New to the game, players intentionally hold the game ******* with phase delays
As a new player, it is very annoying, frustrating, tedious, and a waste of my time to play against players that stall out every step of their turn. Whether or not a player is winning they can effectively "win" in their own juvenile way by wasting your time. I find myself wanting to surrender to players just because a match is going to take four times as long because they are holding the match's progression hsotage, even in the first couple of turns where there is basically no heavy tactics to employ as the players play their core, cheapest mana cost cards.
I would suggest reducing the time allotted to both players in the first three player turns' phases, which would consistently reduce the time that a serial game-hostaging player wastes, and allow the game to progress to the 2-3 mana pool per player phase sooner, when it is more reasonable to use the full duration of a turn's phases due to the increased variety of cards that are playable with increased mana pools.
Alternatively a general reduction in time allotted to each player turn's phases(20%-30% reduction in time, for example, would be nice) and a general per-turn time pool so when a player gets to a more complex and active phase they have the basic phase time allotment and the general time pool that is partially replenished per turn or over time.
I believe any efforts to reduce the length of the longest matches is a welcome one, and tweaking the phase time lengths seems to be the easiest way to improve what is currently the greatest detractor for MTG Arena's player experience.
-
PressureChamber#23947 commented
I agree with this. I also just keep coming across players who waste a minute or more of my time each turn just running down their timer.