I'm curious to know from all of you who attend FNM... what was the attitude of players yesterday? Were there more people playing?
Now that we have had a few days to reflect and temper our knee jerk reactions, how do people feel about the future of standard?
I haven't played standard since a little before the Emrakul ban. Part of the reason is that I don't have a ton of time to follow MTG news. I always considered standard to be the "Safe" constructed format. I thought as long as I knew what the rotation schedules were, I should be able to put together 75 cards using the current product and play at FNM or other events. This has increasingly become not true.
For those of you who follow standard closely, what are the chances that another current card will need to be banned to keep the format healthy? Is there a card(s) right now that we should be looking out for?
Deckbuilding is one of the best parts of Magic. If you're going to "waste time" building decks, it must also be waste of time to play at tournaments
Um... no. To equate deck building to playing is wrong. And not everyone likes to deck build because not everyone has all that time... ie. People with kids? They want to be able to actually PLAY the game...
Jeez, I swear, I see more toxicity from the "anti-netdecker" crowd than from any netdecker...
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This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
Everyone is hating on WotC for screwing up in one way or another. Stop pointing the finger people. The problem is US. What could have a stopped copycat? A good control deck. Us," I hate control, its no fun to play against!". Okay, how about some better removal in general like bolts and doom blades? Us," then it just becomes modern and everyone has 4 bolts in every deck, and I hate having my bombs get hit by cheap removal!!". Okay, how about a fast aggro deck? "monastery swiftspear was broken, just like goblin guide!! I hate having to wrath the board, especially if I have to pay 5 for it!!. Okay, copycat is a 4 color deck, how about we attack their landbase to slow them down enough to survive? Us," Land destruction is the worst thing that ever existed in magic besides counterspell!! I hate LD, its not fun because I don't get to play my deck perfectly on curve and just net deck everything!!!". Fine!! Then what do you suggest? Us," Ban the DECK, but ban it on my terms when I want or I will tell you all about how incompetent you are!!". Maro was right about giving us exactly what we want; battle cruiser magic. We pretend we want something different, until we get it. And that's why copycat was able to flourish
The more relevant topic here isn't why Copycat flourished but rather the fact that it took so long for it be banned AFTER THE FACT. In the early-mid days of this Standard, many of us underestimated the Copycat combo, telling ourselves, "Just hold a Shock." Well that's what we did, and yet Copycat was almost 50% of the meta. Not to mention they have an answer for everything you could possibly think of.
Shock? They have Negate
Authority of the Consuls? They got Natural State
Thalia? They got every Red burn spell you can imagine?
Negate? They have Dispel
Unfortunately, you can't win a game by just holding answers. While you're anxiously waiting for the Copycat combo to go off, you're getting beat down by Chandra or a million Thopters and not wanting to spend the two removals/counterspells in your hand just yet. Then when you lose, your opponent trolls you further by telling you that he actually boarded out Saheeli Rai The bottom line is that creating a deck that can consistently beat Copycat is difficult to the point where it is not even worth trying to, especially when you also gotta watch out for Mardu Vehicles.
Secondly, you assume that WoTC bases its decisions purely on our feedback; they do not. There's definitely much overlap, but their goal as a company is to make money, which is the not always the same as ours, which is having fun at our local game stores and taking home GP wins. More importantly, many pro players including long-time veterans of the game who have written about the subject have all tried to solve the puzzle of how to beat Copycat; the fact they couldn't do it shows you that the Copycat combo is more likely than not a reflection of WoTC and not our expectations for Standard. Wizards has gone on record to admit that the Copycat combo was a mistake (although evidence would suggest that it was actually intentional) and waited until the end to fix it. We never even asked for a Felidar Guardian, and WoTC has no one to blame but themselves for designing a ridiculous card that we never asked for that ultimately drove Standard into the ground.
Everyone is hating on WotC for screwing up in one way or another. Stop pointing the finger people. The problem is US. What could have a stopped copycat? A good control deck. Us," I hate control, its no fun to play against!". Okay, how about some better removal in general like bolts and doom blades? Us," then it just becomes modern and everyone has 4 bolts in every deck, and I hate having my bombs get hit by cheap removal!!". Okay, how about a fast aggro deck? "monastery swiftspear was broken, just like goblin guide!! I hate having to wrath the board, especially if I have to pay 5 for it!!. Okay, copycat is a 4 color deck, how about we attack their landbase to slow them down enough to survive? Us," Land destruction is the worst thing that ever existed in magic besides counterspell!! I hate LD, its not fun because I don't get to play my deck perfectly on curve and just net deck everything!!!". Fine!! Then what do you suggest? Us," Ban the DECK, but ban it on my terms when I want or I will tell you all about how incompetent you are!!". Maro was right about giving us exactly what we want; battle cruiser magic. We pretend we want something different, until we get it. And that's why copycat was able to flourish
It's not us, it's Rosewater's slavish devotion to focus testing for decision making. They don't trust the R&D team to make the game the best it can be, so they run endless focus groups and try to appeal to the broadest base possible. The problem is, people don't necessarily know what they like. To paraphrase Malcolm Gladwell, when people are asked what kind of coffee they like, they choose a rich dark roast. When you look at what kind of coffee people actually buy, it's milky and weak. Wizards needs to knock off the focus testing and start letting R&D do their jobs.
This. It's Maro thinking he's smart and going to make the company money and instead tanking everything.
If you don't like to brew and netdeck good for you. Yay, someone else thinks and you do. Yoda would be proud.
Don't judge people who do like to do some work themselves. I brew. If brewing is pointless (copycat legal) then I don't play. Copycat was not fun. It was not good for competitive or casual or FNM play. Just because you bought some Saheelis doesn't mean the whole of standard should continue to be a dumpsterfire and bleed players (oops I mean buyers).
Of course it's not easy to build competitive decks. If the game is designed properly there should be room for you to work within the meta of your area and finegal within the aggro-control-midrange formula to hit the sweet spot. I also don't have the time to play every week and know the meta but that's ok. What's not ok is knowing the copycat and vehicles ARE the meta and the guys who 'just bought the deck and aren't sure how to sideboard' are going to run the field because Maro and friends SCREWED EVERYTHING UP.
They should have banned dirtykitty before it was release when they got feedback it was broke and metawarping. They failed.
They should be concentrating on making a balanced fun game and not making 'cards people like to buy' as Maro put it.
They should STOP LISTENING to people and just make MTG:the Gathering as they have for MANY years and not MTG:the Creaturing as Maro and company think will make them more money because they have broken a perfectly good game.
If your local FNM is dead because copycat is gone it was sick and needed the surgery.
What else needs to go? Vehicles pushed too far are broken. Heart is just the wrong side of not ok but at least BG can make it sad.
Faster rotation was supposed to be in place right now so 2x OP Gideon was not the plan. At least the meta is opened up for a while though right?
Brewers are the lifeblood of standard and without them no one would even bother playing constructed. If brewers can't even get themselves to make anything because a card gets in the way of generating great decks then that card has to go.
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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!
To be fair FNM is about as soft and low-risk a competitive environment as there is so it's not like you need to go test a deck for weeks in preparation. FNM IS the testing environment.
Though I can understand, with the cost of Magic, people not wanting to buy in to a deck that isn't proven. You can wax on about how great it is for people to brew or whatever but the fact is this game is freaking expensive and not everyone wants to drop hundreds of dollars on decks that may not even be good against a brand new metagame.
To be fair FNM is about as soft and low-risk a competitive environment as there is so it's not like you need to go test a deck for weeks in preparation. FNM IS the testing environment.
Though I can understand, with the cost of Magic, people not wanting to buy in to a deck that isn't proven. You can wax on about how great it is for people to brew or whatever but the fact is this game is freaking expensive and not everyone wants to drop hundreds of dollars on decks that may not even be good against a brand new metagame.
Sure FNM should be about trying out things and having fun... which is where WotC will make their money because people having fun spend money.
It is also correct to say that standard costs too much. New Gideon is $25 right now and isn't close to being as good as Gidigod Ally of OverpoweredMaroness.
$25 per copy for an unproven card that shows promise but isn't as good as the old version STILL good for a long while. That's broke.
The problem that irks people is the 1 or 2 that show up with CoCo week after week (or vehicles or copycat) and take all the credit or packs home each time because they netdecked. it is the nature of the beast but that's what you have to test against if you have time to test. And when the decks that win everything utterly demolish the field... you push everyone else out. It completely stifles creativity and complexity of the environment... which is bad for everyone.
Am I the only one who feels like someone should get fired over this? MaRo keeps talking about how the job is so hard, yards yadda. Like other people don't have jobs that are hard? Maybe it's time to change a few people. I actually like MaRo a lot but some of the Wizards team maybe should cycle out.
Egregious errors of the last year or two:
- 2 card infinite combo in block, and then 3 months to ban it.
- typo on Monarch card that got printed in Conspiracy (this one bugged me a lot)
- Failure to print Damnation in FTV: Annihilation (story keeps changing as to why...)
- Terrible Battle for Zendikar set/environment/mechanics
- Introducing colorless mana symbol halfway through a block
- Developping Smuggler's Copter. Why not make it 2/3 and Sky Skiff 3/3? MaRo keeps talking about how rates can be strictly better but it this one was flagrant and OP.
There are more that are more questionable but I think all of the above speak to Wizards' current incompetence. Especially missing a 2-card infinite combo in block, then not banning it, then banning it 2 days later. Three bad decisions from one situation. In any real business, whoever was in charge would be reprimanded/canned. Wizards might get away with it because they're a mobopply. I hope there's some accountability for this debacle.
Am I the only one who feels like someone should get fired over this? MaRo keeps talking about how the job is so hard, yards yadda. Like other people don't have jobs that are hard? Maybe it's time to change a few people.
Why are you trying to debate a company on whether it should fire some of its own employees over an issue you don't know the exact origin of or the extent of the damages that have and will occur?
Like it or not, we are far from knowing everything about the design and development processes, especially concerning how things went down with recent blocks, and that leaves us in a position where it's difficult to propose changes.
It IS us. Stop trying to lay blame where it doesn't belong.
WotC has control over every relevant part of this. It's their mistake. If WotC is just doing what we say we think will be good, then that's their mistake too for doing that.
Bad things the community does doesn't make the problem- the game should be designed so that the players get what they want by doing what they want. It can only create separate problems or a problem worse that could have ended up better.
a) Bring back core sets
b) Reprint in Core sets any random answer or mechanic that doesn't fit with any storyline, but balance the game, that's what core sets are for.
c) stop with Masters set instead
d) no more bannings
e) case closed, people happy, standard works again
It IS us. Stop trying to lay blame where it doesn't belong.
Thanks for the compelling argument, you sure did convince me that a multimillion dollar company that has been producing a game for almost 25 years and has complete control over the production and development of said game actually has no responsibility for bad decisions that they make
Am I the only one who feels like someone should get fired over this? MaRo keeps talking about how the job is so hard, yards yadda. Like other people don't have jobs that are hard? Maybe it's time to change a few people.
If Maro is whining his job is hard perhaps he needs a demotion. WotC is actually a niche company which has been purchased by a monster that likely has no idea (or care) for how the company functions except requiring that they increase revenue.
The entire direction of design and balance is a travesty and with the mistakes around the cat ban it's impossible to deduce that they fully understand the error of their ways.
It feels like WotC needs a new director who can compartmentalize design from story from balance. There's too much interplay, and they need to get back to the way they've made the game for so many years prior to BfZ. Merchandise, Licencing, and product sales all get better when you make a solid game.
The question is what will make them realize they need to completely reverse the new design course?
I believe WoTC's new policy is to make sure that every color can enjoy the exciting gameplay mechanic of making undercosted dudes and then turning them sideways. Clearly the future of magic.
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What's the point in buying this stuff if they ban it? Maybe if they hadn't banned anything, the saheeli/vehicles/emrakul decks could balance each other out or something. I don't know, wishful thinking maybe.
In other words, they didn't know what to play because there were a lot of new decklists to copy online. Players have gotten extraordinarily lazy these past few years when it comes to deckbuilding, which is likely a large part of the reason that Standard has gotten so stale.
That's the same conclusion that I had arrived at myself.
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Trolling Magic since 2000.
I play Standard, EDH, and a very tiny bit of Modern.
Am I the only one who feels like someone should get fired over this? MaRo keeps talking about how the job is so hard, yards yadda. Like other people don't have jobs that are hard? Maybe it's time to change a few people.
If Maro is whining his job is hard perhaps he needs a demotion. WotC is actually a niche company which has been purchased by a monster that likely has no idea (or care) for how the company functions except requiring that they increase revenue.
The entire direction of design and balance is a travesty and with the mistakes around the cat ban it's impossible to deduce that they fully understand the error of their ways.
It feels like WotC needs a new director who can compartmentalize design from story from balance. There's too much interplay, and they need to get back to the way they've made the game for so many years prior to BfZ. Merchandise, Licencing, and product sales all get better when you make a solid game.
The question is what will make them realize they need to completely reverse the new design course?
I don't think Maro was complaining his job was hard, but rather defending the development team.
The design team is doing a fine job right now. It's the development team that is making mistakes left and right. WotC needs to give some competitive wages to incite platinum pro players to come join their development team. Clearly the staff they have now doesn't have what it takes to balance a healthy standard format. I can't remember the last time the format felt healthy. Maybe during FRF? Even then Siege Rhino had dominance.
Ditto...don't want anybody who plays the game for profit being involved in design or development. That's classic conflict of interest and there is already a foul whiff of that coming out of WotC/secondary market/pros connections.
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FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Ditto...don't want anybody who plays the game for profit being involved in design or development. That's classic conflict of interest and there is already a foul whiff of that coming out of WotC/secondary market/pros connections.
Pro players joining development teams would stop being pro players. A number of the developers have come through this way, I think.
Now that we have had a few days to reflect and temper our knee jerk reactions, how do people feel about the future of standard?
I haven't played standard since a little before the Emrakul ban. Part of the reason is that I don't have a ton of time to follow MTG news. I always considered standard to be the "Safe" constructed format. I thought as long as I knew what the rotation schedules were, I should be able to put together 75 cards using the current product and play at FNM or other events. This has increasingly become not true.
For those of you who follow standard closely, what are the chances that another current card will need to be banned to keep the format healthy? Is there a card(s) right now that we should be looking out for?
Um... no. To equate deck building to playing is wrong. And not everyone likes to deck build because not everyone has all that time... ie. People with kids? They want to be able to actually PLAY the game...
Jeez, I swear, I see more toxicity from the "anti-netdecker" crowd than from any netdecker...
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
The more relevant topic here isn't why Copycat flourished but rather the fact that it took so long for it be banned AFTER THE FACT. In the early-mid days of this Standard, many of us underestimated the Copycat combo, telling ourselves, "Just hold a Shock." Well that's what we did, and yet Copycat was almost 50% of the meta. Not to mention they have an answer for everything you could possibly think of.
Shock? They have Negate
Authority of the Consuls? They got Natural State
Thalia? They got every Red burn spell you can imagine?
Negate? They have Dispel
Unfortunately, you can't win a game by just holding answers. While you're anxiously waiting for the Copycat combo to go off, you're getting beat down by Chandra or a million Thopters and not wanting to spend the two removals/counterspells in your hand just yet. Then when you lose, your opponent trolls you further by telling you that he actually boarded out Saheeli Rai The bottom line is that creating a deck that can consistently beat Copycat is difficult to the point where it is not even worth trying to, especially when you also gotta watch out for Mardu Vehicles.
Secondly, you assume that WoTC bases its decisions purely on our feedback; they do not. There's definitely much overlap, but their goal as a company is to make money, which is the not always the same as ours, which is having fun at our local game stores and taking home GP wins. More importantly, many pro players including long-time veterans of the game who have written about the subject have all tried to solve the puzzle of how to beat Copycat; the fact they couldn't do it shows you that the Copycat combo is more likely than not a reflection of WoTC and not our expectations for Standard. Wizards has gone on record to admit that the Copycat combo was a mistake (although evidence would suggest that it was actually intentional) and waited until the end to fix it. We never even asked for a Felidar Guardian, and WoTC has no one to blame but themselves for designing a ridiculous card that we never asked for that ultimately drove Standard into the ground.
This. It's Maro thinking he's smart and going to make the company money and instead tanking everything.
If you don't like to brew and netdeck good for you. Yay, someone else thinks and you do. Yoda would be proud.
Don't judge people who do like to do some work themselves. I brew. If brewing is pointless (copycat legal) then I don't play. Copycat was not fun. It was not good for competitive or casual or FNM play. Just because you bought some Saheelis doesn't mean the whole of standard should continue to be a dumpsterfire and bleed players (oops I mean buyers).
Of course it's not easy to build competitive decks. If the game is designed properly there should be room for you to work within the meta of your area and finegal within the aggro-control-midrange formula to hit the sweet spot. I also don't have the time to play every week and know the meta but that's ok. What's not ok is knowing the copycat and vehicles ARE the meta and the guys who 'just bought the deck and aren't sure how to sideboard' are going to run the field because Maro and friends SCREWED EVERYTHING UP.
They should have banned dirtykitty before it was release when they got feedback it was broke and metawarping. They failed.
They should be concentrating on making a balanced fun game and not making 'cards people like to buy' as Maro put it.
They should STOP LISTENING to people and just make MTG:the Gathering as they have for MANY years and not MTG:the Creaturing as Maro and company think will make them more money because they have broken a perfectly good game.
If your local FNM is dead because copycat is gone it was sick and needed the surgery.
What else needs to go? Vehicles pushed too far are broken. Heart is just the wrong side of not ok but at least BG can make it sad.
Faster rotation was supposed to be in place right now so 2x OP Gideon was not the plan. At least the meta is opened up for a while though 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!
Though I can understand, with the cost of Magic, people not wanting to buy in to a deck that isn't proven. You can wax on about how great it is for people to brew or whatever but the fact is this game is freaking expensive and not everyone wants to drop hundreds of dollars on decks that may not even be good against a brand new metagame.
Sure FNM should be about trying out things and having fun... which is where WotC will make their money because people having fun spend money.
It is also correct to say that standard costs too much. New Gideon is $25 right now and isn't close to being as good as Gidigod Ally of OverpoweredMaroness.
$25 per copy for an unproven card that shows promise but isn't as good as the old version STILL good for a long while. That's broke.
The problem that irks people is the 1 or 2 that show up with CoCo week after week (or vehicles or copycat) and take all the credit or packs home each time because they netdecked. it is the nature of the beast but that's what you have to test against if you have time to test. And when the decks that win everything utterly demolish the field... you push everyone else out. It completely stifles creativity and complexity of the environment... which is bad for everyone.
Egregious errors of the last year or two:
- 2 card infinite combo in block, and then 3 months to ban it.
- typo on Monarch card that got printed in Conspiracy (this one bugged me a lot)
- Failure to print Damnation in FTV: Annihilation (story keeps changing as to why...)
- Terrible Battle for Zendikar set/environment/mechanics
- Introducing colorless mana symbol halfway through a block
- Developping Smuggler's Copter. Why not make it 2/3 and Sky Skiff 3/3? MaRo keeps talking about how rates can be strictly better but it this one was flagrant and OP.
There are more that are more questionable but I think all of the above speak to Wizards' current incompetence. Especially missing a 2-card infinite combo in block, then not banning it, then banning it 2 days later. Three bad decisions from one situation. In any real business, whoever was in charge would be reprimanded/canned. Wizards might get away with it because they're a mobopply. I hope there's some accountability for this debacle.
Why are you trying to debate a company on whether it should fire some of its own employees over an issue you don't know the exact origin of or the extent of the damages that have and will occur?
Like it or not, we are far from knowing everything about the design and development processes, especially concerning how things went down with recent blocks, and that leaves us in a position where it's difficult to propose changes.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
WotC has control over every relevant part of this. It's their mistake. If WotC is just doing what we say we think will be good, then that's their mistake too for doing that.
Bad things the community does doesn't make the problem- the game should be designed so that the players get what they want by doing what they want. It can only create separate problems or a problem worse that could have ended up better.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
a) Bring back core sets
b) Reprint in Core sets any random answer or mechanic that doesn't fit with any storyline, but balance the game, that's what core sets are for.
c) stop with Masters set instead
d) no more bannings
e) case closed, people happy, standard works again
Thanks for the compelling argument, you sure did convince me that a multimillion dollar company that has been producing a game for almost 25 years and has complete control over the production and development of said game actually has no responsibility for bad decisions that they make
If Maro is whining his job is hard perhaps he needs a demotion. WotC is actually a niche company which has been purchased by a monster that likely has no idea (or care) for how the company functions except requiring that they increase revenue.
The entire direction of design and balance is a travesty and with the mistakes around the cat ban it's impossible to deduce that they fully understand the error of their ways.
It feels like WotC needs a new director who can compartmentalize design from story from balance. There's too much interplay, and they need to get back to the way they've made the game for so many years prior to BfZ. Merchandise, Licencing, and product sales all get better when you make a solid game.
The question is what will make them realize they need to completely reverse the new design course?
I don't know if this was said before, but a good company will increase revenue as a consequence of making the customers happy
That's the same conclusion that I had arrived at myself.
I play Standard, EDH, and a very tiny bit of Modern.
My youtube channel, I upload gaming related videos and other videos.
I don't think Maro was complaining his job was hard, but rather defending the development team.
The design team is doing a fine job right now. It's the development team that is making mistakes left and right. WotC needs to give some competitive wages to incite platinum pro players to come join their development team. Clearly the staff they have now doesn't have what it takes to balance a healthy standard format. I can't remember the last time the format felt healthy. Maybe during FRF? Even then Siege Rhino had dominance.
Ditto...don't want anybody who plays the game for profit being involved in design or development. That's classic conflict of interest and there is already a foul whiff of that coming out of WotC/secondary market/pros connections.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Pro players joining development teams would stop being pro players. A number of the developers have come through this way, I think.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice