Yes, that is the danger. But organic growth isn't just about putting out more product, although that is the simplest way to try to spur it. Wizards hasn't quite realized this, or they don't want to.Originally Posted by Barook
Fear. Here's the thing, they have no clue about how large the collectors sector is. Organized play only leads to only a fraction of sales. The rest must be casual/collectors. Just how much is either one is really anyone's guess. And since they don't know what drastically dropping prices would actually do, they just do what they have always done. It's actually, in a round about way, a good thing for Wizards that there are scalpers. Scalpers are constant customers. Players and collectors are far more fickle, because there are intrinsic reasons why they are buying. Scalpers just want anything they can short supply on. So, it actually in Wizards' business interest to not fight scalpers, just like how here in the US, it is in ticket companies best interest to not seriously fight ticket scalpers.
If secondary market prices fall too far or supply isn't limited, scalpers will just quit buying and cracking product, because it wouldn't be worth it. If they do, players themselves will never buy up that excess. I think that is the fear. I don't know that it is actually true, but that's my best guess.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Maybe they could move more product if they designed sets for Standard instead of Limited. Because you know, godawful Standards drive down play and interest.
I think in general their entire policy was just to try to do as little as possible and let the goose keep laying golden eggs, but much of the original design zeitgeist has basically reached its ceiling while marketing has coasted on doing essentially nothing and they have been caught with their pants down, which is why they have been floundering while trying to innovate suddenly.
Also they are no longer the only option, Hearthstone is eating them alive now.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Sounds about right
Right, I mean, on the one hand, it is wise to not change too much. On the other, insufficient change will inevitably lead to decile. There is a "sweet spot" between conservation of what has worked in the past and acknowledgement of what has changed in the present that necessitates change in for the future. Standard was viewed as a perpetual cash cow. But Standard's recent failure(s) have demonstrated that it isn't (likely to be) a sustainable model. I think part of it is that attempting to cater to all the market segments with the exact same product is simply not going to work. The different expectations of the Limited/Standard/Modern/Eternal/EDH/Casual/Collectors/Scalpers/Businesses are simply too fractious.
I think the biggest fear, and this is probably rational to an extent, is that a set with too good EV which is not limited availability, would "kill" any product released subsequently. Because, of course, if the price isn't jacked up and limited availability, why buy some Standard/Limited junk set when you could buy similarly priced, greater EV reprint set? Sure, some might, but most won't. Because who wants bulk rares and Limited fodder?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Standard's failure is our salvation. At least, it's the best hope of salvation, if it doesn't kill the game. That and Limited is actually the worst thing to happen to Constructed Magic in the game's history.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
That's a problem of modern sets in general. Like 90% of every set is a complete garbage fire and most of the value revolves around a few pushed cards. Everthing is way too save and cookie cutter now.
Seriously, I wonder how much of their revenue actually comes from Limited players since they fuck everybody else over for them, both in set design and rarity-wise.
Edit:
Hearthstone stole their thunder and showed what's possible revenue-wise if you actually gave a fuck and polished your product. It's the shareholders who are eating them alive now since they saw lots of money that isn't made by WotC. And other games entering the market after seeing those sweet Hearthstone bucks certainly didn't do WotC a favor, either.
Countering Hearthstone with a worse rip-off of Hearthstone, except with WotC's greed and incompetence added, is a recipe for disaster. We'll have to wait and see how Artifact is going to turn out, but if it blows up, then WotC is shit outta luck.
I don't think it is necessarily a large portion of revenue, so much as it is a large proportion of Organized Play. It also eases the demands placed on design since numerous cards are just functional reprints and others are literally designed to be bad/unplayable as "skill testers" (probably the biggest farce of this already farcical paradigm). It allows them to push out a set where some arbitrarily large proportion of the cards are actually just literal garbage and justify it (not entirely wrongly) as "good design." Even better, since there isn't any other option, the people who want some or all of the low, low percent of actual playable constructed cards are pretty much obligated to either buy the garbage in pursuit of the good, or pay the premium to get the good. I mean, I don't fault the premise, it's a fantastic way to build a revenue stream and has kept the game alive this long. It's just terrible from the consumer point of view.
Now that there are "more options" out there that don't suffer this, less and less people are going to sign up for that sort of shit. I mean, we idiots are still here, because we are too addicted, too invested, or too whatever to get out, but it's a hard, hard sell to anyone new. It's like if you didn't buy in to the nonsense of loot boxes in video games. The idea of it is idiotic and is (arguably, legally speaking in some places) not much different than gambling. Yet here we are, attempting to dissect the back-end problems of why the game isn't as popular as it "could be" when we accept it's terrible distribution model "without question."
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Not every card can be a winner, but the way they recycle old cards by making them more expensive and crappier is just downright insulting. Who wants to payfor a sorcery speed Lightning Bolt?
That's just the thing, from our (Eternal player's) perspective, that is literal garbage. However, there is a Limited environment where such a card is actually playable. There are also Limited environments where that card is also literal garbage. You get to experience the "skill test" of evaluating the Limited format and figuring out if that is playable or not. Except that the format is largely solved now-a-days in a matter of weeks. This is why Wizards has become so apt to limit MTGO data in recent years. Not that it really makes much of a difference. Again, Limited is made to do two main things: sell sealed product and ease the burden on Design (which actually moves a burden onto Balance).Not every card can be a winner, but the way they recycle old cards by making them more expensive and crappier is just downright insulting. Who wants to pay
When every card needs to be evaluated from the multivariate point of view of Limited/Standard/Modern/Eternal/EDH/Casual/Collectors/Scalpers/Business every product will be a failure. This is guaranteed by the fact that many of the priorities of one of those point of views is antithetical to the other's. This, again, is why the distribution model is destined to be a failure, it cannot accommodate what people buying it want it to be, since there simply is no way to make something that would please all of them at the same time.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
That's simply not true. If you don't care about participating in WotC or otherwise sanctioned play, then you can use whatever proxies you want. Chinese fakes are plenty good enough for my kitchen table.
OK, yes, that is a fact. There is always the option of "simply do not purchase any." But if you are set on playing Sanctioned, or for some other reason desire to have "genuine product" there is no other choice. My "asertion" only applies with the underlying fundamental proposition that you are actually looking to buy genuine product. If you aren't, or are more than willing to not, there is literally an entire universe of possible things you could do, for example, you could also just steal boxes/packs/cards from a store or another person. Indulging all the "other" possibilities serves only obfuscate the point I am trying to make though.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I think there's levels of skill test.
Level 1 - Is this card good in limited Competitive Play
Level 2 - Is this card good in non-limited Competitive Play
Level 3 - Is this card good for a specific non-limited Competitive Meta
The issues seem to be that:
A) Wizards designs cards to fit skill test level 1, in that they print clear jank (to competitive players) with the intention that it's harder to tell if the card is jank in limited.
B) Due to the internet, unlike previous secret team tech and the like, players solve skill test level 1 in a quicker amount of time then Wizards thought a particullar limited season would last.
C) It's actually faster to solve for the Skill Level 2 and 3 depending on how old the format is. The older the format, the faster it is to solve since any one set is a drop in the bucket compared to what's already existing in the format.
D) By printing bad cards to increase the time it takes to solve for Level 1, this decreases the time it takes to solve for 2 and 3 since printing clear non-limited bad cards leaves a smaller card pool to be evaluated.
Right, I agree with that assessment pretty much. The thing is, that it doesn't actually have to be like that, or at least, I should say, I don't think it has to be like that. Many casual/EDH cards are simply not good in either Limited or Sanctioned formats. So, the idea that packs need to be seeded with "unplayable in any format" cards is absolutely a farce, patterned on the idea you detail above, but really is just a way to pad sets and sell more cards. Imagine, why do cards that don't pass the levels you present have to be completely useless to the rest of the market segments? Remember, we are positing that the Casual/EDH/Collector segment is necessarily bigger than the segments that seek Organized Play. Casual/EDH or even Collector aimed cards are bound to be bad in competative formats anyway, so what's the harm in having those in more packs, as opposed to totally dead weight ones? So, it stands to reason that the useless-in-every-format cards serve absolutely no purpose but to occupy space to lower the EV of packs. Lower EV of packs is designed to sell more packs. If the EV is too high, I think their thinking is that, one, people would acquire what they want too easily and so would buy less, and two, that a high EV would cannibalize subsequent potential EV of future printings. I don't think either is actually a fact, but there must be something in their thinking along those lines.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I guess it was meant to be rhetorical, but I'm just following your lead and questioning the distribution model. Talking about the relevance or value of sanctioned play seems particularly apropos when Gerry Thompson just skipped on worlds.
As for "buy" and "not buy" - is there any other kind of leverage that people have on WotC?
Right, sorry, I didn't mean it if I came across as dismissive. People are most definitely apt to simply "bail out" if they can't get the kind of EV that justifies their investment. What "bail out" means can be different for different people though. One way people are definitely "protesting" the distribution model is by simply not buying. Another is by buying proxies/fakes.
What Gerry did is another, although that has little to do with the distribution model. In the end, the "average" consumer is going to have to "make their voice heard" with their wallets. It's simply the only real way to drive home the point that the product simply isn't appealing. We can complain on the internet all day, what drives Wizards is Hasbro and what drives Hasbro is the bottom line they have to appease stock-holders with.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I agree. I feel a card should only be printed if it directly applies to (1) one of the three psychographic profiles, (2) one of the two aesthetic profiles, or (3) fufills ones of the three skill levels listed above. If a card fufills neither, then its useless - no one wants it at all. Each card needs some reason for existing beyond simply existing . Mere existence should not be a goal of design. As such many current chaff cards could apply to (1) or (2). Hell, (2) is so broad in terms of Vorthos subtypes that as long as chaff is given good art or story then they can be allowed, but even in that arena current chaff cards suffer.
Are bad cards even necessary for a good draft format? They are only skill testing insofar as being used once, then forever being relegated to the draft chaff bin. High powered draft formats like masters sets have cards that may be weak in limited but are very strong in constructed, and from what I gather people love playing those sets because of how powerful they are. The extreme example of this is cube, which many consider to be the pinnacle of limited magic. Instead of having dead cards that essentially only trick newbies into playing them, every card is powerful and it is up to the deck builder to create the cohesive list that makes it all work, like creating an all star team. To me, this is far more interesting to play (and watch if it is streamed) than traditional limited which is the equivalent of play fighting with foam swords. The only rationale I can come up with is that they intentionally want draft to be super low powered because it is a limiting factor in game play which makes it simpler and easier for newbies to pick up.
Then there is a monetary aspect. For every crappy card that they put in a set, they are essentially wasting a slot that could be used for a good card. This limits the amount of good cards in a set which causes the value in the set to pool in those few cards. The most egregious example of this is mythic rares, where a couple of them are going to be the strongest cards the set, constructed staples that everyone wants, and the others are dollar bin cards that they put at mythic for 'flavor' reasons or something silly like that. Nobody even cracks boxes anymore since so much of the value in the set is concentrated in a couple cards that you might not even get, and there is not a single person on the face of the earth that enjoys cracking one of the worthless mythics in their box, they are probably the ultimate feel bad in pack cracking.
i guess there is only so much basic cards you can print before you fall into the spiral of power creep. i dont think there would be much difference between a vanilla 3/2 for 3 and a 3/2 flying, vigilance, lifelink for 3 when you see the 1001st reprint. i also like the low powerlevel of limited and although id like to see commons get a little better i doubt theyll get more useful than pauper formats. I also run a themed cube, so some amount of bad cards ends there for flavor reasons and when you sealed with it, its cool to sometimes see them played.
no, printing only chase cards doesnt work
Consider Putrefy and Mortify, which were considered all-stars when they were printed, vs. Abrupt Decay, and now Assassin's Trophy.
You do that every set and pretty soon you're just printing one mana vindicates and counterspells.
I mean, look at the kind of creatures they had to print to outclass Tarmogoyf. It's just stupid.
Also see Ravenous Baloth -> Loxodon Hierarch -> Siege Rhino.
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