If it was easy to make a different product, Hasbro/Wizards would have done it. It isn't. Magic sets are designed 3 years in the future, so right now the teams at Wizards are designing a set we won't play cards from for another 3 years. Magic is a game of discovery, this is where it differs from Living Card Games, where the entire set is given to you in a box. Collectable Card Games have two audiences, players and collectors/speculators, you may not like the latter but they are a part of the audience for Magic.
I don't like the commander precons, they have a nasty habit of warping EDH or introducing busted cards. True-Name Nemesis, Chaos Warp and Song of the Dryads for starters, shouldn't exist nor should most of the commanders in commander precons. The commander precons aren't the only way Wizards mess this up, there is also the planeswalker decks. These have new cards like Tezzeret's Simulacrum, legal in standard but not printed in the sets booster packs. This is a very bad idea, all it takes is one of those cards to slip through and be competitive, then suddenly an introductory precon is being broken to sell singles. Even if they aren't that competitive, they might appeal to players, I choose Tezzeret's Simulacrum as my example because I did buy them, to put in a casual deck with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas.
There is a 4 page thread on the modern forum about the idea of a modern booster, a way to print cards directly into modern, which are too strong for standard, so Baleful Strix, Shardless Agent and Dack Fayden could enter the modern card pool as an example, as could Counterspell or Foil. These cards though are known quantities, we can test them, heck we can play them casually in a modern shell, new cards though, targeted at modern, that could be a risk. Arena Rector printed in Battleborn, costs 4 mana, so looks sort of safe, except the planeswalkers in Battleborn were all awful, put that card in modern and someone will use it to cheat out Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Cards which have to go through Standard simply have better checks and balances than those which don't.
"Magic is a game of discovery, this is where it differs from Living Card Games, where the entire set is given to you in a box."
I never understand this phrase, how is Magic a more of a "discovery" card game than say NetRunner? just because of packs? You always have all the information about a set before buying packs, so in the sense, it's almost the same, the differences you have to wait for someone to open that specific card to buy it and "explore" with it, I don't see how is that relevant to having a booster or not.
Buying 4 copies of every card would "almost" be the same as having an LCG, you can mix and match all the card the way you want and explore stuff, like every CCG, either they are a TCG like Magic, an Online CCG like Hearthstone or an LCG like NetRunner
"Magic is a game of discovery, this is where it differs from Living Card Games, where the entire set is given to you in a box."
I never understand this phrase, how is Magic a more of a "discovery" card game than say NetRunner? just because of packs? You always have all the information about a set before buying packs, so in the sense, it's almost the same, the differences you have to wait for someone to open that specific card to buy it and "explore" with it, I don't see how is that relevant to having a booster or not.
Buying 4 copies of every card would "almost" be the same as having an LCG, you can mix and match all the card the way you want and explore stuff, like every CCG, either they are a TCG like Magic, an Online CCG like Hearthstone or an LCG like NetRunner
Restrictions breed creativity, Magic is played in many ways, packs are only relevant in draft, conveniently most cards found in packs are only relevant in draft too. Part of the discovery is driven by the restrictions around draft, some players look for big stompy creatures, others look for synergy and others still simply want to play certain colours. They all aim to build the best deck they can, from their point of view, that is an inherently creative process. Another factor is that, not all discoveries are good, we learn as much from our failures, sometimes more, as we do from our success.
An non-random way of getting into standard, and having a reasonable chance is a newish product, the challenger decks. Not sure if these will have an equivalent on Arena though.
If you just have viable cards in a set, you get Cube. "A cube is a large stack of mostly powerful cards selected by their owner from throughout Magic's history." This is then used to draft with, essentially adding a random/discovery factor with powerful cards, again this is another way to play.
Even when just considering Standard having Niche cards is also Part of discovery. As you need to find ways of making them work and for as long those cards are in Standard every new set you can check back and either try to make it work with the newer cards. Even in Standard sometimes it takes a while for cards to go off.
Sets are designed for Limited, Standard and to a minimal extend Eternal formats. (and to make money) If you just designed for standard Sets would be significantly smaller since there is rarely a need to add lets say a Catacomb Slug to a Standard environment. Furthermore there would still be bad cards in the set, unless you power creep every card. So the only ways to do new cards is either make them stronger than previous cards, make the same cards, or make different cards ( in the sense of new stuff unexplored design space). Doing only the first leads to power creep making old cards bad cards, the second leads to boring gameplay and cards which are bad stay bad, the third leads to cards like axis of immortality which might become bad cards or to Smugglers copter which might become op cards.
So I think its a smart desicion to design Sets for multiple formats so there is more for everyone and they need to think more about balancing.
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If it was easy to make a different product, Hasbro/Wizards would have done it. It isn't. Magic sets are designed 3 years in the future, so right now the teams at Wizards are designing a set we won't play cards from for another 3 years. Magic is a game of discovery, this is where it differs from Living Card Games, where the entire set is given to you in a box. Collectable Card Games have two audiences, players and collectors/speculators, you may not like the latter but they are a part of the audience for Magic.
I don't like the commander precons, they have a nasty habit of warping EDH or introducing busted cards. True-Name Nemesis, Chaos Warp and Song of the Dryads for starters, shouldn't exist nor should most of the commanders in commander precons. The commander precons aren't the only way Wizards mess this up, there is also the planeswalker decks. These have new cards like Tezzeret's Simulacrum, legal in standard but not printed in the sets booster packs. This is a very bad idea, all it takes is one of those cards to slip through and be competitive, then suddenly an introductory precon is being broken to sell singles. Even if they aren't that competitive, they might appeal to players, I choose Tezzeret's Simulacrum as my example because I did buy them, to put in a casual deck with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas.
There is a 4 page thread on the modern forum about the idea of a modern booster, a way to print cards directly into modern, which are too strong for standard, so Baleful Strix, Shardless Agent and Dack Fayden could enter the modern card pool as an example, as could Counterspell or Foil. These cards though are known quantities, we can test them, heck we can play them casually in a modern shell, new cards though, targeted at modern, that could be a risk. Arena Rector printed in Battleborn, costs 4 mana, so looks sort of safe, except the planeswalkers in Battleborn were all awful, put that card in modern and someone will use it to cheat out Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Cards which have to go through Standard simply have better checks and balances than those which don't.
I never understand this phrase, how is Magic a more of a "discovery" card game than say NetRunner? just because of packs? You always have all the information about a set before buying packs, so in the sense, it's almost the same, the differences you have to wait for someone to open that specific card to buy it and "explore" with it, I don't see how is that relevant to having a booster or not.
Buying 4 copies of every card would "almost" be the same as having an LCG, you can mix and match all the card the way you want and explore stuff, like every CCG, either they are a TCG like Magic, an Online CCG like Hearthstone or an LCG like NetRunner
Restrictions breed creativity, Magic is played in many ways, packs are only relevant in draft, conveniently most cards found in packs are only relevant in draft too. Part of the discovery is driven by the restrictions around draft, some players look for big stompy creatures, others look for synergy and others still simply want to play certain colours. They all aim to build the best deck they can, from their point of view, that is an inherently creative process. Another factor is that, not all discoveries are good, we learn as much from our failures, sometimes more, as we do from our success.
An non-random way of getting into standard, and having a reasonable chance is a newish product, the challenger decks. Not sure if these will have an equivalent on Arena though.
If you just have viable cards in a set, you get Cube. "A cube is a large stack of mostly powerful cards selected by their owner from throughout Magic's history." This is then used to draft with, essentially adding a random/discovery factor with powerful cards, again this is another way to play.
Sets are designed for Limited, Standard and to a minimal extend Eternal formats. (and to make money) If you just designed for standard Sets would be significantly smaller since there is rarely a need to add lets say a Catacomb Slug to a Standard environment. Furthermore there would still be bad cards in the set, unless you power creep every card. So the only ways to do new cards is either make them stronger than previous cards, make the same cards, or make different cards ( in the sense of new stuff unexplored design space). Doing only the first leads to power creep making old cards bad cards, the second leads to boring gameplay and cards which are bad stay bad, the third leads to cards like axis of immortality which might become bad cards or to Smugglers copter which might become op cards.
So I think its a smart desicion to design Sets for multiple formats so there is more for everyone and they need to think more about balancing.