The current state of Magic

[Richard Cheese]

I dare say this describes the problem better than it defeats it. There are a *ton* of kinds of games out there, the mobile gaming scene is A Real Thing, getting good at any of the above games is not a small time investment unless you're like the Doogie Howser of Steam or something and you just intuit every game you download -- oh and speaking of Steam, unless you're frugal and cautious as fuck and you methodically play through a game before you buy a new one, your Steam library probably looks like my Netflix library; a ton of titles that you look at over and over and are kind of unwilling to touch. This doesn't directly affect Magic, but it still has to find space and time among a given player's backlog of Humble Bundles that they haven't even cracked yet.

TLDR, consumers have only so much time and trend towards owning an embarrassment of riches in the choices they have at their disposal, so it's only naturally that people would favor activities with the least perceived points of failure. This sucks for Magic because it is not only a terrible video game (it's secretly a real-time game involving very patient people that ignore the rules until they don't want to anymore), but it has always been a lousy one-player game; you need to either have a venue or set a date to have people over for a game or two. Meanwhile, you can reach into your pocket and dick around with Hearthstone (for example) on your lunch break.

Oh yeah, not saying those things aren't still competing with MtG for attention, just that they aren't currently winning because "kids these days" are all about instant gratification. I just think WotC is doing a fairly poor job at making the idea of investing that time and energy into Magic an attractive option. Quality of experience between LGSs is all over the map. Same for coverage, even for major events. What little advertising they do never speaks to the strengths of the game. Remember this from the late 90s?



That still makes me want to play more than anything I've seen on the WotC site in years. Here I Rule? Get the fuck out! Here I bring some janky brew and go for margaritas between rounds to shoot the shit with other aging nerds.

[Lord Seth]

Of course, without the RL, the necessity to invent Standard never would've existed.

I don't know exactly when the Reserved List happened, but it happened sometime after Chronicles' release (as backlash to Chronicles was why it was made). Chronicles was released in June of 1995, whereas Standard was created in January of 1995. Unless some kind of time travel was involved, I don't see how Standard could have been the result of the Reserved List when Standard predated the Reserved List by at least half a year.

The actual reasons for Standard's creation were chiefly:
1) By keeping the card pool small, it made playtesting easier.
2) It created an incentive to keep getting new product without having to resort to constant power creep.

(I would've immediately fired Sam Stoddard and Mark Rosewater when the Standard bannings were announced, since that was the pure implementation of their vision of what standard should look like in order to avoid bannings like JTMS and SFM, and they clearly misjudged what to do.)

While I've had my issues with those two, especially Stoddard, this seems as much of an overreaction as the Reserved List itself was (would it even be possible to fire them immediately? I'd expect they'd have some kind of tenure). Getting angry at Rosewater for the bans seems especially odd, as the problems that resulted in said bans seem to have been mostly on the development side of things.

[Barook]

Oh yeah, not saying those things aren't still competing with MtG for attention, just that they aren't currently winning because "kids these days" are all about instant gratification. I just think WotC is doing a fairly poor job at making the idea of investing that time and energy into Magic an attractive option. Quality of experience between LGSs is all over the map. Same for coverage, even for major events. What little advertising they do never speaks to the strengths of the game. Remember this from the late 90s?



That still makes me want to play more than anything I've seen on the WotC site in years. Here I Rule? Get the fuck out! Here I bring some janky brew and go for margaritas between rounds to shoot the shit with other aging nerds.

Imho one of the worst offenders of all time were the player cards - who greenlighted that shit? Who wants to aspire to become that?



As for the instant gratification part, here's a little tidbit I haven't noticed before: Look at the number of creatures in AER that either have "enter the battlefield" or other effects that can be used immediately in some way, be it sacrifice effects or crewing vehicle boni. A vast majority of creatures have them aside from a few vanilla/limited filler combat creatures. Tap abilities are almost non-existant due to the 1-turn-delay.

[Begle1]

Getting angry at Rosewater for the bans seems especially odd, as the problems that resulted in said bans seem to have been mostly on the development side of things.

I'm interested in knowing who keeps making the call to not include "safety valves" in Standard. Do Rosewater's enthusiastic, creative "designers" do that, or is it the judgment of the technical, experienced-player "developers"?

It currently costs red 3 mana to kill an artifact and the only available gravehate costs 2 mana to bury one card. Cranial Archive would've been playable against Emrakul and Delirium, and I think lots of decks would currently have playsets of Shatter in their 75 if they could.

I feel like when they push a particular strategy, they should also make hate for that strategy. Narrow, effective answers only punish the greedy. So you can either play the high-risk/ high-reward game, or go where there's less synergy but less risk. Four Smuggler's Copter/ Heart of Kiran is just a target rich environment in a format with Smash to Smithereens...

That's what I like about Legacy, there's always an answer. There isn't a zig that can't be zagged. (Except Miracles, evidently.)


Also, I find the player cards embarrassing as well.

[rufus]

I'm interested in knowing who keeps making the call to not include "safety valves" in Standard. Do Rosewater's enthusiastic, creative "designers" do that, or is it the judgment of the technical, experienced-player "developers"?
...

I think it's a deliberate attempt to push cards while avoiding power creep.

Look at the number of creatures in AER that either have "enter the battlefield" or other effects that can be used immediately in some way, be it sacrifice effects or crewing vehicle boni.

I think it's part of their 'make creatures good' effort. Another factor is that planeswalkers have displaced creatures as 'efficient win condition' cards.

[Begle1]

I think it's a deliberate attempt to push cards while avoiding power creep.

How does printing Shatter or not effect power creep?

A 3/3 flying artifact creature for 2 mana is power creep, even if it does suck in its format. No matter how powerful artifact or graveyard recursion cards are, if they print good anti-artifact and anti-graveyard cards, then there's a good chance for the format to balance itself.

[rufus]

.... No matter how powerful artifact or graveyard recursion cards are, if they print good anti-artifact and anti-graveyard cards, then there's a good chance for the format to balance itself.

Right, but if there are no good anti-artifact or anti-graveyard cards, then even relatively weak or otherwise overcosted graveyard synergies and artifacts can be powerful in the meta.

[Claymore]

I don't play standard, but I do know that older sets used to have deliberate safety valves or straight up powerful hosers for that set's theme. Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage, etc. It seemed to start after Mirrodin and Affinity, where Kataki was printed in Kamigawa as an apology to Ravager and all.

I imagine there's been some backlash to putting a super powerful hoser in a set that directly answered the entire theme of the set...so maybe they've changed the recent set designs to limit or remove those answers, allowing the Standard meta to have a bunch of synergy and have the look that Development wanted. So now they have to ban Emrakul and Copter, and the tournament winning card is Chatter of the Gremlins or whatever.

[Megadeus]

One issue they see is that if there is a powerful hate card they don't get to show off their new mechanic in constructed as much. The problem is though, they don't need Rest In Peace, and end all be all hate card, but something better needs to exist. Like is a Tormods Crypt or Relic of Progenitus (I know it wouldn't fit the flavor, but a card like it) too much to ask for? I remember when Tunnel Ignus got printed in the format everyone thought it was going to hose Valakut decks. Rest on Peace in Innistrad. Melira in Scars block. also Creeping Corrosion.

[nedleeds]

The actual reasons for Standard's creation were chiefly:
1) By keeping the card pool small, it made playtesting easier.
2) It created an incentive to keep getting new product without having to resort to constant power creep.
.

This is false. The first reason was to create a shifting play environment, they feared staleness from a play perspective. The original vision of expansions having different backs was a failed attempt at implementing this. The second reason was to ease any alienation of newer Magic players who never had the chance to get their hands on some of the older, out-of-print expansions. It was to grow the player base.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Imho one of the worst offenders of all time were the player cards - who greenlighted that shit? Who wants to aspire to become that?

Wow I don't think I've ever felt so much physical pain for cringing so hard.

[Crimhead]

How does printing Shatter or not effect power creep?

He did say the goal was go "push cards" while avoiding power creep. Having good answers hinders their ability to push the flashy cards.

[maharis]

Hold on a second - are we talking about revenue from paper or total revenue? If it's total revenue, than MTGO certainly is far away from the former ~40% revenue for Wizards.

Second, it does not capture hobby stores, where we execute more than
80% of our Wizards of the Coast business, including MAGIC: THE
GATHERING.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...nt_Remarks.pdf

I don't know exactly when the Reserved List happened, but it happened sometime after Chronicles' release (as backlash to Chronicles was why it was made). Chronicles was released in June of 1995, whereas Standard was created in January of 1995. Unless some kind of time travel was involved, I don't see how Standard could have been the result of the Reserved List when Standard predated the Reserved List by at least half a year.

The actual reasons for Standard's creation were chiefly:
1) By keeping the card pool small, it made playtesting easier.
2) It created an incentive to keep getting new product without having to resort to constant power creep.

Yeah, I posted above that I got my dates mixed up. In fairness, they were close enough and I was 11.

While I've had my issues with those two, especially Stoddard, this seems as much of an overreaction as the Reserved List itself was (would it even be possible to fire them immediately? I'd expect they'd have some kind of tenure). Getting angry at Rosewater for the bans seems especially odd, as the problems that resulted in said bans seem to have been mostly on the development side of things.

I'm not really angry about the bans, I was able to pick up some cheap copters and play them in Legacy last night.

The point is that the current state of the game is the implementation of the vision of the leaders of design and development. Their task was to create a game that didn't have the huge feel-bad of the JTMS/SFM standard. Not only did they fail to prevent that, there are good arguments that there should've been standard bannings at several other times over the course of the past couple years, if the penetration of Copter/Emrakul/Mage was the baseline.

I look at it like a coach and GM in sports. Do you trust these two to rebuild? I definitely don't with Stoddard. Maro is sort of a figurehead at this point but they would benefit from new thinking in my opinion.

[Begle1]

He did say the goal was go "push cards" while avoiding power creep. Having good answers hinders their ability to push the flashy cards.

I think it goes the other way. Probably depends on the definition of "pushed".

The 6-mana titans were "pushed" cards, famously defended as "this is what it takes for creatures to be relevant in a format with efficient Doom Blade/ Go for the Throat removal". Creatures can be a lot stronger (more pushed), without dominating the meta, if there are efficient answers for them.

That does increase overall power level of the format, though. And also usually makes things swingier.

[Richard Cheese]

The point is that the current state of the game is the implementation of the vision of the leaders of design and development. Their task was to create a game that didn't have the huge feel-bad of the JTMS/SFM standard. Not only did they fail to prevent that, there are good arguments that there should've been standard bannings at several other times over the course of the past couple years, if the penetration of Copter/Emrakul/Mage was the baseline.

I look at it like a coach and GM in sports. Do you trust these two to rebuild? I definitely don't with Stoddard. Maro is sort of a figurehead at this point but they would benefit from new thinking in my opinion.

Good points. MaRo consistently feels like he's pushing boundaries for the sake of pushing boundaries, because he's a design guy and that's what design guys do. The problem is that it feels like he's basically been running the show for a decade, and it's like an auto manufacturer just taking concepts straight to production every year. I've been saying since Ice Age that the constant push to add new mechanics to the game is unnecessary and hurts more than it helps. I might just be wrong though, since it's a shitload bigger than it was back then, but I'm not sure if it's succeeding because of R&D or despite them.

[iatee]

Yeah, the never-ending quest for new mechanics relates to the path dependency thing I brought up a few pages ago. They do it because...they do it. That's what they do. That's what they've always done. In Maro's head there's some deep player demand for x amount of new mechanics a quarter or whatever. The result is a bunch of nonsense like 'Cohort' and 100 kicker mechanics, the rules get a tiny bit more confusing while the game doesn't actually get better. I think people are excited about powerful cards more than they are about any given mechanic, and the game has so many to recycle already. A good chunk of players playing Shadows of Innistrad probably had never played with Madness before - it might as well be a new mechanic as far as they're concerned.

[Dice_Box]

Not only that but the unwillingness to use old keywords in sets they are not a part of seems odd. Inventors Fair has two instances of Metalcraft, neither are keyworded. Whats the point of the keyword if your not planing to use it?

[Octopusman]

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post...e-getting-less

truetranssoulalesha asked: Why does it seem like hate cards are getting less printed in standard? is this a shift we should expect to see continue in the future?

Maro: It was a shift that happened many years ago.

From December 6th, 2016

[Phoenix Ignition]

Yeah, the never-ending quest for new mechanics relates to the path dependency thing I brought up a few pages ago. They do it because...they do it. That's what they do. That's what they've always done. In Maro's head there's some deep player demand for x amount of new mechanics a quarter or whatever. The result is a bunch of nonsense like 'Cohort' and 100 kicker mechanics, the rules get a tiny bit more confusing while the game doesn't actually get better. I think people are excited about powerful cards more than they are about any given mechanic, and the game has so many to recycle already. A good chunk of players playing Shadows of Innistrad probably had never played with Madness before - it might as well be a new mechanic as far as they're concerned.

This also really pisses me off. I've gotten a couple of people into magic and part of that is by having my own Cube that's power level is on the order of what UG madness used to be in Legacy. Thing is, it's insanely hard to come up with a bunch of fun, unique cards for every color without being bogged down by stupid, unnecessary new keywords. I basically can't use any new cards because I don't want to have shit like "crew" "revolt" "ENERGY COUNTER" "Fabricate" "Emerge" "Escalate" "Conspire" and all the other stupid 1-ofs that would be semi-fun to play with but only have one instance and therefore increase the complexity unnecessarily for beginners. Not to even go into all the dumb flip and meld cards that happened and make Cube-play for newcomers impossible.

For the most part I can just completely ignore the new mechanics because they won't hit Eternal, but every once in a while you have to add on more almost useless rules to your knowledge base. Crew and Monarch being two that just came in the last few months, with at least 3x as many that will be lost in magic history once Standard rotates.

[Begle1]

Not only that but the unwillingness to use old keywords in sets they are not a part of seems odd. Inventors Fair has two instances of Metalcraft, neither are keyworded. Whats the point of the keyword if your not planing to use it?

I think it makes a lot of sense not to throw a keyword like Metalcraft out there if a set only uses it a couple times; people read that and think, "what's Metalcraft mean?" even though it says it right on the card.

I think it's a good sign they're re-using mechanics without stamping the keyword on it; like Deep-Sea Terror out of Origins, if it said "Threshold" it just would've made the card more confusing for new players.


It has been a Rosewater-theme recently, that he thinks they've been cycling through new mechanics too fast. Which I agree is excruciatingly obvious. They've had a "must have X new mechanics in each set" fetish for a long, long time. I think it's largely due to how they do "marketing research"; they'll ask players, "what do you think of Cohort? What about Converge?" If they don't have new named mechanics, I don't think they could get their dumb metrics that they operate off of.

Rosewater will say things like "market research says everybody hates this mechanic, so we don't want to reuse it"; but he'll invariably say that about mechanics that have been utilized on weak filler cards, so it always seems less of an indictment of the mechanic than how they used it.

It breaks my heart that genuine depth-inducing mechanics like Converge and colorless mana are abandoned as quick as they're adopted and hardly fleshed out.


As for not printing hosers, it's a pretty clear decision. Makes deck-building more like dueling solitaire than Chess, but I get the argument that more players enjoy just smashing their over-the-top nonsense against their opponent's over-the-top nonsense. The EDH-ification of Standard... I just wonder if that's Design's call or Development's?