I thought maybe a belated response to the Coco decks, but yeah it would be oppressive with saheeli and feldar cat. Which goes back to the design team and Play testers for not fixing it before release. Of course they also release flicker effects in standard as well. My thinking was that a 4cmc would slow it down and keep it out of the CoCo's reach.
I thought maybe a belated response to the Coco decks, but yeah it would be oppressive with saheeli and feldar cat. Which goes back to the design team and Play testers for not fixing it before release. Of course they also release flicker effects in standard as well. My thinking was that a 4cmc would slow it down and keep it out of the CoCo's reach.
4 mana would make it unplayable. IMO they banned the wrong card. But yes, design and test teams are without question to blame
The one thing that throws me off about this announcement is the talk of making sure mechanics are balanced. None of the banned cards had an issue because a mechanic itself is flawed; it is that the card itself is pushed. Trample isn't an unbalanced mechanic, but a 10/10 for 1G with trample would be.
Also, I dont see why they arent willing to explore using downsides. I know I know, players feel bad whatever. Then they dont have to use those cards. Downside mechanics dont make sense, downside cards do. Why not a UU counterspell that deals you 3 damage? Sure it is strictly worse than counterspell; so is Cancel. Same with a 4 mana wrath. What about a 4 mana wrath that deals damage to you equal to the amount of creatures destroyed?
Part of the problem was many of us were brought up (from the old days) with Counterspell was the economy verson and the block typicly had a counter spell that costs 1 more with the most "blue" block mecanic tapped on. Same deal with Wrath, Printed forever and most of the time each block had a wrath that was 1-2 more mana with a neat tag on. You had teh basic verson that was cheaper on mana or the fancy version that was themed. Each block ran some over others dependng on the meta. Now if you wanted different counterspell like this for example
Counter essense
UU
Deal 2 damage to target creature if you can't counter Counter essense,
Counter target spell.
This involks thought, useless in a mirror control match, great against agro, question is countering this spell worth maybe destroying my own creature? Not the same as counterspell but different and functional.
Or a wrath that reads
Wrath of Life
WW2
Destroy all creatures they can't regenerate, Each player gains 1 life for each creature destroyed.
Sure we can talk thats an interesting twist that isn't directly weaker, sure I'm game but to print weaker version doesn't really help anyone.
WOTC refuses to accept that powerful spells can be a part of good limited environments. Cube is undoubtedly in the top 5 draft formats ever, if not the best. Good cubes far outstrip even masters sets in terms of power level, and are often more balanced than triple large set environments, with less testing. This is relevent because, in addition to story/setting concerns, the powerful noncreature/removal spells that were previously relegated to core sets are and were likely omitted from large sets due to concerns that they would spoil the draft environment. The overwhelming dogma is that bad removal=good limited. WOTC has clearly expressed that they have had trouble printing these cards since the shift to two set blocks.
Additionally, anyone who follows the mothership development articles has seen how they continuously declare one effect after another is "too strong for standard." They've also powered up creatures and depowered noncreatures under the logic that creatures should be equal in power to spells, but they never asked themselves what the "correct" power balance between creatures and spells is. Maybe having instants/sorceries be more powerful produces better magic environments. It's certainly possible given what's happened to standard recently, and it's almost as if they don't understand that removing a powerful effect can then make another, previously okay effect seem broken. R&D needs a reset on the game on the scale of M10. They need to take a hard look at a lot of the developmental decisions they've made over the past few years, and probably scrap many of them. Hopefully play design will let them do that.
Also, to echo the point many have already made, WOTC should loosen up on determining what's fun and isn't fun. Just because some players respond poorly to things like prison, LD, mill, doesn't mean they should always cost those cards into unplayability. Kamigawa-ravnica standard is often cited as the best standard ever specifically because of its deck diversity.
Has an LD deck every really broken a format? I can't really remember a truly busted LD deck.
LD - and stone rain - is easy to balance. The problem isn't the power level, the problem is that the times it works the game simply isn't fun for the vast majority of players. And not just as in a sense of "this game is boring", but in a sense of "this game is so frustrating I don't want to play anymore today." Why would you push a mechanic that is based upon mana screw? And don't say that the players need to mature or to become more patient - WotC is a business and do not have the capability to fundamentally change human psychology. They have to accept that for the most part and design for it, not against it. Otherwise the game doesn't sell.
why not? its all part of the game. You just have to be careful not to make too many playable versions at once. Rav/Kam's Magnivore decks are good example of using LD without completely overwhelming a format. And players do need to grow the hell up. You dont have to change human psychology because plenty of people are mature enough to take their lumps when they come because frankly, thats just a part of life. We shouldnt be making excuses for the "take my ball and go home" types
There are plenty of lumps present in Magic. There's the simple fact that you win or lose and that certain cards mess with your cards, this upsets people sometimes. However, there's a difference between accepting problems and intentionally embracing them, making them intentionally larger. In the context of LD, mana screw exists. This is a cost of Magic's mana system. LD decks thrive upon causing mana screw intentionally, and WotC has data showing that this, as a critical mass of emotional responses, overall upsets players rather than pleases them. The point of WotC's game design is to evoke a certain emotional response in players which causes them to buy packs. The game exists solely on the fact that this model works. You should understand this distinction and understand how it's important to "cave in" to human psychology in certain respects as a designer. You want people to grow up, but it's such a bafflingly absurd position about a game that, while having a lot of competetive catering, is fundamentally a fantasy hobby game. The professional scene is more indifferent to Magic's lumps, but the lumps still affect the sales, even among pros. Magic is sustained through sales.
So, LD. You want it to be a viable strategy. Why? It's demonstrated again and again that players overall dislike it. What's the gain of it? Only rarely in recent Standard environments have lands been culprit of broken decks. Wolf Run was a problem, for example, but it didn't break the game. In that sense, giving up powerful land destruction is a real cost to their game design. Modern is another story, of course. Another argument for LD is that all strategies should be viable. Well, there's a different argument here. Part of doing good game design is to make it so that the correct strategy to win is also the most fun way to win. A strategy that solely works by disallowing your opponent from even playing any spells - thriving upon players' fundamental disability to efficiently work around mana screw - is probably fun for one player. But how many times have you personally had mana screw and sat there "Oh boy, I so wish WotC has created a mechanic for this to happen to me more consistently"?
Your post just makes me happy you don't actually work on the Magic design team. You say that lumps happen in life too or something, and that's a really weird point to me. "That's just a part of life" is just not an argument here. There are plenty of real parts of life that would be improper for Magic as a component. It's actually kind of absurd. It's a game meant to entertain. Is it a political problem for you that the damn kids today are too carefully treated? Well, sure. Next time you have mana screw, just sit there "Oh boy, I so am experiencing lumps like life. I'm so happy this is helping raising kids properly today. I sure darn wish this hobby card game would do this more often, as that would fundamentally change the problems with the generation today." At least you'll get something out of it. Again, you have to somewhat cave to certain parts of human psychology in order to make your game entertaining. The way you do this depends on the game. Magic's mana system just doesn't mesh well with the land destruction mechanic - nor mana burn, for that matter, which is why they surgically removed that from the game rules.
Those creatures were played because they were the best creatures available, and you have to play creatures in order to win the game (well, most of the time). Desert wasn't played much because other answers to creatures were just that much more powerful. I don't know much about Tim, but Black Knight was probably good because neither Swords to Plowshares nor Terror could hit it, White Knight was part of an Armageddon build, and Hypnotic Specter was overpowered due to being part of a game that had Dark Ritual, meaning it was powerful due to the sheer power of noncreature spells, and the remainder of creatures were similarly powerful due to the interactions of major answers (and riding Armageddon too)
Desert wasn't played because the answers were so powerful back then, also, many players didn't play enough creatures for it to be worth the inclusion, this was due to creatures being a bad card type back then.
You can't just list cards of a different meta as an argument, you have to understand how they interacted with the rest of the game.
I played Geistflame during Innistrad Standard. The card was powerful due to being a meta call. But when I faced the kids in the after school club I worked at, the card was completely dead.
WotC found Desert overtly restrictive of what cards they could reasonably make. Contrary to Geistflame, Desert is a colorless answer that costs no mana to play (requiring a land drop + skipping one mana for one turn is not a very high cost for what it does). Additionally, Desert doesn't go to the grave after you activate it. As such it severely warps what kind of cards are useful in a standard environment. This does not mean that Desert is necessarily overpowered, because it isn't. There's a difference between making a balanced game and making a fun game. Land destruction at cmc 3 is reasonable power level-wise. That doesn't mean it's healthy for the format to reprint Stone Rain, because it does bad things for the meta (for different reasons than Desert does, of course). Yes, they could have printed Desert, but then every creature with 1 toughness (or 2 toughness in a format with weenie tokens) had to have many more resources invested. It's probably possible for WotC to craft an Amonkhet format with Desert, but that requires time, money and effort, and they reasoned it was simply not worth the amount of restrictions it brought to their card designs.
The problem with this argument is current creatures are pretty much all better than Hypnotic Specter.
Go ahead, try beating the BW Zombies list from the PT with a zombie tribal deck from ODY-ONS Standard using the removal from BFZ-AKH instead of Smother, Innocent Blood, Chainer's Edict or Mutilate. Then try again with the appropiate spells and see who's the undead boss.
Save for monsters like Masticore, Morphling and Spiritmonger, creatures used to be pieces of a greater puzzle. Nowadays they're all value engines with superficial synergies making them even better. Nobody is asking for OP spells, people are asking for spells that are adequate to the ridiculous power level creatures and planeswalkers are playing with nowadays.
I don't see how this is a problem with my argument. Most of the creatures back then were awful, and they played the best of them because they naturally were the best, and creatures are usually necessary to win the game. That's what I pointed out. My main problem with the post was the embarassing claim that somehow Desert is a super fun card to add to standard. It wasn't played back then because a) better answers existed and b) not enough creatures were played for it to matter, if we are to trust a quote from MaRo.
My intent of mentioning Desert was not about Desert being a "super fun" card but about the exclusion of Desert in a top down designed set. A flavor designed set that literally screamed to have it included
Desert appeared in Magic's first expansion, Arabian Nights. The card saw some play in tournaments, but was greatly hampered by the fact that so many of the early decks were completely (or almost completely) creatureless. We actually had Desert in early design files but it proved to be a little too powerful to bring back.
Fine, fair enough. But what does this say about the condition of Standard? Let's skip that for a moment.
It's a tough sell to me knowing that AN creatures Camel and Desert Nomad were designed with defensive measures against Desert. Similar abilities could have been used to freeze out Desert i. Amonokhet.. The Invocations could've allowed for the flavor with explicit exclusion from standard (albeit, at less than $1, it would be THE jank card). Even deviate a little from the Buy a Box Promo. Or egads, a Amonkhet based commander product. There wlare/were ways I think they could have handled this with a little more tact.
I've grown to dislike the word "fun" the way it's bandied about on this forum. Millions of people think Super Mario Bros is a fun game, I happen to think Kid Chameleon is more interesting and fun or Viewtiful Joe more challenging, ergo, fun. Fun is a shockingly subjective word that, quite frankly, I'm really surprised that WotC use the term they way it does at all. Do I think Desert is fun? It depends. Do I think it's absolutely flavorful? Without question.
To be frank, this is a "do nothing" announcement meant to make it sound like they are taking action to stop what happened in the last two years. They can't actually stop selling powerful cards like Emrakul, the Promised End or Smuggler's Copter, as they need powerful cards to show up to push sets. The only thing they can do is try to preemptively ban cards, which would be bad for pack openings, or stop printing powerful cards and make everything on the level of commons, with rarity just upping complexity. This would also hurt pack openings and may kill standard entirely. My own thoughts are increase booster packs to 18 cards each in standard, include 3 bonus cards for other formats, and if a card proves too strong for standard shift that card into a bonus card slot and move another one into the main set before they go to the printers. Congratulations, you have a healthy booster pack opening community regardless of how weak the standard is because they get the good cards anyway for other formats like commander or modern.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well, they should stop designing ***** then instead of forcing us to play the ***** they design by not designing anything better.
Then again, we're assuming they didn't absolutely love seeing their Superman Gideon, Ally of Zendikar at the top tables of every tournament since BFZ's launch until AMK PT when it shouldn't have been in Standard anymore.
You need to open aprox. 110 boosters of a large set to open a specific mythic, after all.
Public Mod Note
(Wildfire393):
Warning for Flaming/Trolling
Well, they should stop designing ***** then instead of forcing us to play the ***** they design by not designing anything better.
Then again, we're assuming they didn't absolutely love seeing their Superman Gideon, Ally of Zendikar at the top tables of every tournament since BFZ's launch until AMK PT when it shouldn't have been in Standard anymore.
You need to open aprox. 110 boosters of a large set to open a specific mythic, after all.
Everyone makes mistakes, even WoTCs designers and staff. As much as people bash them for the bad standard they produced the last two years the designers and developers do genuinely desire to make a good game or else they wouldn't last in this kind of industry. It's how the game is being distributed and promoted that is to blame for most of it's troubles. When a company pushes just one format as the pillar of its being and doesn't support any others except in a token gesture, it puts too much pressure on that one pillar to be constantly strong. They also need to find ways to promote better behavior in competitive play to reduce cheating and provide more support to FNM by improving promotional material such as bonus cards for showing up and what not.
If anything, right now the real enemy of MtG is the marketing team and possibly Hasbro itself. This is sort of a pattern that happens with a lot of games when they get big: People always think it can get bigger and then they try to find ways to make the game appeal to more and more people, spreading itself too thin and eventually leading to a major collapse. The game becomes generic, less identifiable, and falls prey to smaller start ups and other games that pull away the audience that used to play it. That's what happened to World of Warcraft after they botched things on Warlords of Draenor and made it like logging into facebook to make progress. Right now, the same thing is happening in MtG with the gatewatch super hero story.
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!
The one thing that throws me off about this announcement is the talk of making sure mechanics are balanced. None of the banned cards had an issue because a mechanic itself is flawed; it is that the card itself is pushed. Trample isn't an unbalanced mechanic, but a 10/10 for 1G with trample would be.
Also, I dont see why they arent willing to explore using downsides. I know I know, players feel bad whatever. Then they dont have to use those cards. Downside mechanics dont make sense, downside cards do. Why not a UU counterspell that deals you 3 damage? Sure it is strictly worse than counterspell; so is Cancel. Same with a 4 mana wrath. What about a 4 mana wrath that deals damage to you equal to the amount of creatures destroyed?
Part of the problem was many of us were brought up (from the old days) with Counterspell was the economy verson and the block typicly had a counter spell that costs 1 more with the most "blue" block mecanic tapped on. Same deal with Wrath, Printed forever and most of the time each block had a wrath that was 1-2 more mana with a neat tag on. You had teh basic verson that was cheaper on mana or the fancy version that was themed. Each block ran some over others dependng on the meta. Now if you wanted different counterspell like this for example
Counter essense
UU
Deal 2 damage to target creature if you can't counter Counter essense,
Counter target spell.
This involks thought, useless in a mirror control match, great against agro, question is countering this spell worth maybe destroying my own creature? Not the same as counterspell but different and functional.
Or a wrath that reads
Wrath of Life
WW2
Destroy all creatures they can't regenerate, Each player gains 1 life for each creature destroyed.
Sure we can talk thats an interesting twist that isn't directly weaker, sure I'm game but to print weaker version doesn't really help anyone.
But... they are already printing weaker versions right now? Like, if all you care about is legacy or vintage I could see where it wouldn't matter, but most people have been saying that standard needs better counterspells and wraths and this would be one day to do that.
The one thing that throws me off about this announcement is the talk of making sure mechanics are balanced. None of the banned cards had an issue because a mechanic itself is flawed; it is that the card itself is pushed. Trample isn't an unbalanced mechanic, but a 10/10 for 1G with trample would be.
Also, I dont see why they arent willing to explore using downsides. I know I know, players feel bad whatever. Then they dont have to use those cards. Downside mechanics dont make sense, downside cards do. Why not a UU counterspell that deals you 3 damage? Sure it is strictly worse than counterspell; so is Cancel. Same with a 4 mana wrath. What about a 4 mana wrath that deals damage to you equal to the amount of creatures destroyed?
Part of the problem was many of us were brought up (from the old days) with Counterspell was the economy verson and the block typicly had a counter spell that costs 1 more with the most "blue" block mecanic tapped on. Same deal with Wrath, Printed forever and most of the time each block had a wrath that was 1-2 more mana with a neat tag on. You had teh basic verson that was cheaper on mana or the fancy version that was themed. Each block ran some over others dependng on the meta. Now if you wanted different counterspell like this for example
Counter essense
UU
Deal 2 damage to target creature if you can't counter Counter essense,
Counter target spell.
This involks thought, useless in a mirror control match, great against agro, question is countering this spell worth maybe destroying my own creature? Not the same as counterspell but different and functional.
Or a wrath that reads
Wrath of Life
WW2
Destroy all creatures they can't regenerate, Each player gains 1 life for each creature destroyed.
Sure we can talk thats an interesting twist that isn't directly weaker, sure I'm game but to print weaker version doesn't really help anyone.
But... they are already printing weaker versions right now? Like, if all you care about is legacy or vintage I could see where it wouldn't matter, but most people have been saying that standard needs better counterspells and wraths and this would be one day to do that.
The quoted reasoning that has been bubbling up is that strong removal is toxic to the limited format and draft, much like strong counter spells and walling out.
This is why I dislike market testing, though. That information is coming from a sample of volunteer players that fit some predisposed profile. In a hobby game like this getting the right people for those tests is difficult as many of us don't ever come out of the woodwork to communicate so to speak.
Basically, they've been getting bad information for years.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Just doing a little information add (not counter arguing you here), just demonstrating what WotC thinks, from Maro's latest article:
As I talked about during the preview weeks, Desert was in the design file for a while but was removed. In that article, I said it was removed because it was "too powerful," but that actually is a bit misleading. It was removed because it wasn't fun. It, for example, majorly impacted the ability to attack with low-toughness creatures (the lower the rarity of the card, the more problematic). Keeping it in warped the entire Standard environment around it. We didn't believe that would lead to something enjoyable for the players, so we removed it and made different lands with the Desert subtype.
I just wonder who the business people at Wizards are. Lot's of smart, nice people who are passionate about Magic. But where is the experience in running a company. I'm looking at Magic people on LinkedIn, and I'm just not seeing the impressive backgrounds you'd like to see. Where are the Harvard MBA's with brand management experience at P&G, or strategy consulting experience at McKinsey. You've got Amazon and Microsoft in town, where are the people with 5 year's project management experience to come in and lead these teams.
You can have as many smart people as you want, but without the processes to get things done correctly you're bound to have mistakes happen. And Magic, despite being in my opinion the best game of all time, has been horrifically mismanaged almost since the beginning.
Has an LD deck every really broken a format? I can't really remember a truly busted LD deck.
LD - and stone rain - is easy to balance. The problem isn't the power level, the problem is that the times it works the game simply isn't fun for the vast majority of players. And not just as in a sense of "this game is boring", but in a sense of "this game is so frustrating I don't want to play anymore today." Why would you push a mechanic that is based upon mana screw? And don't say that the players need to mature or to become more patient - WotC is a business and do not have the capability to fundamentally change human psychology. They have to accept that for the most part and design for it, not against it. Otherwise the game doesn't sell.
The point is when you are bored with a greedy 3/4 colour aggro deck winning in a format, there will be an answer to it if it gets too good- that may involve a mono red aggro deck boarding in/main decking some landkill. It might be boring, but hey, it might be less boring than "3 months of Mardu Vehicles" or "3 months of Emrakul". The problem is without any avenues beyond PWs and critters the formats are solved instantly and nobody has anywhere to go to reverse engineer a meta deck. In order to have a shifting equilibrium in a format you need handkill, landkill, taxes et al. Just imagine 8 hal decent stone rain effects in a format with Emrakul. It is about having options for players to get answers to any dominant strategy. If your only viabvle answers are critters and planeswalkers then as soon as you have found a couple of shells you have a stagnant format. Deck relying on the bin too much?Oops no bin hate. Deck being greedy on mana....no land hate. Without these constraining things you simply don't have an ecosystem of decks and the result is the same- players quit anyway. The difference is plenty of players leaving due to 3 months of Emrakul is understandable. Players who only want to throw PWs and dudes....not so much, and not a big loss for the game if they go, because they would probably rage quit the moment any control deck turns up, regardless of whether it is land kill or pillow for or counterspell based. Nobody likes being controlled out of a match. Remember players can always scoop when likely beaten the same as they would to combos going off.
Has an LD deck every really broken a format? I can't really remember a truly busted LD deck.
LD - and stone rain - is easy to balance. The problem isn't the power level, the problem is that the times it works the game simply isn't fun for the vast majority of players. And not just as in a sense of "this game is boring", but in a sense of "this game is so frustrating I don't want to play anymore today." Why would you push a mechanic that is based upon mana screw? And don't say that the players need to mature or to become more patient - WotC is a business and do not have the capability to fundamentally change human psychology. They have to accept that for the most part and design for it, not against it. Otherwise the game doesn't sell.
The point is when you are bored with a greedy 3/4 colour aggro deck winning in a format, there will be an answer to it if it gets too good- that may involve a mono red aggro deck boarding in/main decking some landkill. It might be boring, but hey, it might be less boring than "3 months of Mardu Vehicles" or "3 months of Emrakul". The problem is without any avenues beyond PWs and critters the formats are solved instantly and nobody has anywhere to go to reverse engineer a meta deck. In order to have a shifting equilibrium in a format you need handkill, landkill, taxes et al. Just imagine 8 hal decent stone rain effects in a format with Emrakul. It is about having options for players to get answers to any dominant strategy. If your only viabvle answers are critters and planeswalkers then as soon as you have found a couple of shells you have a stagnant format. Deck relying on the bin too much?Oops no bin hate. Deck being greedy on mana....no land hate. Without these constraining things you simply don't have an ecosystem of decks and the result is the same- players quit anyway. The difference is plenty of players leaving due to 3 months of Emrakul is understandable. Players who only want to throw PWs and dudes....not so much, and not a big loss for the game if they go, because they would probably rage quit the moment any control deck turns up, regardless of whether it is land kill or pillow for or counterspell based. Remember players can always scoop when likely beaten the same as they would to combo.
Exactly, its all about balance. If your Standard format has Stone Rain, Demolish, Creeping Mold, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Plow Under, Acidic Slime and ramp spells, then yes, its going to be super oppressive.....but thats not what anyone is asking for. Thats why I previously use KAM/RAV Magnivore decks as an example. A deck that didnt hinder the format even the slightest bit but was a responsible use of land destruction.
We've gotten to a point where everything that doesnt involve Planeswalkers or turning creatures sideways is considered oppressive
Just doing a little information add (not counter arguing you here), just demonstrating what WotC thinks, from Maro's latest article:
As I talked about during the preview weeks, Desert was in the design file for a while but was removed. In that article, I said it was removed because it was "too powerful," but that actually is a bit misleading. It was removed because it wasn't fun. It, for example, majorly impacted the ability to attack with low-toughness creatures (the lower the rarity of the card, the more problematic). Keeping it in warped the entire Standard environment around it. We didn't believe that would lead to something enjoyable for the players, so we removed it and made different lands with the Desert subtype.
(I edited the post to "stuff" because of how large the quote tree became, it's not to denounce your post's content.)
I still find this incredibly weird. Desert was brought back in Time Spiral and while I was not playing Standard during that time and don't fully know I'm pretty sure that Desert wasn't incredibly OP and there wasn't some oppressive deck using it that it became a problem. With that what changed between then and now? Why wasn't Desert OP back then but it is such a problem now?
The quoted reasoning that has been bubbling up is that strong removal is toxic to the limited format and draft, much like strong counter spells and walling out.
The thing is though - this is only half-true. Strong unrestricted removal at low rarities is problematic. And good removal with sensible restrictions built within the set mechanics can be Constructed playable without ruining Limited. That's the whole deal of Fatal Push.
I don't think you are necessarily wrong, but I want to qualify your statement a little better.
Here's my issue: Many people posting here seem to tend towards extremist positions. It doesn't have to be Limited dreg or Lightning Bolt. What Limited wants is not weak removal/answers, but restricted answers. Hence Drown in Sorrow rather than Damnation.
I personally think that creative use of those restrictions could actually benefit Limited and Constructed equally. It's just something that has been falling by the wayside.
Also planeswalkers need to stop being shielded from good answers. There probably needs to be some baseline instant-speed answer in the format at all times. But that's also something Limited cares so little about that it's not standing in the way of printing those Constructed cards.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Has an LD deck every really broken a format? I can't really remember a truly busted LD deck.
LD - and stone rain - is easy to balance. The problem isn't the power level, the problem is that the times it works the game simply isn't fun for the vast majority of players. And not just as in a sense of "this game is boring", but in a sense of "this game is so frustrating I don't want to play anymore today." Why would you push a mechanic that is based upon mana screw? And don't say that the players need to mature or to become more patient - WotC is a business and do not have the capability to fundamentally change human psychology. They have to accept that for the most part and design for it, not against it. Otherwise the game doesn't sell.
The point is when you are bored with a greedy 3/4 colour aggro deck winning in a format, there will be an answer to it if it gets too good- that may involve a mono red aggro deck boarding in/main decking some landkill. It might be boring, but hey, it might be less boring than "3 months of Mardu Vehicles" or "3 months of Emrakul". The problem is without any avenues beyond PWs and critters the formats are solved instantly and nobody has anywhere to go to reverse engineer a meta deck. In order to have a shifting equilibrium in a format you need handkill, landkill, taxes et al. Just imagine 8 hal decent stone rain effects in a format with Emrakul. It is about having options for players to get answers to any dominant strategy. If your only viabvle answers are critters and planeswalkers then as soon as you have found a couple of shells you have a stagnant format. Deck relying on the bin too much?Oops no bin hate. Deck being greedy on mana....no land hate. Without these constraining things you simply don't have an ecosystem of decks and the result is the same- players quit anyway. The difference is plenty of players leaving due to 3 months of Emrakul is understandable. Players who only want to throw PWs and dudes....not so much, and not a big loss for the game if they go, because they would probably rage quit the moment any control deck turns up, regardless of whether it is land kill or pillow for or counterspell based. Nobody likes being controlled out of a match. Remember players can always scoop when likely beaten the same as they would to combos going off.
I understand the argument that greedy manabases aren't being punished enough. I'm not sure I agree but I understand the argument. It's reasonable to think that some kind of LD is needed with too greedy mana bases.
Just doing a little information add (not counter arguing you here), just demonstrating what WotC thinks, from Maro's latest article:
As I talked about during the preview weeks, Desert was in the design file for a while but was removed. In that article, I said it was removed because it was "too powerful," but that actually is a bit misleading. It was removed because it wasn't fun. It, for example, majorly impacted the ability to attack with low-toughness creatures (the lower the rarity of the card, the more problematic). Keeping it in warped the entire Standard environment around it. We didn't believe that would lead to something enjoyable for the players, so we removed it and made different lands with the Desert subtype.
(I edited the post to "stuff" because of how large the quote tree became, it's not to denounce your post's content.)
I still find this incredibly weird. Desert was brought back in Time Spiral and while I was not playing Standard during that time and don't fully know I'm pretty sure that Desert wasn't incredibly OP and there wasn't some oppressive deck using it that it became a problem. With that what changed between then and now? Why wasn't Desert OP back then but it is such a problem now?
I've thought about this too; they haven't addressed it, so I can't say why. But it is pretty obvious that Time Spiral's standard looked much, much different than ours (and sales plummeted during TS, so it's not a set to base your design ideas on - this was not due to Desert of course, so it's probably not a factor there).
Again of cousre, just clarifying for your post - Desert isn't OP at all. They found that it warped the format today, which is a different thing.
The quoted reasoning that has been bubbling up is that strong removal is toxic to the limited format and draft, much like strong counter spells and walling out.
The thing is though - this is only half-true. Strong unrestricted removal at low rarities is problematic. And good removal with sensible restrictions built within the set mechanics can be Constructed playable without ruining Limited. That's the whole deal of Fatal Push.
I don't think you are necessarily wrong, but I want to qualify your statement a little better.
Here's my issue: Many people posting here seem to tend towards extremist positions. It doesn't have to be Limited dreg or Lightning Bolt. What Limited wants is not weak removal/answers, but restricted answers. Hence Drown in Sorrow rather than Damnation.
I personally think that creative use of those restrictions could actually benefit Limited and Constructed equally. It's just something that has been falling by the wayside.
Also planeswalkers need to stop being shielded from good answers. There probably needs to be some baseline instant-speed answer in the format at all times. But that's also something Limited cares so little about that it's not standing in the way of printing those Constructed cards.
Planeswalkers need to go away. Those cards are the hardest thing to teach anyone how to use and just about everyone I've tried to teach to (mostly being young 12-14 year olds) dislike them with a passion because they do too many things and can run away with the game. It's not even a power level thing, they hate Gideon AOZ as much as Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Nissa, Nature's Artisan. They mostly love the same things I ended up loving back in the old days like Lightning Bolt, Dark Ritual, Counterspell, Temporal Aperture, you name it, because those did exactly one thing each and could easily be understood how to work them into a deck.
This is why I think their marketing and focus group information has to be really bad. Kids and pre-teens play more games in a week than us adults can afford to in a month or more, and if they are finding a part of the game is over-complicated BS, that says a lot about that particular aspect of the game.
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!
just about everyone I've tried to teach to (mostly being young 12-14 year olds) dislike them with a passion because they do too many things and can run away with the game. It's not even a power level thing, they hate Gideon AOZ as much as Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Nissa, Nature's Artisan. They mostly love the same things I ended up loving back in the old days like Lightning Bolt, Dark Ritual, Counterspell, Temporal Aperture, you name it, because those did exactly one thing each and could easily be understood how to work them into a deck.
So they also like Shock and Cancel, right? Or are you skewing the results there?
The problem with planeswalker (un)popularity lies in their imbalance. They only run away with games because they are balanced to a pushed Constructed power level - and even the weaker ones are pushed with respect to their reference cards due to being "face cards". The problem is that all planeswalkers are mythic rare and mythic rarity doesn't exist on the same level playing field.
Maybe it is time to play nonmythic Standard and see how that plays out.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
The problem with planeswalker (un)popularity lies in their imbalance. They only run away with games because they are balanced to a pushed Constructed power level - and even the weaker ones are pushed with respect to their reference cards due to being "face cards". The problem is that all planeswalkers are mythic rare and mythic rarity doesn't exist on the same level playing field.
which is why "hate" cards are vital to keep them in check. Black obviously needs Hero's Demise. Blue could get a "1UU: Shuffle target planeswalker in to its owners library". White can get an exile spell that serves the same function. Red gets "x dmg to target planeswalker". Green is probably the most difficult to pin down. I wonder if a spell that gives you X X/X creatures, where x is target planeswalkers loyalty could work though at first glance seems a bit too powerful compared to the others. Or it could give its controller creatures/lands. Id have to give it more thought
Then why the ban?
I liked the card and plan to play it in modern.
Part of the problem was many of us were brought up (from the old days) with Counterspell was the economy verson and the block typicly had a counter spell that costs 1 more with the most "blue" block mecanic tapped on. Same deal with Wrath, Printed forever and most of the time each block had a wrath that was 1-2 more mana with a neat tag on. You had teh basic verson that was cheaper on mana or the fancy version that was themed. Each block ran some over others dependng on the meta. Now if you wanted different counterspell like this for example
Counter essense
UU
Deal 2 damage to target creature if you can't counter Counter essense,
Counter target spell.
This involks thought, useless in a mirror control match, great against agro, question is countering this spell worth maybe destroying my own creature? Not the same as counterspell but different and functional.
Or a wrath that reads
Wrath of Life
WW2
Destroy all creatures they can't regenerate, Each player gains 1 life for each creature destroyed.
Sure we can talk thats an interesting twist that isn't directly weaker, sure I'm game but to print weaker version doesn't really help anyone.
Additionally, anyone who follows the mothership development articles has seen how they continuously declare one effect after another is "too strong for standard." They've also powered up creatures and depowered noncreatures under the logic that creatures should be equal in power to spells, but they never asked themselves what the "correct" power balance between creatures and spells is. Maybe having instants/sorceries be more powerful produces better magic environments. It's certainly possible given what's happened to standard recently, and it's almost as if they don't understand that removing a powerful effect can then make another, previously okay effect seem broken. R&D needs a reset on the game on the scale of M10. They need to take a hard look at a lot of the developmental decisions they've made over the past few years, and probably scrap many of them. Hopefully play design will let them do that.
Also, to echo the point many have already made, WOTC should loosen up on determining what's fun and isn't fun. Just because some players respond poorly to things like prison, LD, mill, doesn't mean they should always cost those cards into unplayability. Kamigawa-ravnica standard is often cited as the best standard ever specifically because of its deck diversity.
There are plenty of lumps present in Magic. There's the simple fact that you win or lose and that certain cards mess with your cards, this upsets people sometimes. However, there's a difference between accepting problems and intentionally embracing them, making them intentionally larger. In the context of LD, mana screw exists. This is a cost of Magic's mana system. LD decks thrive upon causing mana screw intentionally, and WotC has data showing that this, as a critical mass of emotional responses, overall upsets players rather than pleases them. The point of WotC's game design is to evoke a certain emotional response in players which causes them to buy packs. The game exists solely on the fact that this model works. You should understand this distinction and understand how it's important to "cave in" to human psychology in certain respects as a designer. You want people to grow up, but it's such a bafflingly absurd position about a game that, while having a lot of competetive catering, is fundamentally a fantasy hobby game. The professional scene is more indifferent to Magic's lumps, but the lumps still affect the sales, even among pros. Magic is sustained through sales.
So, LD. You want it to be a viable strategy. Why? It's demonstrated again and again that players overall dislike it. What's the gain of it? Only rarely in recent Standard environments have lands been culprit of broken decks. Wolf Run was a problem, for example, but it didn't break the game. In that sense, giving up powerful land destruction is a real cost to their game design. Modern is another story, of course. Another argument for LD is that all strategies should be viable. Well, there's a different argument here. Part of doing good game design is to make it so that the correct strategy to win is also the most fun way to win. A strategy that solely works by disallowing your opponent from even playing any spells - thriving upon players' fundamental disability to efficiently work around mana screw - is probably fun for one player. But how many times have you personally had mana screw and sat there "Oh boy, I so wish WotC has created a mechanic for this to happen to me more consistently"?
Your post just makes me happy you don't actually work on the Magic design team. You say that lumps happen in life too or something, and that's a really weird point to me. "That's just a part of life" is just not an argument here. There are plenty of real parts of life that would be improper for Magic as a component. It's actually kind of absurd. It's a game meant to entertain. Is it a political problem for you that the damn kids today are too carefully treated? Well, sure. Next time you have mana screw, just sit there "Oh boy, I so am experiencing lumps like life. I'm so happy this is helping raising kids properly today. I sure darn wish this hobby card game would do this more often, as that would fundamentally change the problems with the generation today." At least you'll get something out of it. Again, you have to somewhat cave to certain parts of human psychology in order to make your game entertaining. The way you do this depends on the game. Magic's mana system just doesn't mesh well with the land destruction mechanic - nor mana burn, for that matter, which is why they surgically removed that from the game rules.
My intent of mentioning Desert was not about Desert being a "super fun" card but about the exclusion of Desert in a top down designed set. A flavor designed set that literally screamed to have it included
Fine, fair enough. But what does this say about the condition of Standard? Let's skip that for a moment.
It's a tough sell to me knowing that AN creatures Camel and Desert Nomad were designed with defensive measures against Desert. Similar abilities could have been used to freeze out Desert i. Amonokhet.. The Invocations could've allowed for the flavor with explicit exclusion from standard (albeit, at less than $1, it would be THE jank card). Even deviate a little from the Buy a Box Promo. Or egads, a Amonkhet based commander product. There wlare/were ways I think they could have handled this with a little more tact.
I've grown to dislike the word "fun" the way it's bandied about on this forum. Millions of people think Super Mario Bros is a fun game, I happen to think Kid Chameleon is more interesting and fun or Viewtiful Joe more challenging, ergo, fun. Fun is a shockingly subjective word that, quite frankly, I'm really surprised that WotC use the term they way it does at all. Do I think Desert is fun? It depends. Do I think it's absolutely flavorful? Without question.
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!
Then again, we're assuming they didn't absolutely love seeing their Superman Gideon, Ally of Zendikar at the top tables of every tournament since BFZ's launch until AMK PT when it shouldn't have been in Standard anymore.
You need to open aprox. 110 boosters of a large set to open a specific mythic, after all.
Everyone makes mistakes, even WoTCs designers and staff. As much as people bash them for the bad standard they produced the last two years the designers and developers do genuinely desire to make a good game or else they wouldn't last in this kind of industry. It's how the game is being distributed and promoted that is to blame for most of it's troubles. When a company pushes just one format as the pillar of its being and doesn't support any others except in a token gesture, it puts too much pressure on that one pillar to be constantly strong. They also need to find ways to promote better behavior in competitive play to reduce cheating and provide more support to FNM by improving promotional material such as bonus cards for showing up and what not.
If anything, right now the real enemy of MtG is the marketing team and possibly Hasbro itself. This is sort of a pattern that happens with a lot of games when they get big: People always think it can get bigger and then they try to find ways to make the game appeal to more and more people, spreading itself too thin and eventually leading to a major collapse. The game becomes generic, less identifiable, and falls prey to smaller start ups and other games that pull away the audience that used to play it. That's what happened to World of Warcraft after they botched things on Warlords of Draenor and made it like logging into facebook to make progress. Right now, the same thing is happening in MtG with the gatewatch super hero story.
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!
But... they are already printing weaker versions right now? Like, if all you care about is legacy or vintage I could see where it wouldn't matter, but most people have been saying that standard needs better counterspells and wraths and this would be one day to do that.
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
The quoted reasoning that has been bubbling up is that strong removal is toxic to the limited format and draft, much like strong counter spells and walling out.
This is why I dislike market testing, though. That information is coming from a sample of volunteer players that fit some predisposed profile. In a hobby game like this getting the right people for those tests is difficult as many of us don't ever come out of the woodwork to communicate so to speak.
Basically, they've been getting bad information for years.
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!
Just doing a little information add (not counter arguing you here), just demonstrating what WotC thinks, from Maro's latest article:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/odds-ends-amonkhet-part-1-2017-05-22
(I edited the post to "stuff" because of how large the quote tree became, it's not to denounce your post's content.)
You can have as many smart people as you want, but without the processes to get things done correctly you're bound to have mistakes happen. And Magic, despite being in my opinion the best game of all time, has been horrifically mismanaged almost since the beginning.
The point is when you are bored with a greedy 3/4 colour aggro deck winning in a format, there will be an answer to it if it gets too good- that may involve a mono red aggro deck boarding in/main decking some landkill. It might be boring, but hey, it might be less boring than "3 months of Mardu Vehicles" or "3 months of Emrakul". The problem is without any avenues beyond PWs and critters the formats are solved instantly and nobody has anywhere to go to reverse engineer a meta deck. In order to have a shifting equilibrium in a format you need handkill, landkill, taxes et al. Just imagine 8 hal decent stone rain effects in a format with Emrakul. It is about having options for players to get answers to any dominant strategy. If your only viabvle answers are critters and planeswalkers then as soon as you have found a couple of shells you have a stagnant format. Deck relying on the bin too much?Oops no bin hate. Deck being greedy on mana....no land hate. Without these constraining things you simply don't have an ecosystem of decks and the result is the same- players quit anyway. The difference is plenty of players leaving due to 3 months of Emrakul is understandable. Players who only want to throw PWs and dudes....not so much, and not a big loss for the game if they go, because they would probably rage quit the moment any control deck turns up, regardless of whether it is land kill or pillow for or counterspell based. Nobody likes being controlled out of a match. Remember players can always scoop when likely beaten the same as they would to combos going off.
We've gotten to a point where everything that doesnt involve Planeswalkers or turning creatures sideways is considered oppressive
I still find this incredibly weird. Desert was brought back in Time Spiral and while I was not playing Standard during that time and don't fully know I'm pretty sure that Desert wasn't incredibly OP and there wasn't some oppressive deck using it that it became a problem. With that what changed between then and now? Why wasn't Desert OP back then but it is such a problem now?
The thing is though - this is only half-true. Strong unrestricted removal at low rarities is problematic. And good removal with sensible restrictions built within the set mechanics can be Constructed playable without ruining Limited. That's the whole deal of Fatal Push.
I don't think you are necessarily wrong, but I want to qualify your statement a little better.
Here's my issue: Many people posting here seem to tend towards extremist positions. It doesn't have to be Limited dreg or Lightning Bolt. What Limited wants is not weak removal/answers, but restricted answers. Hence Drown in Sorrow rather than Damnation.
I personally think that creative use of those restrictions could actually benefit Limited and Constructed equally. It's just something that has been falling by the wayside.
Also planeswalkers need to stop being shielded from good answers. There probably needs to be some baseline instant-speed answer in the format at all times. But that's also something Limited cares so little about that it's not standing in the way of printing those Constructed cards.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
I understand the argument that greedy manabases aren't being punished enough. I'm not sure I agree but I understand the argument. It's reasonable to think that some kind of LD is needed with too greedy mana bases.
I've thought about this too; they haven't addressed it, so I can't say why. But it is pretty obvious that Time Spiral's standard looked much, much different than ours (and sales plummeted during TS, so it's not a set to base your design ideas on - this was not due to Desert of course, so it's probably not a factor there).
Again of cousre, just clarifying for your post - Desert isn't OP at all. They found that it warped the format today, which is a different thing.
Planeswalkers need to go away. Those cards are the hardest thing to teach anyone how to use and just about everyone I've tried to teach to (mostly being young 12-14 year olds) dislike them with a passion because they do too many things and can run away with the game. It's not even a power level thing, they hate Gideon AOZ as much as Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Nissa, Nature's Artisan. They mostly love the same things I ended up loving back in the old days like Lightning Bolt, Dark Ritual, Counterspell, Temporal Aperture, you name it, because those did exactly one thing each and could easily be understood how to work them into a deck.
This is why I think their marketing and focus group information has to be really bad. Kids and pre-teens play more games in a week than us adults can afford to in a month or more, and if they are finding a part of the game is over-complicated BS, that says a lot about that particular aspect of the game.
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!
So they also like Shock and Cancel, right? Or are you skewing the results there?
The problem with planeswalker (un)popularity lies in their imbalance. They only run away with games because they are balanced to a pushed Constructed power level - and even the weaker ones are pushed with respect to their reference cards due to being "face cards". The problem is that all planeswalkers are mythic rare and mythic rarity doesn't exist on the same level playing field.
Maybe it is time to play nonmythic Standard and see how that plays out.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
In Progress
GBIshkanah, Grafwidow ~ BWGRTymna the Weaver & Tana, the Bloodsower ~ UGRashmi, Eternities Crafter ~ RGAtarka, World Render