On a side note, people are comparing todays Standard to when Portal was legal. People just gloss over the fact there were no older sanctioned formats when Portal came out. Now there is a stepping stone of power level from format to format. Limited being the lowest in power, then Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. Huge difference in design and development between then and now. If Standard was as strong as it was when Portal was out, there would be no need for any of the other formats.
You are way off base here!
When Portal came out, there were 2 older formats sanctioned - Type 1 & Type 2. Portal was legal in neither. It was a "stepping stone" product made explicitly for new players and the cards were not legal in any sanctioned format.
That Standard is lower powered (midrange notwithstanding) than a 20 year old set designed for players who were not ready for tournament magic is obscene. I think WotC is starting to see this. Their customer motivation survey asked a lot of questions about how much we value rules complication. Such things as how important it is to us that we have an "encyclopedic" rules comprehension, that we can learn from our mistakes and become better players, and that there are interesting and unexpected rules interactions. They also asked if we like playing strange and unusual builds, and a number of questions about how important it is to us that the game is easy to learn.
It looks to me like WotC are entertaining a reset on their design philosophy of catering primarily to new players. This is sort of inevitable, as you can't sustain constant explosive growth, and at some point you have to look at what your more established players want.
I remember playing during Kamigawa-Rav Standard, and there were all kinds of different strategies you could play. Aggro, control, combo, aggro-control, LD, etc. I would go to FNM and there would be 30 people there and probably at least 15-20 unique decks. I LOVE to play LD, and so I did. Nobody talked about it being "unfun" to play against, rather they tried extra hard to destroy me and were twice as happy when they did. I died to several Sacred Grounds being played against me, and I still had fun.
What is upsetting to me is that Wizards (and it seems like MaRo in particular) just takes things away that were a part of the game since before I started.
No more LD
No more Mana Leak
No more *** effects
No more core set
Everything is TOO POWERFUL!!!111!!! now. Seriously, read some of the stuff MaRo says. Pyroclasm is too strong, but getting over half my life total taken from Mardu Vehicles by t3 isn't? *** is too powerful, but vehicles-a subtype that literally hoses sweepers-are completely fine?!
Stop worrying about "unfun" and stop micromanaging for draft. If you have boosters with 15 cards in a pack, people are going to draft them. Forget "as-fan", forget micromanaging card designs for "limited".
And STOP telling me that things are "TOO POWERFUL!!!"
::Edit::
In response to SuperHans99
I agree completely. But MaRo and his "market research" has assured us several times that nothing like that will ever happen again. One of my favorite things in mtg ever, and he was just like "nope, newer players didn't like it".
Uhh....I started playing during Onslaught-Mirrodin standard, so I was still relatively new, and I LOVED getting to play with mechanics and cards that my cousin (who got me started in mtg) and all of our teammates talked about "back in the old days". I actually got to cast Akroma in standard, that was fantastic. But nope, MaRo says never again and so it will never be...
They are getting better. People should remember feedback from 6+ months ago is going to start cropping up in standard so we will see changes for the better. Hopefully...
My faith in wotc is at the same level of Nintendo right now.
Now that you mention it, both WOTC and Nin. love to do false scarcity crap.....
I'm not completely sure about wotc, but in the case of Nintendo it's less intentional and more like they just don't care and live in a fantasy world.
Wotc it's more so wanting to push standard and that implicit promise from the reserved list.
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!
I didn't understand what "creatures are too powerful" meant for a time, but now I think I do...
Anyway, I've got a lot to say, based on my own experiences and others' complaints, so I'll collapse it in spoiler tags.
The important part, with a nice little list of card analyses:
The problem is not "creatures slamming into each other is boring", the problem is "creatures put on too much pressure and don't give synergistic decks time to develop their gameplan". (We can see this by the fact that Mardu Vehicles is called a "midrange" deck yet can inflict up to 11 damage by the end of Turn 3.) Let's call the threats that allow them to exert such ridiculous pressure "hyperefficient creatures". They're creatures that are just so good for their cost that they basically force themselves into any deck in their color, and sometimes force decks to play their colors just to include them! In my experience, they tend to fall into two categories:
1) A way above the curve creature with a "drawback" to balance it out, but the "drawback" turns out to be too weak so the creature provides too much benefit
Prime exhibits: Smuggler's Copter, Heart of Kiran
In this case, the "drawback" is the inability to attack or block unless you pay the Crew cost, but that turns out to be too easy and their stats are too good for how early you can bring them out. Also, the "drawback" turns into a benefit against any sorcery-speed creature removal that doesn't also hit noncreature artifacts.
2) A creature with a body on curve but a powerful effect that the developers conveniently forget to charge the player for, manawise
Some prime examples from recent sets:
Body: 2/3 flash flying for is right on curve.
Effect: O-Ringing a spell that costs 4 or less Probably worth 2 mana, it's a more powerful "counter" than either Prohibit or Horribly Awry but has the downside that the opponent can get the spell back. Or, compared to Mystic Snake, you get a counter that's better and worse at the same time (exile > counter, but the spell is recoverable) and you get a better body (2/3 flyer vs 2/2).
Fair cost for Spell Queller: At least , although even that makes Ulamog's Nullifier cry at the hoop it has to jump through.
Actual cost:
Body: 4/4 flash flying for is fair.
Effect: Indestructible until end of turn for your whole team. Should be worth a little less than 2 mana (compare Heroic Intervention) However, the body combines with this effect to make it much more powerful, as she's extremely likely to eat an attacker if she comes in to block and your other creatures can eat more attackers. So the effect should be a little over 2 mana.
Oh, there's also the flip thing that makes her into a more powerful creature while simultaneously burning your opponent and wiping weenies off the board. It takes a little work to control when it triggers (emphasis on a little), so I'm not sure what it should cost, but it definitely shouldn't be free.
Fair cost for Archangel Avacyn: AT LEAST , her power level would drop off significantly at since her effects are both situational, but they shouldn't be free, that's for sure!
Actual cost:
Body: 3/2 for ! That's already above curve, especially for artifact creatures that rarely even make it to X/X for X in most cases!
Effect: Can't block is a negative, but with stats like that, it's made for attacking anyway. Being able to recur it for the low cost of and a creature in your graveyard (at instant speed!) is insane, considering how fast a clock it is.
Fair cost for Scrapheap Scrounger: At least , maybe
Actual cost:
Body: 2/3 for is pretty fair. Maybe a tiny (tiny!) bit below curve considering that Green can get 2/3s for now and multicolored cards tend to be more powerful than monocolored cards.
Effect: Hardened Scales+, which cost . This has the downside of being on a creature, meaning it's easier to remove, but it also has the upside of being on a creature, meaning you don't lack for a body to put +1/+1 counters on! I think the downside and upside are approximately equal there. In any case, a counter-increasing effect is worth something!
Fair Cost for Winding Constrictor:
Actual cost:
[*} Rishkar, Peema Renegade
Body: 3/3 for in the WORST case. It turns out to be at least 4/4 worth of stats in most cases if you can jump through the incredible hoop of controlling at least ONE other creature before you play him. So his worst case is a little below curve in terms of body (a 3/3 with a keyword for 3 is fair), but his average and best case is definitely above curve.
Effect: Counter-placement, which has some nice synergy and gives you flexiblity. Oh, and also the ability to tap creatures with counters on them for mana, in order to aid you in the efficient dumping of your hand (or ramp you into bigger stuff, or make up for missed land drops, etc.)
Fair Cost for Rishkar, Peema Renegade: It's hard to say...he clearly is worth more than but 4 mana for a 3/3 and a +1/+1 counter seems below par. Maybe if he ditched the mana ability he'd be OK at 3 mana.
Actual cost:
Yeah, I wish Wizards would realize that when you add two numbers together, you don't just take the bigger one and ignore the smaller one, they BOTH have to contribute to the mana cost. Anyway, so those are hyperefficient creatures, and as you can see they're all over Standard now and were recently.
Some additional details and thoughts:
Anyway, hyperefficient creatures are a problem. There's also the problem of "2-for-1" creatures that generate card advantage as soon as they hit the battlefield/die, but I don't think those are as big a problem. (Synergy-based decks can gain larger advantages than those simple 2-for-1 creatures do, and control decks can run better CA/inevitability to out-grind those decks (or turn the corner and kill these decks), but these plans only work if they have enough time, which hyperefficient creatures take away.)
Oh yeah, and another problem of hyperefficient creatures: It turns hitting your land drops on time and curving out perfectly from "advantage into the midgame" into "completely unbeatable unless your opponent curved out equally perfectly", and adds a lot of importance to the die roll.
So what do I think of "make answers better" or "print Counterspell in Standard"? I don't think this is quite the way to go. Think about it, when any spell can be countered for or any creature can be destroyed for , then playing hyperefficient creatures is one of the only ways to avoid falling way behind in tempo! That makes the problem worse, as it crowds out the non-hyperefficient creatures even further! No, I think it's important for removal to scale up in cost with the power of the threats it's removing, so that synergistic non-immediate-advantage creatures, as well as high-raw-power-but-low-efficiency creatures have a fighting chance in the format. Maybe creating more answers that can hit multiple different card types would help, especially against decks like Mardu Vehicles.
However, I do think that the argument "answers make the game unfun for newbies" is unfortunate and flawed. If you play against a newbie and they get sad when you destroy their big creature that they wanted to use to win the game, that makes for a good learning experience. Instruct them that if they wish to avoid that in the future, there are cards they can use to protect their favorite creature. Negate, Dispel, Blossoming Defense, Heroic Intervention, Selfless Spirit, and Supernatural Stamina were made for a reason. Use them!
But back to hyperefficient creatures...I think the planeswalker card type has made creatures more powerful in general, because creatures are the best way to fight them. Think about it...they give off a recurring advantage, and usually win the game if left unchecked, but only a few spells can remove them directly, otherwise you need burn (which often doesn't do enough damage) or creature attacks. Oh, and guess what? If you're ahead on board, they tend to stick around for longer, and get you further ahead on board in the process. And the best way to get ahead on board? HYPEREFFICIENT CREATURES. So because of planeswalkers it's even MORE necessary to play only the most efficient creatures and ignore others. I think this could be addressed by powering down planeswalkers a notch. Increasing the number of removal spells that can hit planeswalkers could also help, but only in a limited fashion (due to priority, any planeswalker-destruction spell, even an instant, allows the planeswalker to generate a small advantage with one of its loyalty abilities before it dies).
Oh yeah, and what happens to hyperefficient creatures in terms of price? They become expensive, especially at Mythic. Trying to make the game "newbie-friendly", while also making it unwinnable for newbies who didn't afford/weren't lucky enough to pull the format's keystone cards, is counterproductive.
I'd really like to see Wizards, just for 4 consecutive Standard sets, develop creatures according to the following rules:
1) No creatures with stats better than X/X for , except that 2/1s and 1/2s for 1 are allowed and the creature can get 1 extra stat point if it's multicolored or has a double-monocolored requirement. No cheating with creatures that have printed stats <X/X for but put +1/+1 counters on themselves to become >X/X for .
2) Any creature with a beneficial effect other than 1-2 on-color evergreen keywords must have its cost increased by AT LEAST 1, and careful consideration as to whether it should cost more (possibly much more).
3) NO ABOVE-THE CURVE-WITH-DRAWBACK CREATURES BECAUSE YOU GUYS ARE TERRIBLE AT BALANCING THEM. (I wouldn't be surprised if the BG "-1/-1 counters as drawback" creatures form a very powerful deck.)
Just do it for 4 blocks starting with a fall set, and see how people enjoy Standard at the end. It might be surprisingly fun, with people having to think about more of the cardpool rather than focusing on the hyperefficient creatures.
Of course, anytime a set comes out and the cards aren't all busted, people complain about how they're throwing their money away and the set's terrible. But what happens when a powerful set like Khans comes out? People ooh and aah over all the great multicolored cards, then start to play and complain about Siege Rhino and Mantis Rider. Aether Revolt? Wow these cards are great, I can't wait to buy 4 boxes...and then...ugh, I'm so tired of Winding Constrictor and Heart of Kiran. Like, don't forget that powerful cards aren't all yours, you have to play against them too. And if your Modern/Legacy deck doesn't get new cards, remember that those formats are already chock-full of hyperefficient creatures that are a chore to play against in Standard.
Oh yeah, and Turn-4 two-card win combos aren't good either. Having to always consider it in any deck you build, knowing that any advantage you try to build up can be immediately lost if you let the combo go off even once, makes playing against it extremely demanding (and of course there will be games where you don't draw your interaction and you lose with nothing you could do about it). This format is especially bad with Mardu Vehicles being an extremely aggressive midrange deck (so it goes under the decks that try to go over the top of Copycat Combo, and goes OVER the top of the decks that try to go UNDER Copycat Combo).
And one last note: I thought Green was the color of ramp and big creatures, so why does it get to have 2/1s for 1 like Red and White, which are the colors of small creatures? It's like Green is the color of "most efficient creature no matter where on the curve you are".
Summarized version for the "TL:DR" people:
1) Certain creatures are too mana-efficient, either because their drawbacks don't offset their power or because their mana cost only charges you for their body and not for their (often very powerful) effect. These creatures provide an incredible amount of pressure, taking away the time that more interesting strategies need to develop their gameplan and forcing their way into decks as auto-includes.
2) Planeswalkers exacerbate the problem.
3) More efficient removal/counterspells may not solve the problem as well as people think.
4) The current Standard (one really fast but resilient deck chock-full of noncreature creatures, and one deck with a turn-4 instant win combo) only exacerbates the problem with hyperefficient creatures.
Anyway, that's what I think. A little question for all of you: do you tend to like Standard more when the average CMC of your favorite (reasonably competitive) deck is higher, or lower?
I didn't understand what "creatures are too powerful" meant for a time, but now I think I do...
Anyway, I've got a lot to say, based on my own experiences and others' complaints, so I'll collapse it in spoiler tags.
The important part, with a nice little list of card analyses:
The problem is not "creatures slamming into each other is boring", the problem is "creatures put on too much pressure and don't give synergistic decks time to develop their gameplan". (We can see this by the fact that Mardu Vehicles is called a "midrange" deck yet can inflict up to 11 damage by the end of Turn 3.) Let's call the threats that allow them to exert such ridiculous pressure "hyperefficient creatures". They're creatures that are just so good for their cost that they basically force themselves into any deck in their color, and sometimes force decks to play their colors just to include them! In my experience, they tend to fall into two categories:
1) A way above the curve creature with a "drawback" to balance it out, but the "drawback" turns out to be too weak so the creature provides too much benefit
Prime exhibits: Smuggler's Copter, Heart of Kiran
In this case, the "drawback" is the inability to attack or block unless you pay the Crew cost, but that turns out to be too easy and their stats are too good for how early you can bring them out. Also, the "drawback" turns into a benefit against any sorcery-speed creature removal that doesn't also hit noncreature artifacts.
2) A creature with a body on curve but a powerful effect that the developers conveniently forget to charge the player for, manawise
Some prime examples from recent sets:
Body: 2/3 flash flying for is right on curve.
Effect: O-Ringing a spell that costs 4 or less Probably worth 2 mana, it's a more powerful "counter" than either Prohibit or Horribly Awry but has the downside that the opponent can get the spell back. Or, compared to Mystic Snake, you get a counter that's better and worse at the same time (exile > counter, but the spell is recoverable) and you get a better body (2/3 flyer vs 2/2).
Fair cost for Spell Queller: At least , although even that makes Ulamog's Nullifier cry at the hoop it has to jump through.
Actual cost:
Body: 4/4 flash flying for is fair.
Effect: Indestructible until end of turn for your whole team. Should be worth a little less than 2 mana (compare Heroic Intervention) However, the body combines with this effect to make it much more powerful, as she's extremely likely to eat an attacker if she comes in to block and your other creatures can eat more attackers. So the effect should be a little over 2 mana.
Oh, there's also the flip thing that makes her into a more powerful creature while simultaneously burning your opponent and wiping weenies off the board. It takes a little work to control when it triggers (emphasis on a little), so I'm not sure what it should cost, but it definitely shouldn't be free.
Fair cost for Archangel Avacyn: AT LEAST , her power level would drop off significantly at since her effects are both situational, but they shouldn't be free, that's for sure!
Actual cost:
Body: 3/2 for ! That's already above curve, especially for artifact creatures that rarely even make it to X/X for X in most cases!
Effect: Can't block is a negative, but with stats like that, it's made for attacking anyway. Being able to recur it for the low cost of and a creature in your graveyard (at instant speed!) is insane, considering how fast a clock it is.
Fair cost for Scrapheap Scrounger: At least , maybe
Actual cost:
Body: 2/3 for is pretty fair. Maybe a tiny (tiny!) bit below curve considering that Green can get 2/3s for now and multicolored cards tend to be more powerful than monocolored cards.
Effect: Hardened Scales+, which cost . This has the downside of being on a creature, meaning it's easier to remove, but it also has the upside of being on a creature, meaning you don't lack for a body to put +1/+1 counters on! I think the downside and upside are approximately equal there. In any case, a counter-increasing effect is worth something!
Fair Cost for Winding Constrictor:
Actual cost:
[*} Rishkar, Peema Renegade
Body: 3/3 for in the WORST case. It turns out to be at least 4/4 worth of stats in most cases if you can jump through the incredible hoop of controlling at least ONE other creature before you play him. So his worst case is a little below curve in terms of body (a 3/3 with a keyword for 3 is fair), but his average and best case is definitely above curve.
Effect: Counter-placement, which has some nice synergy and gives you flexiblity. Oh, and also the ability to tap creatures with counters on them for mana, in order to aid you in the efficient dumping of your hand (or ramp you into bigger stuff, or make up for missed land drops, etc.)
Fair Cost for Rishkar, Peema Renegade: It's hard to say...he clearly is worth more than but 4 mana for a 3/3 and a +1/+1 counter seems below par. Maybe if he ditched the mana ability he'd be OK at 3 mana.
Actual cost:
Yeah, I wish Wizards would realize that when you add two numbers together, you don't just take the bigger one and ignore the smaller one, they BOTH have to contribute to the mana cost. Anyway, so those are hyperefficient creatures, and as you can see they're all over Standard now and were recently.
Some additional details and thoughts:
Anyway, hyperefficient creatures are a problem. There's also the problem of "2-for-1" creatures that generate card advantage as soon as they hit the battlefield/die, but I don't think those are as big a problem. (Synergy-based decks can gain larger advantages than those simple 2-for-1 creatures do, and control decks can run better CA/inevitability to out-grind those decks (or turn the corner and kill these decks), but these plans only work if they have enough time, which hyperefficient creatures take away.)
Oh yeah, and another problem of hyperefficient creatures: It turns hitting your land drops on time and curving out perfectly from "advantage into the midgame" into "completely unbeatable unless your opponent curved out equally perfectly", and adds a lot of importance to the die roll.
So what do I think of "make answers better" or "print Counterspell in Standard"? I don't think this is quite the way to go. Think about it, when any spell can be countered for or any creature can be destroyed for , then playing hyperefficient creatures is one of the only ways to avoid falling way behind in tempo! That makes the problem worse, as it crowds out the non-hyperefficient creatures even further! No, I think it's important for removal to scale up in cost with the power of the threats it's removing, so that synergistic non-immediate-advantage creatures, as well as high-raw-power-but-low-efficiency creatures have a fighting chance in the format. Maybe creating more answers that can hit multiple different card types would help, especially against decks like Mardu Vehicles.
However, I do think that the argument "answers make the game unfun for newbies" is unfortunate and flawed. If you play against a newbie and they get sad when you destroy their big creature that they wanted to use to win the game, that makes for a good learning experience. Instruct them that if they wish to avoid that in the future, there are cards they can use to protect their favorite creature. Negate, Dispel, Blossoming Defense, Heroic Intervention, Selfless Spirit, and Supernatural Stamina were made for a reason. Use them!
But back to hyperefficient creatures...I think the planeswalker card type has made creatures more powerful in general, because creatures are the best way to fight them. Think about it...they give off a recurring advantage, and usually win the game if left unchecked, but only a few spells can remove them directly, otherwise you need burn (which often doesn't do enough damage) or creature attacks. Oh, and guess what? If you're ahead on board, they tend to stick around for longer, and get you further ahead on board in the process. And the best way to get ahead on board? HYPEREFFICIENT CREATURES. So because of planeswalkers it's even MORE necessary to play only the most efficient creatures and ignore others. I think this could be addressed by powering down planeswalkers a notch. Increasing the number of removal spells that can hit planeswalkers could also help, but only in a limited fashion (due to priority, any planeswalker-destruction spell, even an instant, allows the planeswalker to generate a small advantage with one of its loyalty abilities before it dies).
Oh yeah, and what happens to hyperefficient creatures in terms of price? They become expensive, especially at Mythic. Trying to make the game "newbie-friendly", while also making it unwinnable for newbies who didn't afford/weren't lucky enough to pull the format's keystone cards, is counterproductive.
I'd really like to see Wizards, just for 4 consecutive Standard sets, develop creatures according to the following rules:
1) No creatures with stats better than X/X for , except that 2/1s and 1/2s for 1 are allowed and the creature can get 1 extra stat point if it's multicolored or has a double-monocolored requirement. No cheating with creatures that have printed stats <X/X for but put +1/+1 counters on themselves to become >X/X for .
2) Any creature with a beneficial effect other than 1-2 on-color evergreen keywords must have its cost increased by AT LEAST 1, and careful consideration as to whether it should cost more (possibly much more).
3) NO ABOVE-THE CURVE-WITH-DRAWBACK CREATURES BECAUSE YOU GUYS ARE TERRIBLE AT BALANCING THEM. (I wouldn't be surprised if the BG "-1/-1 counters as drawback" creatures form a very powerful deck.)
Just do it for 4 blocks starting with a fall set, and see how people enjoy Standard at the end. It might be surprisingly fun, with people having to think about more of the cardpool rather than focusing on the hyperefficient creatures.
Of course, anytime a set comes out and the cards aren't all busted, people complain about how they're throwing their money away and the set's terrible. But what happens when a powerful set like Khans comes out? People ooh and aah over all the great multicolored cards, then start to play and complain about Siege Rhino and Mantis Rider. Aether Revolt? Wow these cards are great, I can't wait to buy 4 boxes...and then...ugh, I'm so tired of Winding Constrictor and Heart of Kiran. Like, don't forget that powerful cards aren't all yours, you have to play against them too. And if your Modern/Legacy deck doesn't get new cards, remember that those formats are already chock-full of hyperefficient creatures that are a chore to play against in Standard.
Oh yeah, and Turn-4 two-card win combos aren't good either. Having to always consider it in any deck you build, knowing that any advantage you try to build up can be immediately lost if you let the combo go off even once, makes playing against it extremely demanding (and of course there will be games where you don't draw your interaction and you lose with nothing you could do about it). This format is especially bad with Mardu Vehicles being an extremely aggressive midrange deck (so it goes under the decks that try to go over the top of Copycat Combo, and goes OVER the top of the decks that try to go UNDER Copycat Combo).
And one last note: I thought Green was the color of ramp and big creatures, so why does it get to have 2/1s for 1 like Red and White, which are the colors of small creatures? It's like Green is the color of "most efficient creature no matter where on the curve you are".
Summarized version for the "TL:DR" people:
1) Certain creatures are too mana-efficient, either because their drawbacks don't offset their power or because their mana cost only charges you for their body and not for their (often very powerful) effect. These creatures provide an incredible amount of pressure, taking away the time that more interesting strategies need to develop their gameplan and forcing their way into decks as auto-includes.
2) Planeswalkers exacerbate the problem.
3) More efficient removal/counterspells may not solve the problem as well as people think.
4) The current Standard (one really fast but resilient deck chock-full of noncreature creatures, and one deck with a turn-4 instant win combo) only exacerbates the problem with hyperefficient creatures.
Anyway, that's what I think. A little question for all of you: do you tend to like Standard more when the average CMC of your favorite (reasonably competitive) deck is higher, or lower?
To be frank it feels like over the years they got new blood into the design system for cards that had drastically different ideas for what MtG should look like. I took out my old boxes of Tempest-9th edition and compared it to what we have now and this is like a night and day difference.
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!
Their customer motivation survey asked a lot of questions about how much we value rules complication. Such things as how important it is to us that we have an "encyclopedic" rules comprehension, that we can learn from our mistakes and become better players, and that there are interesting and unexpected rules interactions. They also asked if we like playing strange and unusual builds, and a number of questions about how important it is to us that the game is easy to learn.
Very interesting - I must have missed that survey, but then again I barely visit MagicTheGathering.com at all any more. I have always had the impression that they don't do anywhere near enough market research, and often not to a truly representative demographic. (I recall it was surprising to a lot of people when it came out that the average Magic player is around 30 years old - I forget the exact number - and plays actively for about six straight years, because a lot of Wizards' actions and statements implied that they thought both numbers were lower.) It also bothers me that Rosewater and Forsythe are always saying things along the lines of "oh, we have so much market research and sales data", and when people ask them to elaborate on it they refuse. Except that lots of companies do elaborate on their market research and sales data (Lego, for one), so I don't believe the data really exists.
On a side note, people are comparing todays Standard to when Portal was legal. People just gloss over the fact there were no older sanctioned formats when Portal came out. Now there is a stepping stone of power level from format to format. Limited being the lowest in power, then Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. Huge difference in design and development between then and now. If Standard was as strong as it was when Portal was out, there would be no need for any of the other formats.
You are way off base here!
When Portal came out, there were 2 older formats sanctioned - Type 1 & Type 2. Portal was legal in neither. It was a "stepping stone" product made explicitly for new players and the cards were not legal in any sanctioned format.
That Standard is lower powered (midrange notwithstanding) than a 20 year old set designed for players who were not ready for tournament magic is obscene. I think WotC is starting to see this. Their customer motivation survey asked a lot of questions about how much we value rules complication. Such things as how important it is to us that we have an "encyclopedic" rules comprehension, that we can learn from our mistakes and become better players, and that there are interesting and unexpected rules interactions. They also asked if we like playing strange and unusual builds, and a number of questions about how important it is to us that the game is easy to learn.
It looks to me like WotC are entertaining a reset on their design philosophy of catering primarily to new players. This is sort of inevitable, as you can't sustain constant explosive growth, and at some point you have to look at what your more established players want.
Type 2 has always been Standard. Yes the number of sets has changed here and there, but type 2 has always been Standard. Where I played back then Portal was allowed in all formats. Maybe it was just the LGS I played at. I didnt chase the golden ring (play higher level events) I didnt think the division of type 1 and 2 had been made at Portal, but I could be wrong. But type 1 wasnt anything like it is now. Expense wise or depth.
Again comparing the game now to how the game was in the late 90s is like comparing apples and oranges. We had the apples, its time for the oranges, and cherries, and bananas... anything but apples.
Quote from Colt47 »
I do feel that wotc has very little feedback from the community
What more do you want them to do? They talk to players at events, they talk to the LGS to see whats being played and whats selling, they have sales figures, they have event results and type and numbers of decks played.
The problem is people want things to happen on an accelerated time table then it does. By the time a set comes out, the next set is in its final stages of being sent to printing. So it takes time to fix things.
Bo, they definitely aren't talking to LGS and they certainly aren't listening to players if what we see now is the results of those talks. I just don't have the energy to even continue this discussion because being reminded of what the game was once like and seeing it now is just depressing.
We just had so much more back pre-modern even though there were fewer sets at the time. Good land destruction, a functional counterspell, cycling, no reserved list, basic dual lands that didn't come into play tapped, holiday cards that referenced things like halloween, and now it's all just devolved into creature wars that completely overshadow card mechanics they push. Ripping off of pop culture and current cinema trends, way too many character specific cards, and overly pushed planeswalkers.
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 didn't understand what "creatures are too powerful" meant for a time, but now I think I do...
Anyway, I've got a lot to say, based on my own experiences and others' complaints, so I'll collapse it in spoiler tags.
The important part, with a nice little list of card analyses:
The problem is not "creatures slamming into each other is boring", the problem is "creatures put on too much pressure and don't give synergistic decks time to develop their gameplan". (We can see this by the fact that Mardu Vehicles is called a "midrange" deck yet can inflict up to 11 damage by the end of Turn 3.) Let's call the threats that allow them to exert such ridiculous pressure "hyperefficient creatures". They're creatures that are just so good for their cost that they basically force themselves into any deck in their color, and sometimes force decks to play their colors just to include them! In my experience, they tend to fall into two categories:
1) A way above the curve creature with a "drawback" to balance it out, but the "drawback" turns out to be too weak so the creature provides too much benefit
Prime exhibits: Smuggler's Copter, Heart of Kiran
In this case, the "drawback" is the inability to attack or block unless you pay the Crew cost, but that turns out to be too easy and their stats are too good for how early you can bring them out. Also, the "drawback" turns into a benefit against any sorcery-speed creature removal that doesn't also hit noncreature artifacts.
2) A creature with a body on curve but a powerful effect that the developers conveniently forget to charge the player for, manawise
Some prime examples from recent sets:
Body: 2/3 flash flying for is right on curve.
Effect: O-Ringing a spell that costs 4 or less Probably worth 2 mana, it's a more powerful "counter" than either Prohibit or Horribly Awry but has the downside that the opponent can get the spell back. Or, compared to Mystic Snake, you get a counter that's better and worse at the same time (exile > counter, but the spell is recoverable) and you get a better body (2/3 flyer vs 2/2).
Fair cost for Spell Queller: At least , although even that makes Ulamog's Nullifier cry at the hoop it has to jump through.
Actual cost:
Body: 4/4 flash flying for is fair.
Effect: Indestructible until end of turn for your whole team. Should be worth a little less than 2 mana (compare Heroic Intervention) However, the body combines with this effect to make it much more powerful, as she's extremely likely to eat an attacker if she comes in to block and your other creatures can eat more attackers. So the effect should be a little over 2 mana.
Oh, there's also the flip thing that makes her into a more powerful creature while simultaneously burning your opponent and wiping weenies off the board. It takes a little work to control when it triggers (emphasis on a little), so I'm not sure what it should cost, but it definitely shouldn't be free.
Fair cost for Archangel Avacyn: AT LEAST , her power level would drop off significantly at since her effects are both situational, but they shouldn't be free, that's for sure!
Actual cost:
Body: 3/2 for ! That's already above curve, especially for artifact creatures that rarely even make it to X/X for X in most cases!
Effect: Can't block is a negative, but with stats like that, it's made for attacking anyway. Being able to recur it for the low cost of and a creature in your graveyard (at instant speed!) is insane, considering how fast a clock it is.
Fair cost for Scrapheap Scrounger: At least , maybe
Actual cost:
Body: 2/3 for is pretty fair. Maybe a tiny (tiny!) bit below curve considering that Green can get 2/3s for now and multicolored cards tend to be more powerful than monocolored cards.
Effect: Hardened Scales+, which cost . This has the downside of being on a creature, meaning it's easier to remove, but it also has the upside of being on a creature, meaning you don't lack for a body to put +1/+1 counters on! I think the downside and upside are approximately equal there. In any case, a counter-increasing effect is worth something!
Fair Cost for Winding Constrictor:
Actual cost:
[*} Rishkar, Peema Renegade
Body: 3/3 for in the WORST case. It turns out to be at least 4/4 worth of stats in most cases if you can jump through the incredible hoop of controlling at least ONE other creature before you play him. So his worst case is a little below curve in terms of body (a 3/3 with a keyword for 3 is fair), but his average and best case is definitely above curve.
Effect: Counter-placement, which has some nice synergy and gives you flexiblity. Oh, and also the ability to tap creatures with counters on them for mana, in order to aid you in the efficient dumping of your hand (or ramp you into bigger stuff, or make up for missed land drops, etc.)
Fair Cost for Rishkar, Peema Renegade: It's hard to say...he clearly is worth more than but 4 mana for a 3/3 and a +1/+1 counter seems below par. Maybe if he ditched the mana ability he'd be OK at 3 mana.
Actual cost:
Yeah, I wish Wizards would realize that when you add two numbers together, you don't just take the bigger one and ignore the smaller one, they BOTH have to contribute to the mana cost. Anyway, so those are hyperefficient creatures, and as you can see they're all over Standard now and were recently.
Some additional details and thoughts:
Anyway, hyperefficient creatures are a problem. There's also the problem of "2-for-1" creatures that generate card advantage as soon as they hit the battlefield/die, but I don't think those are as big a problem. (Synergy-based decks can gain larger advantages than those simple 2-for-1 creatures do, and control decks can run better CA/inevitability to out-grind those decks (or turn the corner and kill these decks), but these plans only work if they have enough time, which hyperefficient creatures take away.)
Oh yeah, and another problem of hyperefficient creatures: It turns hitting your land drops on time and curving out perfectly from "advantage into the midgame" into "completely unbeatable unless your opponent curved out equally perfectly", and adds a lot of importance to the die roll.
So what do I think of "make answers better" or "print Counterspell in Standard"? I don't think this is quite the way to go. Think about it, when any spell can be countered for or any creature can be destroyed for , then playing hyperefficient creatures is one of the only ways to avoid falling way behind in tempo! That makes the problem worse, as it crowds out the non-hyperefficient creatures even further! No, I think it's important for removal to scale up in cost with the power of the threats it's removing, so that synergistic non-immediate-advantage creatures, as well as high-raw-power-but-low-efficiency creatures have a fighting chance in the format. Maybe creating more answers that can hit multiple different card types would help, especially against decks like Mardu Vehicles.
However, I do think that the argument "answers make the game unfun for newbies" is unfortunate and flawed. If you play against a newbie and they get sad when you destroy their big creature that they wanted to use to win the game, that makes for a good learning experience. Instruct them that if they wish to avoid that in the future, there are cards they can use to protect their favorite creature. Negate, Dispel, Blossoming Defense, Heroic Intervention, Selfless Spirit, and Supernatural Stamina were made for a reason. Use them!
But back to hyperefficient creatures...I think the planeswalker card type has made creatures more powerful in general, because creatures are the best way to fight them. Think about it...they give off a recurring advantage, and usually win the game if left unchecked, but only a few spells can remove them directly, otherwise you need burn (which often doesn't do enough damage) or creature attacks. Oh, and guess what? If you're ahead on board, they tend to stick around for longer, and get you further ahead on board in the process. And the best way to get ahead on board? HYPEREFFICIENT CREATURES. So because of planeswalkers it's even MORE necessary to play only the most efficient creatures and ignore others. I think this could be addressed by powering down planeswalkers a notch. Increasing the number of removal spells that can hit planeswalkers could also help, but only in a limited fashion (due to priority, any planeswalker-destruction spell, even an instant, allows the planeswalker to generate a small advantage with one of its loyalty abilities before it dies).
Oh yeah, and what happens to hyperefficient creatures in terms of price? They become expensive, especially at Mythic. Trying to make the game "newbie-friendly", while also making it unwinnable for newbies who didn't afford/weren't lucky enough to pull the format's keystone cards, is counterproductive.
I'd really like to see Wizards, just for 4 consecutive Standard sets, develop creatures according to the following rules:
1) No creatures with stats better than X/X for , except that 2/1s and 1/2s for 1 are allowed and the creature can get 1 extra stat point if it's multicolored or has a double-monocolored requirement. No cheating with creatures that have printed stats <X/X for but put +1/+1 counters on themselves to become >X/X for .
2) Any creature with a beneficial effect other than 1-2 on-color evergreen keywords must have its cost increased by AT LEAST 1, and careful consideration as to whether it should cost more (possibly much more).
3) NO ABOVE-THE CURVE-WITH-DRAWBACK CREATURES BECAUSE YOU GUYS ARE TERRIBLE AT BALANCING THEM. (I wouldn't be surprised if the BG "-1/-1 counters as drawback" creatures form a very powerful deck.)
Just do it for 4 blocks starting with a fall set, and see how people enjoy Standard at the end. It might be surprisingly fun, with people having to think about more of the cardpool rather than focusing on the hyperefficient creatures.
Of course, anytime a set comes out and the cards aren't all busted, people complain about how they're throwing their money away and the set's terrible. But what happens when a powerful set like Khans comes out? People ooh and aah over all the great multicolored cards, then start to play and complain about Siege Rhino and Mantis Rider. Aether Revolt? Wow these cards are great, I can't wait to buy 4 boxes...and then...ugh, I'm so tired of Winding Constrictor and Heart of Kiran. Like, don't forget that powerful cards aren't all yours, you have to play against them too. And if your Modern/Legacy deck doesn't get new cards, remember that those formats are already chock-full of hyperefficient creatures that are a chore to play against in Standard.
Oh yeah, and Turn-4 two-card win combos aren't good either. Having to always consider it in any deck you build, knowing that any advantage you try to build up can be immediately lost if you let the combo go off even once, makes playing against it extremely demanding (and of course there will be games where you don't draw your interaction and you lose with nothing you could do about it). This format is especially bad with Mardu Vehicles being an extremely aggressive midrange deck (so it goes under the decks that try to go over the top of Copycat Combo, and goes OVER the top of the decks that try to go UNDER Copycat Combo).
And one last note: I thought Green was the color of ramp and big creatures, so why does it get to have 2/1s for 1 like Red and White, which are the colors of small creatures? It's like Green is the color of "most efficient creature no matter where on the curve you are".
Summarized version for the "TL:DR" people:
1) Certain creatures are too mana-efficient, either because their drawbacks don't offset their power or because their mana cost only charges you for their body and not for their (often very powerful) effect. These creatures provide an incredible amount of pressure, taking away the time that more interesting strategies need to develop their gameplan and forcing their way into decks as auto-includes.
2) Planeswalkers exacerbate the problem.
3) More efficient removal/counterspells may not solve the problem as well as people think.
4) The current Standard (one really fast but resilient deck chock-full of noncreature creatures, and one deck with a turn-4 instant win combo) only exacerbates the problem with hyperefficient creatures.
Anyway, that's what I think. A little question for all of you: do you tend to like Standard more when the average CMC of your favorite (reasonably competitive) deck is higher, or lower?
To be frank it feels like over the years they got new blood into the design system for cards that had drastically different ideas for what MtG should look like. I took out my old boxes of Tempest-9th edition and compared it to what we have now and this is like a night and day difference.
I played a chaos draft last night because wednesday Duel Commander didn't fire. Backlashing Fleetwheel Cruiser is something people should experience in Standard. But I bet MaRo would say that card is "too powerful".
Old cards just generally found the way to be useful, unlike most non-Walker/Creature spells today.
I agree completely. But MaRo and his "market research" has assured us several times that nothing like that will ever happen again. One of my favorite things in mtg ever, and he was just like "nope, newer players didn't like it".
I really lost any and all respect for him when he wrote his article about what he'd change if he created Magic, and how it "should" be, and proceeded to ***** all over everything Richard Garfield did.
I've been playing since Fallen Empires, WotC has had my email since god knows how long, and the only correspondence I've ever gotten is the monthly "This is how little you played MTGO this month" which almost always equates to zero. Thanks for the email saying that I drafted zero cards, guys. I really needed that. I have no idea where you guys are getting these surveys from, so I'm only left to believe that his "market research" comes from Blogatog, which is hosted on Tumblr, which is the busted unflushable filled with ***** toilet in a crack den of the internet.
Shame pauper is solved and locked mostly. Since NWO makes sure new commons are *****, we only get metagame shakeups when Masters sets rarity-shift stuff.
Type 2 has always been Standard. Yes the number of sets has changed here and there, but type 2 has always been Standard. Where I played back then Portal was allowed in all formats. Maybe it was just the LGS I played at. I didnt chase the golden ring (play higher level events) I didnt think the division of type 1 and 2 had been made at Portal, but I could be wrong. But type 1 wasnt anything like it is now. Expense wise or depth.
Portal was never Standard Legal. It wasn't even legal for Vintage or Legacy till 2005.
comparing the game now to how the game was in the late 90s is like comparing apples and oranges. We had the apples, its time for the oranges, and cherries, and bananas... anything but apples.
Sorry dude, but no. Shifting more power to non-midrange archetypes like combo, control, aggro, and prison =/= a return to 1990s design! Just look Time Spiral Standard. It was nothing like 1990s magic, but still managed support for almost every style of play.
It's almost like the game can grow and evolve without stifling archetype diversity.
The whole point of the Portal analogy is that today's tournament level products do more to shield players from "bad feels" than yesterday's introductory level products. And not by a small margin!
The player base is growing weary of this nonsense, and increasingly want WotC to "move on" from their heavy handed midrange/fair/goodstuff pushing philosophy.
You are the only one who seems to want design philosophy to stagnate in this regard. NWO era can't and shouldn't last forever.
Type 2 has always been Standard. Yes the number of sets has changed here and there, but type 2 has always been Standard. Where I played back then Portal was allowed in all formats. Maybe it was just the LGS I played at. I didnt chase the golden ring (play higher level events) I didnt think the division of type 1 and 2 had been made at Portal, but I could be wrong. But type 1 wasnt anything like it is now. Expense wise or depth.
Portal was never Standard Legal. It wasn't even legal for Vintage or Legacy till 2005.
comparing the game now to how the game was in the late 90s is like comparing apples and oranges. We had the apples, its time for the oranges, and cherries, and bananas... anything but apples.
Sorry dude, but no. Shifting more power to non-midrange archetypes like combo, control, aggro, and prison =/= a return to 1990s design! Just look Time Spiral Standard. It was nothing like 1990s magic, but still managed support for almost every style of play.
It's almost like the game can grow and evolve without stifling archetype diversity.
The whole point of the Portal analogy is that today's tournament level products do more to shield players from "bad feels" than yesterday's introductory level products. And not by a small margin!
The player base is growing weary of this nonsense, and increasingly want WotC to "move on" from their heavy handed midrange/fair/goodstuff pushing philosophy.
You are the only one who seems to want design philosophy to stagnate in this regard. NWO era can't and shouldn't last forever.
As I said, I have played since the inception of the game.
The game has had highs and lows in 20 years. There are always people complaining Wotc has ruined the game. Yet it keeps going.
I couldnt stand Time Spiral. I think that was another low point of the game. Which was sad after they had such a great block as Ravnica.
Its all about different people like different things. Usually those who are happy with something are not vocal. Its always the disgruntled that are the loudest.
I couldnt stand Time Spiral. I think that was another low point of the game. Which was sad after they had such a great block as Ravnica.
Time Spiral (and it's bastard child Cold Snap) was highly divisive. All I'm saying is that it serves as an example that supporting multiple playstyles does not mean being stuck in 10990s design.
For nearly a decade WotC has pushed midrange and (to a lesser extent, aggro) fair decks and more or less cut support for everything else. I understand that you prefer it this way. That's fine. But you don't get to taker the high ground and claim that supporting other archetypes necessarily means the game devolves and stagnates. That's simply not true.
Its all about different people like different things. Usually those who are happy with something are not vocal. Its always the disgruntled that are the loudest.
I absolutely agree.
But sometimes - when sales are poor - WotC actually listens to the loud malcontents and makes a big design shift. Time Spiral is again the perfect example!
Are we at a point where the player base and WotC have an appetite for another major shift? Unless their Player Motivation Survey is intentionally a waste of time, it looks like WotC have change on their minds and may be moving away from Newb World Order style design philosophy. Time will tell.
Why would Wotc go back to Time Spiralish type set when it was not well received the first time? Because a minority of the player base liked it? Seems counter intuitive.
You are assuming the majority feel the same as you do and answered the survey as you did.
Attendance and sales dictate more then a survey a small percentage of the player base takes the time to answer.
But like you said, time will tell. No matter, some are going to be upset at what ever choice Wotc makes. The trick is making the least amount upset.
Standard is not the only warped format. Look what happened to Legacy. I'm probably biased, but I liked the pre-goyf era of magic way more. Delver was the nail in the coffin. They printed overpowered cards - 1 mana boardwipes, emrakul, bargain with lifelink and so on and then had to print stupid answers like Decay (can't be countered), will of the council (gets around "protection from players", shroud, hexproof etc).
The only format that somewhat resembles the "golden" period of extended and legacy is pauper. Of course, many people may disagree, but the old magic didn't have "I win" cards like the new walkers and mythics. There were some nasty lockpieces, but people were running maindeck stuff like disenchant.
It wasn't really goyf that did it. Things went downhill when they got through Zendikar and Scars of Mirrodin. Once those blocks hit a whole lot of things got set into motion across the board, including the rising prices and power level of modern finally breaking the camel's back for a lot of players. I wasn't tracking legacy at the time, but I wouldn't be surprised to read a similar fate hit that format 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!
Why would Wotc go back to Time Spiralish type set when it was not well received the first time? Because a minority of the player base liked it? Seems counter intuitive.
They are never going to go all over the map with keywords and nosgalgia like that again. I'm not talking about doing anything like that.
All I'm talking about is stuff like:
Support for more diverse play-styles (which were once deemed "unfun").
Better non-creature spells.
More counter-intuitive (and stack based) rules interaction.
I only mention Time Spiral because this was the last block before they got away from these things - and specifically because Future Sight was 2007 but you insist on calling these things 1990s style magic.
Why would Wotc go back to Time Spiralish type set when it was not well received the first time? Because a minority of the player base liked it? Seems counter intuitive.
They are never going to go all over the map with keywords and nosgalgia like that again. I'm not talking about doing anything like that.
All I'm talking about is stuff like:
Support for more diverse play-styles (which were once deemed "unfun").
Better non-creature spells.
More counter-intuitive (and stack based) rules interaction.
I only mention Time Spiral because this was the last block before they got away from these things - and specifically because Future Sight was 2007 but you insist on calling these things 1990s style magic.
You are assuming the majority feel the same as you do and answered the survey as you did.
Not so much.
But the fact that they are even asking tells me that WotC no longer assumes I'm still in the minority. Maybe you shouldn't either?
You definitely aren't the minority. A lot of people all over the place are wanting stronger non-creature spells. Specifically better support for alternate lines of play such as land destruction. There's also a big push to get better counter, tempo, and removal magic into standard once more like day of judgment, Path to exile, Exhaustion, and Undo. Some I'd like to see reprinted are Forbid and Price of Progress, turnabout, and whirlwind.
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!
Why would Wotc go back to Time Spiralish type set when it was not well received the first time? Because a minority of the player base liked it? Seems counter intuitive.
You are assuming the majority feel the same as you do and answered the survey as you did.
Attendance and sales dictate more then a survey a small percentage of the player base takes the time to answer.
But like you said, time will tell. No matter, some are going to be upset at what ever choice Wotc makes. The trick is making the least amount upset.
Time will tell. Good talk.
That went "you don't like garlic means your'e a vampire" levels of exaggeration. Wanting Combo, Control and Aggro to be playable at the same time as Midrange doesn't mean we want to play Time Spiral Standard forever and ever. At most, Time Spiral Block and Standard are being used as proof that the game won't break mechanically from an over-abundance of complexity in a small enviroment.
To keep in tone with the exaggerations, what benefit do you aquire from Standard being a two deck Midrange format and how does that reconcile with you claiming Ravnica Block and by extension Ravnica Standard, which was not at all a two deck format either with COK or TSP, was great?
Why would Wotc go back to Time Spiralish type set when it was not well received the first time? Because a minority of the player base liked it? Seems counter intuitive.
He didn't mean exactly like Time Spiral. He meant where each play style is supported and not just mid range. Currently only one style is supported and people want more.
Attendance and sales dictate more then a survey a small percentage of the player base takes the time to answer.
And yet even though that attendance is dropping in Standard you still think that the current course Standard is taking is a good one, when evidence proves otherwise. Seems like a lot of people are speaking up when Standard can barely fire while Modern is easy to get going. Heck, Frontier is almost easier to fire than Standard right now.
Why would Wotc go back to Time Spiralish type set when it was not well received the first time? Because a minority of the player base liked it? Seems counter intuitive.
He didn't mean exactly like Time Spiral. He meant where each play style is supported and not just mid range. Currently only one style is supported and people want more.
Attendance and sales dictate more then a survey a small percentage of the player base takes the time to answer.
And yet even though that attendance is dropping in Standard you still think that the current course Standard is taking is a good one, when evidence proves otherwise. Seems like a lot of people are speaking up when Standard can barely fire while Modern is easy to get going. Heck, Frontier is almost easier to fire than Standard right now.
For some people it's hard to see the changes that have happened in Magic the Gathering over the last two decades because they only started playing when the game was midway through the transition. The megashift really started happening when the company introduced mythic rarity and planeswalkers, then started to go crazy on mega fine-tuning the card game to try and make it like a cardboard e-sport. Then, they simultaneously keep trying to invent cute mechanics without any thought of long term scalability, leading to things like proliferate, infect, dredge, delve, and other problem mechanics. Modern basically became about super expensive core cards not because of popularity, but because of underprintings and the outliers of design being so clearly OP compared to other options. They basically need to ban just about all the highest priced modern cards to bring the power level down to where it needs to be and regularly reprint the cards that were once in those cards places, but I don't see them doing that without making people angry.
Also, as I said previously, the entire problem with their modern non-rotating format is that they never think about the scalability of the mechanics they are inventing. Proliferate is insane because any kind of counter mechanic works with it and it could easily break the game. Free casting has always been the bane of magic going back to the days of Quicksilver Amulet, but now they've gone crazy and started trying it all over the place with Aetherworks Marvel, Cascade, Rashmi, Eternities crafter, Collected Company, and Champion of Rohas. Birthing Pod, which is on the ban list, is Child's play compared to this madness. They might as well give people their old toolbox workhorse back because Coco blows it out of the water in explosiveness and doesn't become redundant when you have nothing higher to pull from the deck.
Examples of good mechanics that are fine: Cycling, Exalted, Wither, Buyback, Unearth, Embalm, and Flashback.
Examples of bad mechanics that shouldn't exist: Infect, Poison, Proliferate, some kinds of counters, Dredge, Delve, Cascade, Affinity, and Storm.
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!
Standard gets the most hate for being a 2-deck midrange format, but Modern isn't much better. While there is a lot of shallow variety, nearly all of the tier 1 decks are midrange. You can play a lot of decks, so long as you're happy playing tier 2 or below. Also, looking at the top 3 most popular modern decks on MtGGoldfish, these decks cost $450, $750, and $1400(!) to build in paper Magic. That's kind of insane. Add to this that you could argue that Modern at this point is a degenerate format dominated by a handful of very expensive bombs. Comparing tier 1 competitive Modern and kitchen table, Modern is all but alien and the games bear almost no resemblance to each other. For everything wrong with Standard, it isn't that bad.
Standard gets the most hate for being a 2-deck midrange format, but Modern isn't much better. While there is a lot of shallow variety, nearly all of the tier 1 decks are midrange. You can play a lot of decks, so long as you're happy playing tier 2 or below. Also, looking at the top 3 most popular modern decks on MtGGoldfish, these decks cost $450, $750, and $1400(!) to build in paper Magic. That's kind of insane. Add to this that you could argue that Modern at this point is a degenerate format dominated by a handful of very expensive bombs. Comparing tier 1 competitive Modern and kitchen table, Modern is all but alien and the games bear almost no resemblance to each other. For everything wrong with Standard, it isn't that bad.
I've been on MTG Salvation for a while and have pressed this point multiple times. People in general carry the same view point you and I do on the subject of modern: It's far too expensive to buy into and play. The trouble with discussing it here, and especially on the modern forum, is that it's like walking into a bar and complaining about the alcohol. Basically, they tend to look at it from the perspective of someone who already jumped the price hurdle and look for all sorts of minor arguments against dropping the price of entry such as it harming collectors, make people lose faith in magic, cause harm to the LGS, or sometimes say it wont fix anything at all because of "price memory" and the market just absorbing the product. It's sort of like they forget the reason the market price stays high is due to artificial scarcity and that anyone who is living off exploiting that for profit has already accepted the risk involved with potential reprinting. The only faith that gets lost from reprinting the cards until they are at a reasonable level of cost (30 usd liliana / tarmogoyf / noble heirarch) are those that are more interested in their cards as an investment / collectors item than for playing the game itself. As a player I want the cards within reasonable prices because if the card gets damaged or destroyed (which can happen all the time) it can be replaced, lowers the risk of theft, and makes going to FNM and other events more appealing since you don't feel like your at as much risk.
That's a big benefit to LGS even more so than printing luxury products like Money Masters, which is still currently a blight to the game more than a boon. The big problem the Masters series causes is that they generate interest in a long running format like Modern, then only reprint a limited quantity of select cards at a greatly inflated MSRP, which drops the price of the cards printed for a very short period in a very limited fashion, then spikes the price of everything related to those cards. Then, because they only printed limited numbers of the cards in the masters set, those quickly start going back up. It's more like they want to kill the format or make it a nightmare for constructed players than actually keep the format supported.
The last thing a player should have to do is scour 10-15 years of cardboard to figure out what cards are going to spike to insanity they may need for a deck because wizards decided they needed to waste space on draft chaff and only reprint a few key pieces, then have to be ready to buy the key pieces from the latest money masters because the idiots don't understand how reprint starved the constructed market is.
(FYI, sorry for the wall of text, just very passionate about having an affordable and stable singles market, which MTG has anything but thanks to a company being run by ignorant sycophants).
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!
Standard gets the most hate for being a 2-deck midrange format, but Modern isn't much better. While there is a lot of shallow variety, nearly all of the tier 1 decks are midrange. You can play a lot of decks, so long as you're happy playing tier 2 or below. Also, looking at the top 3 most popular modern decks on MtGGoldfish, these decks cost $450, $750, and $1400(!) to build in paper Magic. That's kind of insane. Add to this that you could argue that Modern at this point is a degenerate format dominated by a handful of very expensive bombs. Comparing tier 1 competitive Modern and kitchen table, Modern is all but alien and the games bear almost no resemblance to each other. For everything wrong with Standard, it isn't that bad.
I've been on MTG Salvation for a while and have pressed this point multiple times. People in general carry the same view point you and I do on the subject of modern: It's far too expensive to buy into and play. The trouble with discussing it here, and especially on the modern forum, is that it's like walking into a bar and complaining about the alcohol. Basically, they tend to look at it from the perspective of someone who already jumped the price hurdle and look for all sorts of minor arguments against dropping the price of entry such as it harming collectors, make people lose faith in magic, cause harm to the LGS, or sometimes say it wont fix anything at all because of "price memory" and the market just absorbing the product. It's sort of like they forget the reason the market price stays high is due to artificial scarcity and that anyone who is living off exploiting that for profit has already accepted the risk involved with potential reprinting. The only faith that gets lost from reprinting the cards until they are at a reasonable level of cost (30 usd liliana / tarmogoyf / noble heirarch) are those that are more interested in their cards as an investment / collectors item than for playing the game itself. As a player I want the cards within reasonable prices because if the card gets damaged or destroyed (which can happen all the time) it can be replaced, lowers the risk of theft, and makes going to FNM and other events more appealing since you don't feel like your at as much risk.
That's a big benefit to LGS even more so than printing luxury products like Money Masters, which is still currently a blight to the game more than a boon. The big problem the Masters series causes is that they generate interest in a long running format like Modern, then only reprint a limited quantity of select cards at a greatly inflated MSRP, which drops the price of the cards printed for a very short period in a very limited fashion, then spikes the price of everything related to those cards. Then, because they only printed limited numbers of the cards in the masters set, those quickly start going back up. It's more like they want to kill the format or make it a nightmare for constructed players than actually keep the format supported.
The last thing a player should have to do is scour 10-15 years of cardboard to figure out what cards are going to spike to insanity they may need for a deck because wizards decided they needed to waste space on draft chaff and only reprint a few key pieces, then have to be ready to buy the key pieces from the latest money masters because the idiots don't understand how reprint starved the constructed market is.
(FYI, sorry for the wall of text, just very passionate about having an affordable and stable singles market, which MTG has anything but thanks to a company being run by ignorant sycophants).
I don't personally play Modern, or any organized play aside from Sealed to be honest. I know about Standard and Modern from reading forums and people I play who do play those formats. The price tag for Modern, in its defense, is to play competitively. To my knowledge it is possible to build a tier 3 or tier 4 deck for under $100 in Modern, and a budget Modern deck will sadly perform better than a budget Standard deck.
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You are way off base here!
When Portal came out, there were 2 older formats sanctioned - Type 1 & Type 2. Portal was legal in neither. It was a "stepping stone" product made explicitly for new players and the cards were not legal in any sanctioned format.
That Standard is lower powered (midrange notwithstanding) than a 20 year old set designed for players who were not ready for tournament magic is obscene. I think WotC is starting to see this. Their customer motivation survey asked a lot of questions about how much we value rules complication. Such things as how important it is to us that we have an "encyclopedic" rules comprehension, that we can learn from our mistakes and become better players, and that there are interesting and unexpected rules interactions. They also asked if we like playing strange and unusual builds, and a number of questions about how important it is to us that the game is easy to learn.
It looks to me like WotC are entertaining a reset on their design philosophy of catering primarily to new players. This is sort of inevitable, as you can't sustain constant explosive growth, and at some point you have to look at what your more established players want.
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What is upsetting to me is that Wizards (and it seems like MaRo in particular) just takes things away that were a part of the game since before I started.
No more LD
No more Mana Leak
No more *** effects
No more core set
Everything is TOO POWERFUL!!!111!!! now. Seriously, read some of the stuff MaRo says. Pyroclasm is too strong, but getting over half my life total taken from Mardu Vehicles by t3 isn't? *** is too powerful, but vehicles-a subtype that literally hoses sweepers-are completely fine?!
Stop worrying about "unfun" and stop micromanaging for draft. If you have boosters with 15 cards in a pack, people are going to draft them. Forget "as-fan", forget micromanaging card designs for "limited".
And STOP telling me that things are "TOO POWERFUL!!!"
::Edit::
In response to SuperHans99
I agree completely. But MaRo and his "market research" has assured us several times that nothing like that will ever happen again. One of my favorite things in mtg ever, and he was just like "nope, newer players didn't like it".
Uhh....I started playing during Onslaught-Mirrodin standard, so I was still relatively new, and I LOVED getting to play with mechanics and cards that my cousin (who got me started in mtg) and all of our teammates talked about "back in the old days". I actually got to cast Akroma in standard, that was fantastic. But nope, MaRo says never again and so it will never be...
I'm not completely sure about wotc, but in the case of Nintendo it's less intentional and more like they just don't care and live in a fantasy world.
Wotc it's more so wanting to push standard and that implicit promise from the reserved list.
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!
Anyway, I've got a lot to say, based on my own experiences and others' complaints, so I'll collapse it in spoiler tags.
The important part, with a nice little list of card analyses:
The problem is not "creatures slamming into each other is boring", the problem is "creatures put on too much pressure and don't give synergistic decks time to develop their gameplan". (We can see this by the fact that Mardu Vehicles is called a "midrange" deck yet can inflict up to 11 damage by the end of Turn 3.) Let's call the threats that allow them to exert such ridiculous pressure "hyperefficient creatures". They're creatures that are just so good for their cost that they basically force themselves into any deck in their color, and sometimes force decks to play their colors just to include them! In my experience, they tend to fall into two categories:
1) A way above the curve creature with a "drawback" to balance it out, but the "drawback" turns out to be too weak so the creature provides too much benefit
Prime exhibits: Smuggler's Copter, Heart of Kiran
In this case, the "drawback" is the inability to attack or block unless you pay the Crew cost, but that turns out to be too easy and their stats are too good for how early you can bring them out. Also, the "drawback" turns into a benefit against any sorcery-speed creature removal that doesn't also hit noncreature artifacts.
2) A creature with a body on curve but a powerful effect that the developers conveniently forget to charge the player for, manawise
Some prime examples from recent sets:
Effect: O-Ringing a spell that costs 4 or less Probably worth 2 mana, it's a more powerful "counter" than either Prohibit or Horribly Awry but has the downside that the opponent can get the spell back. Or, compared to Mystic Snake, you get a counter that's better and worse at the same time (exile > counter, but the spell is recoverable) and you get a better body (2/3 flyer vs 2/2).
Fair cost for Spell Queller: At least , although even that makes Ulamog's Nullifier cry at the hoop it has to jump through.
Actual cost:
Effect: Indestructible until end of turn for your whole team. Should be worth a little less than 2 mana (compare Heroic Intervention) However, the body combines with this effect to make it much more powerful, as she's extremely likely to eat an attacker if she comes in to block and your other creatures can eat more attackers. So the effect should be a little over 2 mana.
Oh, there's also the flip thing that makes her into a more powerful creature while simultaneously burning your opponent and wiping weenies off the board. It takes a little work to control when it triggers (emphasis on a little), so I'm not sure what it should cost, but it definitely shouldn't be free.
Fair cost for Archangel Avacyn: AT LEAST , her power level would drop off significantly at since her effects are both situational, but they shouldn't be free, that's for sure!
Actual cost:
Effect: Can't block is a negative, but with stats like that, it's made for attacking anyway. Being able to recur it for the low cost of and a creature in your graveyard (at instant speed!) is insane, considering how fast a clock it is.
Fair cost for Scrapheap Scrounger: At least , maybe
Actual cost:
Effect: Hardened Scales+, which cost . This has the downside of being on a creature, meaning it's easier to remove, but it also has the upside of being on a creature, meaning you don't lack for a body to put +1/+1 counters on! I think the downside and upside are approximately equal there. In any case, a counter-increasing effect is worth something!
Fair Cost for Winding Constrictor:
Actual cost:
[*} Rishkar, Peema Renegade
Body: 3/3 for in the WORST case. It turns out to be at least 4/4 worth of stats in most cases if you can jump through the incredible hoop of controlling at least ONE other creature before you play him. So his worst case is a little below curve in terms of body (a 3/3 with a keyword for 3 is fair), but his average and best case is definitely above curve.
Effect: Counter-placement, which has some nice synergy and gives you flexiblity. Oh, and also the ability to tap creatures with counters on them for mana, in order to aid you in the efficient dumping of your hand (or ramp you into bigger stuff, or make up for missed land drops, etc.)
Fair Cost for Rishkar, Peema Renegade: It's hard to say...he clearly is worth more than but 4 mana for a 3/3 and a +1/+1 counter seems below par. Maybe if he ditched the mana ability he'd be OK at 3 mana.
Actual cost:
Yeah, I wish Wizards would realize that when you add two numbers together, you don't just take the bigger one and ignore the smaller one, they BOTH have to contribute to the mana cost. Anyway, so those are hyperefficient creatures, and as you can see they're all over Standard now and were recently.
Some additional details and thoughts:
Anyway, hyperefficient creatures are a problem. There's also the problem of "2-for-1" creatures that generate card advantage as soon as they hit the battlefield/die, but I don't think those are as big a problem. (Synergy-based decks can gain larger advantages than those simple 2-for-1 creatures do, and control decks can run better CA/inevitability to out-grind those decks (or turn the corner and kill these decks), but these plans only work if they have enough time, which hyperefficient creatures take away.)
Oh yeah, and another problem of hyperefficient creatures: It turns hitting your land drops on time and curving out perfectly from "advantage into the midgame" into "completely unbeatable unless your opponent curved out equally perfectly", and adds a lot of importance to the die roll.
So what do I think of "make answers better" or "print Counterspell in Standard"? I don't think this is quite the way to go. Think about it, when any spell can be countered for or any creature can be destroyed for , then playing hyperefficient creatures is one of the only ways to avoid falling way behind in tempo! That makes the problem worse, as it crowds out the non-hyperefficient creatures even further! No, I think it's important for removal to scale up in cost with the power of the threats it's removing, so that synergistic non-immediate-advantage creatures, as well as high-raw-power-but-low-efficiency creatures have a fighting chance in the format. Maybe creating more answers that can hit multiple different card types would help, especially against decks like Mardu Vehicles.
However, I do think that the argument "answers make the game unfun for newbies" is unfortunate and flawed. If you play against a newbie and they get sad when you destroy their big creature that they wanted to use to win the game, that makes for a good learning experience. Instruct them that if they wish to avoid that in the future, there are cards they can use to protect their favorite creature. Negate, Dispel, Blossoming Defense, Heroic Intervention, Selfless Spirit, and Supernatural Stamina were made for a reason. Use them!
But back to hyperefficient creatures...I think the planeswalker card type has made creatures more powerful in general, because creatures are the best way to fight them. Think about it...they give off a recurring advantage, and usually win the game if left unchecked, but only a few spells can remove them directly, otherwise you need burn (which often doesn't do enough damage) or creature attacks. Oh, and guess what? If you're ahead on board, they tend to stick around for longer, and get you further ahead on board in the process. And the best way to get ahead on board? HYPEREFFICIENT CREATURES. So because of planeswalkers it's even MORE necessary to play only the most efficient creatures and ignore others. I think this could be addressed by powering down planeswalkers a notch. Increasing the number of removal spells that can hit planeswalkers could also help, but only in a limited fashion (due to priority, any planeswalker-destruction spell, even an instant, allows the planeswalker to generate a small advantage with one of its loyalty abilities before it dies).
Oh yeah, and what happens to hyperefficient creatures in terms of price? They become expensive, especially at Mythic. Trying to make the game "newbie-friendly", while also making it unwinnable for newbies who didn't afford/weren't lucky enough to pull the format's keystone cards, is counterproductive.
I'd really like to see Wizards, just for 4 consecutive Standard sets, develop creatures according to the following rules:
1) No creatures with stats better than X/X for , except that 2/1s and 1/2s for 1 are allowed and the creature can get 1 extra stat point if it's multicolored or has a double-monocolored requirement. No cheating with creatures that have printed stats <X/X for but put +1/+1 counters on themselves to become >X/X for .
2) Any creature with a beneficial effect other than 1-2 on-color evergreen keywords must have its cost increased by AT LEAST 1, and careful consideration as to whether it should cost more (possibly much more).
3) NO ABOVE-THE CURVE-WITH-DRAWBACK CREATURES BECAUSE YOU GUYS ARE TERRIBLE AT BALANCING THEM. (I wouldn't be surprised if the BG "-1/-1 counters as drawback" creatures form a very powerful deck.)
Just do it for 4 blocks starting with a fall set, and see how people enjoy Standard at the end. It might be surprisingly fun, with people having to think about more of the cardpool rather than focusing on the hyperefficient creatures.
Of course, anytime a set comes out and the cards aren't all busted, people complain about how they're throwing their money away and the set's terrible. But what happens when a powerful set like Khans comes out? People ooh and aah over all the great multicolored cards, then start to play and complain about Siege Rhino and Mantis Rider. Aether Revolt? Wow these cards are great, I can't wait to buy 4 boxes...and then...ugh, I'm so tired of Winding Constrictor and Heart of Kiran. Like, don't forget that powerful cards aren't all yours, you have to play against them too. And if your Modern/Legacy deck doesn't get new cards, remember that those formats are already chock-full of hyperefficient creatures that are a chore to play against in Standard.
Oh yeah, and Turn-4 two-card win combos aren't good either. Having to always consider it in any deck you build, knowing that any advantage you try to build up can be immediately lost if you let the combo go off even once, makes playing against it extremely demanding (and of course there will be games where you don't draw your interaction and you lose with nothing you could do about it). This format is especially bad with Mardu Vehicles being an extremely aggressive midrange deck (so it goes under the decks that try to go over the top of Copycat Combo, and goes OVER the top of the decks that try to go UNDER Copycat Combo).
And one last note: I thought Green was the color of ramp and big creatures, so why does it get to have 2/1s for 1 like Red and White, which are the colors of small creatures? It's like Green is the color of "most efficient creature no matter where on the curve you are".
Summarized version for the "TL:DR" people:
1) Certain creatures are too mana-efficient, either because their drawbacks don't offset their power or because their mana cost only charges you for their body and not for their (often very powerful) effect. These creatures provide an incredible amount of pressure, taking away the time that more interesting strategies need to develop their gameplan and forcing their way into decks as auto-includes.
2) Planeswalkers exacerbate the problem.
3) More efficient removal/counterspells may not solve the problem as well as people think.
4) The current Standard (one really fast but resilient deck chock-full of noncreature creatures, and one deck with a turn-4 instant win combo) only exacerbates the problem with hyperefficient creatures.
Anyway, that's what I think. A little question for all of you: do you tend to like Standard more when the average CMC of your favorite (reasonably competitive) deck is higher, or lower?
To be frank it feels like over the years they got new blood into the design system for cards that had drastically different ideas for what MtG should look like. I took out my old boxes of Tempest-9th edition and compared it to what we have now and this is like a night and day difference.
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!
Very interesting - I must have missed that survey, but then again I barely visit MagicTheGathering.com at all any more. I have always had the impression that they don't do anywhere near enough market research, and often not to a truly representative demographic. (I recall it was surprising to a lot of people when it came out that the average Magic player is around 30 years old - I forget the exact number - and plays actively for about six straight years, because a lot of Wizards' actions and statements implied that they thought both numbers were lower.) It also bothers me that Rosewater and Forsythe are always saying things along the lines of "oh, we have so much market research and sales data", and when people ask them to elaborate on it they refuse. Except that lots of companies do elaborate on their market research and sales data (Lego, for one), so I don't believe the data really exists.
Type 2 has always been Standard. Yes the number of sets has changed here and there, but type 2 has always been Standard. Where I played back then Portal was allowed in all formats. Maybe it was just the LGS I played at. I didnt chase the golden ring (play higher level events) I didnt think the division of type 1 and 2 had been made at Portal, but I could be wrong. But type 1 wasnt anything like it is now. Expense wise or depth.
Again comparing the game now to how the game was in the late 90s is like comparing apples and oranges. We had the apples, its time for the oranges, and cherries, and bananas... anything but apples.
What more do you want them to do? They talk to players at events, they talk to the LGS to see whats being played and whats selling, they have sales figures, they have event results and type and numbers of decks played.
The problem is people want things to happen on an accelerated time table then it does. By the time a set comes out, the next set is in its final stages of being sent to printing. So it takes time to fix things.
We just had so much more back pre-modern even though there were fewer sets at the time. Good land destruction, a functional counterspell, cycling, no reserved list, basic dual lands that didn't come into play tapped, holiday cards that referenced things like halloween, and now it's all just devolved into creature wars that completely overshadow card mechanics they push. Ripping off of pop culture and current cinema trends, way too many character specific cards, and overly pushed planeswalkers.
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 played a chaos draft last night because wednesday Duel Commander didn't fire. Backlashing Fleetwheel Cruiser is something people should experience in Standard. But I bet MaRo would say that card is "too powerful".
Old cards just generally found the way to be useful, unlike most non-Walker/Creature spells today.
How I feel when MaRo talks about his "market research": https://youtu.be/HMqZ2PPOLik
I really lost any and all respect for him when he wrote his article about what he'd change if he created Magic, and how it "should" be, and proceeded to ***** all over everything Richard Garfield did.
I've been playing since Fallen Empires, WotC has had my email since god knows how long, and the only correspondence I've ever gotten is the monthly "This is how little you played MTGO this month" which almost always equates to zero. Thanks for the email saying that I drafted zero cards, guys. I really needed that. I have no idea where you guys are getting these surveys from, so I'm only left to believe that his "market research" comes from Blogatog, which is hosted on Tumblr, which is the busted unflushable filled with ***** toilet in a crack den of the internet.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/more-about-march-1st-2005-03-11
Type 2 was established in 1995.
http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Timeline_of_DCI_bans_and_restrictions
So yeah, their were three tiers of complexity - type 1, type 2, and ”starter level" products not legal in any tournaments.
Sorry dude, but no. Shifting more power to non-midrange archetypes like combo, control, aggro, and prison =/= a return to 1990s design! Just look Time Spiral Standard. It was nothing like 1990s magic, but still managed support for almost every style of play.
It's almost like the game can grow and evolve without stifling archetype diversity.
The whole point of the Portal analogy is that today's tournament level products do more to shield players from "bad feels" than yesterday's introductory level products. And not by a small margin!
The player base is growing weary of this nonsense, and increasingly want WotC to "move on" from their heavy handed midrange/fair/goodstuff pushing philosophy.
You are the only one who seems to want design philosophy to stagnate in this regard. NWO era can't and shouldn't last forever.
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As I said, I have played since the inception of the game.
The game has had highs and lows in 20 years. There are always people complaining Wotc has ruined the game. Yet it keeps going.
I couldnt stand Time Spiral. I think that was another low point of the game. Which was sad after they had such a great block as Ravnica.
Its all about different people like different things. Usually those who are happy with something are not vocal. Its always the disgruntled that are the loudest.
So you keep telling me. I played my fist game in 1994 at UW. I'm not sure how this is relevant though.
Time Spiral (and it's bastard child Cold Snap) was highly divisive. All I'm saying is that it serves as an example that supporting multiple playstyles does not mean being stuck in 10990s design.
For nearly a decade WotC has pushed midrange and (to a lesser extent, aggro) fair decks and more or less cut support for everything else. I understand that you prefer it this way. That's fine. But you don't get to taker the high ground and claim that supporting other archetypes necessarily means the game devolves and stagnates. That's simply not true.
I absolutely agree.
But sometimes - when sales are poor - WotC actually listens to the loud malcontents and makes a big design shift. Time Spiral is again the perfect example!
Are we at a point where the player base and WotC have an appetite for another major shift? Unless their Player Motivation Survey is intentionally a waste of time, it looks like WotC have change on their minds and may be moving away from Newb World Order style design philosophy. Time will tell.
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You are assuming the majority feel the same as you do and answered the survey as you did.
Attendance and sales dictate more then a survey a small percentage of the player base takes the time to answer.
But like you said, time will tell. No matter, some are going to be upset at what ever choice Wotc makes. The trick is making the least amount upset.
Time will tell. Good talk.
It wasn't really goyf that did it. Things went downhill when they got through Zendikar and Scars of Mirrodin. Once those blocks hit a whole lot of things got set into motion across the board, including the rising prices and power level of modern finally breaking the camel's back for a lot of players. I wasn't tracking legacy at the time, but I wouldn't be surprised to read a similar fate hit that format 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!
They are never going to go all over the map with keywords and nosgalgia like that again. I'm not talking about doing anything like that.
All I'm talking about is stuff like:
Not so much.
But the fact that they are even asking tells me that WotC no longer assumes I'm still in the minority. Maybe you shouldn't either?
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You definitely aren't the minority. A lot of people all over the place are wanting stronger non-creature spells. Specifically better support for alternate lines of play such as land destruction. There's also a big push to get better counter, tempo, and removal magic into standard once more like day of judgment, Path to exile, Exhaustion, and Undo. Some I'd like to see reprinted are Forbid and Price of Progress, turnabout, and whirlwind.
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!
That went "you don't like garlic means your'e a vampire" levels of exaggeration. Wanting Combo, Control and Aggro to be playable at the same time as Midrange doesn't mean we want to play Time Spiral Standard forever and ever. At most, Time Spiral Block and Standard are being used as proof that the game won't break mechanically from an over-abundance of complexity in a small enviroment.
To keep in tone with the exaggerations, what benefit do you aquire from Standard being a two deck Midrange format and how does that reconcile with you claiming Ravnica Block and by extension Ravnica Standard, which was not at all a two deck format either with COK or TSP, was great?
He didn't mean exactly like Time Spiral. He meant where each play style is supported and not just mid range. Currently only one style is supported and people want more.
And yet even though that attendance is dropping in Standard you still think that the current course Standard is taking is a good one, when evidence proves otherwise. Seems like a lot of people are speaking up when Standard can barely fire while Modern is easy to get going. Heck, Frontier is almost easier to fire than Standard right now.
For some people it's hard to see the changes that have happened in Magic the Gathering over the last two decades because they only started playing when the game was midway through the transition. The megashift really started happening when the company introduced mythic rarity and planeswalkers, then started to go crazy on mega fine-tuning the card game to try and make it like a cardboard e-sport. Then, they simultaneously keep trying to invent cute mechanics without any thought of long term scalability, leading to things like proliferate, infect, dredge, delve, and other problem mechanics. Modern basically became about super expensive core cards not because of popularity, but because of underprintings and the outliers of design being so clearly OP compared to other options. They basically need to ban just about all the highest priced modern cards to bring the power level down to where it needs to be and regularly reprint the cards that were once in those cards places, but I don't see them doing that without making people angry.
Also, as I said previously, the entire problem with their modern non-rotating format is that they never think about the scalability of the mechanics they are inventing. Proliferate is insane because any kind of counter mechanic works with it and it could easily break the game. Free casting has always been the bane of magic going back to the days of Quicksilver Amulet, but now they've gone crazy and started trying it all over the place with Aetherworks Marvel, Cascade, Rashmi, Eternities crafter, Collected Company, and Champion of Rohas. Birthing Pod, which is on the ban list, is Child's play compared to this madness. They might as well give people their old toolbox workhorse back because Coco blows it out of the water in explosiveness and doesn't become redundant when you have nothing higher to pull from the deck.
Examples of good mechanics that are fine: Cycling, Exalted, Wither, Buyback, Unearth, Embalm, and Flashback.
Examples of bad mechanics that shouldn't exist: Infect, Poison, Proliferate, some kinds of counters, Dredge, Delve, Cascade, Affinity, and Storm.
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've been on MTG Salvation for a while and have pressed this point multiple times. People in general carry the same view point you and I do on the subject of modern: It's far too expensive to buy into and play. The trouble with discussing it here, and especially on the modern forum, is that it's like walking into a bar and complaining about the alcohol. Basically, they tend to look at it from the perspective of someone who already jumped the price hurdle and look for all sorts of minor arguments against dropping the price of entry such as it harming collectors, make people lose faith in magic, cause harm to the LGS, or sometimes say it wont fix anything at all because of "price memory" and the market just absorbing the product. It's sort of like they forget the reason the market price stays high is due to artificial scarcity and that anyone who is living off exploiting that for profit has already accepted the risk involved with potential reprinting. The only faith that gets lost from reprinting the cards until they are at a reasonable level of cost (30 usd liliana / tarmogoyf / noble heirarch) are those that are more interested in their cards as an investment / collectors item than for playing the game itself. As a player I want the cards within reasonable prices because if the card gets damaged or destroyed (which can happen all the time) it can be replaced, lowers the risk of theft, and makes going to FNM and other events more appealing since you don't feel like your at as much risk.
That's a big benefit to LGS even more so than printing luxury products like Money Masters, which is still currently a blight to the game more than a boon. The big problem the Masters series causes is that they generate interest in a long running format like Modern, then only reprint a limited quantity of select cards at a greatly inflated MSRP, which drops the price of the cards printed for a very short period in a very limited fashion, then spikes the price of everything related to those cards. Then, because they only printed limited numbers of the cards in the masters set, those quickly start going back up. It's more like they want to kill the format or make it a nightmare for constructed players than actually keep the format supported.
The last thing a player should have to do is scour 10-15 years of cardboard to figure out what cards are going to spike to insanity they may need for a deck because wizards decided they needed to waste space on draft chaff and only reprint a few key pieces, then have to be ready to buy the key pieces from the latest money masters because the idiots don't understand how reprint starved the constructed market is.
(FYI, sorry for the wall of text, just very passionate about having an affordable and stable singles market, which MTG has anything but thanks to a company being run by ignorant sycophants).
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 don't personally play Modern, or any organized play aside from Sealed to be honest. I know about Standard and Modern from reading forums and people I play who do play those formats. The price tag for Modern, in its defense, is to play competitively. To my knowledge it is possible to build a tier 3 or tier 4 deck for under $100 in Modern, and a budget Modern deck will sadly perform better than a budget Standard deck.