It was the best because of the variety and options and answers it offered. Thats not something we see in set design anymore. THere were close to 30 different decks being played. No one was complaining that there were 5 or 6 different counterspells being used in the format. No one was complaining about Wrath of God. No one was complaining about the 3 land destruction spells being used either. There were a number of playable burn spells. There were a variety of removal spells. Thats the stuff that makes for a healthy format. The only real negative was the overabundance of Jitte. But even that was kept in check
Anyone who says there was no complaining back then was not playing much. I have been playing since 94 and there are always complaints about the game. The reason it seems like there was less complaining back then is the lack of the internet. People complained about control, people complained about land destruction, people complaining about prison decks. That is why Wotc has gone away form those type strategies, because players complained about them.
Lack of Internet? This site alone was 100x more busy then compared to now. NWO players started complaining, not older players. I was playing a ton in 2006....probably the most magic Ive played in my life (and Ive been playing as long as you have). Lets not play the "literal" game. "no one was complaining" wasnt meant to be taken as not a single person, but they were very much in the minority. It wasnt until Generation Participation Trophy started flooding the tables that a shift occurred (and were/are a huge detriment to the game)
Like I said, I dont know how much you were playing or where, but I saw deck tosses, fist fights, table flips, all over the deck their opponent was playing. People were complaining. At big events too. The events Wotc was paying attention to. When the Wotc rep comes around and 5 out or 8 of the guys at the table are all complaining about different interactions and different decks, yes it was that bad. Enough must have been complaining that Wotc took it to heart because they have gone away from all hose decks people were complaining about.
That all said, there is a clear division in the player base. There are those that wish for a more spell based game like it was in the late 90s. and there sre those who are enjoying the mid range creature decks of now. There really is no way to please both sides. shy away from the creatures and one side gets upset, keep away from the spells and the other side is upset.
Quote from Colt47 »
I'm actually surprised how Orwellian the evolution of Magic has been. It's like the feedback wizards followed has lead to one of the most stagnant, me-to types of gaming scenarios seen in a major TCG in a long time. I'm hoping this isn't going to be the future going forward because there is only so long this can keep going on for before even commander and casual formats start getting hit.
Its a hobby with big money in it from the playing pieces themselves to the pay outs from tournaments. It really isnt too surprising to see the way the game has progressed. Make all the playing pieces worthless and remove the monetary prizes from doing well in tournaments and watch the game go back to the more casual wide open game some seem to desire. Killing the secondary alone would push thousands of players away. Remove the prize from events.. the possibilities are endless.
States 2006 there was no 'money' on the line, just product and a plaque. Today events are about payouts (money or store credit).
Like I said, I dont know how much you were playing or where, but I saw deck tosses, fist fights, table flips, all over the deck their opponent was playing. People were complaining. At big events too. The events Wotc was paying attention to. When the Wotc rep comes around and 5 out or 8 of the guys at the table are all complaining about different interactions and different decks, yes it was that bad. Enough must have been complaining that Wotc took it to heart because they have gone away from all hose decks people were complaining about.
That all said, there is a clear division in the player base. There are those that wish for a more spell based game like it was in the late 90s. and there sre those who are enjoying the mid range creature decks of now. There really is no way to please both sides. shy away from the creatures and one side gets upset, keep away from the spells and the other side is upset.
I never saw a single instance of any of that. But any that behaved in such a manner are immature children and shouldnt be catered to. Temper tantrums are for 3 year olds.
It was the best because of the variety and options and answers it offered. Thats not something we see in set design anymore. THere were close to 30 different decks being played. No one was complaining that there were 5 or 6 different counterspells being used in the format. No one was complaining about Wrath of God. No one was complaining about the 3 land destruction spells being used either. There were a number of playable burn spells. There were a variety of removal spells. Thats the stuff that makes for a healthy format. The only real negative was the overabundance of Jitte. But even that was kept in check
Anyone who says there was no complaining back then was not playing much. I have been playing since 94 and there are always complaints about the game. The reason it seems like there was less complaining back then is the lack of the internet. People complained about control, people complained about land destruction, people complaining about prison decks. That is why Wotc has gone away form those type strategies, because players complained about them.
Lack of Internet? This site alone was 100x more busy then compared to now. NWO players started complaining, not older players. I was playing a ton in 2006....probably the most magic Ive played in my life (and Ive been playing as long as you have). Lets not play the "literal" game. "no one was complaining" wasnt meant to be taken as not a single person, but they were very much in the minority. It wasnt until Generation Participation Trophy started flooding the tables that a shift occurred (and were/are a huge detriment to the game)
Like I said, I dont know how much you were playing or where, but I saw deck tosses, fist fights, table flips, all over the deck their opponent was playing. People were complaining. At big events too. The events Wotc was paying attention to. When the Wotc rep comes around and 5 out or 8 of the guys at the table are all complaining about different interactions and different decks, yes it was that bad. Enough must have been complaining that Wotc took it to heart because they have gone away from all hose decks people were complaining about.
That all said, there is a clear division in the player base. There are those that wish for a more spell based game like it was in the late 90s. and there sre those who are enjoying the mid range creature decks of now. There really is no way to please both sides. shy away from the creatures and one side gets upset, keep away from the spells and the other side is upset.
So, Bocephus, care to finally share the name of the store that you claimed Wizards of the Coast conducted testing for the Modern banned list for yet? So that someone could possibly try to verify that story you continually claimed, that they had players there mad decks to test things out for?
I mean, if you were going to keep throwing a claim like that out and then never back it up (unless you did in the interim, in which case I apologize but you could simply name the store now), I'm not sure why anyone should accept an argument that relies entirely on your own alleged experience.
Like I said, I dont know how much you were playing or where, but I saw deck tosses, fist fights, table flips, all over the deck their opponent was playing. People were complaining. At big events too. The events Wotc was paying attention to. When the Wotc rep comes around and 5 out or 8 of the guys at the table are all complaining about different interactions and different decks, yes it was that bad. Enough must have been complaining that Wotc took it to heart because they have gone away from all hose decks people were complaining about.
That all said, there is a clear division in the player base. There are those that wish for a more spell based game like it was in the late 90s. and there sre those who are enjoying the mid range creature decks of now. There really is no way to please both sides. shy away from the creatures and one side gets upset, keep away from the spells and the other side is upset.
I never saw a single instance of any of that. But any that behaved in such a manner are immature children and shouldnt be catered to. Temper tantrums are for 3 year olds.
So when you are playing in a PTQ or GPQ and the Wotc rep comes around asking specific questions and those guys start complaining about interactions and certain decks or cards, they were being childish? Or are you talking about the guys playing for (at the time) large amounts of money, going at fista cuffs over a card or a play? If you are talking about those who got violent, I agree. If you are talking about those that complained to the Wotc rep, not so much.
Gamers in general complain. It doesnt matter if its cards, board, rpg (D&D type games) or video. People want to do what they want to do and dont care about anyone else. Doesnt matter the game.
So when you are playing in a PTQ or GPQ and the Wotc rep comes around asking specific questions and those guys start complaining about interactions and certain decks or cards, they were being childish? Or are you talking about the guys playing for (at the time) large amounts of money, going at fista cuffs over a card or a play? If you are talking about those who got violent, I agree. If you are talking about those that complained to the Wotc rep, not so much.
Gamers in general complain. It doesnt matter if its cards, board, rpg (D&D type games) or video. People want to do what they want to do and dont care about anyone else. Doesnt matter the game.
What specific interactions are we talking about? Are we talking legitimate gripes or are we talking sour grapes?
It was the best because of the variety and options and answers it offered. Thats not something we see in set design anymore. THere were close to 30 different decks being played. No one was complaining that there were 5 or 6 different counterspells being used in the format. No one was complaining about Wrath of God. No one was complaining about the 3 land destruction spells being used either. There were a number of playable burn spells. There were a variety of removal spells. Thats the stuff that makes for a healthy format. The only real negative was the overabundance of Jitte. But even that was kept in check
Anyone who says there was no complaining back then was not playing much. I have been playing since 94 and there are always complaints about the game. The reason it seems like there was less complaining back then is the lack of the internet. People complained about control, people complained about land destruction, people complaining about prison decks. That is why Wotc has gone away form those type strategies, because players complained about them.
Funny, i started in 94 too, and the first time i heard real complains were about the urza-block. sure, people had trouble with necro before, but back then, you just sought for ways to beat them anyway. But it was a hobby back then, nothing that was life deciding, like magic seems to be nowadays for some folks. You didn´t have certain cards? well, so what, play something else. But my opinion on that might be clouded, back then i still though every card would had its use in the right circumstances. That turned out to be not true.
I
I heard the first real complaints in Mirage over phasing. It wasn't game breaking but a lot players complained that there were effectively playing two concurrent games of Magic. We just owned up and just bolted the punks as they phased in or swung when they phased out. I think there was a fun little Armageddon deck running around at the time. I don't know anyone that left over it though.
The next major gripes centered around Tempest and Shadow. The word parasitic wasn't in the general vocabulary then, the concept was just being fleshed out. Most of us just threw in 4x shadow creatures as chump blockers or held back a spell to roast 'em but I recall this was a detested mechanic at the time. Largely because Shadow was virtually non-interactive. A pure shadow deck couldn't use its creatures against more traditional creatures. It was argued flyers were no different but the big difference was flying, and ways to deal with them, existed in every set since Alpha. In a meta that also supported landwalking, no one that I knew wanted to deal with Shadow. A similar mechanic years later, horsemanship, was a flavor fail but I wasn't playing at that time.
These were just my local metas at the time and probably wasn't representative of the player base as a whole. I think the amount of complaining really ramped up over the years. Players complained about Phasing and Shadow and just built our decks around them. Or maybe the internet just consolidates and amplifies the complaining. I dunno.
I do know one thing. Magic is way past due for another split like Portal. None of that $10 a pack Magic Modern garbage either. But, rather, a genuine split to create a Standard and Non-standard set and put them into regular rotation. Maybe that'll alleviate some of the complaining since there are distinct differences between the players and WotC has proven it's too hard to address all their needs in just one set.
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
I doubt they could or would ever do anything about chase cards outside of Standard boosters, but I am really liking the rest of your thoughts. Full agreement on the sales needing to reflect the priorities of the target buyers
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
They use to do just as you say and limited was terrible. There was 1 or 2 decks heads and shoulders above the rest. for the other 6 they might as well have just packed up and went home. Limited now isnt that bad. There are 3-5 decks that can win the event 1 or 2 players that missed what they were trying to do.
Having a decent limited environment is just as important as having a decent Standard environment, maybe more so in the terms of selling packs. If people dont want to draft, that effects the secondary market and the price of Standard.
And just no, Wotc needs to cater to Standard and Limited players. Wotc should not cater to older formats that dont sell packs, or sell packs as well as Limited and Standard.
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
I doubt they could or would ever do anything about chase cards outside of Standard boosters, but I am really liking the rest of your thoughts. Full agreement on the sales needing to reflect the priorities of the target buyers
For standard it's mostly about keeping the older cards that have proven themselves flowing, especially if they stick to the long standard rotation cycle they fell back to. The real place work needs to be done is for modern and legacy. Commander is being handled fine with the way they are doing the pre packed sets of cards and I believe modern and Legacy need the same treatment, or at least they need the premium products getting broken down to more manageable chunks for players to pick up. If they stick with randomized packs at 10 dollars they need to at least add some extra value to justify the premium to players like the aformentioned sleeves, dice, storage, and other perks. Including Novela and other benefits would also go a long way in keeping past sets alive and potentially sell future return to sets. If they are printing literally 1/3rd of a booster box worth of cards, the least they can do is give something to make up the missing value. Also including a minimum of 1 of each major land in a enemy or allied land cycle would help as well.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
They use to do just as you say and limited was terrible. There was 1 or 2 decks heads and shoulders above the rest. for the other 6 they might as well have just packed up and went home. Limited now isnt that bad. There are 3-5 decks that can win the event 1 or 2 players that missed what they were trying to do.
Having a decent limited environment is just as important as having a decent Standard environment, maybe more so in the terms of selling packs. If people dont want to draft, that effects the secondary market and the price of Standard.
And just no, Wotc needs to cater to Standard and Limited players. Wotc should not cater to older formats that dont sell packs, or sell packs as well as Limited and Standard.
According to market watch and the movement of non-standard cards, yes they do. Oh sweet mercy do they need to.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I... can't really say adding sleeves would add value.
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
They use to do just as you say and limited was terrible. There was 1 or 2 decks heads and shoulders above the rest. for the other 6 they might as well have just packed up and went home. Limited now isnt that bad. There are 3-5 decks that can win the event 1 or 2 players that missed what they were trying to do.
Having a decent limited environment is just as important as having a decent Standard environment, maybe more so in the terms of selling packs. If people dont want to draft, that effects the secondary market and the price of Standard.
And just no, Wotc needs to cater to Standard and Limited players. Wotc should not cater to older formats that dont sell packs, or sell packs as well as Limited and Standard.
According to market watch and the movement of non-standard cards, yes they do. Oh sweet mercy do they need to.
You are confusing single prices with pack and box sales. If they focus on Modern reprints in Standard legal sets, Standard becomes Modern lite. The gap would close over time and there wouldnt be a need for Modern and Standard. I would thing Wotc would pull the plug on Modern before they would Standard.
Modern simply can not be the number one format. It should be third in line at the best. Having it number 2 is hurting a lot of things. Mainly people like you who want them to focus on Modern more. That is bad for the game as a whole in the bigger picture.
Wotc should continue focusing on Standard and limited and let the cards land where they do in the older formats and use the ban list to keep those older formats in check.
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
They use to do just as you say and limited was terrible. There was 1 or 2 decks heads and shoulders above the rest. for the other 6 they might as well have just packed up and went home. Limited now isnt that bad. There are 3-5 decks that can win the event 1 or 2 players that missed what they were trying to do.
Having a decent limited environment is just as important as having a decent Standard environment, maybe more so in the terms of selling packs. If people dont want to draft, that effects the secondary market and the price of Standard.
And just no, Wotc needs to cater to Standard and Limited players. Wotc should not cater to older formats that dont sell packs, or sell packs as well as Limited and Standard.
According to market watch and the movement of non-standard cards, yes they do. Oh sweet mercy do they need to.
You are confusing single prices with pack and box sales. If they focus on Modern reprints in Standard legal sets, Standard becomes Modern lite. The gap would close over time and there wouldnt be a need for Modern and Standard. I would thing Wotc would pull the plug on Modern before they would Standard.
Modern simply can not be the number one format. It should be third in line at the best. Having it number 2 is hurting a lot of things. Mainly people like you who want them to focus on Modern more. That is bad for the game as a whole in the bigger picture.
Wotc should continue focusing on Standard and limited and let the cards land where they do in the older formats and use the ban list to keep those older formats in check.
In the very long term it is important that wizards does support the eternal cardpool with proper products and satisfy the demand of people who primarily play those formats. The entire reason that the secondary market exists how it does is because of wizards not supporting modern and legacy play properly. Taking attention away from the format may cool it in the short term, but long term that is just a recipe for trouble when those cards pick up in popularity or speculators swoop in and raise prices.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I... can't really say adding sleeves would add value.
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
Probably would be Ultra-pro given how ubiquitous they are these days. Honestly, it's more about the gesture of providing people who open rares some way to protect the cards in the short term. Most people tend to have a preferred brand of sleeve they use, but they may not have them during a draft or limited event and want to protect what they are using. Not to mention they may also be short on some when they are opening at home and pick up a modern card like Liliana of the Veil and don't want the thing floating around without at least some temporary protection.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Blew up your lands efficiently in a multitude of ways.
Punished you for having untapped lands
Utilized mana burn to punish opponents who had too much excess mana that was just floating.
Used Burn spells that dealt more damage than they costed and were often instant-speed.
Had some of the best artifact removal in all of the colors.
Goblins and Goblin Tribal.
Is very fast in trying to take down opponents to the point it even created an archetype called "Sligh" named after its creator Paul Sligh.
Could be run mono or multicolor with great efficiency.
Had a feuding relationship with to the point where it not only had hate cards for it but also even counterspells designed specifically to fight it.
Never had help from planeswalker cards.
Was very good at clearing the board with various damage sweeper spells.
Had many tools to prevent life gain.
New-School RED
Sorcery speed artifact removal that only works in targeting instead of sweeping.
Goblins nowhere to be seen.
Its burn spells got weaker.
No hate spells or counterspells.
Isn't good at destroying lands anymore by itself and is limited to a singular way of destroying lands, 4cmc sorceries and instant that only blow up a single land.
Stole 's trick with land denial by "Tap target land. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step" in order to try and make up for its weakened land destruction capabilities.
It has more powerful creatures to make up for its other shortcomings.
Can only be run in multicolor decks for the sake of efficiency.
Its tribal cards are not up to snuff in the current standard meta.
A good chunk of its worth comes from planeswalkers now.
No more mana burn to use against opponents.
No more ability to punish players with untapped lands.
Can't prevent life gain.
Its like looking at the difference between an athlete at their peak and then fast forwarding several years and seeing how they just let themselves go. Seriously. I blame all this "pruning" they have been doing in the past like decade where its just "take away this, weaken that" instead of actually trying to come up with side-grades that are actually interesting for a change.
This isn't just "Give us one mega-overpowered card" for Red in order to fix its situation. Red's problems are the Design & Development's philosophies going on that are putting a huge damper on Red.
"Utilized mana burn to punish opponents who had too much excess mana that was just floating."
Mana burn came up so infrequently that they removed it from the rules. It basically only happened when it was forced upon you, with something like magus of the vineyard
"No more ability to punish players with untapped lands."
There are maybe, what, two cards in all of magic that did this? Citadel of pain and a creature, right? Maybe a third?
"A good chunk of its worth comes from planeswalkers now."
They didn't introduce a card type for it to not get used. These cards drive up people's interest, so they make them good.
"Goblins nowhere to be seen."
There are other creature types in magic that people like to see. Not every plane should have goblins on it. Not every set with goblins in it needs to have a tribal thing, either.
"No hate spells or counterspells."
Honestly, good. I don't like caring about the color of my opponent's cards. It's "thematic" but makes for swingy gameplay.
"Its burn spells got weaker."
It's kinda hard to outdo lightning bolt, man. Also, Drafting is significantly more dynamic now that removal is mostly worse than it used to be.
//
About player complaints
When I learned (2006) my friends complained all the time. They mostly played casual magic with whatever cards they owned. I remember lots of old borders, squirrels, reanimator, etc. So they were players from earlier days complaining about old magic
When the Wotc rep comes around and 5 out or 8 of the guys at the table are all complaining about different interactions and different decks, yes it was that bad. Enough must have been complaining that Wotc took it to heart because they have gone away from all hose decks people were complaining about.
That all said, there is a clear division in the player base. There are those that wish for a more spell based game like it was in the late 90s...
...There really is no way to please both sides.
So...
If enough of the players start complaining about a lack of different interactions and different decks, it would make sense for them to ramp up on spells and non-midrange deck support?
You seem to be in full support of WotC having changed the game to suit the complainers 15-20 years ago; but in zero support of any changes which cater to today's players complaining the opposite?
You say "There really is no way to please both sides", but seem to imply that their only reasonable choice is to continue to please your side.
I... can't really say adding sleeves would add value.
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
Probably would be Ultra-pro given how ubiquitous they are these days. Honestly, it's more about the gesture of providing people who open rares some way to protect the cards in the short term. Most people tend to have a preferred brand of sleeve they use, but they may not have them during a draft or limited event and want to protect what they are using. Not to mention they may also be short on some when they are opening at home and pick up a modern card like Liliana of the Veil and don't want the thing floating around without at least some temporary protection.
It is nobody's responsibility except the person who opens the cards to protect the cards they open.
If people don't show up w/ sleeves it is only the fault of the people not showing up with sleeves.
Same thing applies when they open cards at home, where it should actually be easier to "protect" the card even w/o sleeves.
As to some other things you've said recently, WotC definitely should not be catering to people playing this game who cannot understand what a Planeswalker does. One reason this game has gone down the drain is b/c WotC keeps dumbing it down so more and more people of lesser intelligence don't "feel" bad about getting stomped by people smarter than they are. Too. Bad. That's. Life.
You seem to want everybody to have a coach sitting beside them when they play MtG. You are glad-handling people instead of requiring them to take personal responsibility.
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FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
I... can't really say adding sleeves would add value.
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
Probably would be Ultra-pro given how ubiquitous they are these days. Honestly, it's more about the gesture of providing people who open rares some way to protect the cards in the short term. Most people tend to have a preferred brand of sleeve they use, but they may not have them during a draft or limited event and want to protect what they are using. Not to mention they may also be short on some when they are opening at home and pick up a modern card like Liliana of the Veil and don't want the thing floating around without at least some temporary protection.
It is nobody's responsibility except the person who opens the cards to protect the cards they open.
If people don't show up w/ sleeves it is only the fault of the people not showing up with sleeves.
Same thing applies when they open cards at home, where it should actually be easier to "protect" the card even w/o sleeves.
As to some other things you've said recently, WotC definitely should not be catering to people playing this game who cannot understand what a Planeswalker does. One reason this game has gone down the drain is b/c WotC keeps dumbing it down so more and more people of lesser intelligence don't "feel" bad about getting stomped by people smarter than they are. Too. Bad. That's. Life.
You seem to want everybody to have a coach sitting beside them when they play MtG. You are glad-handling people instead of requiring them to take personal responsibility.
Adding value to masters sets by providing card sleeves, protective cases, and dice that the player is going to have to buy anyway and can cost often as much as the cards themselves total when bought separate, removing planeswalkers so they can move away from mid-range swiss army knife design standards, and cutting up booster box costs on Masters sets to 99 msrp chunks does what? Where the heck did you get your conclusions from? Did you just hazily read the posts and not consider the actual motivations? I'm completely opposite of care bear on the subject of magic. I want things like prison, good counterspells, and higher variance gameplay.
And by the way, there was a time when players had a hard time figuring out how instants and interrupts worked and wizards had to create the portal sets to help ease people into playing magic. Calling planeswalker decks "the perfect way to start playing magic" is the most BS statement I've ever seen. They are asking to introduce someone to magic, to the most needlessly complex value engine card type in the game combined in a poorly slapped together deck.
Simple cards in combination with one another yield complex gameplay. Overcomplicating individual cards with a ton of abilities that all require individual analysis does not increase this complexity, it makes deck building for everyone, beginner or otherwise, a complete pain in the neck and kills the space that walker occupies because why put anything else in the damn slot? Gideon, Ally of Zendikar can be a creature, a 2/2 token spewing value engine, or a freaking anthem. Congratulations, they made a card that replaces three different options that could have existed in that slot or a lower cmc slot. Deck variety much?
Wizards introduction of Planeswalkers was effectively Fox Kids taking One Piece to the butcher block and making Franken Piece out of it, where Sanji is now sucking a lollipop and major plot points got entirely axed because they aren't kid friendly enough. Complexity? Go throw that out the window. The only format that is even tangentially supported by wizards that has not fallen into a mid-range nightmare is modern. People who kept their legacy collections are living in a paradise compared to what people are having to deal with right now.
Seriously, they can't even make a standard set that gets people to keep buying it past the first two months. People actively search out Elwynn / Lorwynn and original Innistrad, as well as older sets like Urza's Saga (because that one was one heck of a crazy OP block). No one is going to remember or care about many of these contemporary sets thanks to how the cards were developed and the themes designed. Broken Eldrazi are just about the only thing from BFZ block that anyone will ever remember, for example.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I... can't really say adding sleeves would add value.
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
Probably would be Ultra-pro given how ubiquitous they are these days. Honestly, it's more about the gesture of providing people who open rares some way to protect the cards in the short term. Most people tend to have a preferred brand of sleeve they use, but they may not have them during a draft or limited event and want to protect what they are using. Not to mention they may also be short on some when they are opening at home and pick up a modern card like Liliana of the Veil and don't want the thing floating around without at least some temporary protection.
It is nobody's responsibility except the person who opens the cards to protect the cards they open.
If people don't show up w/ sleeves it is only the fault of the people not showing up with sleeves.
Same thing applies when they open cards at home, where it should actually be easier to "protect" the card even w/o sleeves.
As to some other things you've said recently, WotC definitely should not be catering to people playing this game who cannot understand what a Planeswalker does. One reason this game has gone down the drain is b/c WotC keeps dumbing it down so more and more people of lesser intelligence don't "feel" bad about getting stomped by people smarter than they are. Too. Bad. That's. Life.
You seem to want everybody to have a coach sitting beside them when they play MtG. You are glad-handling people instead of requiring them to take personal responsibility.
Adding value to masters sets by providing card sleeves, protective cases, and dice that the player is going to have to buy anyway and can cost often as much as the cards themselves total when bought separate, removing planeswalkers so they can move away from mid-range swiss army knife design standards, and cutting up booster box costs on Masters sets to 99 msrp chunks does what? Where the heck did you get your conclusions from? Did you just hazily read the posts and not consider the actual motivations? I'm completely opposite of care bear on the subject of magic. I want things like prison, good counterspells, and higher variance gameplay.
And by the way, there was a time when players had a hard time figuring out how instants and interrupts worked and wizards had to create the portal sets to help ease people into playing magic. Calling planeswalker decks "the perfect way to start playing magic" is the most BS statement I've ever seen. They are asking to introduce someone to magic, to the most needlessly complex value engine card type in the game combined in a poorly slapped together deck.
Simple cards in combination with one another yield complex gameplay. Overcomplicating individual cards with a ton of abilities that all require individual analysis does not increase this complexity, it makes deck building for everyone, beginner or otherwise, a complete pain in the neck and kills the space that walker occupies because why put anything else in the damn slot? Gideon, Ally of Zendikar can be a creature, a 2/2 token spewing value engine, or a freaking anthem. Congratulations, they made a card that replaces three different options that could have existed in that slot or a lower cmc slot. Deck variety much?
Wizards introduction of Planeswalkers was effectively Fox Kids taking One Piece to the butcher block and making Franken Piece out of it, where Sanji is now sucking a lollipop and major plot points got entirely axed because they aren't kid friendly enough. Complexity? Go throw that out the window. The only format that is even tangentially supported by wizards that has not fallen into a mid-range nightmare is modern. People who kept their legacy collections are living in a paradise compared to what people are having to deal with right now.
Seriously, they can't even make a standard set that gets people to keep buying it past the first two months. People actively search out Elwynn / Lorwynn and original Innistrad, as well as older sets like Urza's Saga (because that one was one heck of a crazy OP block). No one is going to remember or care about many of these contemporary sets thanks to how the cards were developed and the themes designed. Broken Eldrazi are just about the only thing from BFZ block that anyone will ever remember, for example.
Planeswalkers are not complicated cards. Complexity in MtG comes in understanding the timing rules, stack interaction, priority, and state-based effects. I did not need Portal to learn how to play MtG, nor do most people who are intelligent enough to learn how to play the game. You get your feet wet, you take your lumps, and you LEARN. The old adage of "give a person a fish, you feed them once; teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime" applies to MtG as well.
More value can easily be added to Masters sets by increasing the amount of valuable cards in the sets. What you are suggesting in adding dice and sleeves is nothing more than marketing BS b/c I don't want to purchase a Masters set or any MtG product b/c they will throw in dice or sleeves. I want good cards when I purchase the WotC products, and I don't want to have to play a lottery to do that...hence why I have largely stopped purchasing any direct WotC products. I purchase singles only w/ exception of a box of the recent Masters set b/c it did look like a good roll of the dice for me as I don't possess a lot of the better cards from sets between Kamigawa and Innistrad. I also did it to see for myself how much value there actually was for me in 24 booster Masters box instead of taking everybody else's word for it. In the end I will probably break even on that purchase of a MM17 box of boosters. I bet that if WotC added more value in CARDS to their sets they would actually move more product, b/c they would still get the players that love to play lotteries AND they would get people like me who want value for every penny I spend on their product and do not want to throw money away playing a lottery.
I also used to hate Planeswalkers b/c they were not part of the game when I started playing in the 90s, but I've learned to respect and appreciate the cards b/c of the one-time mana investment into potentially reusable effects, and multiple effects at that. You saying that you want prison, counters, and higher variance gameplay (all complex parts of the game) and then calling Planeswalkers complex or complicated and therefore bad for newer players seems a bit at odds.
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FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Adding high value cards to sets does not always make them more attractive- it depends on which high value cards as to whether they maintain a decent value or become "good pulls". Sinkhole is the classic case of a high value card that got reprinted and tanked. Its very limited in use - Dead Guy variants, Pox in Legacy. Not much else.
Other high value cards either maintain a higher percent of their value, and/or are good pulls because demand for them remains high.
E tutor and Mother of Runes are good examples of cards whose price tanked a fair way, but you have little difficulty getting rid of them in trades because they have multiple uses or are used by one very popular deck. Better examples in green might be Sylvan Library or as an artifact SDT, blue has Show and Tell in Conspiracy II. Nobody complains when they crack those cards even if they have dipped in price. The uncommon and common slots are very important. Brainstorm is a cheap card but the guy opening one or two such cards in the uncommon slot feels a lot better when their rare is a bit whiffy.
I do agree that these master sets need a higher emphasis on playables.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
The secondary market is important, but wizards also needs to produce products that target how people are interested in buying their cards. Booster pack lottery is only good for the first few weeks of a new set release, so they do need a strategy to print high demand cards in a way that isn't a lottery to players as the current preference is to purchase singles post pre-release and the first month. Also, they do need to cap the price on products they release to something more players can afford on short notice. As I said before, the price of a booster box at 100 usd is about the cap most players tend to go. Also they really need to cater more to Modern players sensibilities when they release Modern Masters sets. They can at the very least toss in enough card protectors to protect all the high value rares and mythics they pull per box when they pull them and a box to hold the cards in. Throw a collectors spin down that is more than a d20 would also be a good help. Finally, they need to print more lands in the boxes for things like fetches, shocks, and filter lands and not print those as part of the main set. Save those spaces in the rare and mythic slots for other cards that need reprints as there's more than enough room for mana fixing in draft at the uncommon and common slots. Getting a rare or mythic land tends to be a dead pick for drafting so they might as well put more bombs and good stuff in there.
They use to do just as you say and limited was terrible. There was 1 or 2 decks heads and shoulders above the rest. for the other 6 they might as well have just packed up and went home. Limited now isnt that bad. There are 3-5 decks that can win the event 1 or 2 players that missed what they were trying to do.
Having a decent limited environment is just as important as having a decent Standard environment, maybe more so in the terms of selling packs. If people dont want to draft, that effects the secondary market and the price of Standard.
And just no, Wotc needs to cater to Standard and Limited players. Wotc should not cater to older formats that dont sell packs, or sell packs as well as Limited and Standard.
According to market watch and the movement of non-standard cards, yes they do. Oh sweet mercy do they need to.
You are confusing single prices with pack and box sales. If they focus on Modern reprints in Standard legal sets, Standard becomes Modern lite. The gap would close over time and there wouldnt be a need for Modern and Standard. I would thing Wotc would pull the plug on Modern before they would Standard.
Modern simply can not be the number one format. It should be third in line at the best. Having it number 2 is hurting a lot of things. Mainly people like you who want them to focus on Modern more. That is bad for the game as a whole in the bigger picture.
Wotc should continue focusing on Standard and limited and let the cards land where they do in the older formats and use the ban list to keep those older formats in check.
In the very long term it is important that wizards does support the eternal cardpool with proper products and satisfy the demand of people who primarily play those formats. The entire reason that the secondary market exists how it does is because of wizards not supporting modern and legacy play properly. Taking attention away from the format may cool it in the short term, but long term that is just a recipe for trouble when those cards pick up in popularity or speculators swoop in and raise prices.
Very long term? Modern was on the way to replacing Standard as the most popular format before Wotc pull back on the reigns of Modern.
One reason this game has gone down the drain is b/c WotC keeps dumbing it down so more and more people of lesser intelligence don't "feel" bad about getting stomped by people smarter than they are. Too. Bad. That's. Life.
For the most part I agree with what you are saying.
I do not agree that rules knowledge is primarily limited by intelligence. WotC is not catering to people who are too dim to learn the rules. They are catering to people too impatient or too "casual" to bother learning the rules - and to the "poor sports" who are easily vexed when they get bitten by an interaction they didn't expect or don't understand.
Like I said, I dont know how much you were playing or where, but I saw deck tosses, fist fights, table flips, all over the deck their opponent was playing. People were complaining. At big events too. The events Wotc was paying attention to. When the Wotc rep comes around and 5 out or 8 of the guys at the table are all complaining about different interactions and different decks, yes it was that bad. Enough must have been complaining that Wotc took it to heart because they have gone away from all hose decks people were complaining about.
That all said, there is a clear division in the player base. There are those that wish for a more spell based game like it was in the late 90s. and there sre those who are enjoying the mid range creature decks of now. There really is no way to please both sides. shy away from the creatures and one side gets upset, keep away from the spells and the other side is upset.
Its a hobby with big money in it from the playing pieces themselves to the pay outs from tournaments. It really isnt too surprising to see the way the game has progressed. Make all the playing pieces worthless and remove the monetary prizes from doing well in tournaments and watch the game go back to the more casual wide open game some seem to desire. Killing the secondary alone would push thousands of players away. Remove the prize from events.. the possibilities are endless.
States 2006 there was no 'money' on the line, just product and a plaque. Today events are about payouts (money or store credit).
I mean, if you were going to keep throwing a claim like that out and then never back it up (unless you did in the interim, in which case I apologize but you could simply name the store now), I'm not sure why anyone should accept an argument that relies entirely on your own alleged experience.
So when you are playing in a PTQ or GPQ and the Wotc rep comes around asking specific questions and those guys start complaining about interactions and certain decks or cards, they were being childish? Or are you talking about the guys playing for (at the time) large amounts of money, going at fista cuffs over a card or a play? If you are talking about those who got violent, I agree. If you are talking about those that complained to the Wotc rep, not so much.
Gamers in general complain. It doesnt matter if its cards, board, rpg (D&D type games) or video. People want to do what they want to do and dont care about anyone else. Doesnt matter the game.
I heard the first real complaints in Mirage over phasing. It wasn't game breaking but a lot players complained that there were effectively playing two concurrent games of Magic. We just owned up and just bolted the punks as they phased in or swung when they phased out. I think there was a fun little Armageddon deck running around at the time. I don't know anyone that left over it though.
The next major gripes centered around Tempest and Shadow. The word parasitic wasn't in the general vocabulary then, the concept was just being fleshed out. Most of us just threw in 4x shadow creatures as chump blockers or held back a spell to roast 'em but I recall this was a detested mechanic at the time. Largely because Shadow was virtually non-interactive. A pure shadow deck couldn't use its creatures against more traditional creatures. It was argued flyers were no different but the big difference was flying, and ways to deal with them, existed in every set since Alpha. In a meta that also supported landwalking, no one that I knew wanted to deal with Shadow. A similar mechanic years later, horsemanship, was a flavor fail but I wasn't playing at that time.
These were just my local metas at the time and probably wasn't representative of the player base as a whole. I think the amount of complaining really ramped up over the years. Players complained about Phasing and Shadow and just built our decks around them. Or maybe the internet just consolidates and amplifies the complaining. I dunno.
I do know one thing. Magic is way past due for another split like Portal. None of that $10 a pack Magic Modern garbage either. But, rather, a genuine split to create a Standard and Non-standard set and put them into regular rotation. Maybe that'll alleviate some of the complaining since there are distinct differences between the players and WotC has proven it's too hard to address all their needs in just one set.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I doubt they could or would ever do anything about chase cards outside of Standard boosters, but I am really liking the rest of your thoughts. Full agreement on the sales needing to reflect the priorities of the target buyers
They use to do just as you say and limited was terrible. There was 1 or 2 decks heads and shoulders above the rest. for the other 6 they might as well have just packed up and went home. Limited now isnt that bad. There are 3-5 decks that can win the event 1 or 2 players that missed what they were trying to do.
Having a decent limited environment is just as important as having a decent Standard environment, maybe more so in the terms of selling packs. If people dont want to draft, that effects the secondary market and the price of Standard.
And just no, Wotc needs to cater to Standard and Limited players. Wotc should not cater to older formats that dont sell packs, or sell packs as well as Limited and Standard.
For standard it's mostly about keeping the older cards that have proven themselves flowing, especially if they stick to the long standard rotation cycle they fell back to. The real place work needs to be done is for modern and legacy. Commander is being handled fine with the way they are doing the pre packed sets of cards and I believe modern and Legacy need the same treatment, or at least they need the premium products getting broken down to more manageable chunks for players to pick up. If they stick with randomized packs at 10 dollars they need to at least add some extra value to justify the premium to players like the aformentioned sleeves, dice, storage, and other perks. Including Novela and other benefits would also go a long way in keeping past sets alive and potentially sell future return to sets. If they are printing literally 1/3rd of a booster box worth of cards, the least they can do is give something to make up the missing value. Also including a minimum of 1 of each major land in a enemy or allied land cycle would help as well.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
According to market watch and the movement of non-standard cards, yes they do. Oh sweet mercy do they need to.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
You are confusing single prices with pack and box sales. If they focus on Modern reprints in Standard legal sets, Standard becomes Modern lite. The gap would close over time and there wouldnt be a need for Modern and Standard. I would thing Wotc would pull the plug on Modern before they would Standard.
Modern simply can not be the number one format. It should be third in line at the best. Having it number 2 is hurting a lot of things. Mainly people like you who want them to focus on Modern more. That is bad for the game as a whole in the bigger picture.
Wotc should continue focusing on Standard and limited and let the cards land where they do in the older formats and use the ban list to keep those older formats in check.
In the very long term it is important that wizards does support the eternal cardpool with proper products and satisfy the demand of people who primarily play those formats. The entire reason that the secondary market exists how it does is because of wizards not supporting modern and legacy play properly. Taking attention away from the format may cool it in the short term, but long term that is just a recipe for trouble when those cards pick up in popularity or speculators swoop in and raise prices.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Probably would be Ultra-pro given how ubiquitous they are these days. Honestly, it's more about the gesture of providing people who open rares some way to protect the cards in the short term. Most people tend to have a preferred brand of sleeve they use, but they may not have them during a draft or limited event and want to protect what they are using. Not to mention they may also be short on some when they are opening at home and pick up a modern card like Liliana of the Veil and don't want the thing floating around without at least some temporary protection.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Its like looking at the difference between an athlete at their peak and then fast forwarding several years and seeing how they just let themselves go. Seriously. I blame all this "pruning" they have been doing in the past like decade where its just "take away this, weaken that" instead of actually trying to come up with side-grades that are actually interesting for a change.
This isn't just "Give us one mega-overpowered card" for Red in order to fix its situation. Red's problems are the Design & Development's philosophies going on that are putting a huge damper on Red.
Mana burn came up so infrequently that they removed it from the rules. It basically only happened when it was forced upon you, with something like magus of the vineyard
"No more ability to punish players with untapped lands."
There are maybe, what, two cards in all of magic that did this? Citadel of pain and a creature, right? Maybe a third?
"A good chunk of its worth comes from planeswalkers now."
They didn't introduce a card type for it to not get used. These cards drive up people's interest, so they make them good.
"Goblins nowhere to be seen."
There are other creature types in magic that people like to see. Not every plane should have goblins on it. Not every set with goblins in it needs to have a tribal thing, either.
"No hate spells or counterspells."
Honestly, good. I don't like caring about the color of my opponent's cards. It's "thematic" but makes for swingy gameplay.
"Its burn spells got weaker."
It's kinda hard to outdo lightning bolt, man. Also, Drafting is significantly more dynamic now that removal is mostly worse than it used to be.
//
About player complaints
When I learned (2006) my friends complained all the time. They mostly played casual magic with whatever cards they owned. I remember lots of old borders, squirrels, reanimator, etc. So they were players from earlier days complaining about old magic
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Don't like land/land destruction? Don't like counterspells? I don't really want to play with you. Enjoy your bannings........
So...
If enough of the players start complaining about a lack of different interactions and different decks, it would make sense for them to ramp up on spells and non-midrange deck support?
You seem to be in full support of WotC having changed the game to suit the complainers 15-20 years ago; but in zero support of any changes which cater to today's players complaining the opposite?
You say "There really is no way to please both sides", but seem to imply that their only reasonable choice is to continue to please your side.
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It is nobody's responsibility except the person who opens the cards to protect the cards they open.
If people don't show up w/ sleeves it is only the fault of the people not showing up with sleeves.
Same thing applies when they open cards at home, where it should actually be easier to "protect" the card even w/o sleeves.
As to some other things you've said recently, WotC definitely should not be catering to people playing this game who cannot understand what a Planeswalker does. One reason this game has gone down the drain is b/c WotC keeps dumbing it down so more and more people of lesser intelligence don't "feel" bad about getting stomped by people smarter than they are. Too. Bad. That's. Life.
You seem to want everybody to have a coach sitting beside them when they play MtG. You are glad-handling people instead of requiring them to take personal responsibility.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Adding value to masters sets by providing card sleeves, protective cases, and dice that the player is going to have to buy anyway and can cost often as much as the cards themselves total when bought separate, removing planeswalkers so they can move away from mid-range swiss army knife design standards, and cutting up booster box costs on Masters sets to 99 msrp chunks does what? Where the heck did you get your conclusions from? Did you just hazily read the posts and not consider the actual motivations? I'm completely opposite of care bear on the subject of magic. I want things like prison, good counterspells, and higher variance gameplay.
And by the way, there was a time when players had a hard time figuring out how instants and interrupts worked and wizards had to create the portal sets to help ease people into playing magic. Calling planeswalker decks "the perfect way to start playing magic" is the most BS statement I've ever seen. They are asking to introduce someone to magic, to the most needlessly complex value engine card type in the game combined in a poorly slapped together deck.
Simple cards in combination with one another yield complex gameplay. Overcomplicating individual cards with a ton of abilities that all require individual analysis does not increase this complexity, it makes deck building for everyone, beginner or otherwise, a complete pain in the neck and kills the space that walker occupies because why put anything else in the damn slot? Gideon, Ally of Zendikar can be a creature, a 2/2 token spewing value engine, or a freaking anthem. Congratulations, they made a card that replaces three different options that could have existed in that slot or a lower cmc slot. Deck variety much?
Wizards introduction of Planeswalkers was effectively Fox Kids taking One Piece to the butcher block and making Franken Piece out of it, where Sanji is now sucking a lollipop and major plot points got entirely axed because they aren't kid friendly enough. Complexity? Go throw that out the window. The only format that is even tangentially supported by wizards that has not fallen into a mid-range nightmare is modern. People who kept their legacy collections are living in a paradise compared to what people are having to deal with right now.
Seriously, they can't even make a standard set that gets people to keep buying it past the first two months. People actively search out Elwynn / Lorwynn and original Innistrad, as well as older sets like Urza's Saga (because that one was one heck of a crazy OP block). No one is going to remember or care about many of these contemporary sets thanks to how the cards were developed and the themes designed. Broken Eldrazi are just about the only thing from BFZ block that anyone will ever remember, for example.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Planeswalkers are not complicated cards. Complexity in MtG comes in understanding the timing rules, stack interaction, priority, and state-based effects. I did not need Portal to learn how to play MtG, nor do most people who are intelligent enough to learn how to play the game. You get your feet wet, you take your lumps, and you LEARN. The old adage of "give a person a fish, you feed them once; teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime" applies to MtG as well.
More value can easily be added to Masters sets by increasing the amount of valuable cards in the sets. What you are suggesting in adding dice and sleeves is nothing more than marketing BS b/c I don't want to purchase a Masters set or any MtG product b/c they will throw in dice or sleeves. I want good cards when I purchase the WotC products, and I don't want to have to play a lottery to do that...hence why I have largely stopped purchasing any direct WotC products. I purchase singles only w/ exception of a box of the recent Masters set b/c it did look like a good roll of the dice for me as I don't possess a lot of the better cards from sets between Kamigawa and Innistrad. I also did it to see for myself how much value there actually was for me in 24 booster Masters box instead of taking everybody else's word for it. In the end I will probably break even on that purchase of a MM17 box of boosters. I bet that if WotC added more value in CARDS to their sets they would actually move more product, b/c they would still get the players that love to play lotteries AND they would get people like me who want value for every penny I spend on their product and do not want to throw money away playing a lottery.
I also used to hate Planeswalkers b/c they were not part of the game when I started playing in the 90s, but I've learned to respect and appreciate the cards b/c of the one-time mana investment into potentially reusable effects, and multiple effects at that. You saying that you want prison, counters, and higher variance gameplay (all complex parts of the game) and then calling Planeswalkers complex or complicated and therefore bad for newer players seems a bit at odds.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Other high value cards either maintain a higher percent of their value, and/or are good pulls because demand for them remains high.
E tutor and Mother of Runes are good examples of cards whose price tanked a fair way, but you have little difficulty getting rid of them in trades because they have multiple uses or are used by one very popular deck. Better examples in green might be Sylvan Library or as an artifact SDT, blue has Show and Tell in Conspiracy II. Nobody complains when they crack those cards even if they have dipped in price. The uncommon and common slots are very important. Brainstorm is a cheap card but the guy opening one or two such cards in the uncommon slot feels a lot better when their rare is a bit whiffy.
I do agree that these master sets need a higher emphasis on playables.
Very long term? Modern was on the way to replacing Standard as the most popular format before Wotc pull back on the reigns of Modern.
For the most part I agree with what you are saying.
I do not agree that rules knowledge is primarily limited by intelligence. WotC is not catering to people who are too dim to learn the rules. They are catering to people too impatient or too "casual" to bother learning the rules - and to the "poor sports" who are easily vexed when they get bitten by an interaction they didn't expect or don't understand.
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RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats