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Thread: The current state of Magic

  1. #1221
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by phonics View Post
    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.
    In theory? No, bad cards are not needed. In fact, the existence of Cube as a format is proof of this. Which is why I directly point out that the only real plausible explanation of why such completely unplayable cards exist actually has nothing to do with some fabled "skill testing" or any abstract concept like that and is simply a pragmatic solution to both put out more cards, which speaks to your later point, while making the burden on design and balance teams far lighter.

    Quote Originally Posted by phonics View Post
    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.
    Right, opening packs/boxes is almost always going to be net-negative EV, unless you can open enough to overcome the "randomness" of the distribution. Even then, it is probably a net loss if you are paying retail prices for boxes/packs. In this way, Wizards does indeed cater to the Scalper/Business/Collector segments. You can see every set's EV here. Notice how the only real outlier is Modern Masters 1. Ixalan's value does "buck the trend" but is likely to decease once the sets are no longer in Standard.

    So, to circle back around, the point of these worthless cards is specifically to limited EV. "Skill testing" is a bogus, farcical construct made up only to lighten the Design and Balance load and most importantly negatively impact the EV of the average pack in order to promote the selling of more boxes/cases.
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Humphrey View Post
    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
    Quote Originally Posted by morgan_coke View Post
    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.
    I think most might expect me to disagree here, given my stance. But I don't. The idea isn't to have pervasive power creep. Notice I don't say the aim is to not have power creep at all, as static state that would not be good for the game's Eternal formats (and even the non-Rotating ones) at all. Indeed, too much power creep is detrimental to future design space. The aim should be to be as progressive as possible, while not being regressive. Shit no one wants to play in any format is regressive. That doesn't mean you have to reinvent the wheel every set. It does mean you should be utilizing more actual reprints of reasonably playable cards, not functional reprints of already undesirable cards. Every card in a pack should be desirable from one of the market segments point of view. Packs now have too many cards, in my opinion, now-a-days that simply are filler and add nothing of any value at all to the person opening it.

    Low power-level doesn't have to equal bad cards. You can make a low-power Cube with cards people actually want, rather than filling it with undesirable Grizzly Bears of every shape and size. It's doable, it's just more difficult. And again, it's antithetical to the aim of lowering pack EV.
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  3. #1223
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    I dont agree that packs nowadays have more filler. In fact its the opposite (kind of). Thanks to limited almost every card is playable nowadays and you can easily build a decent casual decks after like 3 drafts when you aim for the same colors. Try that in the glorified days of Legends and its Cathedral of Serras Tons of commons and even uncommons and rares Chaoslace *cough* were trash up until like tempest were they finally found a decent path.

    Your sight on the game is way too biased from a spike eternal player view
    Last edited by Jander78; 09-27-2018 at 01:38 PM. Reason: Fixed card tags
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Humphrey View Post
    I dont agree that packs nowadays have more filler. In fact its the opposite (kind of). Thanks to limited almost every card is playable nowadays and you can easily build a decent casual decks after like 3 drafts when you aim for the same colors. Try that in the glorified days of Legends and its Cathedral of Serras Tons of commons and even uncommons and rares Chaoslace *cough* were trash up until like tempest were they finally found a decent path.

    Your sight on the game is way too biased from a spike eternal player view
    I don't think that's what H is saying. The arguement is not that "there is more trash", but that "Trash is not required". The argument even extends to "Less Trash would be good for the health of the Game as a whole".

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Humphrey View Post
    I dont agree that packs nowadays have more filler. In fact its the opposite (kind of). Thanks to limited almost every card is playable nowadays and you can easily build a decent casual decks after like 3 drafts when you aim for the same colors. Try that in the glorified days of Legends and its Cathedral of Serras Tons of commons and even uncommons and rares Chaoslace *cough* were trash up until like tempest were they finally found a decent path.

    Your sight on the game is way too biased from a spike eternal player view
    A good point. I can't pretend I am not biased. But that's pretty much part of the issue, though, right? That "one-size-fits-all" product is bound to disappoint a fair portion of the market segments?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cire View Post
    I don't think that's what H is saying. The arguement is not that "there is more trash", but that "Trash is not required". The argument even extends to "Less Trash would be good for the health of the Game as a whole".
    Also a good point. There has always been trash, but doesn't predicate there always needs to be trash. Especially not when people may well not be using the packs for Limited.
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    but "trash" is highly subjective. for me trash are cards that are literally unplayables like laces. A vanilla bear is always playable. As said, when you dont spin the powerwheel like crazy you will always have worse cards that are considered trash by someone. MaRo wrote an article why you need "bad" cards.

    And standard packs are designed for limited play and beginner, I think the product does a somewhat decent job. Sure Id appreciate the powerlevel of master edition set levels, but you would still have "trash". For Spikes you have the secondary market.
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Humphrey View Post
    but "trash" is highly subjective. for me trash are cards that are literally unplayables like laces. A vanilla bear is always playable. As said, when you dont spin the powerwheel like crazy you will always have worse cards that are considered trash by someone. MaRo wrote an article why you need "bad" cards.

    And standard packs are designed for limited play and beginner, I think the product does a somewhat decent job. Sure Id appreciate the powerlevel of master edition set levels, but you would still have "trash". For Spikes you have the secondary market.
    Absolutely a fact. All of that. Again, this is why we are discussing the merit and viability of the distribution model. The question we are working toward an "answer" to is: why isn't Wizards selling more product? Which can be rephrased, in a way, as "why isn't Magic more popular?" Or "how can Wizards grow the game?"

    My hypothesis is that the antiquated, disjointed nature of the distribution model is a major factor why Wizards does not sell as many packs as they "could." Of course people can turn to the secondary market. But that turning is actually detrimental to the growth of the game, because it drives entry prices higher. How much is the price of Standard-competitive cards a barrier? Serious question, I don't know that anyone knows the exact answer. But consider it for Modern even, so as to not entangle the Reserve List issue. How much does cost keep people from playing? The reprint policy is a direct off-shoot of distribution model and a direct barrier for entry to non-rotating formats. The key is that, I believe, Wizards does not want to tear down that barrier, because it would make Standard even harder to market.
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  8. #1228

    Re: The current state of Magic

    So much stupidity in this thread in the last couple of pages.
    For all the legitimate complaints towards wizards recently regarding Organized Play, PR, Marketing etc I think that generally their R&D department does a great job and I'm so glad none of you work there.

    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?
    You either don't understand what EV means or how it works.
    Imagine I create an unlimited print-run version of a pack. Each of these packs cost $5 and you're guaranteed to open 1 copy of Engineered Explosives (which for the sake of discussion is currently priced at $100). In the current (real) market, it would be considered very profitable to be able to get an EE for $5. However, in a world with an unlimited supply of Engineered Explosives available for $5, the price of EE instantly drops to $5. Some people buy these packs and then later don't want the EE anymore, or they are given out in tournament prizes, increasing the market supply of EE even further. The price of EE drops to lower than $5. Now even though you are getting what was previously a "$100 card" in your $5 pack, these $5 packs are now negative EV, because you get less than $5 worth of product out of it. You can extrapolate this argument to packs that have random distributions of different cards in them. You can never have a pack with positive EV if that pack has an unlimited print run: weird exceptions like MM1 are when the set is so good that the demand for the packs exceeds the supply. If by "set with too good EV" you mean "a set with a lot of constructed playable cards in it" then fine but that's not what "Expected Value" means.

    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.
    Standard and limited are how WotC makes money, it's not going to "kill the game". Limited basically has no effect on constructed; can you think of a card that has had its effect altered to be balanced for limited?

    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.
    How?

    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.
    So you're saying that trying to balance hundreds of commons/uncommons every set for an enjoyable limited format EASES the demands placed on design? The only way this claim makes any sense is if you expect wizards to replace every bear and hill giant with some kind of totally novel constructed-playable effect, which is insanity. The amount of power creep this would cause would totally upend legacy and modern within 1 year or less.

    Going back to my hypothetical EE-Pack scenario: imagine the pack is still $5, still has 1 EE, but now I add 4 'garbage' worthless cards (like 4 basic islands or something). Does the EV of the pack change? No. Your argument only makes sense if you assume that without the extra garbage commons cards I could sell you the pack for cheaper, which I admit might be possible, at the cost of making limited unplayable.

    Erasing limited is a significant financial cost for constructed players: you are totally ignoring the suppressive effect that limited formats have on card prices. Without limited formats, people buy packs until they have the cards they want. As I have established, packs can never be +EV, so once they have the cards they need there is no incentive to buy packs anymore. This limits the supply of cards on the secondary market so keeps the price for singles relatively high. When draft and sealed events exist, people have an incentive to open packs beyond just getting the cards they need, so more copies of the chase cards enter the market and it reduces the cost of playing constructed. Coming from yugioh which has no limited tournaments and noting the difference in the prices of the chase rares you can see that this plays a significant role in why a "standard mythic" type of card is much cheaper in magic.

    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 for a sorcery speed Lightning Bolt?
    Again, the alternative is that either we keep reprinting lightning bolt and STP over and over, which would restrict the design space of both standard and limited and make them boring, or we reprint cards that are side- or up-grades to these cards and now we have internet mouthbreathers going apeshit about power creep instead of "uhhhhhh why does lightning strike exist it's just a worse lightning bolt". Pick your poison

    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.
    Even if we assume this to be true, if limited formats being solved quickly was an actual issue then why do so many pro players still wax lyrical about draft? This morning Ben Stark tweeted about trying to fire a draft queue of Dominaria on MODO despite the fact that the set was released 5 months ago (and according to you has therefore been 'solved' for 4 months).

    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.
    A) This is not an issue. Wizards has to do this. As I explained, the solution to this "issue" is either removing Limited gameplay entirely or implementing insane powercreep
    B) Probably true, but again, not an "issue"
    C) True, but wizards doesn't deliberately design cards in standard sets for vintage, legacy, or in most cases even modern. Do you really want every set to be like RTR and basically flip the format upside down?
    D) Again, the solution to this "issue" is necessarily to replace every Grizzly Bear and Cancel with some entirely novel effect with constructed applications: powercreep will occur at an extreme rate until the game is basically unrecognisable

    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.
    You're again disregarding the importance of limited formats to many people's MTG experience and showing that you don't understand how EV actually works.

    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.
    Not every masters set is considered a good draft format just like not every cube is considered a good draft format. There have been recent MTGO cubes where the powerlevel of the decks is way higher than the draft decks from standard-legal sets but the cubes are not fun because the drafting and gameplay experience is not interesting. Modern Masters sets are still full of "limited chaff" anyway. MM1 was considered a very good limited format and had (for example) a RB-sac archetype with a Goblin subtheme. Cards like Tar Pitcher and Warren Pilferers have never been constructed playable.

    At this point in the thread both Humphrey and morgan_coke have posts which actually make some sense

    In theory? No, bad cards are not needed. In fact, the existence of Cube as a format is proof of this. Which is why I directly point out that the only real plausible explanation of why such completely unplayable cards exist actually has nothing to do with some fabled "skill testing" or any abstract concept like that and is simply a pragmatic solution to both put out more cards, which speaks to your later point, while making the burden on design and balance teams far lighter.
    As I keep saying, "bad" cards are needed, unless you want
    a) Much smaller sets that don't support limited gameplay at all, or
    b) Insane powercreep
    Cube formats don't suffer from this issue because they can't cause powercreep: they are using all reprints and not adding to the card pool at all

    Right, opening packs/boxes is almost always going to be net-negative EV, unless you can open enough to overcome the "randomness" of the distribution.
    You're actually an idiot lol
    Better head to vegas and spin the roulette wheel 100000 times, can't come out ahead unless you have a large sample to even out the randomness

    So, to circle back around, the point of these worthless cards is specifically to limited EV. "Skill testing" is a bogus, farcical construct made up only to lighten the Design and Balance load and most importantly negatively impact the EV of the average pack in order to promote the selling of more boxes/cases.
    Please answer whether you want limited to disappear entirely or whether you want absurd powercreep in your constructed formats because these are the only 2 alternatives

    The idea isn't to have pervasive power creep. Notice I don't say the aim is to not have power creep at all, as static state that would not be good for the game's Eternal formats (and even the non-Rotating ones) at all. Indeed, too much power creep is detrimental to future design space. The aim should be to be as progressive as possible, while not being regressive. Shit no one wants to play in any format is regressive. That doesn't mean you have to reinvent the wheel every set. It does mean you should be utilizing more actual reprints of reasonably playable cards, not functional reprints of already undesirable cards. Every card in a pack should be desirable from one of the market segments point of view. Packs now have too many cards, in my opinion, now-a-days that simply are filler and add nothing of any value at all to the person opening it. Low power-level doesn't have to equal bad cards. You can make a low-power Cube with cards people actually want, rather than filling it with undesirable Grizzly Bears of every shape and size. It's doable, it's just more difficult. And again, it's antithetical to the aim of lowering pack EV.
    - The underlying assumption in this post is that limited gameplay isn't a "market segment" that anybody cares about, which in my opinion is idiotic
    - You're simultaneously complaining that the wotc card design team is lazy while demanding that they simply reprint more cards that already exist
    - I agree that you CAN make a low-power CUBE with cards that people actually want because these cards are all reprints and therefore don't contribute to the power creep problem
    - Your answer to how the power creep problem is solved ("be as progressive as possible, without being regressive") is wishy-washy and doesn't actually explain anything. If you want many more new cards in each set to be worthy of constructed play then power creep is accelerating by definition. You haven't adequately addressed this at all
    - You either don't understand how EV works or don't know what it means

    I dont agree that packs nowadays have more filler. In fact its the opposite (kind of). Thanks to limited almost every card is playable nowadays and you can easily build a decent casual decks after like 3 drafts when you aim for the same colors. Try that in the glorified days of Legends and its Cathedral of Serras Tons of commons and even uncommons and rares Chaoslace *cough* were trash up until like tempest were they finally found a decent path.

    Your sight on the game is way too biased from a spike eternal player view
    This is an extremely good point: a ton of old sets were full of cards that were unplayable in both constructed AND limited. The reason why modern limited formats are almost universally considered better than the ancient ones (did you watch any of those fucking beta drafts lmao) are because the current WotC design actually does put in effort into how those throwaway commons play.

    I don't think that's what H is saying. The arguement is not that "there is more trash", but that "Trash is not required". The argument even extends to "Less Trash would be good for the health of the Game as a whole".
    Also a good point. There has always been trash, but doesn't predicate there always needs to be trash. Especially not when people may well not be using the packs for Limited.
    Ok, so your answer is that rather than have powercreep, we should just design the sets to have like 1/4 the number of cards and limited MTG doesn't exist anymore. If you think this is actually reasonable then I don't know what to say to you.

    My hypothesis is that the antiquated, disjointed nature of the distribution model is a major factor why Wizards does not sell as many packs as they "could." Of course people can turn to the secondary market. But that turning is actually detrimental to the growth of the game, because it drives entry prices higher.
    How does the existence of a secondary market make the barrier to entry higher? If it was cheaper to get the cards from buying packs people would already just do that instead.

    But consider it for Modern even, so as to not entangle the Reserve List issue. How much does cost keep people from playing? The reprint policy is a direct off-shoot of distribution model and a direct barrier for entry to non-rotating formats. The key is that, I believe, Wizards does not want to tear down that barrier, because it would make Standard even harder to market.
    I agree that wizards of the coast should reprint high-value cards more frequently in order to bring the prices down and make the game more accessible.
    I don't believe that wizards avoids doing this in order to drive people to play standard: yes standard is widely considered their main profit source but it's not like they wouldn't make a ton of money selling another masters set with a lot of chase cards in it.
    I just think they have the wrong mindset: hyper afraid of people getting upset at the value of their collection dipping, when they should be more worried about people dropping out due to formats slowly becoming less and less accessible.

    Edit:
    Another point that I forgot to mention is that even if you do try to print novel effects on all your cards, the pool of constructed playable cards is effectively capped anyway because there's realistically no way that a competitive metagame can support an unlimited number of viable archetypes. Using yugioh as an example again, there are hardly any examples of cards that are strictly worse than another (once you are past the alpha-beta-unl-AQ era that had a lot of vanilla creatures in it) because the sets aren't designed for limited, so every new set is full of weird tribal synergies and niche spells and creatures that do things that have never been seen before. But the top tier of competition (in an eternal format with a release schedule similar to MTG that has existed since 2001) still basically never has more than 3 viable decks available, and it's not too hard for the players to figure out what they are. For all the complaining about "the pros solve limited so fast now" who's to say they can't do the same for constructed? You might end up with a ton of weird new cards in MTG if you want to design sets this way but even if you somehow avoid powercreep while doing this, you won't end up with a situation that's any different to what we have now (a small number of constructed viable cards in sets containing mostly 'junk'),

  9. #1229
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    For all the legitimate complaints towards wizards recently regarding Organized Play, PR, Marketing etc I think that generally their R&D department does a great job and I'm so glad none of you work there.
    I'm glad I don't work there either.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    You either don't understand what EV means or how it works.
    Imagine I create an unlimited print-run version of a pack. Each of these packs cost $5 and you're guaranteed to open 1 copy of Engineered Explosives (which for the sake of discussion is currently priced at $100). In the current (real) market, it would be considered very profitable to be able to get an EE for $5. However, in a world with an unlimited supply of Engineered Explosives available for $5, the price of EE instantly drops to $5. Some people buy these packs and then later don't want the EE anymore, or they are given out in tournament prizes, increasing the market supply of EE even further. The price of EE drops to lower than $5. Now even though you are getting what was previously a "$100 card" in your $5 pack, these $5 packs are now negative EV, because you get less than $5 worth of product out of it. You can extrapolate this argument to packs that have random distributions of different cards in them. You can never have a pack with positive EV if that pack has an unlimited print run: weird exceptions like MM1 are when the set is so good that the demand for the packs exceeds the supply. If by "set with too good EV" you mean "a set with a lot of constructed playable cards in it" then fine but that's not what "Expected Value" means.
    I never said there should be unlimited print runs though. And I never said EV was a fixed value. Indeed, I wasn't as succinct in my terminology as I should have been, as I should have specified that value, in this case, would have been "constructed playable cards."


    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Standard and limited are how WotC makes money, it's not going to "kill the game". Limited basically has no effect on constructed; can you think of a card that has had its effect altered to be balanced for limited?
    I never said either would kill the game. I realize that both are very important revenue streams. But Limited does have an effect on Constructed. Cards still need to be balanced for Limited. Or at least made a certain rarity for Limited. Which does effect Constructed. But I have no idea how I can prove what cards were not printed as originally conceieved or designed because of Limited balance, since I don't work there.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    So you're saying that trying to balance hundreds of commons/uncommons every set for an enjoyable limited format EASES the demands placed on design? The only way this claim makes any sense is if you expect wizards to replace every bear and hill giant with some kind of totally novel constructed-playable effect, which is insanity. The amount of power creep this would cause would totally upend legacy and modern within 1 year or less.
    I already said, it eases the burden of Design and increased the burden on Balance. And what you suggest is not at all what I suggested.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Going back to my hypothetical EE-Pack scenario: imagine the pack is still $5, still has 1 EE, but now I add 4 'garbage' worthless cards (like 4 basic islands or something). Does the EV of the pack change? No. Your argument only makes sense if you assume that without the extra garbage commons cards I could sell you the pack for cheaper, which I admit might be possible, at the cost of making limited unplayable.
    Wait, what? Since I seem to not understand EV, you'll have to explain that to me more. Again, your hypothetical EV supposes unlimited supply, which I never advocated for. Without unlimited supply and no rarity, sure, the EV of the whole pack is going to be $5. Even in this hypotethical situation though, it still must include the whole pack. Suposing that all the value is located in the rare, when there are plenty of relatively "high dollar" commons in existance doesn't add up to me. So again, you'll need to explain this to an idiot like me.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Erasing limited is a significant financial cost for constructed players: you are totally ignoring the suppressive effect that limited formats have on card prices. Without limited formats, people buy packs until they have the cards they want. As I have established, packs can never be +EV, so once they have the cards they need there is no incentive to buy packs anymore. This limits the supply of cards on the secondary market so keeps the price for singles relatively high. When draft and sealed events exist, people have an incentive to open packs beyond just getting the cards they need, so more copies of the chase cards enter the market and it reduces the cost of playing constructed. Coming from yugioh which has no limited tournaments and noting the difference in the prices of the chase rares you can see that this plays a significant role in why a "standard mythic" type of card is much cheaper in magic.
    Not something I advocated for, at all, ever. I am criticizing the idea that one product can fit all market segments.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Even if we assume this to be true, if limited formats being solved quickly was an actual issue then why do so many pro players still wax lyrical about draft? This morning Ben Stark tweeted about trying to fire a draft queue of Dominaria on MODO despite the fact that the set was released 5 months ago (and according to you has therefore been 'solved' for 4 months).
    There are plenty of reasons why someone might do that, even if my hypothetical supposition of it's "being solved" is right or wrong. I absolutely can be wrong on the time frame. He could just enjoy it. Or still desire more practice. Nothing there confirms or denies what I said, which again, I already admitted could be wrong.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    You're again disregarding the importance of limited formats to many people's MTG experience and showing that you don't understand how EV actually works.
    I've not disregarded Limited as important, in fact, I said just the opposite. But it isn't something everyone is interested in. And again, you haven't actually taught me anything about EV, as your "example" only used a hypothetical distribution model that doesn't exist.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    You're actually an idiot lol
    Better head to vegas and spin the roulette wheel 100000 times, can't come out ahead unless you have a large sample to even out the randomness
    Is it not the case you more boxes, there is a better chance that the variance in the opened value of one is mitigated by the subsequent boxes?

    And again, you haven't taught me anything about real world EV, you just say: "lol, idiot" and give made up version of EV that don't apply to the real world.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Please answer whether you want limited to disappear entirely or whether you want absurd powercreep in your constructed formats because these are the only 2 alternatives
    Nope, never said that and only your skewed reading leads you to think I want either, when I have specifically said I don't want either.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    - The underlying assumption in this post is that limited gameplay isn't a "market segment" that anybody cares about, which in my opinion is idiotic
    - You're simultaneously complaining that the wotc card design team is lazy while demanding that they simply reprint more cards that already exist
    - I agree that you CAN make a low-power CUBE with cards that people actually want because these cards are all reprints and therefore don't contribute to the power creep problem
    - Your answer to how the power creep problem is solved ("be as progressive as possible, without being regressive") is wishy-washy and doesn't actually explain anything. If you want many more new cards in each set to be worthy of constructed play then power creep is accelerating by definition. You haven't adequately addressed this at all
    - You either don't understand how EV works or don't know what it means
    You must mean, is, not isn't. And that is not at all what I said. It isn't a segment everyone cares about and that is a fact.

    I never said they were lazy. Lightening their load doesn't mean they are lazy, it means their job is more manageable.

    What's wrong with that? What's wrong with reprints?

    Correct, because, like I said, I don't work in Design and I don't want to. I just don't think there need to be cards that don't fit in Limited or Constructed in packs. Also, I don't buy that one-size-fits-all-market-segements is a sustainable model going forward.

    Again, you have taught me nothing of what it actually is, only insulted me and made up examples that don't model real life.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Ok, so your answer is that rather than have powercreep, we should just design the sets to have like 1/4 the number of cards and limited MTG doesn't exist anymore. If you think this is actually reasonable then I don't know what to say to you.
    I never said or implied that Limited should not exist. Just that one-size-fits-all-market-segements products fail to fit all market segments.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    How does the existence of a secondary market make the barrier to entry higher? If it was cheaper to get the cards from buying packs people would already just do that instead.
    No, the distribution model, which leads to the secondary market, is what makes the barrier high, I should have been more clear.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    I agree that wizards of the coast should reprint high-value cards more frequently in order to bring the prices down and make the game more accessible.
    I don't believe that wizards avoids doing this in order to drive people to play standard: yes standard is widely considered their main profit source but it's not like they wouldn't make a ton of money selling another masters set with a lot of chase cards in it.
    I just think they have the wrong mindset: hyper afraid of people getting upset at the value of their collection dipping, when they should be more worried about people dropping out due to formats slowly becoming less and less accessible.
    Well, there we agree.
    "The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
    Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order

  10. #1230

    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by H View Post
    No, the distribution model, which leads to the secondary market, is what makes the barrier high, I should have been more clear.
    Unfortunately, the distribution model is here to stay, because it is the only way for limited to work. (If you need evidence, see how difficult getting limited to work in the various LCG's by fantasy flight is). All that said, I would *love* to see factory sets, sold by WotC in addition to booster boxes. Ramp the price up to about 1.5X the price of a booster box, and no foil option. But, sell the factory set directly. Collectors would be limited to foils / premium cards as a by product of this, you still have packs in big box retail, but players can buy a full set easily.

    It's not going to happen though.

  11. #1231

    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by H View Post
    I'm glad I don't work there either.

    Is it not the case you more boxes, there is a better chance that the variance in the opened value of one is mitigated by the subsequent boxes?

    And again, you haven't taught me anything about real world EV, you just say: "lol, idiot" and give made up version of EV that don't apply to the real world.
    I try to stay in my lane and not post in the general forums, but here is what I think kombatkiwi is getting at:
    EV will always be less than the value of a box (or pack), for one single box. Otherwise people would (and do) buy them to crack and put the singles into the market, thus increasing the supply and decreasing the price. From what I think you are saying, one could buy multiple boxes in hopes of getting the higher value rare/mythics in one, thus bucking the trend turning a profit. This might be theoretically possible, but given that the EV is below the box price, its complete luck that this happens and most people won't be successful in doing so. Akin to the example KK provided, its possible to get ahead at roulette even though the EV of roulette is less than the cost of one bet per spin. You may hit a streak and be up overall or hit a long shot "mythic" in the short run, but the longer you play the more there will be a "reversion to the mean" (if you will) and you will end up losing money. So, no, the more boxes you buy you will not mitigate the variance of a bad box on average. In fact, its just as likely that you pull a box with LESS than the EV as you are to get one that's MORE than the EV. Individual cases will vary wildly of course but its pretty unlikely you will come out ahead with that strategy.

    My apologies if I missed everyone's mark. Back to just reading now.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
    Look at the bright side, if Legacy becomes like Vintage all of us old dudes can get together, drink whiskey, and smoke cigars while we play the gentleman's format. Like an MtG speak-easy.
    Quote Originally Posted by Cire View Post
    And the Reserved List causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their portfolios: and that no man might buy or sell cards or Chinese rip offs, save he made a post about the Reserved List or the number of its Threads: 666.

  12. #1232
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by ronco View Post
    You may hit a streak and be up overall or hit a long shot "mythic" in the short run, but the longer you play the more there will be a "reversion to the mean" (if you will) and you will end up losing money. So, no, the more boxes you buy you will not mitigate the variance of a bad box on average. In fact, its just as likely that you pull a box with LESS than the EV as you are to get one that's MORE than the EV. Individual cases will vary wildly of course but its pretty unlikely you will come out ahead with that strategy.
    Huh? You say that the more "chances" you take the more likely the series is to regress toward the mean value, correct? Ergo, one "chance" can be wildly off the mean, but the larger the set of chances, the more likely the series is the adhere to the mean. Of course each individual chance is the same chance every time. Your first box has the same statistical probability as the last one opened, and the same as the next one opened. My point wasn't to say that opening more boxes would guarantee "turning a profit" on any individual box. Rather, I was pointing out that if the mean value contained within a box is say $80, opening one box can vary from that significantly, in general. If you opened 80 boxes though, you are significantly more likely to average out the value of all things opened to $80 "per box." Is this not true?
    "The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
    Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order

  13. #1233

    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by H View Post
    Huh? You say that the more "chances" you take the more likely the series is to regress toward the mean value, correct? Ergo, one "chance" can be wildly off the mean, but the larger the set of chances, the more likely the series is the adhere to the mean. Of course each individual chance is the same chance every time. Your first box has the same statistical probability as the last one opened, and the same as the next one opened. My point wasn't to say that opening more boxes would guarantee "turning a profit" on any individual box. Rather, I was pointing out that if the mean value contained within a box is say $80, opening one box can vary from that significantly, in general. If you opened 80 boxes though, you are significantly more likely to average out the value of all things opened to $80 "per box." Is this not true?
    Yes (not taking into the account of declining card prices due to increased supply). The point I was focusing on (and maybe i missed the context of it) was this:
    Right, opening packs/boxes is almost always going to be net-negative EV, unless you can open enough to overcome the "randomness" of the distribution.
    Its the second part of that I am either misunderstanding or was possibly worded poorly. But I interpreted that as saying if one bought a larger volume of product one would turn a profit because of getting the chase cards that buying a small amount of product wouldn't. So, my bad for the misunderstanding.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
    Look at the bright side, if Legacy becomes like Vintage all of us old dudes can get together, drink whiskey, and smoke cigars while we play the gentleman's format. Like an MtG speak-easy.
    Quote Originally Posted by Cire View Post
    And the Reserved List causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their portfolios: and that no man might buy or sell cards or Chinese rip offs, save he made a post about the Reserved List or the number of its Threads: 666.

  14. #1234
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by ronco View Post
    Its the second part of that I am either misunderstanding or was possibly worded poorly. But I interpreted that as saying if one bought a larger volume of product one would turn a profit because of getting the chase cards that buying a small amount of product wouldn't. So, my bad for the misunderstanding.
    No, most likely that is my fault for explaining myself poorly. I wasn't being succinct enough in my terminology and so things get muddled. Which was why I didn't understand the criticism of it, because, in my mind, the phenomena I was explaining made perfect sense. What I expressed however, didn't reflect that and so didn't necessarily make sense.

    My point was only that if you want to get "average" value over a series of box openings, opening more will "average out" the opened "value" of the series of boxes, the more you open, the more likely the series is to regress toward the mean, the more likely the series fits the average. In other words, greater number of openings means greater chance of an "average value" over the series. I mean, I do understand your subsequent point about the "value" not being set in stone though, but that is kind of beyond the scope of what I intended to discuss, as the "average value" will still be the "average value" even if it does decline, numerically, versus the purchase price or say MSRP (which is a "fixed" value).

    I mean, I know I am not all that intelligent, but I have what I would consider (perhaps wrongly) a reasonable understanding of some things. Being able to express myself clearly, however, is not one of my better skills. Never has been and I probably am better than I was years ago, but it's a work-in-progress.

    Thanks for taking the time to actually discover what we were not understanding about each other's point. Just saying "lol, idiot" is wildly fun, but not particularly helpful, except to maybe stoke someone's ego.
    "The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
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  15. #1235

    Re: The current state of Magic

    I'd just like to point out that WotC does basically sell factory sets via MTGO redemption. They've recently started to put a curb in it, but for years now it's been pretty easy/cheap to pick up a full set of whatever you wanted, factory sealed, on eBay.

  16. #1236
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Limited is great at the moment. Rivals was good, Dominaria was amazing, M19 is good, Ravnica looks promising.
    I feel like a lot of discussion ignores this. Constructed in general is full of hyper-focused optimized decks. For a lot of us, limited is the preferred way to play magic. Standard and modern events do fire in our LGS, but at most reach the numbers of two full draft pods. Limited is also great for people that have a job and don't want to spend too mauch time but still get some competitive matches in with competitive decks and not some budget "let's pretend this is valid" garbage. And every week I play a different deck. It's great! Maybe it could be better, but why fix what's not broken?
    I think changing anything in a way that makes Limited worse would be an immense mistake.

  17. #1237

    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Ahab View Post
    Limited is also great for people that have a job and don't want to spend too mauch time but still get some competitive matches in with competitive decks and not some budget "let's pretend this is valid" garbage.

    Most people who have time consuming jobs are able to afford any constructed decks they want. Magic is not that expensive of a hobby compared to most other things professionals spend money on.

  18. #1238
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Brael View Post
    Most people who have time consuming jobs are able to afford any constructed decks they want. Magic is not that expensive of a hobby compared to most other things professionals spend money on.
    I have a job and a good salary with a 600K€ full paid house.
    However, i will not spend money to play suboptimally once a week standard decks that will rotate next year :) I just don't like wasting money :)
    So I play Limited every week :) (And legacy and/or Modern when i want some constructed magic, at least the deck are legals until the end of the world)

  19. #1239
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Exactly, mtg may be cheap compared to Golf etc., but the necessary time investment to be competitive is huge, this is especially noticable because reading articles or watching videos of pros is time spent _not playing_ the game you actually want to improve in, and spent alone.
    Limited is a nice, full mtg experience, as in cracking packs, deck building and playing. The atmosphere is casual but can be quite competitive in the final.

  20. #1240

    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Ahab View Post
    this is especially noticable because reading articles or watching videos of pros is time spent _not playing_

    Videos and articles are not necessary to be competitive.

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