Boils down to corporate greed culture is bad.
Squeeze more money out of everything instead of just doing what you do the best and accept a decent profit doing it.
Nope now the 1% at the top need a larger cut every quarter with less spent at the bottom diluting products until they fail, get broken up and sold off to make stock take a slight pop up and then move on to destroying the next thing.
The survey comment was only a shot at Maro, because we know surveys are perfect... right?
Surveys only ask questions that people want to ask. They can't ask questions that the person writing the survey has no awareness of that need to be asked. It's just the way of things.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I would say quite a bit of dropping, but not too much, reasons:
1. Before Eternal Masters, Iconic Masters, MM3, Modern staples was at all time high, ($100 Verdants, $200 Goyf, $40 Voice etc), therefore a lot of players cannot keep the balance to get those staples, this leads players quitting the formats and dislike the price of the game in general.
2. Standard bannings/Modern banning/Modern metagame change.
Recently standard lost a lot of players due to the bannings, some cards are way too powerful by breaking the format, Smugglers Copter literally makes Chandra, Torch of Defiance out of the meta game, and it is in every Aggro vehicle decks, Emrakul also got banned due to too many graveyard delirium abusing with it.
Same with Modern, some banning are killing certain archtype, Twin/Pod become unplayble due to key cards moving to the banned list, U/G Infect went to tier 3 deck just because of one card Gitatian Probe. Also the "Eldrazi Winter" was sick to the stomach to most of the players, lots of Modern players quit just because of that.
3. Other game starts to become more popular, also cheaper.
This is one biggest problem, Magic need to find a way to gather players attention, Hearthstone already took lots of player off from Magic due to the game being digital, cheaper, more faster to play/learn.
Apparently there was a lot of insider trading going on at Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro to the point where Rudy from Alpha Investments is threatening to expose the actual print run numbers of their Magic products in an effort to get more people out of Magic. It's one thing to boycott their products in order to hold the company accountable for their own actions but when you threaten to put the company producing and manufacturing the game out of business solely to make investors happy, then there's a problem.
Somehow I get the feeling that the only reason why Rudy from Alpha Investments has gotten away with exposing so much about Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro's handling of Magic is because of the fact that he doesn't have a DCI account for the company to dox him. Someone or a group of popular Magic YouTubers deliberately took the fall for him as scapegoats. Now I'm not gonna mention any names but I think you know who since I'd get in trouble with the Mods here.
As for printings, the reason Tarmogoyf is considered to powerful for a standard with Fatal push is beyond me.
The real reason is: Ma$ter$ sets. Thing is player base is dropping, players don't care about standard as much.
The secondary market in general is a problem... There are cards that are way too expensive as masters sets can't keep up with the prices.
The main problem is that they overprint underplayed cards while under-printing the heavily played ones. Standard was once the gateway to Magic for a lot of people who started playing years ago which is slowly being replaced by EDH/Commander. Unlike Standard it isn't officially backed by Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro aside from their annual product releases which they need to do away with.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Reprinting shock duals in Ravnica was a BRILLIANT move , people needed the lands and it was fantastic to get them.
10 good rares also increase the value of a set dramatic.
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Khans had the fetchlands, also a fantastic deal (even if it was terrible for standard to have the shuffling, but thats a problem with fetchlands anyway).
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Instead of using what space they have in new sets, they put the big reprints in Master product , which kinda ruins the prices.
But the sad story, they will keep doing that, as Master sets sell good enough and they only make decisions by how the numbers look , everything that makes a good profit they stick to (ignoring any other option or how it might be bad in the long term).
Reprinting shock duals in Ravnica was a BRILLIANT move , people needed the lands and it was fantastic to get them.
10 good rares also increase the value of a set dramatic.
----
Khans had the fetchlands, also a fantastic deal (even if it was terrible for standard to have the shuffling, but thats a problem with fetchlands anyway).
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Instead of using what space they have in new sets, they put the big reprints in Master product , which kinda ruins the prices.
But the sad story, they will keep doing that, as Master sets sell good enough and they only make decisions by how the numbers look , everything that makes a good profit they stick to (ignoring any other option or how it might be bad in the long term).
The reason I've started stepping out of MtG at the moment (besides the marketing flops and such), is that they aren't maintaining the game as a long term project and are treating it like EA does to their own titles. Again, this feels like a crime of the times that expands beyond any one company and is more of a societal issue, but people have been increasingly living in the now, figuring that if they get more money from whatever they are working with at the moment and then throw it into another project they can leap frog and keep growing profits more quickly than building an enduring project. The problem with this strategy is that if everyone is doing the same thing than where do we put the money? If every project is treated as a slash and burn effort that gets seeded, grown, and then rapidly depleted, than eventually there will be no fields left to keep bouncing around to.
I tend to look down on companies that do this probably because I'm one of the rare breed that still worries about where he is going to be in 30+ years from now. Given how WoTC has been running Magic the Gathering Releases and the generally minimalistic talk of D&D 5th edition they haven't been engendering a good long term projection. Digital can't really save the traditional game of MtG because the traditional game is built on collecting and playing the game, often with more of a bend towards the former. People will keep buying cards even if they only play once a month because they enjoy having the build options.
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!
Also going to mention that after looking over posts and the general difference of mood and tone, Wizards just doesn't listen to the kind of crowd that is on MTG salvation forums. It looks like from the way they are acting they basically have limited their interests to facebook, instagram, tumblr, and twitter while annexing Youtube and any pre-existing forums. I got a feeling I know the reason, but I don't really like the reason. I'm more surprised by the lack of interest in youtube as that is more a go-between the forums and twitter / reddit posters, especially since they actively promoted the Christmas Carol video done by Gram Stark and Co over at Loading Ready Run. Have they made a choice based on the demographic they want to support?
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!
Making better sets is what can help magic, with a more even power level across rarities.
If people want to buy it because its a good set then they dont need to use chase lottery tickets to artificial spike the prices of boxes so stores can turn a profit, which alienates people due to how expensive decks come.
Nowadays it's a lottery ticket, will I get and invention or will it be a crappy booster?
Even premium products like masters are lottery, 80% of the time what you get doesn't make up for the booster price.
But the most laughable, is that even with masters, fetches are still 60/70$.
Totally affordable thanks to print runs, etc.
Liliana of the veil the same, snapcaster got even more expensive. Why not print new things in standard? That people can build decks around.
We do what we can with Hollow decks and such, but at least in modern format, their power level is just not there.
The trouble with trading card games like magic is that the entire idea originally was that players opened boosters and traded to build decks. The heavy prevailance of the secondary market and the push for posted deck lists means that players no longer require playing the lottery to play the game. In a sense, the market for magic has evolved while wizards has failed to keep up.
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!
They won't do it... but the best move to help repair things would be to go back to printing some staples in standard, cut at least one special product release from the yearly schedule, and focus on making a balanced standard instead of the gimmicked one we have. They need to reverse a lot of their stupid marketing decisions too. Support FNM like it's the only hope to save their company.
Work the fetches they haven't printed for standard into upcoming sets. Viable cards put into standard may help them balance the game more in alignment with when the game was better. Stop trying so hard to get out of the envelope and design hard around the color pie and something for every color combo instead of pushing their pet projects.
Modern is too healthy at the moment. 30+ people every Friday night while Standard doesn't fire at my store. Not even much interest in drafting because Un-set drafting doesn't bring in the regular drafters. miscue after miscue.
This, the fetches that haven't seen standard definitely need to. Liliana of the veil too, goyfs, Bobs, they all should see standard again soon as they are not too powerful for it.
Wizards need to care less about secondary market and support the real players. I own Snapcasters, cryptic commands and don't care if they get reprinted.
Cards are meant to be reprinted. And not as extra super rare mythics.
And FNM, support FNM's please. More promos, if you want FNM lands, give them to every participant as well as the other FNM promos for winners, etc.
Oh and yeah, standard doesn't fire as well in the shop where I play, in the capital of the country lol
i do live in a rural area and need to drive an hour to the next game store to play FNM. while i dont mind spending money in stores to support them, I actually want an incentive for winning an FNM and foil tokens do not really want me to WIN a tournement or even travel that far for it. so i stopped with modern and t2 and returned to the kitchen table with my friends. and for this i rarely need to buy any card, since i got so many existing decks. cause thats one of the crux for magic. once u invested in cards, u can play with them for as long as you wish. if wizards fails to incentivse you to buy any new cards, this game slowly dies.
And imagine right now, those players who have to drive a long ways to get to a store on Friday night... and standard doesn't fire.
How often are they going to make the effort to make it out again?
Wizards needs to get their heads out and realize all the damage they are doing to themselves. All the opposite of things they should be doing.
I believe a vast majority of the issues/concerns that come from an unbalanced and uninspired standard environment would be solved by halting the philosophy of telling the magic story through the cards.
It is not an effective vehicle for story telling anyway because it’s naturally disjointed.
It skews what kinds of cards they decide to print and limits the creative boundaries in the cards. It also skews power level of cards.
Honestly, moving away from that stupid model would vastly improve standard. Look at the difference between original Zendikar block and Battle for Zendikar.
But, they show very little signs of wanting to go that route.
I think it could save standard. As an extension, if we think standard is a big part of why the game is dying, it could help Save the game.
I believe a vast majority of the issues/concerns that come from an unbalanced and uninspired standard environment would be solved by halting the philosophy of telling the magic story through the cards.
The problem with the game doesn't come from the story telling via the cards as that is just wallpaper fluff. They could print a lightning helix with whatever raging red / white themed character they want, be it minor or major character of the set, and tie it into the story of the standard set somehow. The problems wizards is having is bouncing around like a giant child with ADHD that can't figure out what works, even when that something hits them in the head like with the latest Unset. No one has any confidence in Wizards of the Coast to publish a good product and the company has been reinforcing this for the last three years. They aren't going to be able to come back from this very easily at all.
Let me put it this way: Return to Dominaria is either going to bury the remaining confidence people have in the company or save it because if they can't deliver on that set it's all over. Just to get people back into playing standard they'd have to ram more sugar and rainbows into Rivals of Ixalan than they'd ever be willing to stomach.
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!
Actually Emrakul, the Promised End was overpowered because they wanted the card in the game to match the story. Maro wrote about that after admitting they overdid it I believe.
I think you're right though, if RtD isn't a good set Standard (and FNM) will be dead. No pressure.
The problem with the game doesn't come from the story telling via the cards as that is just wallpaper fluff. They could print a lightning helix with whatever raging red / white themed character they want, be it minor or major character of the set, and tie it into the story of the standard set somehow. The problems wizards is having is bouncing around like a giant child with ADHD that can't figure out what works, even when that something hits them in the head like with the latest Unset. No one has any confidence in Wizards of the Coast to publish a good product and the company has been reinforcing this for the last three years. They aren't going to be able to come back from this very easily at all.
Let me put it this way: Return to Dominaria is either going to bury the remaining confidence people have in the company or save it because if they can't deliver on that set it's all over. Just to get people back into playing standard they'd have to ram more sugar and rainbows into Rivals of Ixalan than they'd ever be willing to stomach.
No, no. You’re missing the point. The point is that their storytelling through the cards IS skewing the way that they balance standard cards. It’s not just fluff at all. It was at one point fluff - but that philosophy has shifted and THAT is what is hindering Wizards ability to make a strong standard set. Let alone create proper reprints. It’s not he fact that lightning helix can be lightning helix without the same art. It’s he fact that they won’t print lightning helix at all.
They are trying to balance game design with story telling in a way that simply doesn’t work - they’ve tried it for a few years now and they just can’t get it right.
As GreyImp said - a perfect example of my point is the “new” Emrakul that wasn’t just designed for a healthy format but also for story telling purposes. If Wizards instead, designed a powerful but balanced (within the scope of the set) card and told the story elsewhere, we may have not needed bannings.
The odd thing is that people who enjoy the story already seek it out. We will go to the articles on Wednesday and read them if the story is compelling enough. Putting half-hearted, poorly detailed, and full story elements into the flavortext doesn’t sit well and doesn’t make the story intriguing anyway.
I’m sure there are some that have become enamored with the story initially because of a curiosity that was cultivated from the story spotlight cards. But I have a hard time believing there are enough of those people to warrant Wizards continuing down this disjointed path.
I think you’re right though, Colt. Dominaria needs to be a homerun.
Story should really be a completely separate department that doesn't impact cards in the set. They can make flavor text and those who like story and it's association can be happy when they read it but when it comes to card design and balance story should have ZERO impact on a card's end result. They're having a hard enough time designing sets that don't make people want to quit MTG. Take the story factor out!
It doesn't mean that the names of cards and creatures can't parallel.
It doesn't mean flavor text can't give plot hints or what not.
It does mean you won't get Emrakul mistakes.
When they design a planeswalker they can still have it match the tendencies of a character but screw what happens to the character in the story. Make the card work for the game. If anything have good card design influence the story.
And FFS if standard needs a Lightning Helix then bloody give it at whatever set it makes sense for it! Standard needs help not flavor.
Well, the big universe consuming demon in the closet for MtG is really the print runs and the rarity ponza scheme going on with the sets, but Wizards of the Coast seems unwilling to break from their current ratios. As an interesting case study look at the latest set for Force of Will, Advent of the Demon King. In that set, they reprinted the starting Commanders / Rulers found in the starting decks and actually had two different versions of three of the starting rulers, then had two unique rulers and one alternate art starter ruler. Because the ratio of rulers per box is I believe 2 rulers and the printing process doesn't differentiate between the starter rulers, the variant versions of the starters, and the new ones, this left the market bereft of the new rulers. So even though the company probably printed about the right number of boxes, because the ratio was skewed towards rulers that everyone already had there are no copies of the new rulers left on the secondary market and tons of copies of the other ones.
So with Magic, we must have a similar situation with the Mythics, right? Well yes, in fact we actually do have this issue. The key difference is that wizards overprints the sets, so instead of seeing a market bereft of any copies of The Scarab God and reprints of mythics from starter products, we see the god card up on the market for considerable mark up and every other card in the set gets sold off at considerable mark down from just the print run of the booster box. This leads to a massive oversupply of the rares, uncommons, and what few playable commons there are, floods the market with draft cards no one uses, and gives the impression to players that many of the rare singles are unplayable when they probably are playable. It also severely devalues the booster boxes because the chance of pulling the single card that has all the value in the set is low per single box. If Wizards doesn't change the ratios somehow to assure more constructed playable cards hit the market out of a single box, I'm not sure how they expect large single sets to help the market. If anything, they will probably make things worse as we swing faster into completely new and unrelated mechanics. This is probably why they made the "Challenger" decks: To try and make sure they can keep certain cards on the secondary market under control with a faster rotation cycle.
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!
Story should really be a completely separate department that doesn't impact cards in the set.
I think having the story in the cards adds value to the whole experience, but if it’s going to be done that way it can’t be done at the expense of other important aspects of the game.
On top of that, it really sucks for those who follow the story line, when cards like Anguished Unmaking are spoiled way before the story gets to that point.
No, no. You’re missing the point. The point is that their storytelling through the cards IS skewing the way that they balance standard cards. It’s not just fluff at all. It was at one point fluff - but that philosophy has shifted and THAT is what is hindering Wizards ability to make a strong standard set. Let alone create proper reprints. It’s not he fact that lightning helix can be lightning helix without the same art. It’s he fact that they won’t print lightning helix at all.
It's not like there's anything that remotely ties Lightning Helix to any plane, so I don't think story has that much to do with the lack of reprinting Lightning Helix. It certainly didn't stop them from putting it into Explorers of Ixalan. Sure, a non-Standard set, but one focused around Ixalan. I think it comes more from power level... and you might say that that's silly, but remember they apparently thought Lightning Strike was too good for a while, as it was taken out of Standard and only brought back after they finally realized how bad an idea that was.
As GreyImp said - a perfect example of my point is the “new” Emrakul that wasn’t just designed for a healthy format but also for story telling purposes. If Wizards instead, designed a powerful but balanced (within the scope of the set) card and told the story elsewhere, we may have not needed bannings.
The bannings of Smuggler's Copter, Reflector Mage, Felidar Guardian, and Aetherworks Marvel were all pretty independent of whether or not Emrakul was in the format (the latter two were banned when Emrakul wasn't even legal!) so I'm confused as to how you think a nerf to Emrakul would have somehow not needed bannings. If anything, that might have made Smuggler's Copter even more rampant because Emrakul decks were one of the few decks not running that card.
Now, perhaps you meant it wouldn't have caused the banning of Emrakul, but you said "bannings" as in plural so that seems wrong. At any rate, even if that was the intent, I should point out something: By the numbers, Emrakul wasn't actually too good. The top deck in the format didn't play Emrakul at all. Indeed, Standard was actually a little more diverse than usual; normally the top deck is something like 30% of the metagame but it was "only" 20% this time around. The problem with the format that led to the first three bannings wasn't a deck or card being problematically good (maybe Smuggler's Copter simply because it was everywhere), but the fact players didn't like the format as a whole because due to lack of good answers, there was inadequate ways to actually stop your opponent from executing their plan so the best thing to do was to just try to pre-empt their plan with your own.
The problem with Emrakul was much less a problem with Emrakul itself and more a problem with them not bothering to print actual answer cards. There was basically zero playable graveyard hate in the format when Emrakul was around, nor were there particularly effective ways of dealing with Aetherworks Marvel (sadly, some of the best stuff for dealing with it came in right after it was banned). Now you might argue they deliberately avoided those cards because they wanted Emrakul to be so darn good, but the fact they avoided those kinds of cards for non-Emrakul things indicates that it was a general issue rather than something done to try to prop Emrakul up. None of the banned cards, except for perhaps Felidar Guardian, would have been an issue had adequate answer cards been printed, and I'm not sure even about Felidar Guardian because Splinter Twin was a totally fine deck in Standard thanks to there being good ways to deal with it.
So I don't really think it was storyline considerations that made Emrakul into a problem. It was all of the stuff they didn't print that caused Emrakul to be an issue, and the format in general being seen as uninteresting for reasons not limited to Emrakul.
Maro said specifically they wanted the Emrakul card to reflect the overwhelming power and presence (something like this) from the story.
So they went too far. That's what HE said.
Story = reason for over doing Emrakul
No answers was the general policy Maro was implementing and is a side issue from that point but a big reason why standard has sucked. If you read the crap Maro puts in his articles you'd see the evidence comes directly from him. He also pointed out at one point that Hero's Downfall did not fit flavor wise with a set it might have been necessary in so they didn't print it.
As a result of many things we have lost Standard attendance, and some of us would like the game to be better so we can get the chance to go in and play our cards at FNM... if it would fire.
People don't like spaghetti on turn 4. It sucks.
People don't like 2 card infinite combo in standard.
Right now it looks like people are tired of Energy and ramitupyourred because they aren't showing up to FNM.
Changing rewards and days you want people to play, influencing cards with story, trying to shorten the life of cards in standard, and screwing up sets is gutting standard.
Hi, my name is Heath of MTGOTraders which I started back in 2003 and also own Cape Fear Games which I started in 2009 that's a retail store right here in Wilmington, North Carolina on the East Coast and today I want to talk about Magic: The Gathering and some of the issues that are affecting retailers. So first off our store Cape Fear Games, we make sure that we provide that experience Wizards of the Coast is really looking for. We have the clean store, everyone's welcome at our store, we try to make sure the play space is family-friendly and our staff really values our customers.
Obviously we're not perfect but that's what we strive for. So they say they want these things but there's some really big issues that are making it hard for us right now and I want to go over those issues. The first one is sealed product evaluation and the most recently played example with this one is Iconic Masters where right after it came out it was selling for like right at our cost. If you know anything about business you can't buy a product, sell it for your cost, because you're not gonna make a profit. If you're not able to make a profit, you're not able to stay in business.
While that might not matter in some other industries, it does matter in this industry where the game is really dependent on having a place to play a public place that can run events not your home kitchen table which you know kitchen table Magic is fantastic, nothing against it whatsoever, I'm a casual player. But for that type of game to survive it needs you know somewhere to run events, to run tournaments, a public place for people to play it and feel safe playing at.
So when we can't even make a profit on the item that the company sells, the same company that's asking us to run these events, then that creates a big problem. So I want to go over a couple solutions, my first solution would be to create a map and this is a minimum advertised price and this is probably going to be my least popular solution, but this is something where Wizards of the Coast could set a minimum in which you could sell a box for. Say for example that it's now $95 so now no Magic retailer can sell a box of Magic for less than $95.
So that would guarantee that even If you do sell over $95, MSRP's going for $144 a box but you're still making some profit where as right now boxes are going for write a cost, it's really hard to compete. If you ask the average player you know what is the MSRP in a box of Magic they're probably going to say $90-95 for something because MSRP is really meaningless when you know your product never goes for even close to what the actual MSRP is. One of the other solutions would be to ship a limited amount of product to stores early based on events that they run.
So let's say there's a store that's just killing it, they're running consistent events, they're putting a ton of effort into running good events. They would go ahead and ship to that store their product like a week or two early so that the players in that community could have a chance at that product and you'd be a part of that store that has been growing this large community locally. One of the best solutions would be to give allocations to stores based on events that they're running instead of just quantity.
Right now the way it works is that If a store typically orders, let's say I want 10,000 boxes, you know then they give certain allocations based on what they've bought in the past. What If instead we looked at the overall health of that store and what it's doing to really grow the game not just how many boxes it can you know move through on Amazon or mass drop or whatever. It is like actually how many events are running and how many new players they brought into the game, things that really matter for the overall long-term health of the game.
The next thing we'll talk about is the recent shift from local game stores to big box stores and when I'm talking about big box stores I'm referring to Target, Walmart, stores like that. It used to be that Wizards of the Coast would always push the local game store as the end goal where all the Magic would happen, you could get into your local community, meet a lot of people playing in tournaments, and honestly I agree with that the local game store is the place where you can play the most, where even If you're competitive you can have that outlet to play with other people and really test out your deck.
Lately they've been shifting away from that and they're starting to do more advertising for Walmart and Target, they're doing special products for them, and then most recently they even sold Iconic Masters in Target and Walmart and they did it right before Black Friday. So people were posting pictures of Iconic Masters boosters 3 packs for $15 which is even less than our cost and we can't compete with that it will really hurt us. We bought a whole lot of Iconic Masters and a whole lot of other retailers did as well because typically a product like that is not going to end up in Target or Walmart.
So we're just sitting on that right now, and it's you know not great for your local game store that's trying to make a profit because they have to in order to pay the bills to provide that play space and other things. We've had players come in and I've also heard this from a lot of other game store owners saying that people come in like, "Oh your packs are $4 and some change after tax, you're ripping us off!" because they assume that the MSRP is whatever Walmart and Target are selling it for.
So when Iconic Masters is going for $15 a pack, players assume that's the MSRP and they wonder why you're selling it for double as it's a huge ripoff for them and I understand that makes complete sense. So some of the solutions to this one are real simple, just don't sell products like Iconic Masters to Target and Walmart by limiting it to local game stores that provide play space and have a place where people can come in and play and participate in events. That's a pretty simple solution.
The next solution would be to keep promoting local game stores as the place where the Magic happens. I'm not sure what happened with the shift recently, I'm sure whoever decided to sell Iconic Masters to Target and Walmart they're probably getting a promotion right about now, "Ah man sales are fantastic!" Long term it's really going to hurt the game, I've talked to so many game store owners that are really frustrated with Wizards of the Coast right now and they're looking for other games where the publisher cares more about providing play space and have you support local game stores.
That is not good for the long term health of Magic: The Gathering which is a game that depends on local game stores and having somewhere to play. So the last thing I want to talk about are clubhouse stores, when I say clubhouse stores I'm referring to the stores you walk into that are dirty. You're probably not greeted by the owner or whoever is up front running the desk maybe they're just on the computer. The community might be a little toxic because they're not addressing that are not okay, they're not talking to players that have bad behaviors.
Maybe that player spends a bunch of money and is well-known in the community, maybe that player is being a total jerk and needs to be talked to but they're not willing to do that, they're not willing to pull that player aside and talk to that player politely like a human being and let them know, "Hey this behavior is not acceptable here." They're totally not willing to do that, and when I first had my store it was totally a clubhouse store maybe not so much with the behavior part but it was not professionally run at all.
The layout was absolute chaos, we had boxes piled up against a wall, some days there wasn't anywhere to play because we would get our new inventory in and it would just cover all of the play space. That makes literally no sense at all but I had no clue what I was doing. Luckily I had a lot of other store owners that I spoke to and I would just constantly ask questions like, "Hey you know this happened? what did you guys do? Oh cool that's a fantastic idea I didn't think of that!"
I constantly worked on improving, I've read books, talked to some friends who have a lot more business experience than me and we just constantly ask questions to look at how I could improve. I wanted to improve because I care about how Cape Fear Games looks and how it's perceived. When I have my friends go over to my store I want to be proud of what they walk into, how the staff treats them, you know what it looks like that sort of thing. But right now, there's not a ton of incentive for stores to get out of this "clubhouse" category.
Some of the ideas I've thought up of on how to fix this are why don't we let players review stores? Say you play in FNM and after you get your name in you get an e-mail from Wizards of the Coast asking how that event was, you know how was it for you? Were the local players fun to play against with you? You know plight, was the community toxic? You know however they want to word that e-mail but just something to get some sort of gauge on which stores are having these problems and that Wizards of the Coast can talk to these stores saying, "Hey you know you're consistently getting negative feedback, let's talk about this. Are you willing to improve? how can we help you improve? Do you realize this is a problem?
Hopefully those stores once with some familiarity didn't even know that their store was perceived this way. The other thing that I think would help a lot is to reward stores that have really good feedback. Instead of just providing cool promos to all stores, why don't we provide cool promos to stores that run really good events or even just special promos maybe that only go to these stores that get good feedback from players that provide the experience that Wizards of the Coast really wants. Do things that help grow the game overall, grow the community, and help the long-term health of the game.
Instead of just penalizing stores that are doing that poorly, why don't we also reward stores that are doing really well and going above and beyond especially FNM promos? I even thought of the idea of working your way up to a free draft for all local players that's paid for by Wizards of the Coast where you see a package saying, "Congrats for your games, you guys did a great job in 2017, we're going to reward you and your local players with a free draft, tell all your friends on social media thank you for being a part of our community." Something like that.
That would lift a ton of weight, and other store owners would see that, "Man I would love to provide that sort of thing at our store and it'd be something really cool to work towards." One other thought was possibly have someone from Wizards of the Coast actually visit stores. A lot of other publishers from other board games actually have staff that will travel around business stores and talk to them, see what's going on in that store, what they're struggles are, how their game is set up at that store, how it's displayed, that sort of thing.
Why not have someone from Wizards of the Coast go to these stores to check them out and provide feedback, help them If they're willing, you know to change. I don't think that's too much to ask for a large company like Wizards of the Coast I mean there's much smaller board game publishers that do this so why couldn't Wizards of the Coast do that If Organized Play is so important to them why can't they dedicate some staff members just for that? So those are just kind of the three big issues I feel like are going on right now.
They're really affecting game stores and I hate hearing all the game store owners talking about focusing on other games, other publishers that are supporting them, and how they feel like they've been really hurt by Wizards of the Coast right now, they're extremely unhappy with them. I'm sure Wizards of the Coast made a lot of money selling Iconic Masters at Walmart and Target but they're really hurting the long-term growth potential. You can't just flood the market with endless products and not grow your player base as a way to bring in new players, that's a terrible long-term strategy.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
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Squeeze more money out of everything instead of just doing what you do the best and accept a decent profit doing it.
Nope now the 1% at the top need a larger cut every quarter with less spent at the bottom diluting products until they fail, get broken up and sold off to make stock take a slight pop up and then move on to destroying the next thing.
The survey comment was only a shot at Maro, because we know surveys are perfect... right?
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!
1. Before Eternal Masters, Iconic Masters, MM3, Modern staples was at all time high, ($100 Verdants, $200 Goyf, $40 Voice etc), therefore a lot of players cannot keep the balance to get those staples, this leads players quitting the formats and dislike the price of the game in general.
2. Standard bannings/Modern banning/Modern metagame change.
Recently standard lost a lot of players due to the bannings, some cards are way too powerful by breaking the format, Smugglers Copter literally makes Chandra, Torch of Defiance out of the meta game, and it is in every Aggro vehicle decks, Emrakul also got banned due to too many graveyard delirium abusing with it.
Same with Modern, some banning are killing certain archtype, Twin/Pod become unplayble due to key cards moving to the banned list, U/G Infect went to tier 3 deck just because of one card Gitatian Probe. Also the "Eldrazi Winter" was sick to the stomach to most of the players, lots of Modern players quit just because of that.
3. Other game starts to become more popular, also cheaper.
This is one biggest problem, Magic need to find a way to gather players attention, Hearthstone already took lots of player off from Magic due to the game being digital, cheaper, more faster to play/learn.
EDH: Xenagos, God of Revels.
Somehow I get the feeling that the only reason why Rudy from Alpha Investments has gotten away with exposing so much about Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro's handling of Magic is because of the fact that he doesn't have a DCI account for the company to dox him. Someone or a group of popular Magic YouTubers deliberately took the fall for him as scapegoats. Now I'm not gonna mention any names but I think you know who since I'd get in trouble with the Mods here. The main problem is that they overprint underplayed cards while under-printing the heavily played ones. Standard was once the gateway to Magic for a lot of people who started playing years ago which is slowly being replaced by EDH/Commander. Unlike Standard it isn't officially backed by Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro aside from their annual product releases which they need to do away with.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
10 good rares also increase the value of a set dramatic.
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Khans had the fetchlands, also a fantastic deal (even if it was terrible for standard to have the shuffling, but thats a problem with fetchlands anyway).
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Instead of using what space they have in new sets, they put the big reprints in Master product , which kinda ruins the prices.
But the sad story, they will keep doing that, as Master sets sell good enough and they only make decisions by how the numbers look , everything that makes a good profit they stick to (ignoring any other option or how it might be bad in the long term).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
The reason I've started stepping out of MtG at the moment (besides the marketing flops and such), is that they aren't maintaining the game as a long term project and are treating it like EA does to their own titles. Again, this feels like a crime of the times that expands beyond any one company and is more of a societal issue, but people have been increasingly living in the now, figuring that if they get more money from whatever they are working with at the moment and then throw it into another project they can leap frog and keep growing profits more quickly than building an enduring project. The problem with this strategy is that if everyone is doing the same thing than where do we put the money? If every project is treated as a slash and burn effort that gets seeded, grown, and then rapidly depleted, than eventually there will be no fields left to keep bouncing around to.
I tend to look down on companies that do this probably because I'm one of the rare breed that still worries about where he is going to be in 30+ years from now. Given how WoTC has been running Magic the Gathering Releases and the generally minimalistic talk of D&D 5th edition they haven't been engendering a good long term projection. Digital can't really save the traditional game of MtG because the traditional game is built on collecting and playing the game, often with more of a bend towards the former. People will keep buying cards even if they only play once a month because they enjoy having the build options.
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!
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!
If people want to buy it because its a good set then they dont need to use chase lottery tickets to artificial spike the prices of boxes so stores can turn a profit, which alienates people due to how expensive decks come.
Even premium products like masters are lottery, 80% of the time what you get doesn't make up for the booster price.
But the most laughable, is that even with masters, fetches are still 60/70$.
Totally affordable thanks to print runs, etc.
Liliana of the veil the same, snapcaster got even more expensive. Why not print new things in standard? That people can build decks around.
We do what we can with Hollow decks and such, but at least in modern format, their power level is just not there.
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!
Work the fetches they haven't printed for standard into upcoming sets. Viable cards put into standard may help them balance the game more in alignment with when the game was better. Stop trying so hard to get out of the envelope and design hard around the color pie and something for every color combo instead of pushing their pet projects.
Modern is too healthy at the moment. 30+ people every Friday night while Standard doesn't fire at my store. Not even much interest in drafting because Un-set drafting doesn't bring in the regular drafters. miscue after miscue.
Wizards need to care less about secondary market and support the real players. I own Snapcasters, cryptic commands and don't care if they get reprinted.
Cards are meant to be reprinted. And not as extra super rare mythics.
And FNM, support FNM's please. More promos, if you want FNM lands, give them to every participant as well as the other FNM promos for winners, etc.
Oh and yeah, standard doesn't fire as well in the shop where I play, in the capital of the country lol
And imagine right now, those players who have to drive a long ways to get to a store on Friday night... and standard doesn't fire.
How often are they going to make the effort to make it out again?
Wizards needs to get their heads out and realize all the damage they are doing to themselves. All the opposite of things they should be doing.
It is not an effective vehicle for story telling anyway because it’s naturally disjointed.
It skews what kinds of cards they decide to print and limits the creative boundaries in the cards. It also skews power level of cards.
Honestly, moving away from that stupid model would vastly improve standard. Look at the difference between original Zendikar block and Battle for Zendikar.
But, they show very little signs of wanting to go that route.
I think it could save standard. As an extension, if we think standard is a big part of why the game is dying, it could help Save the game.
Yes please.
Let me put it this way: Return to Dominaria is either going to bury the remaining confidence people have in the company or save it because if they can't deliver on that set it's all over. Just to get people back into playing standard they'd have to ram more sugar and rainbows into Rivals of Ixalan than they'd ever be willing to stomach.
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 think you're right though, if RtD isn't a good set Standard (and FNM) will be dead. No pressure.
No, no. You’re missing the point. The point is that their storytelling through the cards IS skewing the way that they balance standard cards. It’s not just fluff at all. It was at one point fluff - but that philosophy has shifted and THAT is what is hindering Wizards ability to make a strong standard set. Let alone create proper reprints. It’s not he fact that lightning helix can be lightning helix without the same art. It’s he fact that they won’t print lightning helix at all.
They are trying to balance game design with story telling in a way that simply doesn’t work - they’ve tried it for a few years now and they just can’t get it right.
As GreyImp said - a perfect example of my point is the “new” Emrakul that wasn’t just designed for a healthy format but also for story telling purposes. If Wizards instead, designed a powerful but balanced (within the scope of the set) card and told the story elsewhere, we may have not needed bannings.
The odd thing is that people who enjoy the story already seek it out. We will go to the articles on Wednesday and read them if the story is compelling enough. Putting half-hearted, poorly detailed, and full story elements into the flavortext doesn’t sit well and doesn’t make the story intriguing anyway.
I’m sure there are some that have become enamored with the story initially because of a curiosity that was cultivated from the story spotlight cards. But I have a hard time believing there are enough of those people to warrant Wizards continuing down this disjointed path.
I think you’re right though, Colt. Dominaria needs to be a homerun.
It doesn't mean that the names of cards and creatures can't parallel.
It doesn't mean flavor text can't give plot hints or what not.
It does mean you won't get Emrakul mistakes.
When they design a planeswalker they can still have it match the tendencies of a character but screw what happens to the character in the story. Make the card work for the game. If anything have good card design influence the story.
And FFS if standard needs a Lightning Helix then bloody give it at whatever set it makes sense for it! Standard needs help not flavor.
So with Magic, we must have a similar situation with the Mythics, right? Well yes, in fact we actually do have this issue. The key difference is that wizards overprints the sets, so instead of seeing a market bereft of any copies of The Scarab God and reprints of mythics from starter products, we see the god card up on the market for considerable mark up and every other card in the set gets sold off at considerable mark down from just the print run of the booster box. This leads to a massive oversupply of the rares, uncommons, and what few playable commons there are, floods the market with draft cards no one uses, and gives the impression to players that many of the rare singles are unplayable when they probably are playable. It also severely devalues the booster boxes because the chance of pulling the single card that has all the value in the set is low per single box. If Wizards doesn't change the ratios somehow to assure more constructed playable cards hit the market out of a single box, I'm not sure how they expect large single sets to help the market. If anything, they will probably make things worse as we swing faster into completely new and unrelated mechanics. This is probably why they made the "Challenger" decks: To try and make sure they can keep certain cards on the secondary market under control with a faster rotation cycle.
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 think having the story in the cards adds value to the whole experience, but if it’s going to be done that way it can’t be done at the expense of other important aspects of the game.
On top of that, it really sucks for those who follow the story line, when cards like Anguished Unmaking are spoiled way before the story gets to that point.
The bannings of Smuggler's Copter, Reflector Mage, Felidar Guardian, and Aetherworks Marvel were all pretty independent of whether or not Emrakul was in the format (the latter two were banned when Emrakul wasn't even legal!) so I'm confused as to how you think a nerf to Emrakul would have somehow not needed bannings. If anything, that might have made Smuggler's Copter even more rampant because Emrakul decks were one of the few decks not running that card.
Now, perhaps you meant it wouldn't have caused the banning of Emrakul, but you said "bannings" as in plural so that seems wrong. At any rate, even if that was the intent, I should point out something: By the numbers, Emrakul wasn't actually too good. The top deck in the format didn't play Emrakul at all. Indeed, Standard was actually a little more diverse than usual; normally the top deck is something like 30% of the metagame but it was "only" 20% this time around. The problem with the format that led to the first three bannings wasn't a deck or card being problematically good (maybe Smuggler's Copter simply because it was everywhere), but the fact players didn't like the format as a whole because due to lack of good answers, there was inadequate ways to actually stop your opponent from executing their plan so the best thing to do was to just try to pre-empt their plan with your own.
The problem with Emrakul was much less a problem with Emrakul itself and more a problem with them not bothering to print actual answer cards. There was basically zero playable graveyard hate in the format when Emrakul was around, nor were there particularly effective ways of dealing with Aetherworks Marvel (sadly, some of the best stuff for dealing with it came in right after it was banned). Now you might argue they deliberately avoided those cards because they wanted Emrakul to be so darn good, but the fact they avoided those kinds of cards for non-Emrakul things indicates that it was a general issue rather than something done to try to prop Emrakul up. None of the banned cards, except for perhaps Felidar Guardian, would have been an issue had adequate answer cards been printed, and I'm not sure even about Felidar Guardian because Splinter Twin was a totally fine deck in Standard thanks to there being good ways to deal with it.
So I don't really think it was storyline considerations that made Emrakul into a problem. It was all of the stuff they didn't print that caused Emrakul to be an issue, and the format in general being seen as uninteresting for reasons not limited to Emrakul.
So they went too far. That's what HE said.
Story = reason for over doing Emrakul
No answers was the general policy Maro was implementing and is a side issue from that point but a big reason why standard has sucked. If you read the crap Maro puts in his articles you'd see the evidence comes directly from him. He also pointed out at one point that Hero's Downfall did not fit flavor wise with a set it might have been necessary in so they didn't print it.
As a result of many things we have lost Standard attendance, and some of us would like the game to be better so we can get the chance to go in and play our cards at FNM... if it would fire.
People don't like spaghetti on turn 4. It sucks.
People don't like 2 card infinite combo in standard.
Right now it looks like people are tired of Energy and ramitupyourred because they aren't showing up to FNM.
Changing rewards and days you want people to play, influencing cards with story, trying to shorten the life of cards in standard, and screwing up sets is gutting standard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9jokCjB8Hs Just thought I'd share this with you guys.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta