago this site crashed every 30 mins lol.
It's come a long way, and it's still improving and I thank you all for it.
July 6, 2015 4:29 p.m. Edited.
And I think there's a more important theme here, there's no simple way to educate people or even quantify synergy vs combo so you've basically got to have editorial control at that point. That means sorting out things that are either, which sounds like a large volunteer effort to me.
I am okay with creating a queue for people to come along and editorialize what is or isn't a combo/synergy etc. It would be pretty easy to do. There's currently 29k of them.
July 6, 2015 4:33 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #11
Wait.... are you suggesting what I think you are? As in the community will literally look over all the combo's synergy? Vote Synergy or combo, and once a certain number is hit... it gets passed as combo/synergy. Maybe even a 3rd option of nothing and deleted. Then the system can remember that so it doesn't come back again, unless it introduces a different card interaction?
If so that's interesting
July 6, 2015 4:41 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #12
I'm down for that... but maybe have a few restrictions on it. Must be a member for x time, and post y amount of times, or have z amount of good card suggestions. That being said, I just threw out a random idea to keep a flood of accounts/trolls allowing everything to become a combo/synergy. I understand Storm Crow just wins games on being in your deck, but that's cause it's a win condition, it doesn't mean combo. (Being sarcastic to prove a point).
July 6, 2015 4:46 p.m. Edited.
lol. well one thing i guess we could do is set all to disabled for now, and then uptick them every time they are mentioned. then perhaps when they get mentioned 5 times they get opted in, but people could come along and opt them out, too.
Does anyone find the fact that the 'combos' list contains synergies too particularly offensive? is it useless?
July 6, 2015 4:48 p.m.
I'm with the op. This was a fantastic feature that got ruined by people who didn't know how to use it. Having separate syntax to add combos versus synergies would be great.
July 6, 2015 4:56 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #15
Lol... offensive is a bit of a strong word (unless you are Epochalyptik then yes it's strong hate for confusing the 2), but I'd prefer them to be differentiated. That being said, I can't expect you to fix that now atm, and I'm willing to compromise on it. I can obviously see if it goes infinite or just synergy, and from synergy I can maybe figure out a way to go infinite, or get ideas for it.
In a perfect world, synergy would be synergy, combos would be combos. This is a work in progress though, so I'm just fine with tweaking. Once we get this process down, we can build on it from there yeago (I say we, but lol I mean you are the one to be writing the lines of code for it and fine-tuning). So let's start small, and work from there? Unless you want to go ahead and add both synergy and combo off the bat, and see how that works.
July 6, 2015 4:59 p.m. Edited.
What is fantastic about this feature? Being able to go to the cards page and check out what it combos with?
July 6, 2015 5:01 p.m.
Could we get a feature of like flagging it for examination by a moderator if we feel like it's not a combo? That way they'd be getting reviewed without overwhelming the mods with constant applications
July 6, 2015 5:02 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #18
The nice part of this feature is literally checking on what it combos with yes. Even seeing synergy is great. I like chaining them and get my juices flowing when making a new deck off an idea. Just now I thought about Splinter Twin+Goblin Sharpshooter+Impact Tremors for infinite dmg and win.
If I could.. I'd even go further and clarify what the card has uses for. For instance... ETB synergy/combos. Giving it tags so that it can branch further to fetch you more ideas for a deck. Does that makes sense yeago? I can go in further detail, but idk if I'm confusing you lol.
July 6, 2015 5:05 p.m.
@yeaGO yeah, it helps new players learn and it helps experienced players reexamine the cards side by side to see if they missed something.
July 6, 2015 5:05 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #20
The problem atm though with that page... is players who don't understand card interaction. They might look at it... then go.. wtf I don't get it.. add it into a deck cause it's a combo then go do I win? gg huehue. Now granted that's their bad, but I'm kind of a bleeding heart on that issue. If I could, I'd have it so that when you click on the combo, I'd have a discussion of that combo allowed. That way a player cay say, "How does this interaction work?". Then someone can go, ooh this works by stack manipulation, and etb effects.
xyz card says when a creature dies, untap it. So when that untaps, you tap it for the splinter twin ability to make a copy of it. The copy triggers the enchantment, etc etc etc. This would allow more player discussion and more community involvement into this. That's what I would love to see. Idk how hard this would be to do though honestly yeaGO. I have ideas... not the necessary know how to act on them.
July 6, 2015 5:12 p.m. Edited.
Femme_Fatale says... #21
It's mainly for the casual folk who just want to build that new deck to surprise the kitchen table for yeaGO, or to have fun at the next FNM with a unique deck. Remember that a majority of the magic:the gathering customer base and even our user base are casual users.
And yeago, I'm explaining why this feature never saw the light of completion. And everything in those paragraphs is true so please do not bash me for that.
As a side not yeago: I hope you realize you have a bad habit of not letting any of us know the progress on any feature and where it is on your list of "things to do". Please don't blame me for that as I try to explain to many users why so many threads are made of a particular issue and yet that issue isn't being solved even after months of complaints for seemingly very simple solutions (the tokens thing for example, I still can't add images or change the subtypes of tokens, thus it won't ever get done). The changelog is an improvement, but a proper "bugs and issues report section" is in definite order. Something done in this fashion would be wonderful (this is for the game Hero Siege). I can create another thread to avoid extensive derailment if you desire.
July 6, 2015 5:20 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #22
KillTheIslandUser, I'll dredge up the old combase discussion for you, some of what you suggested was in that thread so you might be able to be enlightened from what transpired. Give me a minute to find the thing.
July 6, 2015 5:22 p.m.
are these combos?
grand-abolisher+holy-day+red-elemental-blast
kiki-jiki-mirror-breaker+restoration-angel+village-bell-ringer
agent-of-the-fates+flickering-ward
darksteel-forge+mycosynth-lattice+nevinyrrals-disk
July 6, 2015 5:23 p.m. Edited.
Femme_Fatale says... #25
Agent of the Fates Flickering Ward
I had to link those cards to see ...
Number 2 and 4 are combos, as the Kiki combo is an infinite combo and the disk combo is a lock (as Epoch had layed out that locks work effectively as infinite combos). Number 3 is synergy, it effectively advances your board state through card interaction but doesn't win you the game. The first one is just shit.
July 6, 2015 5:34 p.m.
well the combos are now collecting occurrences that they appear so it seems pretty easy for whoever to come along and sort them by their occurences and disable the ones that don't fit. seems like you said 4 out of 5 were combos so its not really a bad starting point for an editorialization approach
July 6, 2015 5:38 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #27
Femme_FataleI wouldn't go so far as to say kitchen table, as I am not one of those players. That being said, I like it literally for mass of ideas I get while brewing my decks. I love brewing, so for people who brew, (it's probably my 2nd most fun of playing magic), this is something that is a nice feature. It's currently not accurate, so it bugs me on that, but I know necessity vs luxury. This is one of those things that will need to be worked on in time.
1.) lol no
2.) yes
3.) That's good card synergy, but you can't go infinite, unless you had infinite mana. It's a product of the initial infinite combo. Those synergies you mentioned together are not infinite.
4.) It's a hardlock, but not infinite. You can't continuously blow up the world without untapping the disk, and having the mana source to do so. For all intent and purpose, you can say it's a combo. That is one of the most debated is it or not a combo questions.
July 6, 2015 5:46 p.m. Edited.
i don't really think i envisioned this system to only cover infinite combos, though. i guess there's the particular meaning and the general meaning. I don't see why users wouldn't be interested in particularly riveting synergies as well. the whole point is just discovery of good combinations of cards.
If we rename this to the 'Combos and Synergies' feature do most of these qualms go away? :P
July 6, 2015 5:49 p.m. Edited.
Femme_Fatale says... #29
Why don't we have 3 categories then? One that says infinite combo, one that says hard lock (meaning once it is down, you pretty much win the game, just not right away as with infinite combos, like that disk combo), and then another that says synergy?
July 6, 2015 5:54 p.m. Edited.
KillTheIslandUser says... #30
I said before, I am fine with good synergies being on there. That doesn't bother me. Something like Agent of the Fates and Flickering Ward I'd be ok with being up there on combos, as it's a great card synergy that can advance board state.
The disk and lattic and forge again as well should go under combo as well. Hardlocks are in essence a combo... it can't win you the game outright, but the advantage is so huge you shouldn't lose. I'm not a huge stickler for the synergy vs combo debate on here. I just am tired of cards that are literally really not synergistic nor combo on here.
If you had 3 categories, or even just synergy vs combo. I'm fine with that honestly. If possible hardlock, combo, and synergy would be ideal. I'm not gonna force you to work on this though, as it will take time. For now I'm ok with just synergy and combo, or even mixing them up... but so long as things that don't at least have synergy being on the combos list lol.
July 6, 2015 5:57 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #31
Holy shit I'm tired.. forgive my bad grammar posts atm >.> I'm rereading them, and realizing lol... but to tired to go back to fix them. My general point is getting across.
That being said, thanks yeago for taking the time to go over all this, and working on it. I really appreciate both yours and femmes time for going over it.
July 6, 2015 6 p.m. Edited.
but if we are just trying to keep out things that aren't a synergy, who cares which category they are in if they're only just all displayed the same on the card page? its not like there is a lot of sorting features. i guess i could add some search features. i'd be interested to hear what kind of fun all of this granularity really buys us.
July 6, 2015 6 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #33
It's a feature that people would enjoy using, sort of like the alters feature. It isn't really needed, but it spices up this site a bit more.
July 6, 2015 6:02 p.m.
eh whatever i added those categories and they're all available to you in the admin. i would try by sorting by occurences to roughly toss out things that are junk. things that don't have more than 10 occurences don't display anywhere anyway.
July 6, 2015 6:08 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #35
See, the issue is that we have no differentiation between the kinds of "combos" being listed. If you can find a way to separate infinite combos, locks, and synergies, then it might be feasible to list entries from all three of those categories.
However, I don't like the idea of accepting synergies because there are umpteen hundreds of synergies between various cards. What's the cutoff? How do you determine what is and isn't worth listing? Qualifying and curating a synergy list would be, to put it mildly, a fucking nightmare.
Infinite combos and locks are much, much easier. They're easily definable, and you can identify them by asking a single yes or no question. Maybe two if you give one question to each group.
And personally, I'm much more interested in whether I can win the game with "card X" than in whether card X happens to have tangential interactions with 100 other cards.
That said, I certainly don't claim to speak for all of the users of the site, and I would be surprised if this perspective represented the entirety of community opinion.
If you're thinking about accommodating synergies, we'd need to identify whether it's a worthwhile pursuit (there seems to be support for it), what criteria we would canonize, and how we would curate the beast.
July 6, 2015 6:08 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #36
And I also don't think "display all combos with N links from users" is a good strategy. We have no way to ensure that these combos are even combos or whether they're worth considering. And it would mean we're missing out on quite a few legitimate entries.
I still say we nuke the entire list and start over with the true combos. We can evaluate other options from there.
July 6, 2015 6:09 p.m. Edited.
KillTheIslandUser says... #37
It's basically what femme said, except I feel that the combos feature holds a little more weight in the over-all site goal. This site was originally about brewing, sharing, and knowledge to the community if I remember correctly. That would help others get more ideas for their brewing, and sharing.
Now I don't want it to be said that art alters isn't useful, cause it is. It's very cool and appealing, and magic itself is an art; people use it express themselves. Just my 2 cents.
July 6, 2015 6:10 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #38
Synergy: Obvious hefty board state advantage achieved through card interaction.
That's a start at least.
I generally have a good idea of what should and shouldn't be included as a synergy from managing the combase during its early ages. However I can't really define that in words beyond what I mentioned above, it's really just "gut feeling" and that isn't an accurate determinable method that can be backed with reliable information.
However, I don't have the time to be managing it at the moment, I already have so many other unfinished projects for this site that have basically been put on hold because of how far away my work place is.
EDIT: But I'm with Epoch in the "nuke the damn thing already". How would that affect current combo codes that are littered around the site? Do we just "turn them off" by assigning the combase another code as was mentioned above?
July 6, 2015 6:14 p.m. Edited.
yeah i mean there's always going to be hookers like oblivion ring sitting around. but with a goal in mind of surfacing interesting related cards to people, we all just have to figure out the best system possible.
occurences just help us understand and work with combos that have risen to the top of prevalence. its just a sorting feature.
i'm having trouble understanding what specific proposal the people have in mind when they say 'nuke the whole list and lets start again with true combos'. i guess let me see your volunteer army salivating to type these things in with fidelity or stop suggesting it. things have to be feasible.
as for the admin privs i was talking about the OP. look what you've earned yourself KillTheIslandUser :P
July 6, 2015 6:16 p.m. Edited.
KillTheIslandUser says... #40
Epochalyptiksays... "Infinite combos and locks are much, much easier. They're easily definable, and you can identify them by asking a single yes or no question. Maybe two if you give one question to each group."
Yes that's 100% true. Synergy sorting is a fucking nightmare, but maybe like yeago said... if it gets mentioned enough, it is worth looking at, and that's where it can start. It would cut most the work out. I mean really... do we need to know every single card interaction in the game of magic? No... infact that's the fun of fucking brewing. Combos are in all sense... game winning, or so huge to board state advancement that it's basically a win. Those should be known on that list of combos.
July 6, 2015 6:17 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #41
29k in combos didn't just get added through a team of users, it was this site's entire community that did it. They did it once they can do it again.
I also suggest having upgraded users the ability to add in descriptions for how the combo actually works. As a sort of description that was already mentioned above.
July 6, 2015 6:20 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #42
How about we get the definitions laid out first, then.
A synergy is an interaction between two cards that produces greater advantage than either card would normally produce on its own.
A combo is a synergy that provides
1. an infinitely repeating loop;
2. an infinitely repeatable loop;
3. a lock on the game.
A lock is any combo between cards that prevents players from taking actions.
Those are very basic definitions, but they highlight the important distinctions. Basically, synergies are rectangles and combos are squares. All combos are synergies, but not all synergies are combos.
The idea of a combo is that it can win or otherwise end the game. Or it can create a board state that is impossible for an opponent to progress through.
July 6, 2015 6:20 p.m.
we can't even get all cards added before sets get released but, oh yeah, we're totally gonna have people add all legitimate combos and then maintain that list every set release. the definitions aren't particularly interesting to me if there's no viable way they'd ever get typed up. its academic at this point. show me the army.
July 6, 2015 6:22 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #44
yeago, I hope you realize that 90% of the combos in existence most likely aren't even in our database. Oh, and people already have all these combos listed as coding in their decks. If you send out a notification of sorts to all users to re-enter their combos that are listed on their decks so we can effectively sort them better, that would add a fair portion of combos to our site.
And give me a break, I've got 1-3 hours to my day now. Do you really honestly think I can add 100 cards in that time frame? I'm almost finished adding all of them now, I've got about 30 more to go.
July 6, 2015 6:24 p.m. Edited.
Epochalyptik says... #45
This thread develops way to goddamn fast.
Regarding the nuking. There really aren't an extraordinary number of true combos. There are maybe 100-200 good ones, and even getting a fraction of those would give us a much better start than looking through the thousands of current entries (something I once endeavored to do) and trying to identify which ones are worth keeping. I'm not saying "let's kill everything and then comb Magic's history for everything that qualifies as a combo." I'm saying "let's kill everything because 99% of it is garbage and start again with a quality sample."
We ought to actually create a team that is responsible for managing the combo lists. That way, we could have some kind of quality control entity without putting all of the responsibility on a single person. The team could be comprised of volunteers who we trust to understand and apply the definitions we identify.
And if it means that we can have a well-managed and usable feature, I could donate several hours of my time to inputting the starting data.
July 6, 2015 6:25 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #46
yeaGO HOLY SHIT!!!! Thanks lol! I'll get right on that list of 10000000000000000 combos lolol. I just found myself a new hobby GG!!
Femme_FataleYeah I think I mentioned that, but your idea solifies it better (about the upgraded users adding how combos work for a description). That would make it easier for people to comprehend the combo. Some people don't have the knowledge, or game mechanics yet to figure it out. That's fine, but if you suggest a combo, you should be able to explain it.
EpochalyptikYes and that's exactly the basic definitions that should be the basework of how we go about combos.
July 6, 2015 6:25 p.m.
KillTheIslandUser says... #47
I think that would actually be best to get those well-trusted people to work on it. There's numerous people on this site who spend a good amount of time on here, and love reading and advancing their knowledge... this would in essence be their holy grail. So why not let them help keep the card database of Combos (as you said actual combos) worked on. The synergies is always going to be a work in progress, and that's fine, as long as that team can understand the guidelines we set up for what is acceptable and not.
July 6, 2015 6:29 p.m.
Nothing is stopping a group of people from coming up with a list of these combos, since as you say there's not that many.
July 7, 2015 1:34 a.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #49
KillTheIslandUser - something doesn't need to be infinite to be a combo (if it did, then there would be no need for the term 'infinite combo', as it would be redundant. Since there clearly are separate terms 'combo' and 'infinite combo' we can infer that they are different things.
And both of those are different to synergies. =)
July 8, 2015 5:57 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #50
yeaGO, I hope you realize that right now, it is a lot easier to completely wipe the combase. It's going to take KillTheIslandUser a few years longer to fix what we currently have than it's going to take everyone else to resubmit the combos with the new markdown syntax limiting what people put down.
Femme_Fatale says... #2
Oh the combase? That was basically given up on when nobody was able to come to turns with the criteria of what is a combo and whether or not if synergy should be included and to what extent should certain synergies be included. Just ignore it, as it is never going to get done. It would require a complete wipe plus a complete revamp, which won't be done anytime soon as we would have to come to terms as to how to construct it and is quite low on the list of things yeago is concerned about (at least I'm pretty sure it is, as it isn't causing problems in the site and is off in its own little dusty corner). People also use the plus syntax when listing cards not knowing that they are adding things to the combase.
July 6, 2015 2:57 p.m.