Exactly because it happens EVEN with experienced game designers that amateur will be highly more likely to do disaster with unbalanced things. Tested this for years with friends that had the idea to make their own custom cards and decks. That's why if I don't have great faith in WotC I have even less in the ordinary player.
Thank god the RC was never "ordinary players" then.
People creating random ass to put into their decks hardly proves anything. There is a clear conflict of interests. Instead of printing balanced cards you could just design broken cards to win, or crazy concepts without any sense like having 5 different creatures with partner, one of each color, as your commander.
And there is also a clear conflict of interest with wotc printing cards and then deciding to ban them.
Well maybe If they stopped focusing so much on designing new cards specifically for Commander and allow the design process to flow organically as it did before the format took off then we'd be better off. It would allow more creative freedom for cards designed for other formats and allow a sense of experimentation for players who want to test these cards for Commander instead of it being egregious. Not every new Standard and Modern legal set HAS to have Legendary Creatures printed when all it does is dilutes formats outside of Commander. Designing cards for other formats will eventually find their way to Commander. Patience is not Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's strongest virtue.
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Jesus Christ, Who Is God Revealed In The Flesh, Bless America.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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
It's not a matter of patience, it's just that profits > creativity
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
Well maybe If they stopped focusing so much on designing new cards specifically for Commander and allow the design process to flow organically as it did before the format took off then we'd be better off. It would allow more creative freedom for cards designed for other formats and allow a sense of experimentation for players who want to test these cards for Commander instead of it being egregious. Not every new Standard and Modern legal set HAS to have Legendary Creatures printed when all it does is dilutes formats outside of Commander. Designing cards for other formats will eventually find their way to Commander.
100% agreed. Thing is in my opinion there's practically zero chance of that happening. I know there has been statements in regards to scaling back the commander focus but that's going to materialize like a year down the line at best and in the end it'll be something like "See, we squeezed only 20 instead of 50 cards aimed at commander in every set and released 20 instead of 30 precons containing custom cards per year. Aren't we the most attentive company ever?", which hardly matters in regards to the big picture.
Besides for the most part the damage has already been done and that simply can't be undone (well, besides the damage Wizards is doing in general with their rapid fire mode of churning out new products and making Magic from a fantasy game into a assortment of of IPs, which current commander also likely plays quite a role in making that possible - well, lets enjoy Optimus Prime fighting Goblins and Elves...). At least not without incurring a ton of damage elsewhere. I mean, sure, one can take the route we are taking locally and simply house rule ban all specialized commander products, which in turn kills the "play with whatever you have lying around (unless it's on a short list)" aspect and leads the a lot of edge cases while not addressing the commander cards in disguise hidden inside regular sets. Objectively it's probably a desperate move at best and unlikely to work outside of quite dedicated groups. The average player would probably just eternally confused by what is and what isn't legal to play under such a rule. Just ignoring commander specific cards isn't really an option anymore either as the pool grew so big anyone doing so puts themselves at a huge disadvantage. Not to mention that there's people who might be fine with the fact that commander is a busted format to begin with but don't really fancy the straight up sillyness a good portion of those cards add. In short the format that once blew up (i'd argue it had already blown up long before Wizards started "flood-wraping" it but that's besides the point) simply doesn't exist anymore.
It's not a matter of patience, it's just that profits > creativity
Yeah, as much as Wizards might deny it, it's pretty hard to overlook that they are in fact driven (or at least ordered to be) by the need to maximize profits and stuffing commander into everything is a double win in that regard. On one hand there is an almost scary amount of people by now which know nothing but commander (thus expecting downright silly stuff) or at least just focus on that and those are probably more inclined to buy standard products if there's cards designed for their format in it, forcing everyone no matter the size of their standard card pool to invest into commander products works the other way around. Being happy with commander driving up overall sales simply didn't/doesn't cut it. The cow needs to be milked while the udder is bursting. Once it's exhausted one can always look for a new cow...
Exactly because it happens EVEN with experienced game designers that amateur will be highly more likely to do disaster with unbalanced things. Tested this for years with friends that had the idea to make their own custom cards and decks. That's why if I don't have great faith in WotC I have even less in the ordinary player.
Thank god the RC was never "ordinary players" then.
People creating random ass to put into their decks hardly proves anything. There is a clear conflict of interests. Instead of printing balanced cards you could just design broken cards to win, or crazy concepts without any sense like having 5 different creatures with partner, one of each color, as your commander.
And there is also a clear conflict of interest with wotc printing cards and then deciding to ban them.
I was referring to Cube specifically (since cube enthusiasts like to say it's superior to commander because it doesn't have any problematic or toxic dynamic about accepting deckbuilding and power level but I noticed that that's not true actually), but sure, RC is no ordinary players, since Sheldon was a level 5 judge. Unfortunately, I believe that the loss of Sheldon is so great that the post-Sheldon RC is something fundamentally different and I don't believe he or any of the historic old members of the RC would ever ban the fast mana. I remember clearly when the old mtgcommander forum was still operative and I even wrote directly with the RC, that if wasn't for the high price entry and the reserved list problem, they would probably had unban even more Power Nine pieces like Ancestral Recall or even the whole moxes and lotus package, because they want as much legal cards in the format and a tiniest banlist as possible. The old RC was never against fast mana per se but just the way a player would use it, that's the whole point of having a social philosophy with gentlemen's agreement. (yes, fast mana is technically one of the RC ban criteria, but was always used specifically for cards that players used specifically to do oppressive things like Rofellos and Tolarian Academy and give much, much more mana for their cost and abuse and exploit them in ways that you hardly do with a sol ring, lotus, crypt or mox. Btw, the P9 except TimeTwister were specifically banned for the barrier entry problem and that's something they explicitly said it's a criteria they would use only for them and never use again)
Well maybe If they stopped focusing so much on designing new cards specifically for Commander and allow the design process to flow organically as it did before the format took off then we'd be better off. It would allow more creative freedom for cards designed for other formats and allow a sense of experimentation for players who want to test these cards for Commander instead of it being egregious. Not every new Standard and Modern legal set HAS to have Legendary Creatures printed when all it does is dilutes formats outside of Commander. Designing cards for other formats will eventually find their way to Commander.
100% agreed. Thing is in my opinion there's practically zero chance of that happening. I know there has been statements in regards to scaling back the commander focus but that's going to materialize like a year down the line at best and in the end it'll be something like "See, we squeezed only 20 instead of 50 cards aimed at commander in every set and released 20 instead of 30 precons containing custom cards per year. Aren't we the most attentive company ever?", which hardly matters in regards to the big picture.
Besides for the most part the damage has already been done and that simply can't be undone (well, besides the damage Wizards is doing in general with their rapid fire mode of churning out new products and making Magic from a fantasy game into a assortment of of IPs, which current commander also likely plays quite a role in making that possible - well, lets enjoy Optimus Prime fighting Goblins and Elves...). At least not without incurring a ton of damage elsewhere. I mean, sure, one can take the route we are taking locally and simply house rule ban all specialized commander products, which in turn kills the "play with whatever you have lying around (unless it's on a short list)" aspect and leads the a lot of edge cases while not addressing the commander cards in disguise hidden inside regular sets. Objectively it's probably a desperate move at best and unlikely to work outside of quite dedicated groups. The average player would probably just eternally confused by what is and what isn't legal to play under such a rule. Just ignoring commander specific cards isn't really an option anymore either as the pool grew so big anyone doing so puts themselves at a huge disadvantage. Not to mention that there's people who might be fine with the fact that commander is a busted format to begin with but don't really fancy the straight up sillyness a good portion of those cards add. In short the format that once blew up (i'd argue it had already blown up long before Wizards started "flood-wraping" it but that's besides the point) simply doesn't exist anymore.
Were you around when players were sending death threats to Wizards because they refused to do anything about Red outside of Standard red deck wins? How about how the biggest complainers when white got cranked down in power for Standard were also Commander players? Were it not for designing for Commander, we wouldn't have red or white card draw, black enchantment removal, or Tarkir, to give a few examples.
Were you around when players were sending death threats to Wizards because they refused to do anything about Red outside of Standard red deck wins?
Well, given i've been playing Magic on and off since around 95 i've probably been around in some shape or form. I can't really say that i've noticed this specific basement dweller incident but then i usually don't follow Magic's online space to much - i just play Magic - but even ~15 years ago red was already pretty much agreed upon to be "the worst color", which was just taken for granted. It's not like i'm surprised though. There'll always be people yelling at Wizards to make their strategies strong but i don't really get what that should tell me. It's just kinda silly and spells "i can't or don't want to deal with restrictions" and is politely ignored at best. Green can't wheel (which is red card draw straight from Alpha by the way and quite powerful at that) and blue doesn't have Reanimate, so what? These people don't get to represent anyone but themselves. Sure, many commander players these days have very little in common with EDH players from 15 years ago and some on them probably actually think green should be able to wheel because that's just what they want to do but they still don't get to be representative for the format as a whole.
Especially when it comes to red, a color best known for burn, aggro and land destruction aka a set of strategies where 2 aren't all that effective in commander and 1 is highly frowned upon (besides also being not that effective outside the mass- version). Someone actively chooses exactly that and then gets irritated that it isn't all smooth sailing. Well, OK...
How about how the biggest complainers when white got cranked down in power for Standard were also Commander players? Were it not for designing for Commander, we wouldn't have red or white card draw, black enchantment removal, or Tarkir, to give a few examples.
Probably and it's pretty much the same. Lacking enchantment removal is blacks classic downside. If you consider going mono black you factored that in and probably started looking what kind of colorless options you had to fill the void. Obviously those weren't exactly Disenchant. I don't want to insult the people whining at Wizards to fix their problems without them having to compromise too much but personally i don't think all that highly of such mindset. Besides those kind of stopgap printings have very little to do with the bazillion legendaries (which ironically make the whole thing just more and more generic the higher their number - just yet another random legend with another random busted effect) obviously target at commander (if they aren't commander specific to begin with) or the "funny" over the top interaction spells.
Speaking of having been around: I've been around long enough to remember that Wizards first idea when printing for commander was to create a City Of Brass without drawback (aka Command Tower), so every multicolor deck that didn't mind to run non-basics (i.e. pretty much 90+%) would have a land to add without thinking at all. I must have somehow missed the death threats over being pinged for 1 by City Of Brass though
Probably and it's pretty much the same. Lacking enchantment removal is blacks classic downside.
Not really, it's much more similar to when black was unable to destroy his own black or artifact creatures - a relic of the past dictated initially by flavor, but that didn't lead to good or elegant gameplay. MaRo explained why they remove the enchantment weakness from black : it was the only color to have a double weakness to card types. Red can destroy anything except enchantments, green everything except creatures, white anything except pinpoint lands, and blue can just bounce + counter everything, doesn't need direct removal. They make this decision first of all for color balance reasons, not for commander. Commander indirectly benefit from it for his harsh color identity rule that make deckbuilding restrictions a real thing.
Probably and it's pretty much the same. Lacking enchantment removal is blacks classic downside.
Not really, it's much more similar to when black was unable to destroy his own black or artifact creatures - a relic of the past dictated initially by flavor, but that didn't lead to good or elegant gameplay. MaRo explained why they remove the enchantment weakness from black : it was the only color to have a double weakness to card types. Red can destroy anything except enchantments, green everything except creatures, white anything except pinpoint lands, and blue can just bounce + counter everything, doesn't need direct removal. They make this decision first of all for color balance reasons, not for commander. Commander indirectly benefit from it for his harsh color identity rule that make deckbuilding restrictions a real thing.
True, good ol' Terror (long before it got replaced with Doom Blade in people's minds) and friends. While i wasn't really making the original claim of directly linking it to commander it's a fair point, i guess. Let's say lacking enchantment removal was one of black's classic drawbacks as in people knew quite well what to expect when they went mono black.
Besides, even if the line of thought is obviously easy to follow i'm not that sure if i feel such a change was really all that desperately needed. If i think back to what annoyed me more it was probably rather Terror/Doom Blade being practically useless unless you fancied risking holding a dead card. If enchantments became to much of a problem at worst it would be up to Explosives/O-Stone/Disk/All Is Dust or similar to solve it if a more clever strat was 100% unavailable. Wiping because of every single problematic creature on the other hand...
Also archiving 100% parity between colors is probably not really possible anyways (like white's lack of targeted land destruction hardly is that big of a drawback as situations where the biggest threat is a land don't happen all that often and most commonly ran targeted land destruction is actually printed on lands with a colorless identity anyways), which i'm pretty much OK with personally. It's just the way things are as far as i'm concerned.
Looks like we've gotten pretty far down into the weeds of the conversation with talk of shifts in color-pie and design philosophy. But I'll weigh in as another person who's been playing >20 years.
I haven't personally found the color-pie shifts over the years to be incredibly problematic. I think it's fine for colors to have access to abilities as long as there are color-appropriate restrictions. I personally think Feed the Swarm is a fine card because it's sorcery speed with a fairly meaningful downside that's very black. Mire in Misery also seems fine to me. Withering Torment on the other hand I take issue with for being too easy to use. Likewise I was very pleased when green got Prey Upon. When it got Rabid Bite, I was a little skeptical, but it proved generally positive for all. But Hard-Hitting Question (in addition to kinda stupid flavor) feels too easy to use to me. I take issue not with the ability itself, but with the power-creep. And I know this is a bit divisive, but I have no problem with Unyaro Bee Sting or Roots so long as the effect is rarely used and done inefficiently.
But all this is up to something so ephemeral as what feels right to a specific person. There is no right answer to what the color pie should or should not do: there were a lot of things that weren't set in the beginning, and things didn't have to develop the way they did. Blue didn't have to lose burn as a secondary ability. Blink didn't have to go in blue/white. Red didn't have to lose vigilance (Eternal Warrior). There have been hundreds such little developments in color pie.
I will say this: Command Tower and Arcane Signet are mistakes, and should have been seen as such from the beginning. In Magic, card choices are supposed to matter.
I suppose my point is simply that color-pie bends are only problematic when they're done efficiently. That's why I point to power creep as the real problem. There's no reason white shouldn't be able to draw a card here or there: cantripping is in every color. But it shouldn't be allowed to repeatedly and efficiently draw cards. I don't personally mind a Desert Twister or a Psychic Purge once in a blue moon.
Well put. I'd pretty much 100% sign this. A little color bending is fine and has been around since the dawn of time (arguably even more back then since things hadn't really settled yet). It's all about the execution. An off color effect that basically says "Yeah, you can do this but you won't be efficient and it'll likely hurt a bit." or basically is some weird niche thing that'll just see play once every blue moon anyways is fine in my book as long as those doesn't become a regular occurrence.
Kinda like Tornado, which beyond the name being in the Hurricane/Savage Twister tradition doesn't really feel like a green spell to me but given i've only seen a single player ever (myself...) use it probably isn't really all that inviting after all (it's basically Desert Twister like clunky and hurts a ton) or Storm Seeker, which in my opinion doesn't have any business being green but i've never seen it being played at all, even if killing a dredge player with Nature's Resurgence followed by Storm Seeker is actually on my list of things to do before i die (bonus points for decking them with Nature's Resurgence alone)
Well maybe If they stopped focusing so much on designing new cards specifically for Commander and allow the design process to flow organically as it did before the format took off then we'd be better off. It would allow more creative freedom for cards designed for other formats and allow a sense of experimentation for players who want to test these cards for Commander instead of it being egregious. Not every new Standard and Modern legal set HAS to have Legendary Creatures printed when all it does is dilutes formats outside of Commander. Designing cards for other formats will eventually find their way to Commander.
100% agreed. Thing is in my opinion there's practically zero chance of that happening. I know there has been statements in regards to scaling back the commander focus but that's going to materialize like a year down the line at best and in the end it'll be something like "See, we squeezed only 20 instead of 50 cards aimed at commander in every set and released 20 instead of 30 precons containing custom cards per year. Aren't we the most attentive company ever?", which hardly matters in regards to the big picture.
Besides for the most part the damage has already been done and that simply can't be undone (well, besides the damage Wizards is doing in general with their rapid fire mode of churning out new products and making Magic from a fantasy game into a assortment of of IPs, which current commander also likely plays quite a role in making that possible - well, lets enjoy Optimus Prime fighting Goblins and Elves...). At least not without incurring a ton of damage elsewhere. I mean, sure, one can take the route we are taking locally and simply house rule ban all specialized commander products, which in turn kills the "play with whatever you have lying around (unless it's on a short list)" aspect and leads the a lot of edge cases while not addressing the commander cards in disguise hidden inside regular sets. Objectively it's probably a desperate move at best and unlikely to work outside of quite dedicated groups. The average player would probably just eternally confused by what is and what isn't legal to play under such a rule. Just ignoring commander specific cards isn't really an option anymore either as the pool grew so big anyone doing so puts themselves at a huge disadvantage. Not to mention that there's people who might be fine with the fact that commander is a busted format to begin with but don't really fancy the straight up sillyness a good portion of those cards add. In short the format that once blew up (i'd argue it had already blown up long before Wizards started "flood-wraping" it but that's besides the point) simply doesn't exist anymore.
Were you around when players were sending death threats to Wizards because they refused to do anything about Red outside of Standard red deck wins? How about how the biggest complainers when white got cranked down in power for Standard were also Commander players? Were it not for designing for Commander, we wouldn't have red or white card draw, black enchantment removal, or Tarkir, to give a few examples.
We also wouldn't have gotten Smothering Tithe which is arguably one of the best Mono White enchantments in Commander that's more broken in Multicolor. I wonder what the reaction from the community would've been If the former Rules Committee had banned Rhystic Study alongside Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, Dockside Extortionist, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom? Mystic Remora is a less broken variant due to Cumulative Upkeep but having to "pay the 1" can get really annoying at times in a Commander game.
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Jesus Christ, Who Is God Revealed In The Flesh, Bless America.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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
amateur people that know little to nothing of Magic game design.
The whole reason we're having this discussion is because the "professionals" keep blowing their own stuff up so they can sell product.
Exactly because it happens EVEN with experienced game designers that amateur will be highly more likely to do disaster with unbalanced things. Tested this for years with friends that had the idea to make their own custom cards and decks. That's why if I don't have great faith in WotC I have even less in the ordinary player.
I dunno how this is a response. The experts who know everything about game design are designing cards to make money, not to make a balanced game. They're not better at this than amateurs, just better paid. If you want a balanced card game without the financial bs do not play magic. Check out the L5R LCG.
I dunno how this is a response. The experts who know everything about game design are designing cards to make money, not to make a balanced game. They're not better at this than amateurs, just better paid. If you want a balanced card game without the financial bs do not play magic. Check out the L5R LCG.
You do not make money if you don't make at least the effort to make a balanced game, which is why horribly balanced sets like Homelands or old Kamigawa selled very poorly while others are financial success. They are absolutely better and much more conscious than amateurs at how game design rules and if you don't even grasp this, it is simply because you didn't read enough design articles and/or have experience with enough amateur players, aka : you are talking about stuff you aren't really competent about. Making a good designed set is EXTREMELY hard and even then, if will never be perfectly balanced, it's still more competently designed than most custom sets you will ever see in your life.
How about how the biggest complainers when white got cranked down in power for Standard were also Commander players? Were it not for designing for Commander, we wouldn't have red or white card draw, black enchantment removal, or Tarkir, to give a few examples.
Probably and it's pretty much the same. Lacking enchantment removal is blacks classic downside. If you consider going mono black you factored that in and probably started looking what kind of colorless options you had to fill the void. Obviously those weren't exactly Disenchant. I don't want to insult the people whining at Wizards to fix their problems without them having to compromise too much but personally i don't think all that highly of such mindset. Besides those kind of stopgap printings have very little to do with the bazillion legendaries (which ironically make the whole thing just more and more generic the higher their number - just yet another random legend with another random busted effect) obviously target at commander (if they aren't commander specific to begin with) or the "funny" over the top interaction spells.
Speaking of having been around: I've been around long enough to remember that Wizards first idea when printing for commander was to create a City Of Brass without drawback (aka Command Tower), so every multicolor deck that didn't mind to run non-basics (i.e. pretty much 90+%) would have a land to add without thinking at all. I must have somehow missed the death threats over being pinged for 1 by City Of Brass though
There's all the immense horse***** around Divine Gamble. Commander players to this day are complaining about how it's proof Wizards prefers Green over White, when it was built to specifically stop UB in Kaldheim Limited. Tell me the solution there.There's also legends nowadays like Arabella, Abandoned Doll to see what happens when you actually use legendary as a downside for Limited, but Commander and Constructed-only players wouldn't know that.
It's hilarious to think only basement dwellers send these death threats when before the RC disbandment last week, the biggest and worst cases were to the Organized Play team back in what is now considered the golden age of the Pro Tour. Sure, something something excuses something something basement dwellers who can't even get a win at FNM, but when Wizards ends up having to beef up security to escort people to their cars daily, there's an issue. You can't just pretend none of that exists because you don't care enough to think about it.
There's all the immense horse***** around Divine Gamble. Commander players to this day are complaining about how it's proof Wizards prefers Green over White, when it was built to specifically stop UB in Kaldheim Limited. Tell me the solution there.There's also legends nowadays like Arabella, Abandoned Doll to see what happens when you actually use legendary as a downside for Limited, but Commander and Constructed-only players wouldn't know that.
Well, it's not like i disagree on the first part. On one hand green is pretty strong (as a guy liking his green mono i have quite some first hand knowledge on this, i'd say) but on the other i don't really understand how Divine Gambit plays into this all that much. Sure, the effect doesn't feel very white and it's no Beast Within but so what? If people really feel the need to complain i'd rather understand they'd point fingers at green card draw. The times were i had to consider Slate of Ancestry (accepting the anti-synergy with Titania's Song) to supply my ramp with a sufficient amount of spells are long gone and i'm not entirely sure that's a good thing but all in all this whole "favorism" line of thought is pretty silly in my opinion. Colors have been (and still are) evolving for over 30 years now and the whole "equality" thing is (at least in an absolute form) nothing but an idealistic pipe dream. One can try to even the playing field a bit but color X will always be better with situation Y and i have a feeling that taking this away wouldn't actually have as many upsides as some people seem to think.
I pretty much get your point in regards to making creatures legendary having more impact than legalizing them for use as commander and how it's actually a drawback in pretty much any format besides commander. It's just that i don't get the feeling that this is the reasoning behind a lot of the legendaries being churned out recently (i mean, just look at the EDHrec top 100 poll, like 75 of them are random legendaries) or at least that if it wasn't for commander those simply wouldn't have been added in the first place. Disclaimer: I'm not that big into 60 card constructed these days but limited is basically my main format currently so i feel at least semi-competent to have an opinion on that.
It's hilarious to think only basement dwellers send these death threats when before the RC disbandment last week, the biggest and worst cases were to the Organized Play team back in what is now considered the golden age of the Pro Tour. Sure, something something excuses something something basement dwellers who can't even get a win at FNM, but when Wizards ends up having to beef up security to escort people to their cars daily, there's an issue. You can't just pretend none of that exists because you don't care enough to think about it.
Well, lets be real, someone sending death threats over a card game is a basement dweller by definition regardless of their actual living conditions. Being a pro player doesn't saveguard people from that. I admit its a bit surprising to me as from my experience serious players usually seemed to have a tendency for having made peace with the way things are (lets face it "Bahwahwah but i want to play mono white!!" doesn't make you successful - recognizing what color, strat and so on is advantageous is what does) therefore being unlikely to throw a tantrum but even if they do it doesn't change how they represent noone but their sorry and deranged self.
You do not make money if you don't make at least the effort to make a balanced game, which is why horribly balanced sets like Homelands or old Kamigawa selled very poorly while others are financial success. They are absolutely better and much more conscious than amateurs at how game design rules and if you don't even grasp this, it is simply because you didn't read enough design articles and/or have experience with enough amateur players, aka : you are talking about stuff you aren't really competent about. Making a good designed set is EXTREMELY hard and even then, if will never be perfectly balanced, it's still more competently designed than most custom sets you will ever see in your life.
Seems like an incomplete or uninformed take. Players like balance, but they also like to pubstomp and have easy victories. A big crowd is gonna buy broken cards just to win. It's pretty clear even with your example: Kamigawa sold poorly, Mirrodin did not... but Mirrodin was way less balanced than Kamigawa. Players liked its power anyway. There is actually a shot-term increase in sales with busted sets, because players need to buy the latest cards to compete. The bubble is going to burst eventually... but Hasbro cares about short-term profits mainly.
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
Players like balance, but they also like to pubstomp and have easy victories. A big crowd is gonna buy broken cards just to win. It's pretty clear even with your example: Kamigawa sold poorly, Mirrodin did not... but Mirrodin was way less balanced than Kamigawa. Players liked its power anyway. There is actually a shot-term increase in sales with busted sets, because players need to buy the latest cards to compete. The bubble is going to burst eventually... but Hasbro cares about short-term profits mainly.
Not only that. A limited/standard experience featuring big plays also has a certain charm and in a vacuum this isn't really all that problematic but once put into a bigger picture should seriously raise eyebrows. I mean, a couple powerhouses now and then are pretty much business as usual and shaking things up a little is probably actually a good thing. The question is the amount and pace these appear at. As is the speed of the bar being raised. Sure, Tarmogoyf is still a quite playable card but would also probably not get half the attention if printed today compared to the amount it got when it was actually released. It simply takes way more now to really capture the players attention and it'll just get harder and harder to further this approach of printing money (lets face it, that's pretty much what it is) is embraced.
While my group and me don't agree with quite a bit of the directions Magic is taking these days power creep is pretty much uniformly seen as the biggest threat to the longlivity of the game. Power creep has an upper ceiling and so has the complexity currently used to at least somewhat keep it in check. This whole dynamic is simply way to obvious to assume the people in power simply don't notice it. I guess to a point it's actually welcomed due to the focus on eternal formats, which by definition aren't very profitable because of non-existent rotation. Well, unless you powercreep rotate them that is of course...
Probably and it's pretty much the same. Lacking enchantment removal is blacks classic downside.
Not really, it's much more similar to when black was unable to destroy his own black or artifact creatures - a relic of the past dictated initially by flavor, but that didn't lead to good or elegant gameplay. MaRo explained why they remove the enchantment weakness from black : it was the only color to have a double weakness to card types. Red can destroy anything except enchantments, green everything except creatures, white anything except pinpoint lands, and blue can just bounce + counter everything, doesn't need direct removal. They make this decision first of all for color balance reasons, not for commander. Commander indirectly benefit from it for his harsh color identity rule that make deckbuilding restrictions a real thing.
To add on, they had also found in enchantment heavy sets that green and white wasn't enough to keep enchantments under control in limited/sealed/draft and decided there need to be a third color that could get rid of them to help with this and landed on it being black. Also why the best black enchantment removal card we just got was in Dusmourn an enchantment focused set.
So ya commander wasn't a factor at all, it was color balances and to help out non-commander formats.
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Probably and it's pretty much the same. Lacking enchantment removal is blacks classic downside.
Not really, it's much more similar to when black was unable to destroy his own black or artifact creatures - a relic of the past dictated initially by flavor, but that didn't lead to good or elegant gameplay. MaRo explained why they remove the enchantment weakness from black : it was the only color to have a double weakness to card types. Red can destroy anything except enchantments, green everything except creatures, white anything except pinpoint lands, and blue can just bounce + counter everything, doesn't need direct removal. They make this decision first of all for color balance reasons, not for commander. Commander indirectly benefit from it for his harsh color identity rule that make deckbuilding restrictions a real thing.
To add on, they had also found in enchantment heavy sets that green and white wasn't enough to keep enchantments under control in limited/sealed/draft and decided there need to be a third color that could get rid of them to help with this and landed on it being black. Also why the best black enchantment removal card we just got was in Dusmourn an enchantment focused set.
So ya commander wasn't a factor at all, it was color balances and to help out non-commander formats.
Well, "not at all" might be a bit strong in my opinion but in the end what you guys are saying makes sense. Not like i care all that much anyways, i'm just a bit triggered that i get quoted on it when it wasn't really my claim. Not being able to deal with enchantments being one of blacks classic weaknesses is kinda hard to argue against i think
You do not make money if you don't make at least the effort to make a balanced game, which is why horribly balanced sets like Homelands or old Kamigawa selled very poorly while others are financial success. They are absolutely better and much more conscious than amateurs at how game design rules and if you don't even grasp this, it is simply because you didn't read enough design articles and/or have experience with enough amateur players, aka : you are talking about stuff you aren't really competent about. Making a good designed set is EXTREMELY hard and even then, if will never be perfectly balanced, it's still more competently designed than most custom sets you will ever see in your life.
Seems like an incomplete or uninformed take. Players like balance, but they also like to pubstomp and have easy victories. A big crowd is gonna buy broken cards just to win. It's pretty clear even with your example: Kamigawa sold poorly, Mirrodin did not... but Mirrodin was way less balanced than Kamigawa. Players liked its power anyway. There is actually a shot-term increase in sales with busted sets, because players need to buy the latest cards to compete. The bubble is going to burst eventually... but Hasbro cares about short-term profits mainly.
When a set is so OP that multiple cards get banned from said set, R&D doesn't never consider this a goal or a success but au contraire an utter failure to avoid, even if the set sells better than the average one. MaRo said multiple times for example that the sets he was on development team at time, the Urza block, even if it was one of the most broken, popular and best selled sets of all times, was a total failure for the R&D exactly because of the multiple broken cards that made the competitive scene miserable and forced Wotc to do a mass banning and a colletive dismissal of many R&D members at time and one of the worst lows of MaRo magic career since it was one of the times when his bosses told him that the next time he would fail so much he would just be fired and never seen again in R&D. Seems I am not the one with the incomplete or uninformed take on magic history and what consequences do broken sets on R&D lifes behind the curtains that regular players have absolutely no idea of.
Yeah, I don't agree with Evil often (cough ever cough), but he's right here. It is against WotC's own interest to print broken cards. Any time a card became problematic it was an accident.
If they really wanted to keep printing powerful cards, we wouldn't have had such underpowered blocks like Mercadian Masques and Kamigawa right after overpowered messes like Urza block and Mirrodin. They were cautious because the fear of repeating the mistake or making it worse outweighed a dip in sales from an unpopular, underpowered block.
HOWEVER
Power creep is a real thing, for the reasons some have stated. Players like powerful cards. WotC (Hasbro) likes money. Selling powerful cards to players equals money. So while Wizards is avoiding openly broken cards like the plague, they still slowly ramp up the power levels, either without noticing or on purpose.
If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I'd say that Hasbro isn't expecting MtG to last much longer (were talking years here, not decades) and are pushing Wizards to milk as much money out of it as they can, longevity of the game be damned (Secret Lairs, Universes Beyond, product flood, power creep).
At any rate, any player who believes they can design entire balanced sets as well as Wizards is like ten miles deep in Dunning-Kruger territory.
If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I'd say that Hasbro isn't expecting MtG to last much longer (were talking years here, not decades) and are pushing Wizards to milk as much money out of it as they can, longevity of the game be damned (Secret Lairs, Universes Beyond, product flood, power creep).
There's some quite unsettling realistic about this. I usually try to put the uneasy feeling i sometimes get about the health of the game off to getting old but maybe there actually is some substance to it. I hope not but who knows? In any case i vividly remember being glued to every new spoiler coming out. These days i usually just get a box (after missing like 1-3 sets entirely...) and hope i enjoy what's in there. The pace of releases is just to frantic for me to really keep up. I also miss the times when it took years and years for an ability to be condensed down into a keyword and not have something like "connive" appear out of nowhere. To me it kind of feels like a desperate attempt to make something memorable when it really isn't.
• **Are you reversing the ban list changes made on 9/23? Are any older bans to be overturned with this new take on the Ban list? **
Upcoming, there will be an evaluation of the banned card list. Those cards, as well as others on the banned list, will all be part of that review.
that was a question in a FAQ most people were asking Gaving about this whole thing the most recent bannings are gonna be involved with the ban list review
If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I'd say that Hasbro isn't expecting MtG to last much longer (were talking years here, not decades) and are pushing Wizards to milk as much money out of it as they can, longevity of the game be damned (Secret Lairs, Universes Beyond, product flood, power creep).
I agree on everything except this. In what world expanding your own franchise in new innovative ways and growing your customer base is considered a sign of the short life of the game? If anything the logic should suggest that is exactly the contrary and is when you are making LESS and less products and selling less and less things a real sign that your brand is dying for real. Players that don't like the changes of the game like to do the part of the apocalyptic prophets that announce the imminent doom of the game since the dawn of times (players tought the game was just a milking machine that wouldnt last long at least since when WotC created the standard format, then the sixth edition rules, etc...you can read the famous "20 things the almost killed magic" article for the full history of lists of failed prophecies.) and in 10 out of 10 cases players just confused their death of interest on the game changes with the death of the game itself. No matter how catastrophic it seems in your eyes, but objectively speaking Magic is more than likely to last decades and MaRo said multiple times that he firmly believes the game longevity will outlast his very own life. For every conservative old player too outraged to love and recognize his game at the current time, there's a flood of new blood replacing them anytime, since the player base grows exponentially and that's why WotC is making more products in proportion to satisfy so many different targets willing to buy and genuinely enjoy their products. As I always say, You, single player, may not survive Magic changes, but Magic will survive and prosper without you.
If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I'd say that Hasbro isn't expecting MtG to last much longer (were talking years here, not decades) and are pushing Wizards to milk as much money out of it as they can, longevity of the game be damned (Secret Lairs, Universes Beyond, product flood, power creep).
I agree on everything except this. In what world expanding your own franchise in new innovative ways and growing your customer base is considered a sign of the short life of the game?
I'm not claiming to be an authority on this but there's multiple ways you can look at this. "Expanding your own franchise in new innovative ways and growing your customer base" is just one one of those. "Diluting your IPs identity/brand recognition and alienating a good chunk of your existing player base" would be another and that's probably just scratching the surface.
If anything the logic should suggest that is exactly the contrary and is when you are making LESS and less products and selling less and less things a real sign that your brand is dying for real.
What you are describing is a state post collapse. If such a thing hasn't happened yet but you predict it churning out as much as possible regardless the consequences to cash in while you can is actually the logic thing to do since who cares about consequences when you predict a future where the thing those would apply to simply doesn't exist anymore?
Players that don't like the changes of the game like to do the part of the apocalyptic prophets that announce the imminent doom of the game since the dawn of times (players tought the game was just a milking machine that wouldnt last long at least since when WotC created the standard format, then the sixth edition rules, etc...you can read the famous "20 things the almost killed magic" article for the full history of lists of failed prophecies.) and in 10 out of 10 cases players just confused their death of interest on the game changes with the death of the game itself. No matter how catastrophic it seems in your eyes, but objectively speaking Magic is more than likely to last decades
While i don't disagree on the hyperbolic nature of a lot of people noone here is actually making predictions - as i get it it's all just "bad feelings" - and personally i've never witnessed a notable amount of (or even any) people predicting imminent doom in regards of magic before and there was time when i was actually around dozens and dozens, maybe even 100s of magic players on a pretty regular basis.
No matter how catastrophic it seems in your eyes, but objectively speaking Magic is more than likely to last decades
Well, at least you added "likely" there. As much as i wouldn't want predictions of definite doom to be attributed to me outright declaring the opposite seems pretty much equally sketchy but i of course hope you are right, i really do.
MaRo said multiple times that he firmly believes the game longevity will outlast his very own life.
To be frank i don't give much of a ***** about MaRo and his opinions in general. In this particular situation: A guy who's paycheck depends on people believing in the longlivity of Magic says Magic has great longlivity. Such surprise...
For every conservative old player too outraged to love and recognize his game at the current time, there's a flood of new blood replacing them anytime, since the player base grows exponentially and that's why WotC is making more products in proportion to satisfy so many different targets willing to buy and genuinely enjoy their products. As I always say, You, single player, may not survive Magic, but Magic will survive and prosper without you.
Well, you know what they say about absolute statements, do you? Besides, player very much doesn't equal player and that's in more than one way. Sure, high turnover can work in some situations. It doesn't work in others though. Playing a numbers game can just look nice on paper or actually be sustainable. There's way more to this than what some spoke person states publicly.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
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100% agreed. Thing is in my opinion there's practically zero chance of that happening. I know there has been statements in regards to scaling back the commander focus but that's going to materialize like a year down the line at best and in the end it'll be something like "See, we squeezed only 20 instead of 50 cards aimed at commander in every set and released 20 instead of 30 precons containing custom cards per year. Aren't we the most attentive company ever?", which hardly matters in regards to the big picture.
Besides for the most part the damage has already been done and that simply can't be undone (well, besides the damage Wizards is doing in general with their rapid fire mode of churning out new products and making Magic from a fantasy game into a assortment of of IPs, which current commander also likely plays quite a role in making that possible - well, lets enjoy Optimus Prime fighting Goblins and Elves...). At least not without incurring a ton of damage elsewhere. I mean, sure, one can take the route we are taking locally and simply house rule ban all specialized commander products, which in turn kills the "play with whatever you have lying around (unless it's on a short list)" aspect and leads the a lot of edge cases while not addressing the commander cards in disguise hidden inside regular sets. Objectively it's probably a desperate move at best and unlikely to work outside of quite dedicated groups. The average player would probably just eternally confused by what is and what isn't legal to play under such a rule. Just ignoring commander specific cards isn't really an option anymore either as the pool grew so big anyone doing so puts themselves at a huge disadvantage. Not to mention that there's people who might be fine with the fact that commander is a busted format to begin with but don't really fancy the straight up sillyness a good portion of those cards add. In short the format that once blew up (i'd argue it had already blown up long before Wizards started "flood-wraping" it but that's besides the point) simply doesn't exist anymore.
Yeah, as much as Wizards might deny it, it's pretty hard to overlook that they are in fact driven (or at least ordered to be) by the need to maximize profits and stuffing commander into everything is a double win in that regard. On one hand there is an almost scary amount of people by now which know nothing but commander (thus expecting downright silly stuff) or at least just focus on that and those are probably more inclined to buy standard products if there's cards designed for their format in it, forcing everyone no matter the size of their standard card pool to invest into commander products works the other way around. Being happy with commander driving up overall sales simply didn't/doesn't cut it. The cow needs to be milked while the udder is bursting. Once it's exhausted one can always look for a new cow...
I was referring to Cube specifically (since cube enthusiasts like to say it's superior to commander because it doesn't have any problematic or toxic dynamic about accepting deckbuilding and power level but I noticed that that's not true actually), but sure, RC is no ordinary players, since Sheldon was a level 5 judge. Unfortunately, I believe that the loss of Sheldon is so great that the post-Sheldon RC is something fundamentally different and I don't believe he or any of the historic old members of the RC would ever ban the fast mana. I remember clearly when the old mtgcommander forum was still operative and I even wrote directly with the RC, that if wasn't for the high price entry and the reserved list problem, they would probably had unban even more Power Nine pieces like Ancestral Recall or even the whole moxes and lotus package, because they want as much legal cards in the format and a tiniest banlist as possible. The old RC was never against fast mana per se but just the way a player would use it, that's the whole point of having a social philosophy with gentlemen's agreement. (yes, fast mana is technically one of the RC ban criteria, but was always used specifically for cards that players used specifically to do oppressive things like Rofellos and Tolarian Academy and give much, much more mana for their cost and abuse and exploit them in ways that you hardly do with a sol ring, lotus, crypt or mox. Btw, the P9 except TimeTwister were specifically banned for the barrier entry problem and that's something they explicitly said it's a criteria they would use only for them and never use again)
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Spoiler EditorWell, given i've been playing Magic on and off since around 95 i've probably been around in some shape or form. I can't really say that i've noticed this specific basement dweller incident but then i usually don't follow Magic's online space to much - i just play Magic - but even ~15 years ago red was already pretty much agreed upon to be "the worst color", which was just taken for granted. It's not like i'm surprised though. There'll always be people yelling at Wizards to make their strategies strong but i don't really get what that should tell me. It's just kinda silly and spells "i can't or don't want to deal with restrictions" and is politely ignored at best. Green can't wheel (which is red card draw straight from Alpha by the way and quite powerful at that) and blue doesn't have Reanimate, so what? These people don't get to represent anyone but themselves. Sure, many commander players these days have very little in common with EDH players from 15 years ago and some on them probably actually think green should be able to wheel because that's just what they want to do but they still don't get to be representative for the format as a whole.
Especially when it comes to red, a color best known for burn, aggro and land destruction aka a set of strategies where 2 aren't all that effective in commander and 1 is highly frowned upon (besides also being not that effective outside the mass- version). Someone actively chooses exactly that and then gets irritated that it isn't all smooth sailing. Well, OK...
Probably and it's pretty much the same. Lacking enchantment removal is blacks classic downside. If you consider going mono black you factored that in and probably started looking what kind of colorless options you had to fill the void. Obviously those weren't exactly Disenchant. I don't want to insult the people whining at Wizards to fix their problems without them having to compromise too much but personally i don't think all that highly of such mindset. Besides those kind of stopgap printings have very little to do with the bazillion legendaries (which ironically make the whole thing just more and more generic the higher their number - just yet another random legend with another random busted effect) obviously target at commander (if they aren't commander specific to begin with) or the "funny" over the top interaction spells.
Speaking of having been around: I've been around long enough to remember that Wizards first idea when printing for commander was to create a City Of Brass without drawback (aka Command Tower), so every multicolor deck that didn't mind to run non-basics (i.e. pretty much 90+%) would have a land to add without thinking at all. I must have somehow missed the death threats over being pinged for 1 by City Of Brass though
Not really, it's much more similar to when black was unable to destroy his own black or artifact creatures - a relic of the past dictated initially by flavor, but that didn't lead to good or elegant gameplay. MaRo explained why they remove the enchantment weakness from black : it was the only color to have a double weakness to card types. Red can destroy anything except enchantments, green everything except creatures, white anything except pinpoint lands, and blue can just bounce + counter everything, doesn't need direct removal. They make this decision first of all for color balance reasons, not for commander. Commander indirectly benefit from it for his harsh color identity rule that make deckbuilding restrictions a real thing.
True, good ol' Terror (long before it got replaced with Doom Blade in people's minds) and friends. While i wasn't really making the original claim of directly linking it to commander it's a fair point, i guess. Let's say lacking enchantment removal was one of black's classic drawbacks as in people knew quite well what to expect when they went mono black.
Besides, even if the line of thought is obviously easy to follow i'm not that sure if i feel such a change was really all that desperately needed. If i think back to what annoyed me more it was probably rather Terror/Doom Blade being practically useless unless you fancied risking holding a dead card. If enchantments became to much of a problem at worst it would be up to Explosives/O-Stone/Disk/All Is Dust or similar to solve it if a more clever strat was 100% unavailable. Wiping because of every single problematic creature on the other hand...
Also archiving 100% parity between colors is probably not really possible anyways (like white's lack of targeted land destruction hardly is that big of a drawback as situations where the biggest threat is a land don't happen all that often and most commonly ran targeted land destruction is actually printed on lands with a colorless identity anyways), which i'm pretty much OK with personally. It's just the way things are as far as i'm concerned.
I haven't personally found the color-pie shifts over the years to be incredibly problematic. I think it's fine for colors to have access to abilities as long as there are color-appropriate restrictions. I personally think Feed the Swarm is a fine card because it's sorcery speed with a fairly meaningful downside that's very black. Mire in Misery also seems fine to me. Withering Torment on the other hand I take issue with for being too easy to use. Likewise I was very pleased when green got Prey Upon. When it got Rabid Bite, I was a little skeptical, but it proved generally positive for all. But Hard-Hitting Question (in addition to kinda stupid flavor) feels too easy to use to me. I take issue not with the ability itself, but with the power-creep. And I know this is a bit divisive, but I have no problem with Unyaro Bee Sting or Roots so long as the effect is rarely used and done inefficiently.
But all this is up to something so ephemeral as what feels right to a specific person. There is no right answer to what the color pie should or should not do: there were a lot of things that weren't set in the beginning, and things didn't have to develop the way they did. Blue didn't have to lose burn as a secondary ability. Blink didn't have to go in blue/white. Red didn't have to lose vigilance (Eternal Warrior). There have been hundreds such little developments in color pie.
I will say this: Command Tower and Arcane Signet are mistakes, and should have been seen as such from the beginning. In Magic, card choices are supposed to matter.
I suppose my point is simply that color-pie bends are only problematic when they're done efficiently. That's why I point to power creep as the real problem. There's no reason white shouldn't be able to draw a card here or there: cantripping is in every color. But it shouldn't be allowed to repeatedly and efficiently draw cards. I don't personally mind a Desert Twister or a Psychic Purge once in a blue moon.
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Kinda like Tornado, which beyond the name being in the Hurricane/Savage Twister tradition doesn't really feel like a green spell to me but given i've only seen a single player ever (myself...) use it probably isn't really all that inviting after all (it's basically Desert Twister like clunky and hurts a ton) or Storm Seeker, which in my opinion doesn't have any business being green but i've never seen it being played at all, even if killing a dredge player with Nature's Resurgence followed by Storm Seeker is actually on my list of things to do before i die (bonus points for decking them with Nature's Resurgence alone)
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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 dunno how this is a response. The experts who know everything about game design are designing cards to make money, not to make a balanced game. They're not better at this than amateurs, just better paid. If you want a balanced card game without the financial bs do not play magic. Check out the L5R LCG.
You do not make money if you don't make at least the effort to make a balanced game, which is why horribly balanced sets like Homelands or old Kamigawa selled very poorly while others are financial success. They are absolutely better and much more conscious than amateurs at how game design rules and if you don't even grasp this, it is simply because you didn't read enough design articles and/or have experience with enough amateur players, aka : you are talking about stuff you aren't really competent about. Making a good designed set is EXTREMELY hard and even then, if will never be perfectly balanced, it's still more competently designed than most custom sets you will ever see in your life.
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Spoiler EditorIt's hilarious to think only basement dwellers send these death threats when before the RC disbandment last week, the biggest and worst cases were to the Organized Play team back in what is now considered the golden age of the Pro Tour. Sure, something something excuses something something basement dwellers who can't even get a win at FNM, but when Wizards ends up having to beef up security to escort people to their cars daily, there's an issue. You can't just pretend none of that exists because you don't care enough to think about it.
Well, it's not like i disagree on the first part. On one hand green is pretty strong (as a guy liking his green mono i have quite some first hand knowledge on this, i'd say) but on the other i don't really understand how Divine Gambit plays into this all that much. Sure, the effect doesn't feel very white and it's no Beast Within but so what? If people really feel the need to complain i'd rather understand they'd point fingers at green card draw. The times were i had to consider Slate of Ancestry (accepting the anti-synergy with Titania's Song) to supply my ramp with a sufficient amount of spells are long gone and i'm not entirely sure that's a good thing but all in all this whole "favorism" line of thought is pretty silly in my opinion. Colors have been (and still are) evolving for over 30 years now and the whole "equality" thing is (at least in an absolute form) nothing but an idealistic pipe dream. One can try to even the playing field a bit but color X will always be better with situation Y and i have a feeling that taking this away wouldn't actually have as many upsides as some people seem to think.
I pretty much get your point in regards to making creatures legendary having more impact than legalizing them for use as commander and how it's actually a drawback in pretty much any format besides commander. It's just that i don't get the feeling that this is the reasoning behind a lot of the legendaries being churned out recently (i mean, just look at the EDHrec top 100 poll, like 75 of them are random legendaries) or at least that if it wasn't for commander those simply wouldn't have been added in the first place. Disclaimer: I'm not that big into 60 card constructed these days but limited is basically my main format currently so i feel at least semi-competent to have an opinion on that.
Well, lets be real, someone sending death threats over a card game is a basement dweller by definition regardless of their actual living conditions. Being a pro player doesn't saveguard people from that. I admit its a bit surprising to me as from my experience serious players usually seemed to have a tendency for having made peace with the way things are (lets face it "Bahwahwah but i want to play mono white!!" doesn't make you successful - recognizing what color, strat and so on is advantageous is what does) therefore being unlikely to throw a tantrum but even if they do it doesn't change how they represent noone but their sorry and deranged self.
Seems like an incomplete or uninformed take. Players like balance, but they also like to pubstomp and have easy victories. A big crowd is gonna buy broken cards just to win. It's pretty clear even with your example: Kamigawa sold poorly, Mirrodin did not... but Mirrodin was way less balanced than Kamigawa. Players liked its power anyway. There is actually a shot-term increase in sales with busted sets, because players need to buy the latest cards to compete. The bubble is going to burst eventually... but Hasbro cares about short-term profits mainly.
Not only that. A limited/standard experience featuring big plays also has a certain charm and in a vacuum this isn't really all that problematic but once put into a bigger picture should seriously raise eyebrows. I mean, a couple powerhouses now and then are pretty much business as usual and shaking things up a little is probably actually a good thing. The question is the amount and pace these appear at. As is the speed of the bar being raised. Sure, Tarmogoyf is still a quite playable card but would also probably not get half the attention if printed today compared to the amount it got when it was actually released. It simply takes way more now to really capture the players attention and it'll just get harder and harder to further this approach of printing money (lets face it, that's pretty much what it is) is embraced.
While my group and me don't agree with quite a bit of the directions Magic is taking these days power creep is pretty much uniformly seen as the biggest threat to the longlivity of the game. Power creep has an upper ceiling and so has the complexity currently used to at least somewhat keep it in check. This whole dynamic is simply way to obvious to assume the people in power simply don't notice it. I guess to a point it's actually welcomed due to the focus on eternal formats, which by definition aren't very profitable because of non-existent rotation. Well, unless you powercreep rotate them that is of course...
To add on, they had also found in enchantment heavy sets that green and white wasn't enough to keep enchantments under control in limited/sealed/draft and decided there need to be a third color that could get rid of them to help with this and landed on it being black. Also why the best black enchantment removal card we just got was in Dusmourn an enchantment focused set.
So ya commander wasn't a factor at all, it was color balances and to help out non-commander formats.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Well, "not at all" might be a bit strong in my opinion but in the end what you guys are saying makes sense. Not like i care all that much anyways, i'm just a bit triggered that i get quoted on it when it wasn't really my claim. Not being able to deal with enchantments being one of blacks classic weaknesses is kinda hard to argue against i think
When a set is so OP that multiple cards get banned from said set, R&D doesn't never consider this a goal or a success but au contraire an utter failure to avoid, even if the set sells better than the average one. MaRo said multiple times for example that the sets he was on development team at time, the Urza block, even if it was one of the most broken, popular and best selled sets of all times, was a total failure for the R&D exactly because of the multiple broken cards that made the competitive scene miserable and forced Wotc to do a mass banning and a colletive dismissal of many R&D members at time and one of the worst lows of MaRo magic career since it was one of the times when his bosses told him that the next time he would fail so much he would just be fired and never seen again in R&D. Seems I am not the one with the incomplete or uninformed take on magic history and what consequences do broken sets on R&D lifes behind the curtains that regular players have absolutely no idea of.
If they really wanted to keep printing powerful cards, we wouldn't have had such underpowered blocks like Mercadian Masques and Kamigawa right after overpowered messes like Urza block and Mirrodin. They were cautious because the fear of repeating the mistake or making it worse outweighed a dip in sales from an unpopular, underpowered block.
HOWEVER
Power creep is a real thing, for the reasons some have stated. Players like powerful cards. WotC (Hasbro) likes money. Selling powerful cards to players equals money. So while Wizards is avoiding openly broken cards like the plague, they still slowly ramp up the power levels, either without noticing or on purpose.
If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I'd say that Hasbro isn't expecting MtG to last much longer (were talking years here, not decades) and are pushing Wizards to milk as much money out of it as they can, longevity of the game be damned (Secret Lairs, Universes Beyond, product flood, power creep).
At any rate, any player who believes they can design entire balanced sets as well as Wizards is like ten miles deep in Dunning-Kruger territory.
There's some quite unsettling realistic about this. I usually try to put the uneasy feeling i sometimes get about the health of the game off to getting old but maybe there actually is some substance to it. I hope not but who knows? In any case i vividly remember being glued to every new spoiler coming out. These days i usually just get a box (after missing like 1-3 sets entirely...) and hope i enjoy what's in there. The pace of releases is just to frantic for me to really keep up. I also miss the times when it took years and years for an ability to be condensed down into a keyword and not have something like "connive" appear out of nowhere. To me it kind of feels like a desperate attempt to make something memorable when it really isn't.
that was a question in a FAQ most people were asking Gaving about this whole thing the most recent bannings are gonna be involved with the ban list review
I agree on everything except this. In what world expanding your own franchise in new innovative ways and growing your customer base is considered a sign of the short life of the game? If anything the logic should suggest that is exactly the contrary and is when you are making LESS and less products and selling less and less things a real sign that your brand is dying for real. Players that don't like the changes of the game like to do the part of the apocalyptic prophets that announce the imminent doom of the game since the dawn of times (players tought the game was just a milking machine that wouldnt last long at least since when WotC created the standard format, then the sixth edition rules, etc...you can read the famous "20 things the almost killed magic" article for the full history of lists of failed prophecies.) and in 10 out of 10 cases players just confused their death of interest on the game changes with the death of the game itself. No matter how catastrophic it seems in your eyes, but objectively speaking Magic is more than likely to last decades and MaRo said multiple times that he firmly believes the game longevity will outlast his very own life. For every conservative old player too outraged to love and recognize his game at the current time, there's a flood of new blood replacing them anytime, since the player base grows exponentially and that's why WotC is making more products in proportion to satisfy so many different targets willing to buy and genuinely enjoy their products. As I always say, You, single player, may not survive Magic changes, but Magic will survive and prosper without you.
I'm not claiming to be an authority on this but there's multiple ways you can look at this. "Expanding your own franchise in new innovative ways and growing your customer base" is just one one of those. "Diluting your IPs identity/brand recognition and alienating a good chunk of your existing player base" would be another and that's probably just scratching the surface.
What you are describing is a state post collapse. If such a thing hasn't happened yet but you predict it churning out as much as possible regardless the consequences to cash in while you can is actually the logic thing to do since who cares about consequences when you predict a future where the thing those would apply to simply doesn't exist anymore?
While i don't disagree on the hyperbolic nature of a lot of people noone here is actually making predictions - as i get it it's all just "bad feelings" - and personally i've never witnessed a notable amount of (or even any) people predicting imminent doom in regards of magic before and there was time when i was actually around dozens and dozens, maybe even 100s of magic players on a pretty regular basis.
Well, at least you added "likely" there. As much as i wouldn't want predictions of definite doom to be attributed to me outright declaring the opposite seems pretty much equally sketchy but i of course hope you are right, i really do.
To be frank i don't give much of a ***** about MaRo and his opinions in general. In this particular situation: A guy who's paycheck depends on people believing in the longlivity of Magic says Magic has great longlivity. Such surprise...
Well, you know what they say about absolute statements, do you? Besides, player very much doesn't equal player and that's in more than one way. Sure, high turnover can work in some situations. It doesn't work in others though. Playing a numbers game can just look nice on paper or actually be sustainable. There's way more to this than what some spoke person states publicly.