I have been playing Magic all my life, since 3rd edition and I have never seen such an expansion set before, like in Ikoria that literally breaks Standard, with it's certain broken and busted companions and very obvious and boring 'shells'. A lot of these customary decks in standard just run on rails and are too powerful. So much so, that if your not running these archetypal decks yourself, then your not winning. This leaves a lot to be considered by way of creativity and originality in brewing alternatives. Standard seems like it's dysfunctional, dead and buried with this set already...
They literally did not test this format at all and absolutely did not test companion at all in any other format.
The fact they ban one outright in EDH/Commander is one thing, but the entire mechanic is broken by design.
Anything that provides you a free extra card is something the game cannot handle, as any deck that does not get that extra card has to make up for that disadvantage by being even more broken to justify that disadvantage, which kinda forces everyone into building decks that can use Companions.
And they are not really just an extra card, they are mostly "combo" pieces, and a combo deck that can guarantee to have its parts doesnt even need tutors, and historically tutors did break the game in terms of combo decks as they made them sufficiently easy to find the pieces.
If you have one pieces guaranteed 100% of the time its just not playing the game, its doing the very same over and over, with no "chance" involved.
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Chances are that Companion will simply be banned, the entire mechanic removed.
If not than the "good" Companions will be banned at least as Companion, but thats a extra rule again, so the cards might just be banned entirely (like the one in Commander is just banned, not just as Companion).
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In Standard chances are very high that at least the UB and the WB one will be banned.
In Vintage and Legacy they produce very annoying problems too, especially with Lion's Eye Diamond, so chances are that either the Companions are banned or LED will be.
In Vintage with power especially "restriction" wont really do anything to the companion and having it with stuff like moxes and especially Black Lotus produces an incredible annoying play pattern, its absolutely not fun at all.
The game simply cannot handle these idiotic cards in a reasonable way.
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Mutate and the other mechanics in the set are "ok".
Lots of stuff is pushed in powerlevels for what you would expect for a common/uncommon.
Most if not all sets they design in the last decade of magic follow a pretty simplistic pattern of "design".
They want all 10 color combinations to be somehow presented in each set, so each color combination gets a "theme" and cards support that theme pretty hard, so you really want to play that theme to make the card work as it should be working.
Especially a bunch of rares get upgraded in Limited to bomb-status thats outright game breaking. Lots of limited formats had such bombs, but mostly just 1 in the entire set, or a cycle that was particularly pushed (Titans for example, or Planeswalkers).
Currently they put in Mythic rare cards for constructed that are pushed for constructed to levels that in limited demand a removal immediately, or the card will burry the opponent and dominate whatever board they have.
They do all that so actual playing well matters less, and weaker players win more often just because the one bomb will do all the trick and win the game on its own. It is how it is, playing particularly bad still loses the game, so thats "ok".
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Standard offers a bunch of brew decks, but it all orbits around a bunch of "mythic rares" that are so pushed that you just have to play them and build decks around them to make the deck viable at all.
Standard is filled with such "op" cards in lots of colors and its almost impossible to build a playable deck that can compete without including them.
And they tend to be so good that theres almost no reason not to play them at all.
Some "combos" are just too much forced, like Witch's Oven and Cauldron Familiar. Stuff like that is "in your face" combos. Fires of Invention produces really ugly decks too, the play-pattern of these decks is just awful as its the same stuff of pushed cards over and over and over again.
With these pushed cards around brews have a super hard time competing.
And with current design philosophy that will not change at all.
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For brew decks "casual" Commander is pretty much the only place to be.
Any other constructed format that wants to be competitive will always be forced to use the cards they pushed to levels that demand to see play, as weaker stuff simply doesnt perform as well.
WoTC are using the most vile *****tiest tactics in selling this game. They try to appeal to people with inferiority complex who then will spend the money to buy OP cards. This strategy basically kills the old style MTG, that was played IRL on a physical table. Now it's not about creating interesting decks and just socialising.. now it's a real life butthurt relief game, where anyone just pay a couple of hundren bucks, get their OP deck(of basically any color but mostly black and blue) and crush basically anyone who paid less or F2P. MTG Arena became a ******* joke. It's not a fan game anymore.. it's not made for fans anymore. It's made for people who are really butthurt IN REAL LIFE.. and now all these hordes of total mental cases, ******* whales with money, total degenerates who don't give a single flying **** about anything but their own butthurt egos. These losers are surfing the web for "pay-to-win" opportunities, join the game, pay and win, then move the **** on to the next game, where they turn the same trick. Each loser would feed 2-3 P2W games at the least, usually more. It becomes addictive.
Online gaming became a stress relief for an office rat, who never even played any games before online gaming hit the market and allowed the office rat to play at his desk or from his laptop or mobile. Online gaming is not even gaming in it's true sense, because you don't see your opponent. You're basically playing with a screen. There is no people behind that screen. It's just code. You're just buying what would happen on the screen.
Do you get it? They don't want to play the game with anyone. They just want to buy a certain guaranteed outcome. They want to pay an easy 100 and immediately get their fix. It's just like drugs.
So.. here is your answer why they make all these idiotic sets. The previous blue deck meta with something like Agent of Treachery etc etc is total cancer. There are many cards like that. Completely retarded drain decks, completely retarded counter decks, completely retarded everything. Because this is what sells.
Office rats will pay their 100 anal bucks and cheese their way to mythic. Everyone else is there just because they want to try. But they are not going to stay for long.. but who cares, there will always be a ton of newbies who will come and serve as cannon fodder for the butthurt whales to feed on.
Online gaming killed gaming. Everything became pay to win. Even titles that used to be subscription based are changing to F2P format because it's so easy to milk the retarded whale with inferiority complex. The temptation to go online is impossible to fight. Just compare.. an offline game wouldn't make more then a couple of millions if it's really good and high quality. An online game of even *****ty quality will bring you millions by default, sometimes billions.
This is why people are so upset with online gaming. Fanboys would say that people cry because they are not skilled enough to play, but the reality is that it's all plainly PAY TO WIN.
They are just selling drugs to butthurt losers. Pay 100USD -> get your fix(victories). Don't want to pay?? Boo hoo hoo.
Public Mod Note
(motleyslayer):
Warning for inappropriate language
I have been playing Magic all my life, since 3rd edition and I have never seen such an expansion set before, like in Ikoria that literally breaks Standard, with it's certain broken and busted companions and very obvious and boring 'shells'. A lot of these customary decks in standard just run on rails and are too powerful. So much so, that if your not running these archetypal decks yourself, then your not winning. This leaves a lot to be considered by way of creativity and originality in brewing alternatives. Standard seems like it's dysfunctional, dead and buried with this set already...
Wait a second....you have been playing since Revised and somehow, some way, you never noticed Combo Winter with Urza's Saga or Affinity with Mirrodin or Cawblade with Worldwake breaking the game?
I mean games ended on turn 1 with some regularity with Urza's Saga. How many games are doing that now?
I don't really know how much Ikoria is actually breaking things but if you are going to say that what we currently have is somehow worse than some of the worst things in the history of the game, I don't think I can really take you seriously. Sure, it might be bad (I don't think so beyond me not liking Companion) but I don't think it is nearly as bad as Combo Winter or Affinity.
Wait a second....you have been playing since Revised and somehow, some way, you never noticed Combo Winter with Urza's Saga or Affinity with Mirrodin or Cawblade with Worldwake breaking the game?
I mean games ended on turn 1 with some regularity with Urza's Saga. How many games are doing that now?
I don't really know how much Ikoria is actually breaking things but if you are going to say that what we currently have is somehow worse than some of the worst things in the history of the game, I don't think I can really take you seriously. Sure, it might be bad (I don't think so beyond me not liking Companion) but I don't think it is nearly as bad as Combo Winter or Affinity.
To be frank, the number of "tournament players" back in Urzas Saga time was MINIMAL.
Barely you had players that even knew about the decks and had the deck in full , thats only the top of the iceberg that did that (and it resulted in hilarious counter strategies, like a guy with 2000 islands in his deck and nothing else, and the Tolarian Academy combo deck could not win against that).
The entire combo-winter deal is quite overblown, as the number of people was just so small that even bothered playing at the time.
And given that they had pretty much 0 actual testing going on back then, the cards that produced the biggest offenders had to go (and they where fairly quickly banned for the time) , then you had a working format with reasonable decks around.
Right now you have a lot more people that are supposed to test cards and engineer a format around them (which is bad on its own right, as the entire experience isnt about building cool decks anymore, its more like the testing and design team build decks in the future league they are testing in and tweak the cards for these decks, then they let players "rebuild" these decks, rarely if ever can someone build a deck that isnt engineered to be a deck, which was absolutely the case in the past, as magic designed cards more card by card basis and deck builders figured out how to make them work together, that brew-feeling is totally gone for good, which is supposed to give them more control of a metagame, but they show again and again that they fail to archive that, and cards still need to get banned, which they should avoid like the plague, but they even embrace it, as "op" cards sell a lot of boxes, till the card is banned).
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In the past to see decks you had to play in tournaments, read articles or get seriously involved with friends.
Today its much more digital and way way less paper magic.
You get so many streamers and lots of people that just copy decks all over the place, and if something is "broken" it drifts way faster to the surface and takes over instantly.
In the paper time of magic, you had to wait for a Pro-Tour event to see people bring their A-game and the secret-tech decks, thats not happening anymore at all, its like christmas is now every day and everyone spoils the secrets way in advance.
Also for cards themselves, especially with digital, people just get the cards they need. Theres no actual trading, it took some time to get cards, or you traded in a group of friends for the paper cards you wanted for a tournament. Today people just order the cards all on their own.
And thats just constructed.
For "limited" it was even more brutal.
You had to play in paper, you drafted maybe 1 time a week at an FNM, very rarely people draft more often in paper.
People that where good at playing limited where really rare, only very dedicated players, anybody else simply didnt play limited formats often enough to get even close (so the "good" players in lots of regions where much much better players than almost anybody else).
The entire format of limited required more understanding of the card pool and building a proper deck, as sets included so many "dead" cards, the fail case of a draft was much higher, especially as the sets mechanics did not throw themselves at you like they do today (some sets barely had any "theme" of color combinations, you actually just had to draft a proper deck, no theme at all).
And with slower decks in general, mistakes mattered much more as getting back with vanilla creatures is much harder than mechanics that help you refuel.
You could "snow-ball" a game much less easy then today.
Today you get so much limited content and so much digital drafts all over the place and at every time of the day, that this changed drastically.
The difference between the players is much smaller and you get way way more of them.
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It all changed a long time ago.
Its massively different today.
For the better and often for the worse.
There for sure is no way to go back anymore, so its inevitable to adjust to the time.
WoTC are using the most vile *****tiest tactics in selling this game. They try to appeal to people with inferiority complex who then will spend the money to buy OP cards. This strategy basically kills the old style MTG, that was played IRL on a physical table. Now it's not about creating interesting decks and just socialising.. now it's a real life butthurt relief game, where anyone just pay a couple of hundren bucks, get their OP deck(of basically any color but mostly black and blue) and crush basically anyone who paid less or F2P. MTG Arena became a ******* joke. It's not a fan game anymore.. it's not made for fans anymore. It's made for people who are really butthurt IN REAL LIFE.. and now all these hordes of total mental cases, ******* whales with money, total degenerates who don't give a single flying **** about anything but their own butthurt egos. These losers are surfing the web for "pay-to-win" opportunities, join the game, pay and win, then move the **** on to the next game, where they turn the same trick. Each loser would feed 2-3 P2W games at the least, usually more. It becomes addictive.
Online gaming became a stress relief for an office rat, who never even played any games before online gaming hit the market and allowed the office rat to play at his desk or from his laptop or mobile. Online gaming is not even gaming in it's true sense, because you don't see your opponent. You're basically playing with a screen. There is no people behind that screen. It's just code. You're just buying what would happen on the screen.
Do you get it? They don't want to play the game with anyone. They just want to buy a certain guaranteed outcome. They want to pay an easy 100 and immediately get their fix. It's just like drugs.
So.. here is your answer why they make all these idiotic sets. The previous blue deck meta with something like Agent of Treachery etc etc is total cancer. There are many cards like that. Completely retarded drain decks, completely retarded counter decks, completely retarded everything. Because this is what sells.
Office rats will pay their 100 anal bucks and cheese their way to mythic. Everyone else is there just because they want to try. But they are not going to stay for long.. but who cares, there will always be a ton of newbies who will come and serve as cannon fodder for the butthurt whales to feed on.
Online gaming killed gaming. Everything became pay to win. Even titles that used to be subscription based are changing to F2P format because it's so easy to milk the retarded whale with inferiority complex. The temptation to go online is impossible to fight. Just compare.. an offline game wouldn't make more then a couple of millions if it's really good and high quality. An online game of even *****ty quality will bring you millions by default, sometimes billions.
This is why people are so upset with online gaming. Fanboys would say that people cry because they are not skilled enough to play, but the reality is that it's all plainly PAY TO WIN.
They are just selling drugs to butthurt losers. Pay 100USD -> get your fix(victories). Don't want to pay?? Boo hoo hoo.
Wizards of the Coast is doing this on purpose so that they'll make enough revenue for Hasbro to sell Wizards of the Coast off by next year with no one stupid enough to buy the company from Hasbro. COVID-19 is really just the icing on the cake as it gave Wizards of the Coast the green light to dismantle everything there is to do with competitive Paper Magic moving forward as far as the In-Store Play business model is concerned as it makes up 80% of revenue for Local Game Stores (LGSs) which is now completely decimated while only having to survive on 20% of store sales alone. The Commander Precons and subsidiary sets are just an extra revenue source to help them get closer to cutting ties with Hasbro once and for all which means that their Reserve List contract would become null and void.
Wizards of the Coast isn't going to be the same company they once were before partnering with Hasbro in 1998 once working individually as it's own company again. The Paper Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game Industry has changed dramatically compared to how it was before where they're going to have to adapt to the current changes happening as they've already turned their backs against the MTG community that got them where they are today where the only thing they care about is money but with Papa Hasbro gone they're a much smaller company compared to what they were. It's equivalent to Disney and AT&T breaking up with Marvel and DC Comics as they really need each other in order to survive. Physical Media is dead whether we like it or not as we're being thrust into a Digital Media.
"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
Stop being net-deckers. Look at every single card in standard and look at how new cards react to it. If you are net-decking people are already side boarding against you and you are already behind the curve. It is acceptable to start with a net decking base but by the time the list gets to you it has already been seen by your would be intelligent opponents and may not be built for your meta (server/LGS).
I’m only seeing one companion out there that should be cause for alarm if you aren’t running removal.
Mutate will only ever be up to decent because removal exists.
Also if you are so worried about that companion, the is the anti-companion/commander card in the same set. Drannith Magistrate.
This isn’t like the days of Urza’s Saga were you went in blind to a draft. We know the cards spoiled before they hit standard.
I know what to expect by analyzing all the cards but know what colors to lean towards by analyzing the commons.
You can’t tell me Gates and mono red burn aren’t viable. Know the meta, save your lunch money and only when you have triple checked your research, then get what you need ( which sounds like you need to get removal).
WoTC are using the most vile *****tiest tactics in selling this game. They try to appeal to people with inferiority complex who then will spend the money to buy OP cards. This strategy basically kills the old style MTG, that was played IRL on a physical table. Now it's not about creating interesting decks and just socialising.. now it's a real life butthurt relief game, where anyone just pay a couple of hundren bucks, get their OP deck(of basically any color but mostly black and blue) and crush basically anyone who paid less or F2P. MTG Arena became a ******* joke. It's not a fan game anymore.. it's not made for fans anymore. It's made for people who are really butthurt IN REAL LIFE.. and now all these hordes of total mental cases, ******* whales with money, total degenerates who don't give a single flying **** about anything but their own butthurt egos. These losers are surfing the web for "pay-to-win" opportunities, join the game, pay and win, then move the **** on to the next game, where they turn the same trick. Each loser would feed 2-3 P2W games at the least, usually more. It becomes addictive.
Online gaming became a stress relief for an office rat, who never even played any games before online gaming hit the market and allowed the office rat to play at his desk or from his laptop or mobile. Online gaming is not even gaming in it's true sense, because you don't see your opponent. You're basically playing with a screen. There is no people behind that screen. It's just code. You're just buying what would happen on the screen.
Do you get it? They don't want to play the game with anyone. They just want to buy a certain guaranteed outcome. They want to pay an easy 100 and immediately get their fix. It's just like drugs.
So.. here is your answer why they make all these idiotic sets. The previous blue deck meta with something like Agent of Treachery etc etc is total cancer. There are many cards like that. Completely retarded drain decks, completely retarded counter decks, completely retarded everything. Because this is what sells.
Office rats will pay their 100 anal bucks and cheese their way to mythic. Everyone else is there just because they want to try. But they are not going to stay for long.. but who cares, there will always be a ton of newbies who will come and serve as cannon fodder for the butthurt whales to feed on.
Online gaming killed gaming. Everything became pay to win. Even titles that used to be subscription based are changing to F2P format because it's so easy to milk the retarded whale with inferiority complex. The temptation to go online is impossible to fight. Just compare.. an offline game wouldn't make more then a couple of millions if it's really good and high quality. An online game of even *****ty quality will bring you millions by default, sometimes billions.
This is why people are so upset with online gaming. Fanboys would say that people cry because they are not skilled enough to play, but the reality is that it's all plainly PAY TO WIN.
They are just selling drugs to butthurt losers. Pay 100USD -> get your fix(victories). Don't want to pay?? Boo hoo hoo.
Maybe you should get out of competitive play, then? Or at least find a playgroup that's more your style. I hated playing at the stores around me a decade ago, everyone was way too intense, way too competitive, and way too invested in spending a ton of money to win (and laughing at those who didn't). It turned me off the game entirely for a long time until I found people who actually made playing fun. The intense netdeck power players can still do their thing, I'm happily away from them.
Who thinks UW? is overpowered? I do...it's no wonder everyone is splashing counter-spells! They do nothing, just sitting there counting their little counter-spells, sweating their balls maybe if they don't have enough (but they always have enough, don't they? But then, only they know that!), scrying (which basically is an analogy for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat away), thinking of flashing something in or not flashing something in, leaving land up (is it enough?), making sure (with a damp hanky), never thinking much about a wincon (until September rolls round, maybe), wait, Gyruda maybe coming! I guess, the only consolation to it all is to make a cup of tea while they think about what they're seeing and counter-spelling your deck, I mean spell.
Then, you come back thinking things may have moved on a bit? They haven't, you then fall into a coma and tea spills all over your lap...
Maybe you should get out of competitive play, then?
I wasn't talking about competitiveness. I was talking about how WoTC are simply after the money and are creating completely retarded OP card and combos that actually make it impossible to even try to compete. Buying a victory is not a competition. If you're allowed to bring a gun to a knife fight.. isn't competetive.
I'm just saying that WoTC is building a road to nowhere. Just like username Card Slinger said - they are just stacking up on cash before selling the company.
I really like MTG, the art and casual play. I thought MTG-A would be a good game.. but it's very disappointing. I play black and white decks. I don't use OP cards on purpose. I don't like it. It kills the spirit of the game. Most OP cards of today should even exist. They kill the game. Each match with an OP decks on each side becomes fly or die situation, until who is going to be the first to get their OP combos out. It doesn't make any sense to play like that. It's not competitive. It's childish and simply boring.
Even tho I really like when I whip another OP whale's ass with my basically basic B&W deck that has only 2 mythics in it. And zero OP cards. I just use combinations of cards to make myself last and heal out. I play defensively and I only have 4 creatures in my deck. My winning % is still over 50% and I hit platinum every time, but to reach mythic level I'd have to use OP cards, which I don't want to use.
The ironic part is that even if I try playing unranked games, still OP retards would be there to get their pwnz victory.
The problem is that by going online.. there was only one choice to make a lot of money - milk the degenerates with inferiority complex. And it works. Unfortunately at the cost of quality, good content and general player base toxicity, which in the past 10 years became total cancer.
I'm kinda whining.. didn't mean to pass off as a crybaby.
The evolution of everything, even more-so when money is considered, is to descend down into the foul and treacherous gutter! All you've become and will become, are pawns fishing and fending in that gutter...
WoTC are using the most vile *****tiest tactics in selling this game. They try to appeal to people with inferiority complex who then will spend the money to buy OP cards. This strategy basically kills the old style MTG, that was played IRL on a physical table. Now it's not about creating interesting decks and just socialising.. now it's a real life butthurt relief game, where anyone just pay a couple of hundren bucks, get their OP deck(of basically any color but mostly black and blue) and crush basically anyone who paid less or F2P. MTG Arena became a ******* joke. It's not a fan game anymore.. it's not made for fans anymore. It's made for people who are really butthurt IN REAL LIFE.. and now all these hordes of total mental cases, ******* whales with money, total degenerates who don't give a single flying **** about anything but their own butthurt egos. These losers are surfing the web for "pay-to-win" opportunities, join the game, pay and win, then move the **** on to the next game, where they turn the same trick. Each loser would feed 2-3 P2W games at the least, usually more. It becomes addictive.
Online gaming became a stress relief for an office rat, who never even played any games before online gaming hit the market and allowed the office rat to play at his desk or from his laptop or mobile. Online gaming is not even gaming in it's true sense, because you don't see your opponent. You're basically playing with a screen. There is no people behind that screen. It's just code. You're just buying what would happen on the screen.
Do you get it? They don't want to play the game with anyone. They just want to buy a certain guaranteed outcome. They want to pay an easy 100 and immediately get their fix. It's just like drugs.
So.. here is your answer why they make all these idiotic sets. The previous blue deck meta with something like Agent of Treachery etc etc is total cancer. There are many cards like that. Completely retarded drain decks, completely retarded counter decks, completely retarded everything. Because this is what sells.
Office rats will pay their 100 anal bucks and cheese their way to mythic. Everyone else is there just because they want to try. But they are not going to stay for long.. but who cares, there will always be a ton of newbies who will come and serve as cannon fodder for the butthurt whales to feed on.
Online gaming killed gaming. Everything became pay to win. Even titles that used to be subscription based are changing to F2P format because it's so easy to milk the retarded whale with inferiority complex. The temptation to go online is impossible to fight. Just compare.. an offline game wouldn't make more then a couple of millions if it's really good and high quality. An online game of even *****ty quality will bring you millions by default, sometimes billions.
This is why people are so upset with online gaming. Fanboys would say that people cry because they are not skilled enough to play, but the reality is that it's all plainly PAY TO WIN.
They are just selling drugs to butthurt losers. Pay 100USD -> get your fix(victories). Don't want to pay?? Boo hoo hoo.
Maybe you should get out of competitive play, then? Or at least find a playgroup that's more your style. I hated playing at the stores around me a decade ago, everyone was way too intense, way too competitive, and way too invested in spending a ton of money to win (and laughing at those who didn't). It turned me off the game entirely for a long time until I found people who actually made playing fun. The intense netdeck power players can still do their thing, I'm happily away from them.
Yes I agree, everyone was there to win, so it was rather toxic.
I mitigated that by only going for pre-releases... there are still some toxic people, but less.
Can we slate some other stuff too? Like, how no other player is tougher to beat than MTGO's shuffling dynamic. I have just now played some well constructed decks, mulliganed 2 to 3 times, and have had to battle my own deck for upto four or five turns with card draw, before I can start concentrating on my opponent. Who, I thought was an opponent but is not, because all along MTGO is mainly my opponent...
Also, why the ***k are scrying spells and card drawing spells 'instants'?
I'm experimenting with 100-150 card B&W deck variations, and what I find very surprising is how often I would get same cards in a row or even in a dealt hand. What are the chances of pulling 3 same cards in a row or with 1 card of each other? It's not even the issue with mana draw, it's how the whole deck is shuffled. It seems the mechanics of the game makes certain preferences towards certain cards in your deck, which get shuffled on "top" of the deck. This is an easy way to control win rates. Sometimes you have very nice first draw or nice 1st mulligan draw, but then there are these times when you just see how the shuffler gives you ridiculous unplayable draws. I would get it if this happened rarely, but it literally happens at least 1 time out of three. Obviously during these bad draws the chances to win the match at very low. Then you add in the equation those people who play OP-cheat-combo decks and here is your answer why this happens.
The shuffler itself acts as a paywall. You either invest money so you can build an OP deck(basically anything that has blue combos) or you will suffer from being gated by the shuffler. It was proven that even online poker shuffling algorithm is often tilted towards giving good initial draws to several people at the table, so everyone would buy in and be encouraged to raise bets, but then in the end the shuffler would produce a highly unlikely end result, when one player would win at very low odds. One may sit with a full house and another player would end up with a flush. The chances of that happening at one table, playing 1 52 card deck are very low, but that situation would happen in online pocket all the time, very often. Something like every 10-20 games you will see a similar situation in online poker. This is done so the players wouldn't lose interest and keep playing the game. So by default, it's not a fair game but a rigged simulation. I assume something similar is happening with MTGO.
You see, the problem here is that when people pay online, they expect quick results. They want to pay and win now. But if the shuffler was truly random, then those who paid would have very high chance of being "luck screwed". Some guy with a simple combo deck may defeat a pay-to-win player and that would cause butthurt, resulting in p2w players quitting and switching to online games where p2w players are well cared for by the shuffler. WoTC may claim they use a fair shuffler, but practical evidence says otherwise.
Having said that, I still have to admit that it's possible to get 50%+ win rate if one cares enough to work on his deck or just copy others. It's just the game is tilted towards caring after paying customers. The more you pay, the better you will have it. 100%. The same is true about any online game that uses F2P + micro-transactions model
Can we slate some other stuff too? Like, how no other player is tougher to beat than MTGO's shuffling dynamic. I have just now played some well constructed decks, mulliganed 2 to 3 times, and have had to battle my own deck for upto four or five turns with card draw, before I can start concentrating on my opponent. Who, I thought was an opponent but is not, because all along MTGO is mainly my opponent...
The shuffler itself acts as a paywall. You either invest money so you can build an OP deck(basically anything that has blue combos) or you will suffer from being gated by the shuffler. It was proven that even online poker shuffling algorithm is often tilted towards giving good initial draws to several people at the table, so everyone would buy in and be encouraged to raise bets, but then in the end the shuffler would produce a highly unlikely end result, when one player would win at very low odds. One may sit with a full house and another player would end up with a flush. The chances of that happening at one table, playing 1 52 card deck are very low, but that situation would happen in online pocket all the time, very often. Something like every 10-20 games you will see a similar situation in online poker. This is done so the players wouldn't lose interest and keep playing the game. So by default, it's not a fair game but a rigged simulation. I assume something similar is happening with MTGO.
You see, the problem here is that when people pay online, they expect quick results. They want to pay and win now. But if the shuffler was truly random, then those who paid would have very high chance of being "luck screwed". Some guy with a simple combo deck may defeat a pay-to-win player and that would cause butthurt, resulting in p2w players quitting and switching to online games where p2w players are well cared for by the shuffler. WoTC may claim they use a fair shuffler, but practical evidence says otherwise.
That is why my MTGO play at this time (while I have MORE time to play online) is practically zero. Its try to beat the "randomizer", try to beat the paywall/pay to play algorithms with a strong budget deck, then try to compete with the most expensive decks in the format. No one plays the "for fun"rooms. Its toxic and I am wanting less part of it all the time.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I think that's mostly a factor of finding games more quickly if everyone just consistently uses one room, which by default wouldn't be the "for fun" room.
And doubting the randomization of a computer program versus human-operated handshuffling is such a human thing to do, isn't it?
[quote]
That is why my MTGO play at this time (while I have MORE time to play online) is practically zero. Its try to beat the "randomizer", try to beat the paywall/pay to play algorithms with a strong budget deck, then try to compete with the most expensive decks in the format. No one plays the "for fun"rooms. Its toxic and I am wanting less part of it all the time.
Well, I still enjoy it when I find some guy who isn't OP and we can actually have an interesting match, instead of nuking with OP card combos.
The problem is as you said.. not many people want to play "for fun" and enjoy the game. These games attract so many people with psychological problems who want to win, doesn't matter what it costs them. That's why online gaming took off in the first place and quickly drifted towards anal P2W schemes. If you remember, at first when gaming went online around 2002-3, immediately it was infested with people who looked for flaws in game design and code that could be used for an "unfair" advantage. The game producers noticed it and thought about a way how to monetize the demand for "cheating\hacks".
Online gaming simply doesn't work on a mass scale because there are way too many butthurt losers who would do anything to win, cheat, hack, lie, etc.
Of course gaming companies could fight cheaters, quite easily, but that would mean losing an opportunity to "milk" other people's insanity. Gaming cheaters are insane, therefore very easy to manipulate. Thus, we have all these pay-to-win games. There is no purpose in finding a cheat in a game, it's much easier to just pay-to-win. So that's what they do. Also, in some cases, gaming companies would sell cheats to their own games via seemingly unrelated(to them) companies, as in cases with World of Tanks\Warships, where you can actually buy cheating software for a monthly subscription of $20, which is a lot, considering that they have a stable player base in hundreds of thousands. Every online game I know has this problem - cheaters and cheating software.
So.. no wonder MTGO is turning to selling cheat cards and *****ting out a new "OP" set every couple of months.
All we can do is face this reality. Nothing we can do about it. Market rules. If cheating brings in the money, then that's what it will be.
The age of interesting games died when we went online. Majority of people shouldn't even be allowed near a computer, but now they can all use it. Now all these people can reach you and poison your life.
Also, as you can see WoTC are not creating any UI which would allow the players to at least remove players which use certain cards from being paired up with. This would be the most simplest way to solve this problem. You could just remove the cards that you don't want to play against and that's it. Then OP players would only be playing each other.. and getting very upset because they wouldn't be winning all the time.
You see.. how "fair" gaming doesn't work in this model? This is because MTGO was built and intended for those who want to cheat, pay and win.
Yeah this pay-to-win loot crate model was something I've also noticed within Amusement Arcades back in the 80's up until the early to mid 2000's where eventually the gaming industry caught on to how predatory it was when they made the switch over to Triple A Consoles when the hardware was finally able to keep up with it. I've noticed a lot of places like Dave & Busters and Chuck E. Cheese's (formerly Showbiz Pizza) have switched over from quarters to game tokens though it's just as predatory since you still need to spend money to play on these Arcade machines.
One of my LGSs used to hold video game tournaments every Saturday evening where players would bring their own arcade sticks and flat screen TV's just to play Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Mortal Kombat 11, and other fighting games on PS4 and XBox One. With the current quarantine I imagine most of them are playing online like everyone else is right now. I've always been more of a fan of the on the couch experience by going to your friends' house to play video games since there's something about the experience you don't get from playing online like If you're playing Fortnite or Overwatch.
"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
And doubting the randomization of a computer program versus human-operated handshuffling is such a human thing to do, isn't it?
If you have undeniable truth as in actual code in the MTGO randomizer and share it I will listen. If not my opinion has just as much validity. And I am not going to argue that point, its a draw, move on.
Well, I still enjoy it when I find some guy who isn't OP and we can actually have an interesting match, instead of nuking with OP card combos.
The problem is as you said.. not many people want to play "for fun" and enjoy the game. These games attract so many people with psychological problems who want to win, doesn't matter what it costs them.
Its getting harder and harder to do that. MTGO is the single and only game I play online, I do my console playing "offline" against the AI even though I am connected.
Yeah this pay-to-win loot crate model was something I've also noticed within Amusement Arcades back in the 80's
I was there at that time and now you mention it, yep it was starting then.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV1IcWV4fng
Now imagine if MagicTG cards were all hand printed by wood prints and there was an actual balance and lore behind it? How many of these sets could you sell? And how much it would cost? And most importantly, would a master create cheating cards?
It could be possible to achieve such quality in gaming if gaming remained an art, like it was prior to online\mobile explosion. It's very ironic how card games, while initially requiring a lot of skills to play and handle, became so trivial. All other games too.. completely lost it's depth after going online. Online shooters became hectic pixel hunting, online RPGs became mindless grinding for ***** that is going to be nerfed in 3 months, PvP became an elitist club of who can pay more or get sponsored by some AAA developer to LARP as if their game requires skills to play. PvP as in comparison to real life fighting. Maybe not a good example but still.. everything turns to ***** online. Online is anti-Midas
And doubting the randomization of a computer program versus human-operated handshuffling is such a human thing to do, isn't it?
If you have undeniable truth as in actual code in the MTGO randomizer and share it I will listen. If not my opinion has just as much validity. And I am not going to argue that point, its a draw, move on.
I think it would be a lot easier to prove that people aren't properly shuffling their paper decks on a person by person case. I really think this is the case for MTG in particular where you may shuffle your library multiple times in the first few turns of the game. Not everyone does the recommended seven riffle shuffles. I've seen a lot of people do useless pile shuffling.
The fact they ban one outright in EDH/Commander is one thing, but the entire mechanic is broken by design.
Anything that provides you a free extra card is something the game cannot handle, as any deck that does not get that extra card has to make up for that disadvantage by being even more broken to justify that disadvantage, which kinda forces everyone into building decks that can use Companions.
And they are not really just an extra card, they are mostly "combo" pieces, and a combo deck that can guarantee to have its parts doesnt even need tutors, and historically tutors did break the game in terms of combo decks as they made them sufficiently easy to find the pieces.
If you have one pieces guaranteed 100% of the time its just not playing the game, its doing the very same over and over, with no "chance" involved.
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Chances are that Companion will simply be banned, the entire mechanic removed.
If not than the "good" Companions will be banned at least as Companion, but thats a extra rule again, so the cards might just be banned entirely (like the one in Commander is just banned, not just as Companion).
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In Standard chances are very high that at least the UB and the WB one will be banned.
In Vintage and Legacy they produce very annoying problems too, especially with Lion's Eye Diamond, so chances are that either the Companions are banned or LED will be.
In Vintage with power especially "restriction" wont really do anything to the companion and having it with stuff like moxes and especially Black Lotus produces an incredible annoying play pattern, its absolutely not fun at all.
The game simply cannot handle these idiotic cards in a reasonable way.
----
Mutate and the other mechanics in the set are "ok".
Lots of stuff is pushed in powerlevels for what you would expect for a common/uncommon.
Most if not all sets they design in the last decade of magic follow a pretty simplistic pattern of "design".
They want all 10 color combinations to be somehow presented in each set, so each color combination gets a "theme" and cards support that theme pretty hard, so you really want to play that theme to make the card work as it should be working.
Especially a bunch of rares get upgraded in Limited to bomb-status thats outright game breaking. Lots of limited formats had such bombs, but mostly just 1 in the entire set, or a cycle that was particularly pushed (Titans for example, or Planeswalkers).
Currently they put in Mythic rare cards for constructed that are pushed for constructed to levels that in limited demand a removal immediately, or the card will burry the opponent and dominate whatever board they have.
They do all that so actual playing well matters less, and weaker players win more often just because the one bomb will do all the trick and win the game on its own. It is how it is, playing particularly bad still loses the game, so thats "ok".
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Standard offers a bunch of brew decks, but it all orbits around a bunch of "mythic rares" that are so pushed that you just have to play them and build decks around them to make the deck viable at all.
Standard is filled with such "op" cards in lots of colors and its almost impossible to build a playable deck that can compete without including them.
And they tend to be so good that theres almost no reason not to play them at all.
T3f3ri (Teferi, Time Raveler) for example, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, the now banned Oko, Thief of Crowns.
Some "combos" are just too much forced, like Witch's Oven and Cauldron Familiar. Stuff like that is "in your face" combos.
Fires of Invention produces really ugly decks too, the play-pattern of these decks is just awful as its the same stuff of pushed cards over and over and over again.
With these pushed cards around brews have a super hard time competing.
And with current design philosophy that will not change at all.
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For brew decks "casual" Commander is pretty much the only place to be.
Any other constructed format that wants to be competitive will always be forced to use the cards they pushed to levels that demand to see play, as weaker stuff simply doesnt perform as well.
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Online gaming became a stress relief for an office rat, who never even played any games before online gaming hit the market and allowed the office rat to play at his desk or from his laptop or mobile. Online gaming is not even gaming in it's true sense, because you don't see your opponent. You're basically playing with a screen. There is no people behind that screen. It's just code. You're just buying what would happen on the screen.
Do you get it? They don't want to play the game with anyone. They just want to buy a certain guaranteed outcome. They want to pay an easy 100 and immediately get their fix. It's just like drugs.
So.. here is your answer why they make all these idiotic sets. The previous blue deck meta with something like Agent of Treachery etc etc is total cancer. There are many cards like that. Completely retarded drain decks, completely retarded counter decks, completely retarded everything. Because this is what sells.
Office rats will pay their 100 anal bucks and cheese their way to mythic. Everyone else is there just because they want to try. But they are not going to stay for long.. but who cares, there will always be a ton of newbies who will come and serve as cannon fodder for the butthurt whales to feed on.
Online gaming killed gaming. Everything became pay to win. Even titles that used to be subscription based are changing to F2P format because it's so easy to milk the retarded whale with inferiority complex. The temptation to go online is impossible to fight. Just compare.. an offline game wouldn't make more then a couple of millions if it's really good and high quality. An online game of even *****ty quality will bring you millions by default, sometimes billions.
This is why people are so upset with online gaming. Fanboys would say that people cry because they are not skilled enough to play, but the reality is that it's all plainly PAY TO WIN.
They are just selling drugs to butthurt losers. Pay 100USD -> get your fix(victories). Don't want to pay?? Boo hoo hoo.
I mean games ended on turn 1 with some regularity with Urza's Saga. How many games are doing that now?
I don't really know how much Ikoria is actually breaking things but if you are going to say that what we currently have is somehow worse than some of the worst things in the history of the game, I don't think I can really take you seriously. Sure, it might be bad (I don't think so beyond me not liking Companion) but I don't think it is nearly as bad as Combo Winter or Affinity.
To be frank, the number of "tournament players" back in Urzas Saga time was MINIMAL.
Barely you had players that even knew about the decks and had the deck in full , thats only the top of the iceberg that did that (and it resulted in hilarious counter strategies, like a guy with 2000 islands in his deck and nothing else, and the Tolarian Academy combo deck could not win against that).
The entire combo-winter deal is quite overblown, as the number of people was just so small that even bothered playing at the time.
And given that they had pretty much 0 actual testing going on back then, the cards that produced the biggest offenders had to go (and they where fairly quickly banned for the time) , then you had a working format with reasonable decks around.
Right now you have a lot more people that are supposed to test cards and engineer a format around them (which is bad on its own right, as the entire experience isnt about building cool decks anymore, its more like the testing and design team build decks in the future league they are testing in and tweak the cards for these decks, then they let players "rebuild" these decks, rarely if ever can someone build a deck that isnt engineered to be a deck, which was absolutely the case in the past, as magic designed cards more card by card basis and deck builders figured out how to make them work together, that brew-feeling is totally gone for good, which is supposed to give them more control of a metagame, but they show again and again that they fail to archive that, and cards still need to get banned, which they should avoid like the plague, but they even embrace it, as "op" cards sell a lot of boxes, till the card is banned).
----
In the past to see decks you had to play in tournaments, read articles or get seriously involved with friends.
Today its much more digital and way way less paper magic.
You get so many streamers and lots of people that just copy decks all over the place, and if something is "broken" it drifts way faster to the surface and takes over instantly.
In the paper time of magic, you had to wait for a Pro-Tour event to see people bring their A-game and the secret-tech decks, thats not happening anymore at all, its like christmas is now every day and everyone spoils the secrets way in advance.
Also for cards themselves, especially with digital, people just get the cards they need. Theres no actual trading, it took some time to get cards, or you traded in a group of friends for the paper cards you wanted for a tournament. Today people just order the cards all on their own.
And thats just constructed.
For "limited" it was even more brutal.
You had to play in paper, you drafted maybe 1 time a week at an FNM, very rarely people draft more often in paper.
People that where good at playing limited where really rare, only very dedicated players, anybody else simply didnt play limited formats often enough to get even close (so the "good" players in lots of regions where much much better players than almost anybody else).
The entire format of limited required more understanding of the card pool and building a proper deck, as sets included so many "dead" cards, the fail case of a draft was much higher, especially as the sets mechanics did not throw themselves at you like they do today (some sets barely had any "theme" of color combinations, you actually just had to draft a proper deck, no theme at all).
And with slower decks in general, mistakes mattered much more as getting back with vanilla creatures is much harder than mechanics that help you refuel.
You could "snow-ball" a game much less easy then today.
Today you get so much limited content and so much digital drafts all over the place and at every time of the day, that this changed drastically.
The difference between the players is much smaller and you get way way more of them.
----
It all changed a long time ago.
Its massively different today.
For the better and often for the worse.
There for sure is no way to go back anymore, so its inevitable to adjust to the time.
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Wizards of the Coast isn't going to be the same company they once were before partnering with Hasbro in 1998 once working individually as it's own company again. The Paper Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game Industry has changed dramatically compared to how it was before where they're going to have to adapt to the current changes happening as they've already turned their backs against the MTG community that got them where they are today where the only thing they care about is money but with Papa Hasbro gone they're a much smaller company compared to what they were. It's equivalent to Disney and AT&T breaking up with Marvel and DC Comics as they really need each other in order to survive. Physical Media is dead whether we like it or not as we're being thrust into a Digital Media.
"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
People passed that **** over as chaff at first.
Stop being net-deckers. Look at every single card in standard and look at how new cards react to it. If you are net-decking people are already side boarding against you and you are already behind the curve. It is acceptable to start with a net decking base but by the time the list gets to you it has already been seen by your would be intelligent opponents and may not be built for your meta (server/LGS).
I’m only seeing one companion out there that should be cause for alarm if you aren’t running removal.
Mutate will only ever be up to decent because removal exists.
Also if you are so worried about that companion, the is the anti-companion/commander card in the same set. Drannith Magistrate.
This isn’t like the days of Urza’s Saga were you went in blind to a draft. We know the cards spoiled before they hit standard.
I know what to expect by analyzing all the cards but know what colors to lean towards by analyzing the commons.
You can’t tell me Gates and mono red burn aren’t viable. Know the meta, save your lunch money and only when you have triple checked your research, then get what you need ( which sounds like you need to get removal).
This is tough love.
Maybe you should get out of competitive play, then? Or at least find a playgroup that's more your style. I hated playing at the stores around me a decade ago, everyone was way too intense, way too competitive, and way too invested in spending a ton of money to win (and laughing at those who didn't). It turned me off the game entirely for a long time until I found people who actually made playing fun. The intense netdeck power players can still do their thing, I'm happily away from them.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Then, you come back thinking things may have moved on a bit? They haven't, you then fall into a coma and tea spills all over your lap...
I wasn't talking about competitiveness. I was talking about how WoTC are simply after the money and are creating completely retarded OP card and combos that actually make it impossible to even try to compete. Buying a victory is not a competition. If you're allowed to bring a gun to a knife fight.. isn't competetive.
I'm just saying that WoTC is building a road to nowhere. Just like username Card Slinger said - they are just stacking up on cash before selling the company.
I really like MTG, the art and casual play. I thought MTG-A would be a good game.. but it's very disappointing. I play black and white decks. I don't use OP cards on purpose. I don't like it. It kills the spirit of the game. Most OP cards of today should even exist. They kill the game. Each match with an OP decks on each side becomes fly or die situation, until who is going to be the first to get their OP combos out. It doesn't make any sense to play like that. It's not competitive. It's childish and simply boring.
Even tho I really like when I whip another OP whale's ass with my basically basic B&W deck that has only 2 mythics in it. And zero OP cards. I just use combinations of cards to make myself last and heal out. I play defensively and I only have 4 creatures in my deck. My winning % is still over 50% and I hit platinum every time, but to reach mythic level I'd have to use OP cards, which I don't want to use.
The ironic part is that even if I try playing unranked games, still OP retards would be there to get their pwnz victory.
The problem is that by going online.. there was only one choice to make a lot of money - milk the degenerates with inferiority complex. And it works. Unfortunately at the cost of quality, good content and general player base toxicity, which in the past 10 years became total cancer.
I'm kinda whining.. didn't mean to pass off as a crybaby.
Yeah I agree. We are literally being drafted as digital toy solders serving those who pay to be generals
Yes I agree, everyone was there to win, so it was rather toxic.
I mitigated that by only going for pre-releases... there are still some toxic people, but less.
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881
Oooh Dicey:
[dice=1]100[/dice]
Also, why the ***k are scrying spells and card drawing spells 'instants'?
I'm experimenting with 100-150 card B&W deck variations, and what I find very surprising is how often I would get same cards in a row or even in a dealt hand. What are the chances of pulling 3 same cards in a row or with 1 card of each other? It's not even the issue with mana draw, it's how the whole deck is shuffled. It seems the mechanics of the game makes certain preferences towards certain cards in your deck, which get shuffled on "top" of the deck. This is an easy way to control win rates. Sometimes you have very nice first draw or nice 1st mulligan draw, but then there are these times when you just see how the shuffler gives you ridiculous unplayable draws. I would get it if this happened rarely, but it literally happens at least 1 time out of three. Obviously during these bad draws the chances to win the match at very low. Then you add in the equation those people who play OP-cheat-combo decks and here is your answer why this happens.
The shuffler itself acts as a paywall. You either invest money so you can build an OP deck(basically anything that has blue combos) or you will suffer from being gated by the shuffler. It was proven that even online poker shuffling algorithm is often tilted towards giving good initial draws to several people at the table, so everyone would buy in and be encouraged to raise bets, but then in the end the shuffler would produce a highly unlikely end result, when one player would win at very low odds. One may sit with a full house and another player would end up with a flush. The chances of that happening at one table, playing 1 52 card deck are very low, but that situation would happen in online pocket all the time, very often. Something like every 10-20 games you will see a similar situation in online poker. This is done so the players wouldn't lose interest and keep playing the game. So by default, it's not a fair game but a rigged simulation. I assume something similar is happening with MTGO.
You see, the problem here is that when people pay online, they expect quick results. They want to pay and win now. But if the shuffler was truly random, then those who paid would have very high chance of being "luck screwed". Some guy with a simple combo deck may defeat a pay-to-win player and that would cause butthurt, resulting in p2w players quitting and switching to online games where p2w players are well cared for by the shuffler. WoTC may claim they use a fair shuffler, but practical evidence says otherwise.
Having said that, I still have to admit that it's possible to get 50%+ win rate if one cares enough to work on his deck or just copy others. It's just the game is tilted towards caring after paying customers. The more you pay, the better you will have it. 100%. The same is true about any online game that uses F2P + micro-transactions model
That is why my MTGO play at this time (while I have MORE time to play online) is practically zero. Its try to beat the "randomizer", try to beat the paywall/pay to play algorithms with a strong budget deck, then try to compete with the most expensive decks in the format. No one plays the "for fun"rooms. Its toxic and I am wanting less part of it all the time.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I think that's mostly a factor of finding games more quickly if everyone just consistently uses one room, which by default wouldn't be the "for fun" room.
And doubting the randomization of a computer program versus human-operated handshuffling is such a human thing to do, isn't it?
Well, I still enjoy it when I find some guy who isn't OP and we can actually have an interesting match, instead of nuking with OP card combos.
The problem is as you said.. not many people want to play "for fun" and enjoy the game. These games attract so many people with psychological problems who want to win, doesn't matter what it costs them. That's why online gaming took off in the first place and quickly drifted towards anal P2W schemes. If you remember, at first when gaming went online around 2002-3, immediately it was infested with people who looked for flaws in game design and code that could be used for an "unfair" advantage. The game producers noticed it and thought about a way how to monetize the demand for "cheating\hacks".
Online gaming simply doesn't work on a mass scale because there are way too many butthurt losers who would do anything to win, cheat, hack, lie, etc.
Of course gaming companies could fight cheaters, quite easily, but that would mean losing an opportunity to "milk" other people's insanity. Gaming cheaters are insane, therefore very easy to manipulate. Thus, we have all these pay-to-win games. There is no purpose in finding a cheat in a game, it's much easier to just pay-to-win. So that's what they do. Also, in some cases, gaming companies would sell cheats to their own games via seemingly unrelated(to them) companies, as in cases with World of Tanks\Warships, where you can actually buy cheating software for a monthly subscription of $20, which is a lot, considering that they have a stable player base in hundreds of thousands. Every online game I know has this problem - cheaters and cheating software.
So.. no wonder MTGO is turning to selling cheat cards and *****ting out a new "OP" set every couple of months.
All we can do is face this reality. Nothing we can do about it. Market rules. If cheating brings in the money, then that's what it will be.
The age of interesting games died when we went online. Majority of people shouldn't even be allowed near a computer, but now they can all use it. Now all these people can reach you and poison your life.
Also, as you can see WoTC are not creating any UI which would allow the players to at least remove players which use certain cards from being paired up with. This would be the most simplest way to solve this problem. You could just remove the cards that you don't want to play against and that's it. Then OP players would only be playing each other.. and getting very upset because they wouldn't be winning all the time.
You see.. how "fair" gaming doesn't work in this model? This is because MTGO was built and intended for those who want to cheat, pay and win.
One of my LGSs used to hold video game tournaments every Saturday evening where players would bring their own arcade sticks and flat screen TV's just to play Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Mortal Kombat 11, and other fighting games on PS4 and XBox One. With the current quarantine I imagine most of them are playing online like everyone else is right now. I've always been more of a fan of the on the couch experience by going to your friends' house to play video games since there's something about the experience you don't get from playing online like If you're playing Fortnite or Overwatch.
"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
If you have undeniable truth as in actual code in the MTGO randomizer and share it I will listen. If not my opinion has just as much validity. And I am not going to argue that point, its a draw, move on.
Its getting harder and harder to do that. MTGO is the single and only game I play online, I do my console playing "offline" against the AI even though I am connected.
I was there at that time and now you mention it, yep it was starting then.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Now imagine if MagicTG cards were all hand printed by wood prints and there was an actual balance and lore behind it? How many of these sets could you sell? And how much it would cost? And most importantly, would a master create cheating cards?
It could be possible to achieve such quality in gaming if gaming remained an art, like it was prior to online\mobile explosion. It's very ironic how card games, while initially requiring a lot of skills to play and handle, became so trivial. All other games too.. completely lost it's depth after going online. Online shooters became hectic pixel hunting, online RPGs became mindless grinding for ***** that is going to be nerfed in 3 months, PvP became an elitist club of who can pay more or get sponsored by some AAA developer to LARP as if their game requires skills to play. PvP as in comparison to real life fighting. Maybe not a good example but still.. everything turns to ***** online. Online is anti-Midas
I think it would be a lot easier to prove that people aren't properly shuffling their paper decks on a person by person case. I really think this is the case for MTG in particular where you may shuffle your library multiple times in the first few turns of the game. Not everyone does the recommended seven riffle shuffles. I've seen a lot of people do useless pile shuffling.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
-Retired Decks-
UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver