Am I the only person that misses the modern where jund, twin, pod and tron kept each other in check? The format had clear checks and balances. The banning is getting excessive. Storm, pod, twin, bloom, dredge. Next year it'all be some other deck.
I want to start playing this game and format again but last night I looked through the blue cards being played in the format and it's basically serum visions. There's the occasion scm. I mean wtf..I want to play my snapcasters and cliques again. Celestial colonnade is getting depressed bc nobody wants to sleeve it up anymore.
In closing,the accumulation of bannings over the past 3 years have made this a worse format. Bring back twin, bring back the color blue.
I've been having an itch to come back to the game after about a 2 year hiatus. I completely shelved the game when the eldrazi sets came out (which apparently is now called eldrazi winter?).
So is this a good time to come back to the format/game? Whats happened with modern in the past 12ish months.
I used to mostly play and still have all my cards for a snapcaster/clique deck or some version that revolves around those but could theoretically get cards to fill out a similar type of deck
so card availability isnt a sticking point but trying to recreate a similar experience.
Looking through the state of the format thread also didn't tell me much as its just people arguing back and forth over cards i dont know anything about.
If it makes any difference i came back to mtg at the tail end of the first zendikar and played the modern format (ptqs and occasional fnms) roughly since it started so not a total noob.
I think anytime you start bringing in additional cards to justify playing this card, the interaction has to be extremely powerful.
Most everyone agrees that on an empty board, this card is horrible.
If theres 1 creature on the board, this card is still pretty bad, at 2 creature this gets better. But for a three+ card "combo" this card has to be the nuts.
There are already too many cards competing for a 4 drop slot in most white decks, this card does nothing on its own if you untap with it, it dies to bolt, 3W in the casting cost is ridiculous.
If it needs 2 or 3 other cards to be good, and it doesnt just win you the game, its bad.
Just because people say that every set sucks, doesnt mean that all the sets are good.
Yes some sets are going to suck.
This set sucks.
If someone offered you to draft this vs some of the best draft formats from the past (Inn, MMA1, ROE) you would pick the better sets. Or even open packs for value.
I dont know why people take it personally when someone on the internet calls a set stupid.
Some sets are going to suck, especially compared to widely beloved sets... like Zendikar..which this was supposed to be based on.
most of the iconic cards from zendikar would be so far above the power curve from recent years that they'd be completely unprintable.
Even obscure stuff like devout lightcaster probably feels like choke by today's power level standards. Consider yourself lucky if you get 5-10 eternal/modern playable staples out of an entire block.
Phantom Queues are ripoffs for the simple fact they only pay out in play points. Often the limited queue is more expensive as a phantom queue than the actual event would cost with actual packs.
Who cares? If they prizes were nothing you'd still get to play the game you like for a fairly modest price (of course prizes are necessary to keep the level of competition up).
But I keep forgetting that ridiculous hyperbole is the norm around here. This is a place where "the prizes are not perfectly ideal for my purposes" becomes "the event is a ripoff". The way people whine around here you'd think that the purpose of Magic Online wasn't to play Magic, but to collect useless values in a database server somewhere just so that you can say "See that sequence of ones and zeroes over there? That one's MINE."
When this game became significantly more expensive than other video games, the entire premise of "play the game and be happy with what you bought" flew out of the window.
Video games dont cost me a grand to play over a couple of years. I don't have a couple of grand of value sitting in diablo 3. At this price point, this better be the best digital experience available. And its no where close.
Claims he won't give a *****ty rant. Instantly starts into a *****ty rant. Why am i supposed to feel pity for this guy? Why is he talking about hex like ANYONE plays it. Wow 150 watching hex, yeah its really stealing wizards thunder!
Who lets your collection get to 115k cards then complains when it lags? Its almost like you should have traded some of those cards along the way when the prices spiked! Maybe that way you wouldn't have 'SPENT' 10k in a year on modo, while others MAKE money on modo.
Its almost like bot chains are different some some are better than others! The bots i use i have never had an issue with. I guess this guy would prefer his cards be stolen, lost or damaged in the mail or pay shipping and handling for 10 pieces of cardboard.
Fact is as much as people whine and complain about mtgo, its better than normal MTG in MANY ways. Cheating nonexistant, searching libraries/shuffling, triggers, drafting is easier/faster, decks are quicker to assemble/disassemble, you don't need multiple 4+ copies of cards for multiple decks, etc.
Basically this guy is the cancer that needs to be cut out of mtgo. Good riddance. I hope wizards took you for every penny you had!
He's not asking you to feel pity for him, its a video of a guy explaining a bunch of issues with the game.
The game lags at different stages, not just the collection screen, that's a fact.
I've had that same issue with bots over the past 3+ years of MODO, 2 of which was almost daily use. Every bot on my list has had that issue, from mtgo traders to aboshanbot, and I've got a long list of bots that I use.
I'm pretty sure the guy would just prefer for this not to happen, not for his cards to get stolen in the mail or whatever you're suggesting is the alternative.
Nobody is saying MTGO isn't better than paper magic in some ways. Nobody is saying there's not a single things MTGO does better than paper. What's the point of acting like someone is bringing that up as an argument.
I invite you to reexamine the proposed payouts for Daily Events. You seem to be under the impression that they will no longer pay out any tradable product, if you do believe this then you are mistaken. It will still be possible to grind Dailies for value and convert that value into cards. You will win a constant number of play points for a given record and you also will win packs on top of that. As I said, I value this stability. If you're not trying to grind MTGO as a career then I don't believe you will notice a significant loss of value. Your play points can be used as entry to any event, and you can still win boosters from most of them.
There is a 45% reduction in tradeable product from going 4-0 in a daily event between proposed changes and previous payouts while the cost has gone up 100% (assuming you have zero player points on your account at the start). This comes at a time when people's biggest complaints about the economy are low value of paid out product, not an inability to play more tournaments.
There is a 100% reduction of tradeable product from playing 2 man queues but that isn't relevant because people weren't playing those queues for tradeable product.
I mention tradeable product, because (i'm assuming) most people were grinding daily events to get tradeable product, not the ability to play free tournaments (which already exists in tournament practice).
I'm not sure if we're just talking past each other or what but its fine.
Either way, we'll see how this system shakes out. I've played 2 daily events in the last 6 months, one of which crashed while i was 2-0. This change isn't going to make me play more.
Edit: At the end of the day this isn't even my biggest problem with MTGO right now so this change isn't super relevant to me. I'm not playing much right now (aside from Cube) b/c of my last DE crash and because there's just way too much downtime in between games so it just leads to these long stretches of being logged in and being bored. This payout schedule is just another thing on a very very long list of things that make me not want to play anything other than cube.
Yeah, if you play MTGO to make money this is bad for you. For the vast majority of players, though, I think this is a good change. From my perspective, EV maximisation is a means towards playing more Magic, and this allows me to play more Magic. My only complaint is that there's still no prize for a 2-2 record in Dailies (even as they double the entry fee), so I still feel obligated to drop if I hit two losses to avoid the "dreamkiller" bracket.
How does this improve the experience for the majority.
I've yet to see anything that says the majority of people were online grinding 2 man, 8 man and daily event queues. That aside, even if a large % of the population were, this is not a positive change for the majority of daily event players.
If the only reason people played constructed tournaments was to get enough entry to play more constructed tournaments, then they would just play tournament practice room which gets a ton of use and has been getting a ton of use for years.
Maybe I'm very wrong but the majority of players were playing dailies because it allowed them to build up their collection, not because it allowed them to play more dailies. You got a big payout for going 4-0 and then used that payout to trade for cards for more decks. The new daily event system kills this completely. I can't be the only person that did this to build up a collection over the years.
If you're saying that this is an improvement for the 2 man queues then ok, i won't disagree with you. But people playing 2 man queues were playing them for a completely different reason than the ones playing daily events. Again, nobody was joining constructed tournaments to win more tickets to constructed tournaments. I'm not sure if you're saying that this is an improvement or not but I don't see how it is. There are already ways to play infinitely - tournament practice room. Daily events were being used to grind for value and then convert value to cards.
If that isn't going to be viable anymore, then fine. That's hardly an improvement though since there is no no efficient way of building up a collection over time. Nothing even remotely as efficient as it was to just play DE's.
Its hard to answer anything without knowing where booster pack prices stabilize.
My immediate kneejerk reaction is that this is terrible and not worth my time to play constructed magic anymore.
I cashed out about a grand last year (about half of my account value) so your quitting equity comment is fairly accurate.
I don't feel incentivized to grind daily events for a product i can't cash out.
On its own, the experience for me isn't fun enough to justify sinking money into it without a possibility of getting all of that money back.
Compared to cube where i don't actually mind spending $20-$30 once a year to play something new and exciting.
In a perfect world we would go back to $5 redemption and daily event structure where you pay $6 to potentially win $40 for 4-0 or $20 for 3-1 (in pack values).
Everything i'm seeing from WOTC tells me this will never happen.
So I don't know where people go from here.
I don't mind paying money for an awesome experience.
Unfortunately MTGO isn't an awesome experience.
Unless I'm missing something, 90% of the people who were playing daily events, were playing them for the payouts. Otherwise you would just play 8 mans and finish a lot sooner.
This change shafts everyone who was in the "Pay X dollars to win Y dollars" crowd.
With this change i'm paying 12 bucks to win 16 bucks and things that aren't worth any real money vs 2 years ago of paying 6 bucks to win 40 bucks.
When that equation became pay 6 bucks to win 22 bucks (due to deflated pack prices), i stopped playing.
Is this a pretty good summary of this change or am I overlooking something.
It can't actually be this bad can it?
I understand the argument for NOT firing the entire team, but speaking from personal experience, the entire team is often the issue plus or minus a couple of people.
I came into my company after they had fired almost the entire accounting and finance group of 12-15 people. 2 people from that group remained and one was re-hired after being fired by the original group. A year later, one more person from the original group was fired. The problem was that policies from managers and lack of oversight setup horrible processes, it ingrained carelessness in people below, poor attitude and a feeling of "this is how we've always done it and if it worked then, then we're doing it right." In reality it never worked well and things just snowballed over the years into a massive avalanche.
It could very well be the case with Wizards. Years of doing the things poorly are reinforced and become the norm. You can't change a company's culture by getting rid of one person at the top.
Also it could be about paying better people more money but again those new people are walking into a horrible system and now they're forced to work in that system.
So the 10 pm modern daily just crashed. I come back to play constructed only to find that the problems with events crashing are still ongoing.
They've really spent the past year+ to give us all these improvements - stability, leagues, a fixed economy. Nice.
Delver in modern has always felt like a trap to me. I understand that the deck puts up decent results but it feels bad every time I play it.
It just doesn't flip often enough. Serum visions is a terrible substitute for ponder but tasigur doesn't really care as long as you have cheap cantrips in GY.
So yeah, I think grixis control and twin are both much better than delver.
twin is the best control deck in the format.
If you want to play a control deck that just answers stuff for the first dozen turns, then plays a haymaker threat and wins then yes, modern doesn't have it. Those are typical standard control decks.
The format is about being proactive and about actively trying to win the game. The only decks that aren't mixing threats and answers are all in combo decks.
Look at every successful deck in the format. They all have a clear game plan and it isn't just "stop the other player from doing stuff" its "how do I win this game."
The reason control decks suck is because you can't answer every single thing thrown at you.
I'm assuming that when you're saying "no control deck in the format" you mean no deck that plays a whole bunch of counterspells and a bunch of hand filtering, then plays something big on turn 6 to win the game on the spot. No there isn't a deck like that.
I want to start playing this game and format again but last night I looked through the blue cards being played in the format and it's basically serum visions. There's the occasion scm. I mean wtf..I want to play my snapcasters and cliques again. Celestial colonnade is getting depressed bc nobody wants to sleeve it up anymore.
In closing,the accumulation of bannings over the past 3 years have made this a worse format. Bring back twin, bring back the color blue.
So is this a good time to come back to the format/game? Whats happened with modern in the past 12ish months.
I used to mostly play and still have all my cards for a snapcaster/clique deck or some version that revolves around those but could theoretically get cards to fill out a similar type of deck
so card availability isnt a sticking point but trying to recreate a similar experience.
Looking through the state of the format thread also didn't tell me much as its just people arguing back and forth over cards i dont know anything about.
If it makes any difference i came back to mtg at the tail end of the first zendikar and played the modern format (ptqs and occasional fnms) roughly since it started so not a total noob.
Thanks in advance.
Most everyone agrees that on an empty board, this card is horrible.
If theres 1 creature on the board, this card is still pretty bad, at 2 creature this gets better. But for a three+ card "combo" this card has to be the nuts.
There are already too many cards competing for a 4 drop slot in most white decks, this card does nothing on its own if you untap with it, it dies to bolt, 3W in the casting cost is ridiculous.
If it needs 2 or 3 other cards to be good, and it doesnt just win you the game, its bad.
Yes some sets are going to suck.
This set sucks.
If someone offered you to draft this vs some of the best draft formats from the past (Inn, MMA1, ROE) you would pick the better sets. Or even open packs for value.
I dont know why people take it personally when someone on the internet calls a set stupid.
Some sets are going to suck, especially compared to widely beloved sets... like Zendikar..which this was supposed to be based on.
Even obscure stuff like devout lightcaster probably feels like choke by today's power level standards. Consider yourself lucky if you get 5-10 eternal/modern playable staples out of an entire block.
Video games dont cost me a grand to play over a couple of years. I don't have a couple of grand of value sitting in diablo 3. At this price point, this better be the best digital experience available. And its no where close.
He's not asking you to feel pity for him, its a video of a guy explaining a bunch of issues with the game.
The game lags at different stages, not just the collection screen, that's a fact.
I've had that same issue with bots over the past 3+ years of MODO, 2 of which was almost daily use. Every bot on my list has had that issue, from mtgo traders to aboshanbot, and I've got a long list of bots that I use.
I'm pretty sure the guy would just prefer for this not to happen, not for his cards to get stolen in the mail or whatever you're suggesting is the alternative.
Nobody is saying MTGO isn't better than paper magic in some ways. Nobody is saying there's not a single things MTGO does better than paper. What's the point of acting like someone is bringing that up as an argument.
There is a 45% reduction in tradeable product from going 4-0 in a daily event between proposed changes and previous payouts while the cost has gone up 100% (assuming you have zero player points on your account at the start). This comes at a time when people's biggest complaints about the economy are low value of paid out product, not an inability to play more tournaments.
There is a 100% reduction of tradeable product from playing 2 man queues but that isn't relevant because people weren't playing those queues for tradeable product.
I mention tradeable product, because (i'm assuming) most people were grinding daily events to get tradeable product, not the ability to play free tournaments (which already exists in tournament practice).
I'm not sure if we're just talking past each other or what but its fine.
Either way, we'll see how this system shakes out. I've played 2 daily events in the last 6 months, one of which crashed while i was 2-0. This change isn't going to make me play more.
Edit: At the end of the day this isn't even my biggest problem with MTGO right now so this change isn't super relevant to me. I'm not playing much right now (aside from Cube) b/c of my last DE crash and because there's just way too much downtime in between games so it just leads to these long stretches of being logged in and being bored. This payout schedule is just another thing on a very very long list of things that make me not want to play anything other than cube.
How does this improve the experience for the majority.
I've yet to see anything that says the majority of people were online grinding 2 man, 8 man and daily event queues. That aside, even if a large % of the population were, this is not a positive change for the majority of daily event players.
If the only reason people played constructed tournaments was to get enough entry to play more constructed tournaments, then they would just play tournament practice room which gets a ton of use and has been getting a ton of use for years.
Maybe I'm very wrong but the majority of players were playing dailies because it allowed them to build up their collection, not because it allowed them to play more dailies. You got a big payout for going 4-0 and then used that payout to trade for cards for more decks. The new daily event system kills this completely. I can't be the only person that did this to build up a collection over the years.
If you're saying that this is an improvement for the 2 man queues then ok, i won't disagree with you. But people playing 2 man queues were playing them for a completely different reason than the ones playing daily events. Again, nobody was joining constructed tournaments to win more tickets to constructed tournaments. I'm not sure if you're saying that this is an improvement or not but I don't see how it is. There are already ways to play infinitely - tournament practice room. Daily events were being used to grind for value and then convert value to cards.
If that isn't going to be viable anymore, then fine. That's hardly an improvement though since there is no no efficient way of building up a collection over time. Nothing even remotely as efficient as it was to just play DE's.
My immediate kneejerk reaction is that this is terrible and not worth my time to play constructed magic anymore.
I cashed out about a grand last year (about half of my account value) so your quitting equity comment is fairly accurate.
I don't feel incentivized to grind daily events for a product i can't cash out.
On its own, the experience for me isn't fun enough to justify sinking money into it without a possibility of getting all of that money back.
Compared to cube where i don't actually mind spending $20-$30 once a year to play something new and exciting.
In a perfect world we would go back to $5 redemption and daily event structure where you pay $6 to potentially win $40 for 4-0 or $20 for 3-1 (in pack values).
Everything i'm seeing from WOTC tells me this will never happen.
So I don't know where people go from here.
I don't mind paying money for an awesome experience.
Unfortunately MTGO isn't an awesome experience.
This change shafts everyone who was in the "Pay X dollars to win Y dollars" crowd.
With this change i'm paying 12 bucks to win 16 bucks and things that aren't worth any real money vs 2 years ago of paying 6 bucks to win 40 bucks.
When that equation became pay 6 bucks to win 22 bucks (due to deflated pack prices), i stopped playing.
Is this a pretty good summary of this change or am I overlooking something.
It can't actually be this bad can it?
I came into my company after they had fired almost the entire accounting and finance group of 12-15 people. 2 people from that group remained and one was re-hired after being fired by the original group. A year later, one more person from the original group was fired. The problem was that policies from managers and lack of oversight setup horrible processes, it ingrained carelessness in people below, poor attitude and a feeling of "this is how we've always done it and if it worked then, then we're doing it right." In reality it never worked well and things just snowballed over the years into a massive avalanche.
It could very well be the case with Wizards. Years of doing the things poorly are reinforced and become the norm. You can't change a company's culture by getting rid of one person at the top.
Also it could be about paying better people more money but again those new people are walking into a horrible system and now they're forced to work in that system.
They've really spent the past year+ to give us all these improvements - stability, leagues, a fixed economy. Nice.
It just doesn't flip often enough. Serum visions is a terrible substitute for ponder but tasigur doesn't really care as long as you have cheap cantrips in GY.
So yeah, I think grixis control and twin are both much better than delver.
If you want to play a control deck that just answers stuff for the first dozen turns, then plays a haymaker threat and wins then yes, modern doesn't have it. Those are typical standard control decks.
The format is about being proactive and about actively trying to win the game. The only decks that aren't mixing threats and answers are all in combo decks.
Look at every successful deck in the format. They all have a clear game plan and it isn't just "stop the other player from doing stuff" its "how do I win this game."
The reason control decks suck is because you can't answer every single thing thrown at you.
I'm assuming that when you're saying "no control deck in the format" you mean no deck that plays a whole bunch of counterspells and a bunch of hand filtering, then plays something big on turn 6 to win the game on the spot. No there isn't a deck like that.