The combo problem can be fixed by Wizards of the Coast doing their job and banning the cards that enable the combos and change the rules so that it is impossible for someone to sit there playing solitaire.

Agree with The IT Guy#41932's take.

Acererak player here. Half the games that you would be able to combo off, you lose because you don't have time to do the full 20 damage with your loop before your turn ends.

@The IT Guy#41932 agree with this. There needs to be a fix. If new decks are available but they realistically can't be played on the engine, it makes no sense.

This issue is now more important then ever.

With the rise in popularity and good tournement result for decks like Relic of legend / Acerak combo players shouldn't have to suffer from opponent not conceding when there's an obvious infinite combo that would win the game but end up loosing due to the timer. It is litterally impossible to win a Bo1 game due to the time it takes to kill the opponent and in Bo3 if you win one game you'll end up with no time left for the following games.

This is also true with the addition of hidden strings to arena there is now the possibility to play UR Lotus field combo that generally wins by drawing their whole deck with Artist Talent. Although it is possible to win the huge amount of Artist talent trigger and the difficulty to find cards in your hand when all your spell in the gravetard have flashback (with Lier) makes it easy to miss click and hard to "speed run" your combo. I personally try to avoid playing Lier even if it'S the "correct" play to guarantee the win since the flashback interface make it so hard to play fast. This has cost me a few games already after just a couple of days since the printing of hidden strings.

I see 2 possible fix for this.
1. Add some sort of infinite loop system. This might be hard to implement since the opponent needs to be able to set a stop point somewhere in the loop.
2. The solution provided by OP would work if we increased the time gained by doing actions. I do agree that we might need to reduce the default "thinking timer" to compensate.

With respect to the roping out issue, it's annoying A.F. Especially when people intentionally or unintentionally leave a match before it starts, so you're left sitting through several rounds of timers before they blow up. But also, sometimes you get sore losers who hate losing and will just sit there running down timers, intentionally, and like clicking on something to move to the next step or phase **just before** their timer runs out so they then get a new timer to continue running down.

In my opinion, the start of game timer situation and some others could be reduced by **not giving people a "grace period"** if they already ran down one timer. During their last step, phase, or turn. Like if they fully ran down their timers to zero. When they move on to the next step / phase / turn they shouldn't get any "extra" "bonus time." Like at the start of the game, if they rand down a timer to zero last turn, currently it gives them a good 15-30 seconds *before* it starts a new timer on them.

IMO, if they ran it down last turn (intentionally or due to disconnecting [intentionally or otherwise]), it should **immediately start a new timer** as soon as their next turn starts. Only if they're actually present, and actually do active things should that timer go away. Otherwise, make them go boom and let me move on to the next match, not waste five minutes on unnecessary extra timers waiting on someone who's disconnected and not even there.

Why punish the person who's present and ready to play, making them wait for someone who's not present intentionally or otherwise? I feel like some people do it intentionally to make people concede the match in order to not waste time waiting for timers, and get "free wins," or whatever.

Agreed.
It's very annoying, and rude, when an opponent "bails" on a session simply because of defeat, and doesn't just end it. Having to sit through 4 time outs because they closed the game, or whatever sux.

It would also be great if we could BLOCK other players so we never have to play them again....J/S

Strong agree

If you either allow us to skip animations or freeze the timer while animations are shown that would also help.
If you resolve a minds desire with a stormcount upwards of 40 you only win if your opponent wants you to since your turn will be over by the time the animation ends and most often they show unsportsmanlike behaviour by abusing the timer instead of conceiding when they have obvioulsy lost

Nice! This is a good suggestion.