Because it's the computer doing it and not a person there's no need to reveal.
As long as the effects are reasonable then I don't care if they need a computer to be executed or not. If it strays into the realm of effects like "bad Hearthstone RNG" where early game rng dictates the next several turns of board state then there is a real problem.
Y'know, if you want to put mechanics into a physical AND digital game (mechanics that won't work in one of those versions), you can always design a new game.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
This feels like another cash grab at the expense of the game. I had hoped that Arena and paper would move towards unification as "remastered" sets are introduced. Jumpstart: Historic Horizons is a fork in that road so, short of banning the digital mechanic cards, that'll never happen.
There is *some* randomness possible with his second ability but that is not what I am talking about. I really mean a very specific kind of RNG that a lot of HS players really despise and have been pretty vocal about.
It doesn't work the same way in Magic really, because the blocker generally has control over what blocks where, so it's hard to do a strict 1-to-1 comparison. The classic examples are things like early Knife Juggler or Flame Juggler using its ability to decide the board state. Since attackers choose blockers in Hearthstone, a well-placed Knife from either of those minions put the other player on the back foot for most of the early game because it means that you're either 2-for-1ing them early or trading in where you "shouldn't".
Davriel doesn't do this at all, it's a turn 4 play that has all of two random effects to choose from - return two random creatures from grave to hand and perpetually buff them, OR return a random creature with the highest CMC from your grave to the field. It has the word "random" in it but it isn't the kind of bad RNG I was referring to.
The reason arena is not fun is the same why most more recent formats are not fun: They printed too many overpowered cards in the last years.
They've also done a shit job in regulating their formats with banning cards too late for ez$$$.
While magic has an intrinsic random characteristic (your lib/draw) most spells have a deterministic effect or at least one that can be skewed by deck building.
This keeps the probable board states in a reasonable and predictable set.
"True randomness" (effect literally does something random) gives both player little influence on the outcome.
While this seems more marketed to casuals who are "more likely to like randomness", I would doubt that that works.
Even casual players hate losing to an opponent who's just better at rolling dice instead of being a better player.
The only group I can see enjoying these mechanics are people, who secretly know that they are bad players but revel in the idea of taking games off better players by randoming them to death.
Another important point not yet brought up is the rules.
With a disparity between paper and digital maintaining a common rule set is going to be a nightmare.
You'd either have to make everything consistent even though cards are on different platforms or rules have to be updated every time cards are ported to arena.
Considering the quality of rules and wordings we got in the last years, I'm not looking forward to either.
It's probably worth noting that the kind of RNG in Davriel at least is super easy to mitigate. "Return a random creature with the highest mana value" is dead simple to fix and if you were playing that card as a Spike then you already know how you'd attempt to maximize your returns. Returning two random creatures to your hand is first of all already an effect in the game on like two jank Innistrad green cards, so that's not even a new effect, the perpetual buff is definitely digital-only though.
If any of these effects revealed thus far are going to lead to the most pissing and moaning, it's going to be Tome of the Infinite. Only two things can happen off a card like this; the Tome player wins thanks to the effects they get and the opponent feels bad, or the Tome player gets a handful of junk that does nothing and they feel bad. Like, you're going to see games where the Tome player draws multiple Lightning Bolts and wins the game by going face, or because they staved off lethal thanks to drawing a Fog and turned the game around, and the opponent will say "I couldn't have played around that, fuck that card and fuck this game" and they'll be totally right.
There's a mitigating factor, which is that Wizards already effectively does this by splitting the legal card pool into different formats both in paper and digital MtG. The trouble is that this set marks a sea change in the company's approach to new printings and the relationship between the two media. Rather than maintain cohesion, they'd rather print competing products. (I really shouldn't be surprised, I guess. Over the last two years Wizards has pretty much free-associated its product lineup.) Twenty-five years of failure to address the RL combined with digi-only "printings" that aren't complemented by paper-only printings makes it pretty clear which medium the company wants to maintain.
I don't play MTGO. I don't play Arena. I play the game my friend showed me in 1998. I play that game because I like that game; if they want me to play vidya instead, I'd rather play Total Annihilation, which remains unsurpassed.
If you want a game to be a different game, design a new game. It's not like it's Wizards of the Coast's job, or anything. They keep printing more and more elaborately useless cards. They print those cards on ass-paper nowadays. They ban cards whenever they see play for more than a weekend. Now, they're splitting cards between distinct and mutually exclusive platforms. I'm going to keep being That Guy and reiterate that the templating on Forgotten Realms: the Forgetting is slow-roasted festering dogshit. All these things show complete ignorance of lessons they claim they learned between 1993 and 2001.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
I still maintain that arena should have been anything else then a port of paper.
The unique thing about magic is the many points of interactions you can take which translates horrible to digital.
They even killed of their decently successful line of duels of the pws for this.
Had it been something that just uses the magic IP and is decently related enough it would have probally fared better.
Maybe they concluded from the mtg:Tactics (anyone remember that lol?) stillbirth that it only works if it's paper but in digital.
I suppose the suits thought that the brand alone would carry it, which seems to be a fair assessment, but the question seems to be for how long.
If they move closer to Hearthstone, then why not play that (excluding Blizzard being a huge dumpster fire atm)?
Post covid the competition between paper and digital will also be a huge issue.
Why should you spend Friday nights in usually overcrowded rooms with people with dubious hygiene to play standard if you can do that any day of the week any time?
For people who want to play competitive, there's little reason to go to an LGS anymore.
Then the casual scene has to support their LGS completely because they also need the LGS.
Fragmentizing the community even further doesn't seem like a smart move.
There's a variety of reasons why they will likely push competitive play toward digital; a primary reason being that its infinitely easier to watch a digital match as compared to a paper match.
I really think this will be less problematic than Tome, if only because Tome draws (conjures) cards while Pool here requires a card, and also, the whiff rate is probably way higher with Pool? Unless the random pool of creatures is known and curated to behave at a certain power level (Hearthstone does this, for better or for worse) then I'd say the Pool player is far less likely to profit.
Whiff rates and stolen games aside though these kinds of cards are generally terrible for the players because they always just leave someone feeling like they're on the wrong side of RNG and that their choices didn't matter. Like when someone loses because they're at 7 and their mono-green opponent gets (for example) Blistering Firecat off of Pool, that's just a stupid way to lose and there was probably nothing they could have done about that, especially in a Best of 1 game. It's random of a whole different order than luck-of-the-draw and it always feels bad for one player.
Momir with actual cards rather than basic lands is interesting, although I am pretty sure that the appeal is for Momir Basic.
(BTW, Island is historically the worst basic in the format.)
Looks like 100-card Historic Brawl is coming to Arena. So basically "we have EDH at home".
Also, lulz, since Perpetual effects are bad in a format where you're meant to have access to your commander, cards with perpetual effects are being monitored and cards with Davriel's name on them are already b&. Good.
I still think formats as delimiters for "only online" effects are fine and if they are smart enough to keep the stupidest ones out of formats that they just roflstomp, great. Tome of the Infinite is still gonna piss people off though, bet
One of the true things about these "Arena only" cards is that since there is no physical medium to consider, they will all almost certainly be subject to errata/nerfing/buffing. I foresee this to be the power level moderation of choice with whatever cards they introduce in this way.
Probably wouldn't have noticed it earlier if a friend hadn't told me:
You can't search for cards from MH2 unless by name/text since it's not listed as expansion nor are the cards listed under the new jumpstart.
The interface just gets worse with every 15GB update.
It's also absolute clown shoes to introduce perpetual effects just after Historic Brawl, just to ban some of them and probably more later.
But Drannith Magistrate is too much.
How can anyone be expected to deal with a 2 mana 1/3?
It's double funny since they haven't even cared about the arena only formats since forever or there would be many more cards banned.
If Historic turns shit again and none of the Brawl formats are enjoyable in any form, I'm probably uninstalling.
I think in this case it's general incompetence.
It seems like at least the desktop version buffers almost everything on startup which takes forever and requires that you have everything on disk.
Then they add all the stupid graphic effects over everything.
To me the also seem to have an issue with separating front-end from back-end.
For the longest time a new FNM game mode or shop change required an update instead of being a back-end thing.
Quality programming at it's finest.
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