"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Whats not old is Frank Karsten being muzzled from posting GP data.
That is not old but it also seemingly has nothing to do with the other part. Are they connected or did you just jump in here to yell fire?
Also, yes that is tragic. More data should be a good thing.
Well in Historian's Video.
He actually puts that first before the MPL rules change.
His reason being in citing its recency.
And why its a bad thing.
Yes SavannahLion, that is why.
Whats not old is Frank Karsten being muzzled from posting GP data.
That is not old but it also seemingly has nothing to do with the other part. Are they connected or did you just jump in here to yell fire?
Also, yes that is tragic. More data should be a good thing.
Well in Historian's Video.
He actually puts that first before the MPL rules change.
His reason being in citing its recency.
And why its a bad thing.
Yes SavannahLion, that is why.
Yeah... sorry... I posted before your post appeared for me and it didn't appear until after user### posted. A cache issue I suppose.
Whats not old is Frank Karsten being muzzled from posting GP data.
That is not old but it also seemingly has nothing to do with the other part. Are they connected or did you just jump in here to yell fire?
Also, yes that is tragic. More data should be a good thing.
Well in Historian's Video.
He actually puts that first before the MPL rules change.
His reason being in citing its recency.
And why its a bad thing.
Yes SavannahLion, that is why.
K, I didn't watch the video just read the readable stuff and it had nothing to do with that. Having still not watched the video are people actually upset about the fine? The article caps off with this is an expected clause that no one should be surprised about. Cause if no one is upset about the fine a thread should be talking about the cutting off of Data not the fine because that's some annoying *****.
Same verse, same as the first.
Members of the community tried to provide data.
Showing how the metagame actually is.
Wizards again trying to quell it.
First MTGGoldFish, now Frank.
So they went after Saffron Olive before Frank Karsten?
The $500 fine seems par for the course as far as "contracting" people's appearances which is what the MPL basically does.
Punishing those with differing opinions has been an awful practice that Wizards of the Coast has been getting away with for a long time and it's a shame that they're now reaching out to others who are disseminating that information.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I wondered why MTGoldFish wasn't showing much of anything. Before the whole Karsten thing, I just figured it had to do with the fact that it's ChannelFireball's "data".
I don't actively go out looking for that data, I don't play much Standard anymore. But I do get the trickle down effect with a lot of the Youtube channels (for example) talking about top strategies and such.
I personally agree with The Mmagic Historian video about this: WotC is becoming more and more controlling, demanding that you never say anything even slightly critical of them on any kind of platform. You pretty much must be a sycophant to work with them.
The censorship on the tournament data is most likely a way to hide the fact that the standard environment is broken and stale.
I personally agree with The Mmagic Historian video about this: WotC is becoming more and more controlling, demanding that you never say anything even slightly critical of them on any kind of platform. You pretty much must be a sycophant to work with them.
The censorship on the tournament data is most likely a way to hide the fact that the standard environment is broken and stale.
I also see the censorship on tournament data as a way to stop players from netdecking and be more original with what kind of decks they build. Then again you're always going to have players who will try to break the game in order to expose broken synergies and combos to convince WotC to ban. Instead of addressing the problem right away they wait til the last minute to do something about it. They don't ban anything because they don't want to hurt the monetary value of popular cards.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I personally agree with The Mmagic Historian video about this: WotC is becoming more and more controlling, demanding that you never say anything even slightly critical of them on any kind of platform. You pretty much must be a sycophant to work with them.
The censorship on the tournament data is most likely a way to hide the fact that the standard environment is broken and stale.
I also see the censorship on tournament data as a way to stop players from netdecking and be more original with what kind of decks they build. Then again you're always going to have players who will try to break the game in order to expose broken synergies and combos to convince WotC to ban. Instead of addressing the problem right away they wait til the last minute to do something about it. They don't ban anything because they don't want to hurt the monetary value of popular cards.
I can see that. The Oko business must have stung their profits a bit. Seems like Oko's ban seemed to have killed interest with that set.
I also get the feeling that Theros isn't as "full" as it should be. Informal rumors point to Theros having some of the cards cut and a very rocky development cycle.
And Maros recent article on Unsanctioned seems to hint at internal problems at WotC.
So in the end, I can see the logic with trying to "stretch" out the meta. I don't know if I agree with it but I do see the logic.
I also get the feeling that Theros isn't as "full" as it should be. Informal rumors point to Theros having some of the cards cut and a very rocky development cycle.
Theros was fully printed before Oko was banned they couldn't cut cards from it they work too far in the future.
I also get the feeling that Theros isn't as "full" as it should be. Informal rumors point to Theros having some of the cards cut and a very rocky development cycle.
Theros was fully printed before Oko was banned they couldn't cut cards from it they work too far in the future.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply that Oko and cards rumored to be cut from Theros were related. I don't actually know that they are related.
What I was trying to say was that Theros feels "incomplete" and it doesn't jive with me very well. Blah for lack of a better term elsewhere. This is coming from someone that had one of their top ten favorite cards ever printed reprinted in this set.
I'm not the only one either. My local LGS community also feels underwhelmed as well about the set. A lot of them seem to point to the lack of planeswalkers but I don't think that's it. Eldraine had the same number. It just seems like the set has spaces or perhaps gaps with the cards. It just feels "off". There's a Youtube video talking about it, supposedly from an "insider".
Point being, if enough players feel like I do, they're probably not buying Theros packs in numbers as high that WotC desires. This is coupled with the coincidental banning of Oko probably dragging Eldraine sales down.
So, back to my point, I can see why WotC is trying to stretch the meta out.
The reason that MTG has so many problems is because it's an amazing game. It's the end result of the actions that are being taken because MTG is an amazing game that actually led to it's current problems. MTG has been a massive success which has led to really poor corporate decisions and an overall structuring of the company around that. MTG used to be a much smaller affair in terms of Wizards of the Coast and then the game itself grew larger and so dominant that Wizards of the Coast was actually able to purchase TSR the makers of Dungeons & Dragons. Hilariously enough MTG was made as "something quick and fun that people can play between games and at gaming conventions", quoting founder of Wizards of the Coast Peter Adkison.
MTG has become wildly successful in terms of Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games that it's being leveraged in a way that has a detrimental effect overall to the company and leads to us having a poorer experience as consumers because they're not putting in the effort to ensure that we're getting the best results. What's going on is think about it, wouldn't you like to work at Wizards of the Coast? There's a bunch of people thinking, "Oh I'd love to spend my time designing MTG cards, working with MTG, play MTG all the time, talk MTG all day and all that goodness". It's a pretty sweet deal when you think about it however what's happened there is the same thing that's happened in a number of different industries that are desirable.
This is leveraged by all kinds of different companies and it generally leads to bad results. In this hypothetical scenario you desperately want to work for Wizards of the Coast so as a result you're going to put up with more hassles than a regular employee who doesn't care about the company the same way. Think about the place that would be your dream job and then thinking about working at a place you don't care about. Think about two equal jobs where one is like "Oh my God I get to be at Wizards of the Coast!" versus "I'm going to manage a Kmart." Now there's nothing wrong with being a Kmart manager (is Kmart even a thing anymore?), anyway like a department store manager, a perfectly respectable job where the employee gets paid fairly adequately.
I'm NOT here using that as a knock on those kinds of jobs but just to give you an example of "you're going to dream about being a Wizards of the Coast employee and working on MTG" that's the dream. It's not a dream of being a Wizards of the Coast employee, it's a dream of working on MTG. There is no equal for like the department "so I can't wait to be the guy whose in charge of making sure we have enough pairs of jeans to sell." There's just no parallel there. So Wizards of the Coast has the ability to essentially pay their employees less except here's the catch, they can't pay them as much. So say you were one of these Wizards of the Coast employees and you were to go to work as a department store manager you'd get paid more with two jobs.
If you go work for a company where you don't care about working there and you're doing the same level job then you're not going to take that level of pay but because you love Wizards of the Coast you're going to take this level of pay because you love MTG specifically. Mostly this is about MTG though there are people who feel the same way about Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast will leverage that as well however MTG is the biggest draw. It's the most valuable property that the company owns and it has the most people who are scrambling. Look at all the people who spend their time designing their own MTG cards. There's tons of people who are from the outside because they don't see what it's like on the inside who would absolutely love to be there.
This puts Wizards of the Coast in a scenario where they can essentially hire people, pay them less, treat them poorly, and throw them out the door like garbage because they don't matter. You've seen it within the Video Game Industry where people want to work on video games. The dream of working on video games is so amazing to them that they're like "Oh my God I can't wait to work on video games!" So what happens is that they end up getting hired for low-level pay and as soon as whatever project they're working on is done they all get thrown out the door so the corporation can go, "Look we made this much extra money, we can write all this off" and "Take a look at this we can trumpet our earnings!"
Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro so it's the same kind of scenario. So you have these people who are being hired because they love the game and they're taking less pay and you ask, "Well what's wrong with someone wanting to take less pay to work a job that is essentially their dream job?" There's nothing wrong from the perspective of the person who goes in all starry-eyed and wants to work for Wizards of the Coast. What's wrong is what happens as an end result of it. You end up with people with a consistent level of "churn". Churn is basically how many people end up leaving the business. Apparently around two years in is where all the Magic starts to rub off. That's the furthest most people will make it before they start to become completely disillusioned.
So anyone who sticks around long-term is no longer going to be "full of the joy". The people who are there and are excited and new, they put absurd amounts of work on them while also shrinking down the work force. As an end result there's not enough employees to go around for all the work that needs to be done. You have to skimp here and there. So where do we see the skimping? We see it very clearly in things like Oko, Thief of Crowns in Throne of Eldraine. While they were looking to make fun, innovative, and exciting new cards; playtest design is really important in order to get a balanced environment. Wizards of the Coast admitted that they barely even playtested Oko for Standard in terms of his +1 ability which should've been a -1 ability.
The employees didn't have time to playtest because they were being overworked. So this mentality that "You're lucky to get to work on MTG's premium product", "That it deserves sacrifices on your part", and "We're the best because we're MTG" infuses new people who apply to work for Wizards of the Coast who aren't even applying because they love MTG. So the manager who was in charge of developing MTG Arena came out with a very snobbish condescending attitude talking about MTG Arena and how it would be more expensive than other digital games purely because it was MTG. He wasn't a massive fanatic who came to work on the game because he had that instilled into him by the company itself.
Dealing with that level of arrogance and attitude from the company infused its way into somebody who was relatively new to the company. That's the scenario we're currently in right now where you have employees getting burnt out, in fear of losing their jobs, overworked, and the company taking constant advantage of people who are willing to work under pay. For a part of the world that these employees are in they only receive below average pay while Wizards of the Coast expects them to work for the love of MTG. This leads to employees who aren't as good at the job as they could be. If you're paying below industry standards then you're not going to have the level of confidence and quality you would have If you'd paid for a higher level of confidence and quality.
You're never going to have the best quality because the best employees are going to leave for better jobs. If you pay below the average people will go where they can get the average or better. These employees are only going to stick around for a certain amount of time before they're more preoccupied with life in general. Wizards of the Coast's most talented individuals are going to leave while they're stuck with essentially subpar employees that's led to this churn scenario. So you've got a situation where they burn their overworked employees, throw them out the door, and then bring a new wave. They're constantly doing that. There have been people talking about the lack of diversity inside the company.
They tout these ideals but don't internally reflect them and that may be also my opinion what they do is predatory. It may have to do with the predatory way that they do things where they end up with a lot of particular people working for them because they're preying on those people to work for them. In other words they're taking substandard employees just because they love the game, the numbers look better on the spreadsheet, but at the end of the day If you have less competent people working for you then you end up with a less competent product. Look at the slew of problems that Wizards of the Coast has right now.
They literally had to cancel a novel that they paid for to get created based on Theros: Beyond Death however they screwed things up so poorly that they couldn't even release it out to the public. They're unable to print cards to decent quality like they used to be able to or they just refuse to. So it's either incompetence or absolute outright greed. Either way this preying on MTG players the way that the Video Game Industry preys on gamers where they take advantage of them is causing their consumer base to feel that kind of pressure as well. We've probably all been in positions where we've been exploited to a degree by this sort of thing, not specifically with MTG but it's a very human sort of thing.
Wizards of the Coast is just actively making these choices that are making things worse and it spreads out to every aspect of the company because of that corporate culture where they become complacent. They're like, "We're King of the Hill Card Game" and it just translates into them thinking that they're also going to be "King of Video Games" and it's just not going to play out that way. They're not hiring the best and the brightest to create this stuff when they're hiring people who'll work for what they're paying and considering how much money this company makes from all these products it makes no sense to see a shrinking employee base being loaded with more and more work.
You can get away with that If you're running a Fast Food Chain since it's not going to change the quality due to already being a robotic process where you just need people to essentially fill the role of droids. However when it comes to MTG it requires a lot more thought and care to properly do things and we're seeing a number of different issues that are all cropping up because of it. So underneath it all it really all boils down to the biggest problem with MTG is the elitism that's felt by the company itself and the management that feels that you should feel privileged to work at Wizards of the Coast.
They should be happy for their employees to work for them but it's at an unreasonable level that leads to them taking advantage of people who don't deserve to be taken advantage of. It leads to choices where people are being treated poorly and underpaid because MTG is a great game. The game itself is suffering because of incompetence, because of complacent management, because of taking advantage of individuals who don't deserve to be taken advantage of. So that's my opinion on the subject. I just wanted to bring that out as a conversation piece.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
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http://epicstream.com/news/JakeVyper/New-Magic-The-Gathering-MPL--Rivals-League-Rules-Forbid-Criticism-of-The-League
https://www.reddit.com/r/freemagic/comments/ewkd8l/new_mpl_contracts_include_500_fine_for/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd8EdwWRYfw
https://twitter.com/JeffHoogland/status/1223315855636942850
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Wizards already doesn't work with people who are critical of them(other than the professor) so it's just more of the same.
How many of the people actually affected by this are complaining? Because random uninvolved people being angry isn't relevant.
It's possibly a problem but it's very difficult to care.
Also, yes that is tragic. More data should be a good thing.
He actually puts that first before the MPL rules change.
His reason being in citing its recency.
And why its a bad thing.
Yes SavannahLion, that is why.
Yeah... sorry... I posted before your post appeared for me and it didn't appear until after user### posted. A cache issue I suppose.
Members of the community tried to provide data.
Showing how the metagame actually is.
Wizards again trying to quell it.
First MTGGoldFish, now Frank.
The $500 fine seems par for the course as far as "contracting" people's appearances which is what the MPL basically does.
Punishing those with differing opinions has been an awful practice that Wizards of the Coast has been getting away with for a long time and it's a shame that they're now reaching out to others who are disseminating that information.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I don't actively go out looking for that data, I don't play much Standard anymore. But I do get the trickle down effect with a lot of the Youtube channels (for example) talking about top strategies and such.
The censorship on the tournament data is most likely a way to hide the fact that the standard environment is broken and stale.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I can see that. The Oko business must have stung their profits a bit. Seems like Oko's ban seemed to have killed interest with that set.
I also get the feeling that Theros isn't as "full" as it should be. Informal rumors point to Theros having some of the cards cut and a very rocky development cycle.
And Maros recent article on Unsanctioned seems to hint at internal problems at WotC.
So in the end, I can see the logic with trying to "stretch" out the meta. I don't know if I agree with it but I do see the logic.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply that Oko and cards rumored to be cut from Theros were related. I don't actually know that they are related.
What I was trying to say was that Theros feels "incomplete" and it doesn't jive with me very well. Blah for lack of a better term elsewhere. This is coming from someone that had one of their top ten favorite cards ever printed reprinted in this set.
I'm not the only one either. My local LGS community also feels underwhelmed as well about the set. A lot of them seem to point to the lack of planeswalkers but I don't think that's it. Eldraine had the same number. It just seems like the set has spaces or perhaps gaps with the cards. It just feels "off". There's a Youtube video talking about it, supposedly from an "insider".
Point being, if enough players feel like I do, they're probably not buying Theros packs in numbers as high that WotC desires. This is coupled with the coincidental banning of Oko probably dragging Eldraine sales down.
So, back to my point, I can see why WotC is trying to stretch the meta out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUHhngxPGLc&t=
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta