I think this thread is a bit off topic. The power level of commons and uncommons are low by ridiculous standards. They call bolt too powerful so we only get shock, but then shock is too powerful so you throw up good damage red to higher cost and now it's mostly unplayable. It has happened for a long time this way. Wasteland and encroaching wastes are the same rarity, have the same effect, but wastes costs 4 mana to activate. Their is literally no reason for this, and in most cases it just makes you throw away wastes where if the card was a wasteland you would keep it because it's competitively costed. Limited hates both of these cards equally because of the low amount of non basics in draft. Would it hurt to have the card in a set, no. It would make you want to buy packs to crack the card for competitive. Then you look at a set like Dragons Maze where literally the only worthwhile card has teetered between $30 and $60 it's entire life in standard and that's only at mythic.
I think you have it backwards. Limited is what Wizards uses to make people interested in the low-power cards in a set. I remember my teen days playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, which didn't have a Limited format at the time. The massive majority of commons you'd open were not playable in any context, ever, at all.
If you take a look at design and development articles, they will regularly tell you that they printed a card in its current state for limited purposes. Artificial scarcity probably has a lot to do with it, but designing for limited is the main reason we get for such cards as clearly unconstructable vanilla creatures.
I think you have it backwards. Limited is what Wizards uses to make people interested in the low-power cards in a set. I remember my teen days playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, which didn't have a Limited format at the time. The massive majority of commons you'd open were not playable in any context, ever, at all.
If you take a look at design and development articles, they will regularly tell you that they printed a card in its current state for limited purposes. Artificial scarcity probably has a lot to do with it, but designing for limited is the main reason we get for such cards as clearly unconstructable vanilla creatures.
Of course the design articles say that. You wouldn't expect Wizards R&D to admit that they print bad cards just so that people buy more product would you?
Of course the design articles say that. You wouldn't expect Wizards R&D to admit that they print bad cards just so that people buy more product would you?
And what do you think happens to the game if people don't buy more product? Take your argument out to its logical conclusion.
I think you have it backwards. Limited is what Wizards uses to make people interested in the low-power cards in a set. I remember my teen days playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, which didn't have a Limited format at the time. The massive majority of commons you'd open were not playable in any context, ever, at all.
If you take a look at design and development articles, they will regularly tell you that they printed a card in its current state for limited purposes. Artificial scarcity probably has a lot to do with it, but designing for limited is the main reason we get for such cards as clearly unconstructable vanilla creatures.
Of course the design articles say that. You wouldn't expect Wizards R&D to admit that they print bad cards just so that people buy more product would you?
Oh, you're one of the "WoTC is conspiring to give us bad cards" types. Why do you believe that making the odds worse for getting constructed playable cards per pack very low, thus disenfranchising people from wanting to buy such product, is going to increase sales?
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
I don't think WotC is conspiring to put bad cards in packs or anything. But imagine trying to design 350 card sets where every card is the same power level, which is the same power level as every card in the last set, and the simple commons are as powerful as the complex rares. That way lies madness. So they don't aim to do that.
People already presented many good arguments. There's one I rarely see and it' a fairly good argument if you take the perceptive of the game designer/producer.
* There's a certain demographic of MTG players who will buy relative low amount of product during certain time. Those are newer players who have no pretensions of advancing in the game by going for LGS and such. They are not interested in trading with strangers, they are not interested in playing with strangers. They bought the game at wallmart and such to play with his friends.
* What this demographic will do is buy some starter packs and some boosters to upgrade it.
* If the power level of cards were all the same, the amount of upgrade this player gets for every booster is smaller. Imagine Pillafield Ox is a 3W 4/4 - not even rare Seraphim of the Sword is a clear upgrade here. The player can't buy boosters and directly upgrade his decks - since all cards are equally good, he can only horizontally change his deck.
* This demographic individually buys not many products, but this new demographic is actually quite large - every extra booster for then is a large marginal revenue gain.
* One might argue this demographic is not representative enough to warrant so many design dedication. To be honest only WotC knows that. What we know is that a few grey ogres and pillarfield ox is the set followed by strictly better uncommons is a formula for selling a lot more packs - and those cards have no negative impact on the other demographics (it actually have a positive impact on limited player). It's a win-win for WotC and for the community.
At the end of the day people must realize boosters is a product aimed at the demographic above and limited players. Constructed players shouldn't be worried about pillarfield ox because they shouldn't be buying boosters.
There's the argument that those bad cards makes the game expansive, but to be honest, the price of the game is determined by WotC - they choose to sell boosters as a price discrimination strategy. Constructed players should pay avg 500 U$ a deck, that's he price of MTG - you either take it or leave it. If WotC suddenly decided to eliminate bad cards, be sure they would sell boosters for 20 U$ or so (until standard players had to pay the 500 U$ for their decks).
For all the people bashing limited, you do not realize that there is a huge section that love limited and play MTG because of limited. I also personally know a lot of people that play only limited and don't bother with rotating constructed because they enjoy it more and because it's cheaper than constructed. The thousands of people that spend real money to draft digital cards every day on MTGO are proof of this. There are tons of people that draft casually with friends around the kitchen table, and not because they were practicing for FNM or the pro tour. (I know this because I worked at a shop for 2 years and a lot of people bought booster boxes and told me they were keeping them sealed to draft at home with friends).
If WOTC stopped supported limited, a HUGE number of players would buy way less product or even stop playing Magic altogether. WOTC and TOs both know this. Creating good limited environments is extremely important for the game, and limited filler cards are key to this.
Also, for those that don't know, trying to make every single card in a set better than every other card ever made (As the OP suggested) is how you get Power Creep. If you give white a 4/4 for 3W at C, then you have to give green a 6/6 for 3G at common and Red a 4/1 for 2R and U a 7/7 for 3UU to maintain color-pie balance. Then in a year OP complains about how underpowered 4/4s for 3W are, and they have to raise the numbers again and again every year. Power Creep. And if you just give every color 4/4 for 3C at common, then the colors start to become meaningless and the game will get boring and die.
These arguments about bisecting sets based on a hierarchy of the power level of cards is just an extremely flawed argument. If we assigned a power level to each card like pillarfield ox gets a 20/100 and brimaz gets 100/100, the objective would be to have a higher median score. If we bisected the set and the middle card was like 38/100, what would be desired is a median score like 48/100. Frankly there are some limited cards that are not even playable in limited.
The main problem is that there are cards extremely underpowered compared to the other cards in their set. The point is to raise the average power level by stop printing extremely underpowered cards.
And personally I don't think pillarfield ox is weak enough to be considered unplayable. It serves a purpose, even if it's just a marginal one in limited.
These arguments about bisecting sets based on a hierarchy of the power level of cards is just an extremely flawed argument. If we assigned a power level to each card like pillarfield ox gets a 20/100 and brimaz gets 100/100, the objective would be to have a higher median score. If we bisected the set and the middle card was like 38/100, what would be desired is a median score like 48/100. Frankly there are some limited cards that are not even playable in limited.
The main problem is that there are cards extremely underpowered compared to the other cards in their set. The point is to raise the average power level by stop printing extremely underpowered cards.
And personally I don't think pillarfield ox is weak enough to be considered unplayable. It serves a purpose, even if it's just a marginal one in limited.
I think it is a pretty strawman-y argument assuming people will call the new low end crap with closing the power gap further. It's like saying, "oh no, LotV isn't as powerful as Jace!, she's junk" That kind of behavior is a little implausible...Things as simple as subtype can matter.
I agree people will complain no matter what WotC does, but I believe bringing the extreme end of underpowered closer to the middle will make drafting and sealed much more enjoyable and less dependent on bombs and more dependent on drafting and playing well.
Card quality is the way it is because players continue to buy into it.
By spending no money on the game you forfeit any right to criticize the game. There is no reason wizards should ever care what you think about the game. You are not a magic player.
There simply will always be a finite amount of cards considered playable within any distribution, it is a matter of where the bar is.
One reason that I am not sure was touched on, though I might have missed it, is the color pie. Some cards are going to seem "strictly" worse than others (and therefor "bad") due to the fact that not all colors can do all things. Black's 2/2 fliers are going to cost more and/or have more drawbacks than those you find in blue.
Frankly, the OP has only pointed out creatures that were vanilla as cards that are bad, so is it just those that bother him?
I think it is a pretty strawman-y argument assuming people will call the new low end crap with closing the power gap further. It's like saying, "oh no, LotV isn't as powerful as Jace!, she's junk" That kind of behavior is a little implausible...Things as simple as subtype can matter.
I think if you are taking it to that extreme then yes, it is silly, but if you use a more reasonable scale of value where (for example) Ajani, Caller of the Pride is the lowest end of quality of PW and every other PW is much better, then it is not that hard to imagine people calling it "unplayable". Just because it does not hold up under the two-man race you propose does not mean the premise is untenable.
By spending no money on the game you forfeit any right to criticize the game. There is no reason wizards should ever care what you think about the game. You are not a magic player.4
That's a new one. Normally you get people telling you that you can criticize something ONLY if you paid for it.
There simply will always be a finite amount of cards considered playable within any distribution, it is a matter of where the bar is.
That's another one of those "since there will always be a power gap between cards, it doesn't matter how big the gap is" arguments. I know that there's going to be a power gap, but why shouldn't I care about the size of that gap?
People making that argument show an incredibly deep misunderstanding of what the problem is. I'm normally the one defending unplayed or sparsely played cards like one with nothing, ajani's chosen, and plummet.
I'm tired of hearing this argument, so from now on, I'm going to continue asking why it matters until I get an answer.
Why should I not care about the size of the power gap?
The last time i spent money on cards i didnt want was... When i first started playing over a year ago.
I complain about bad cards driving up the prices of singles, and your answer is to buy fewer boosters.
I don't get it.
Uh, I just don't see how you can draw a direct line of causation from the existence of Pillarfield Ox and the price of Mutavault on the secondary market.
Uh, I just don't see how you can draw a direct line of causation from the existence of Pillarfield Ox and the price of Mutavault on the secondary market.
The prices of the cards that can come in a pack are more or less bound by the price of the pack, and the likelihood of them appearing in said pack. If it were possible to just open packs and make money, than people would be doing that until the excess supply of cards
If the cards that are not mutavault are relatively more expensive, than the price of the mutavault has to be lower, or else the average price of the singles in the pack would exceed the price of the pack.
--------
If the cards are more balanced in power, than it's likely that they'll be more balanced in price, It's not feasible to assume that all of the rares would be worth tens of dollars. People would just buy packs instead if that were the case. What would happen instead is that the prices of the expensive rares would go down, as the cheaper ones go up
I don't really think that would be the case. There'd just be more rares worth spending money on. Replacing thirty rares with distinctly more awesome rares in M14 doesn't make Mutavault any less rare, or any of those cards more of a Mutavault. If anything, LGS's might raise the price of Mutavault to keep people from scoring Mutavault off of two or three rares traded in.
You brought up the fact that Pillarfield Ox and Gray Ogre are bad cards, but they aren't competing for the same spot in a pack as Mutavault, or Archangel of Thune, or any rare at all, except in the Foil Slot, and that's another matter entirely. Heck, they aren't even competing with Serra Angel, or Brave the Elements. They're just commons. They're supposed to be simple. Easy to understand. Reflect themes and mechanics when a set rolls around.
Do you want more power from your commons? Okay. How do we go about that without shifting complexity, or making the uncommons, rares and mythics rares look a little worse? Would you play Pillarfield Ox in this meta if it were a 4/4 for the same cost? A 4/4 Lifelink? A 4/4 Lifelink, First Strike? Where does your particular buck stop on playing this card? What needs to be added? And would that really fit at common?
I'm also not entirely sure how big you think this "gap" is between power levels, considering you have defended in the past such typically browbeat cards. The "gap" is going to be there because at the end of the day, there's a limit on what colors can do, what cards can do, how many you can fit into your deck, and what the meta becomes. It doesn't matter if every single card in the meta is playable, good, great even. At the end of the day, the Spike-types are gonna sit down with card lists, and build and play and test, and build and play and test until there's a group of decks that dominate, leaving a bunch of great cards unplayed. If we're lucky, the meta is varied, and a larger amount of cards get played, and the decks that do really well will have expensive cards, but they won't be as expensive as if the meta was limited, and only a few cards were deemed important. There's always gonna be cards that just aren't worth much.
Plummet can be a great card in a format with tons of fliers. It's a fantastic card for Green. It's kinda useless if the format wants to make a ton of elementals and steam-roll you with them, or drain your life with a bunch of merchants. It's not a bad card. Not in the slightest. It's just not the right situation, the right meta for it. And there's gonna be cards like that no matter how good the block is. No matter how good BOTH blocks are.
I know this is a lot of text, but it's late and I'm sort of a rambler anyway. Yesterday I wrote up a big long argument on why Gray Ogre was bad but it was okay that's it's bad, but I don't think it's really that relevant now.
Uh, I guess, tl;dr - Rarity is the issue here, not power level, and the metagame's simply going to make things more expensive as it gets "Solved."
I would like to see more cards like sinkhole at common its simple but powerful. If they printed cards like these more often: Lightning Bolt, terminate, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Hymn to Tourach, Wild Mongrel, Counterspell, Duress, Dark Ritual, Land Grant, Daze, Memory Lapse, Wild Nacatl. All these cards are good if we saw more stuff like this not just 1 to 3 a set if that. Upping it to like 10 per set would be fine if you ask me. Some of these commons are way too high on the power level though for what wizards likes. It would be nice to see more commons that are potentially playable in eternal formats more often that is where all cards eventual go. Good commons should be useful utility cards for the most part.
Card quality is the way it is because players continue to buy into it.
By spending no money on the game you forfeit any right to criticize the game. There is no reason wizards should ever care what you think about the game. You are not a magic player.
Oh no, does this mean I can't wear the secret decoder ring anymore?! /sarc
I don't hold any pretensions that WotC does or should care about any individual player, but if enough people were to stop buying, WotC would be forced to adapt. Or leave open a convenient niche in the market for some up-and-coming tcg brand. That's economics 101.
Card quality is the way it is because players continue to buy into it.
By spending no money on the game you forfeit any right to criticize the game. There is no reason wizards should ever care what you think about the game. You are not a magic player.
Oh no, does this mean I can't wear the secret decoder ring anymore?! /sarc
I don't hold any pretensions that WotC does or should care about any individual player, but if enough people were to stop buying, WotC would be forced to adapt. Or leave open a convenient niche in the market for some up-and-coming tcg brand. That's economics 101.
Actually, if enough stopped buying the game would die. Making cards so cheap and taking control over the market would hurt the game even more. The "I want something for nothing" argument is not going to lead this HIGHLY successful game into being more so.
BTW, it is not the "no true scotsman" argument, it is the democratic abstainer position- meaning I believe that if you live in a democratic society and you legally are able to vote, but you do not vote, then you have no right to complain about the government because you gave up your voice (voting). Not voting is not an ad hoc vote, and proxying isn't an ad hoc capitalist statement.
Actually, if enough stopped buying the game would die.
If enough players stopped buying and WotC refused to adapt, Magic would die. Maybe. If enough players keep buying despite (or because of) the card quality, Magic has a niche and lives on. There certainly seem to be enough defenders of the status quo, so don't worry about Magic dying (or dramatically changing) any time soon.
BTW, it is not the "no true scotsman" argument, it is the democratic abstainer position- meaning I believe that if you live in a democratic society and you legally are able to vote, but you do not vote, then you have no right to complain about the government because you gave up your voice (voting). Not voting is not an ad hoc vote, and proxying isn't an ad hoc capitalist statement.
Nice false comparison. Unless WotC's been holding elections that I don't know about? Could MaRo conceivably be voted out of office next term?
No? Didn't think so. In capitalism, votes are made with wallets; a purchase is a vote of confidence, and a boycott is a vote for change.
So either you’re guilty of the No True Scotsman fallacy, or of creating a false comparison in an attempt to justify your little self-righteous rant.
Either way, I’ve lost interest in this conversation. You’re not going to convince me to start buying cards again, and I’m not going to convince you to stop wasting your breath.
You see, I do not hate on 'bad cards'. Bad cards can be great sources of entertainment. There are the times when those in your face 'better than you' players have decided to make a deck around a truly terrible card and you then proceed to stomp their smug faces. Some terrible cards have awesome artwork. I can use those terrible cards (that I seem to get thousands of)in my 3d altered MTG life counters, which I sell and make money for better cards! It's the ciiiircle of Liiiiife~
It's not accidental variance, it's mathematically impossible to get around. If everything is, or near fauna shaman in order to have any variance between cards, there will need to be things stronger, and thus power creeps up, or, people begin to notice the subtle differences between them.
Imagine a line graph, which you then cut down the middle, you then zoom in, and again there's that middle to be, it now seems as low, as you've changed your view.
Imagine that professional designers are competent at mathematics, and that a game with 100s of different mechanics has a variance that makes predicting power hard.
Power creep is not necessary, until design space is empty.
Pillarfield Ox could have been 3/5 or 2/6. Bad offensive, very good defensive.
It cost FOUR MANA -- the same amount you need to call the WRATH OF GOD -- a spell powerful enough to kill 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 creatures.
I mean.
When mana capable of casting spells that kills 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 opposing creatures without affecting your side of the battlefield in any way is spent on summoning a creature, that creature should be better than Pillarfield Ox.
Grizzly bears could've been 2/3.
Big butts could help vanilla cards immensely.
One of the biggest problems is the power of removal.
The same 1 mana spell that kills a 1/1, can kill a 10/10 costing 10.
...
In any case, it's not even necessarily necessary to increase the power of all creatures.
I believe the main intent of the topic is discussing intentionally bad cards.
Pillarfield Ox being 3/5 or 2/6 would not make it playable in standard or modern.
That is the nature of vanilla booster filler.
But cards like Thassa's Emissary cannot ever be played in standard nor modern.
Unlike Pillarfield Ox, which is useless because it doesn't replace itself (simply put; dies to removal -- in addition to not winning the game anytime soon), Thassa's Emissary is useless because of it's bestow cost, which is put on an completely unplayable level for no other reason than purposefully making it utterly useless outside limited, while it dies to removal costing 1 and 2 if hardcasted -- making the opponent's 2 cmc removal a Time Walk in his favor.
Both modes are purposefully overcosted for most bestow creatures.
Going back to Pillarfield Ox, it could have costed 2W, with no problems, could it not?
It is almost useless offensively, and at 3 mana -- it must be better than Angelic Wall defensively.
Thassa's Emissary could/should have had a low Bestow cost; 1UU or something to be good -- with 2/3 power/toughness.
Magic is in Activision's sight -- and EA is sure to follow when they see Hearthstone's success, which is kind of inevitable because of MTGO's ridiculous pricing.
...
Imagine if opening ONE PACK was exciting, because you KNEW there was a playable card or two inside each one -- as a standard player, not only as a limited player.
And then you get mad, because the playable you opened isn't in your deck du jour, and isn't worth that much money because it isn't one of the best playable cards, and you just wasted your money on known variance.
Booster packs just aren't for constructed formats. Let's get that out of the way. If you are competitively playing in a constructed format of any kind, then boosters aren't for you. Booster packs are for limited, for the casual audience, for those people who walk into Wal-Mart and go, "Hey, that looks interesting," or,"Man, Magic, haven't looked at that in a while," or, "I could use a few more cards," or those that simply like gambling.
It doesn't matter how much of a set, how much of any one booster pack is good. We're dealing with a twenty year old game that has over thirteen thousand available cards in the extended formats. There will almost always be better things to pick unless Mythical Best Set X wipes every other set off the board. And that's power creep.
And if you're worried about standard? Why spend even more money on that variance? Your format rotates the fastest. Unless you have pre-cognition, you won't get exactly what you need from boosters, even if every pack had something good or great in it.
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Of course the design articles say that. You wouldn't expect Wizards R&D to admit that they print bad cards just so that people buy more product would you?
And what do you think happens to the game if people don't buy more product? Take your argument out to its logical conclusion.
Oh, you're one of the "WoTC is conspiring to give us bad cards" types. Why do you believe that making the odds worse for getting constructed playable cards per pack very low, thus disenfranchising people from wanting to buy such product, is going to increase sales?
* There's a certain demographic of MTG players who will buy relative low amount of product during certain time. Those are newer players who have no pretensions of advancing in the game by going for LGS and such. They are not interested in trading with strangers, they are not interested in playing with strangers. They bought the game at wallmart and such to play with his friends.
* What this demographic will do is buy some starter packs and some boosters to upgrade it.
* If the power level of cards were all the same, the amount of upgrade this player gets for every booster is smaller. Imagine Pillafield Ox is a 3W 4/4 - not even rare Seraphim of the Sword is a clear upgrade here. The player can't buy boosters and directly upgrade his decks - since all cards are equally good, he can only horizontally change his deck.
* This demographic individually buys not many products, but this new demographic is actually quite large - every extra booster for then is a large marginal revenue gain.
* One might argue this demographic is not representative enough to warrant so many design dedication. To be honest only WotC knows that. What we know is that a few grey ogres and pillarfield ox is the set followed by strictly better uncommons is a formula for selling a lot more packs - and those cards have no negative impact on the other demographics (it actually have a positive impact on limited player). It's a win-win for WotC and for the community.
At the end of the day people must realize boosters is a product aimed at the demographic above and limited players. Constructed players shouldn't be worried about pillarfield ox because they shouldn't be buying boosters.
There's the argument that those bad cards makes the game expansive, but to be honest, the price of the game is determined by WotC - they choose to sell boosters as a price discrimination strategy. Constructed players should pay avg 500 U$ a deck, that's he price of MTG - you either take it or leave it. If WotC suddenly decided to eliminate bad cards, be sure they would sell boosters for 20 U$ or so (until standard players had to pay the 500 U$ for their decks).
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
Heck, just stop buying period.
Card quality is the way it is because players continue to buy into it.
If WOTC stopped supported limited, a HUGE number of players would buy way less product or even stop playing Magic altogether. WOTC and TOs both know this. Creating good limited environments is extremely important for the game, and limited filler cards are key to this.
Also, for those that don't know, trying to make every single card in a set better than every other card ever made (As the OP suggested) is how you get Power Creep. If you give white a 4/4 for 3W at C, then you have to give green a 6/6 for 3G at common and Red a 4/1 for 2R and U a 7/7 for 3UU to maintain color-pie balance. Then in a year OP complains about how underpowered 4/4s for 3W are, and they have to raise the numbers again and again every year. Power Creep. And if you just give every color 4/4 for 3C at common, then the colors start to become meaningless and the game will get boring and die.
The main problem is that there are cards extremely underpowered compared to the other cards in their set. The point is to raise the average power level by stop printing extremely underpowered cards.
And personally I don't think pillarfield ox is weak enough to be considered unplayable. It serves a purpose, even if it's just a marginal one in limited.
I think it is a pretty strawman-y argument assuming people will call the new low end crap with closing the power gap further. It's like saying, "oh no, LotV isn't as powerful as Jace!, she's junk" That kind of behavior is a little implausible...Things as simple as subtype can matter.
What people?
There simply will always be a finite amount of cards considered playable within any distribution, it is a matter of where the bar is.
One reason that I am not sure was touched on, though I might have missed it, is the color pie. Some cards are going to seem "strictly" worse than others (and therefor "bad") due to the fact that not all colors can do all things. Black's 2/2 fliers are going to cost more and/or have more drawbacks than those you find in blue.
Frankly, the OP has only pointed out creatures that were vanilla as cards that are bad, so is it just those that bother him?
I think if you are taking it to that extreme then yes, it is silly, but if you use a more reasonable scale of value where (for example) Ajani, Caller of the Pride is the lowest end of quality of PW and every other PW is much better, then it is not that hard to imagine people calling it "unplayable". Just because it does not hold up under the two-man race you propose does not mean the premise is untenable.
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
I complain about bad cards driving up the prices of singles, and your answer is to buy fewer boosters.
I don't get it.
That's a new one. Normally you get people telling you that you can criticize something ONLY if you paid for it.
That's another one of those "since there will always be a power gap between cards, it doesn't matter how big the gap is" arguments. I know that there's going to be a power gap, but why shouldn't I care about the size of that gap?
People making that argument show an incredibly deep misunderstanding of what the problem is. I'm normally the one defending unplayed or sparsely played cards like one with nothing, ajani's chosen, and plummet.
I'm tired of hearing this argument, so from now on, I'm going to continue asking why it matters until I get an answer.
Why should I not care about the size of the power gap?
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
The prices of the cards that can come in a pack are more or less bound by the price of the pack, and the likelihood of them appearing in said pack. If it were possible to just open packs and make money, than people would be doing that until the excess supply of cards
If the cards that are not mutavault are relatively more expensive, than the price of the mutavault has to be lower, or else the average price of the singles in the pack would exceed the price of the pack.
--------
If the cards are more balanced in power, than it's likely that they'll be more balanced in price, It's not feasible to assume that all of the rares would be worth tens of dollars. People would just buy packs instead if that were the case. What would happen instead is that the prices of the expensive rares would go down, as the cheaper ones go up
You brought up the fact that Pillarfield Ox and Gray Ogre are bad cards, but they aren't competing for the same spot in a pack as Mutavault, or Archangel of Thune, or any rare at all, except in the Foil Slot, and that's another matter entirely. Heck, they aren't even competing with Serra Angel, or Brave the Elements. They're just commons. They're supposed to be simple. Easy to understand. Reflect themes and mechanics when a set rolls around.
Do you want more power from your commons? Okay. How do we go about that without shifting complexity, or making the uncommons, rares and mythics rares look a little worse? Would you play Pillarfield Ox in this meta if it were a 4/4 for the same cost? A 4/4 Lifelink? A 4/4 Lifelink, First Strike? Where does your particular buck stop on playing this card? What needs to be added? And would that really fit at common?
I'm also not entirely sure how big you think this "gap" is between power levels, considering you have defended in the past such typically browbeat cards. The "gap" is going to be there because at the end of the day, there's a limit on what colors can do, what cards can do, how many you can fit into your deck, and what the meta becomes. It doesn't matter if every single card in the meta is playable, good, great even. At the end of the day, the Spike-types are gonna sit down with card lists, and build and play and test, and build and play and test until there's a group of decks that dominate, leaving a bunch of great cards unplayed. If we're lucky, the meta is varied, and a larger amount of cards get played, and the decks that do really well will have expensive cards, but they won't be as expensive as if the meta was limited, and only a few cards were deemed important. There's always gonna be cards that just aren't worth much.
Plummet can be a great card in a format with tons of fliers. It's a fantastic card for Green. It's kinda useless if the format wants to make a ton of elementals and steam-roll you with them, or drain your life with a bunch of merchants. It's not a bad card. Not in the slightest. It's just not the right situation, the right meta for it. And there's gonna be cards like that no matter how good the block is. No matter how good BOTH blocks are.
I know this is a lot of text, but it's late and I'm sort of a rambler anyway. Yesterday I wrote up a big long argument on why Gray Ogre was bad but it was okay that's it's bad, but I don't think it's really that relevant now.
Uh, I guess, tl;dr - Rarity is the issue here, not power level, and the metagame's simply going to make things more expensive as it gets "Solved."
I loathe creatures! Praise Prison and Land Destruction!
My Peasant Cube (looking for feedback)
Oh no, does this mean I can't wear the secret decoder ring anymore?! /sarc
Lol, silly No True Scotsman fallacy.
I don't hold any pretensions that WotC does or should care about any individual player, but if enough people were to stop buying, WotC would be forced to adapt. Or leave open a convenient niche in the market for some up-and-coming tcg brand. That's economics 101.
BTW, it is not the "no true scotsman" argument, it is the democratic abstainer position- meaning I believe that if you live in a democratic society and you legally are able to vote, but you do not vote, then you have no right to complain about the government because you gave up your voice (voting). Not voting is not an ad hoc vote, and proxying isn't an ad hoc capitalist statement.
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
If enough players stopped buying and WotC refused to adapt, Magic would die. Maybe. If enough players keep buying despite (or because of) the card quality, Magic has a niche and lives on. There certainly seem to be enough defenders of the status quo, so don't worry about Magic dying (or dramatically changing) any time soon.
Nice false comparison. Unless WotC's been holding elections that I don't know about? Could MaRo conceivably be voted out of office next term?
No? Didn't think so. In capitalism, votes are made with wallets; a purchase is a vote of confidence, and a boycott is a vote for change.
So either you’re guilty of the No True Scotsman fallacy, or of creating a false comparison in an attempt to justify your little self-righteous rant.
Either way, I’ve lost interest in this conversation. You’re not going to convince me to start buying cards again, and I’m not going to convince you to stop wasting your breath.
Imagine that professional designers are competent at mathematics, and that a game with 100s of different mechanics has a variance that makes predicting power hard.
Power creep is not necessary, until design space is empty.
Pillarfield Ox could have been 3/5 or 2/6. Bad offensive, very good defensive.
It cost FOUR MANA -- the same amount you need to call the WRATH OF GOD -- a spell powerful enough to kill 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 creatures.
I mean.
When mana capable of casting spells that kills 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 opposing creatures without affecting your side of the battlefield in any way is spent on summoning a creature, that creature should be better than Pillarfield Ox.
Grizzly bears could've been 2/3.
Big butts could help vanilla cards immensely.
One of the biggest problems is the power of removal.
The same 1 mana spell that kills a 1/1, can kill a 10/10 costing 10.
...
In any case, it's not even necessarily necessary to increase the power of all creatures.
I believe the main intent of the topic is discussing intentionally bad cards.
Pillarfield Ox being 3/5 or 2/6 would not make it playable in standard or modern.
That is the nature of vanilla booster filler.
But cards like Thassa's Emissary cannot ever be played in standard nor modern.
Unlike Pillarfield Ox, which is useless because it doesn't replace itself (simply put; dies to removal -- in addition to not winning the game anytime soon), Thassa's Emissary is useless because of it's bestow cost, which is put on an completely unplayable level for no other reason than purposefully making it utterly useless outside limited, while it dies to removal costing 1 and 2 if hardcasted -- making the opponent's 2 cmc removal a Time Walk in his favor.
Both modes are purposefully overcosted for most bestow creatures.
Going back to Pillarfield Ox, it could have costed 2W, with no problems, could it not?
It is almost useless offensively, and at 3 mana -- it must be better than Angelic Wall defensively.
Thassa's Emissary could/should have had a low Bestow cost; 1UU or something to be good -- with 2/3 power/toughness.
Magic is in Activision's sight -- and EA is sure to follow when they see Hearthstone's success, which is kind of inevitable because of MTGO's ridiculous pricing.
...
Imagine if opening ONE PACK was exciting, because you KNEW there was a playable card or two inside each one -- as a standard player, not only as a limited player.
Booster packs just aren't for constructed formats. Let's get that out of the way. If you are competitively playing in a constructed format of any kind, then boosters aren't for you. Booster packs are for limited, for the casual audience, for those people who walk into Wal-Mart and go, "Hey, that looks interesting," or,"Man, Magic, haven't looked at that in a while," or, "I could use a few more cards," or those that simply like gambling.
It doesn't matter how much of a set, how much of any one booster pack is good. We're dealing with a twenty year old game that has over thirteen thousand available cards in the extended formats. There will almost always be better things to pick unless Mythical Best Set X wipes every other set off the board. And that's power creep.
And if you're worried about standard? Why spend even more money on that variance? Your format rotates the fastest. Unless you have pre-cognition, you won't get exactly what you need from boosters, even if every pack had something good or great in it.