Magic is a game, not a tool for you to feel superior. Games need players, and since the old guard is constantly dwindling, we constantly need new blood.
Imagine if they smarted up the game to the point that only your clearly superior intellect could handle it. Do you think it would still be easy to find a commander game? Do you think FNMs would still be regularly attended? Would you be happy to have no one to play with because it proves how much smarter you are?
Magic is the most complicated game in the world, to the degree that making it a little more approachable isn't going to change that.
My first commander deck was a token deck. I've needed this stuff for the past 10 years. This isn't new, Magic doesn't suddenly suck.
Regular intelligence clearly suffices to play, to play well, it does not (like it or not, its what it is).
But there was a reason that magic was played a lot by students , and now its increasingly casual, there are simply more casual gamers, especially in todays times (Entertainment, video games, its not fringe, its as mainstream as it gets).
And to make money is a twofold. You can make a good product and sell it as the quality is high (thats not the case for Magic, simply look at curling foils).
Or you make a product for the casual and appeal to the addictive nature of the buyer (As magic boosters are quite literally MicroTransactions and LootBoxes).
Plenty of people that are addicted to gambling, catering to that crowd isnt making a good product, its selling to addicted people (questionable business practice, but it brings in big money, if anything politics has to make rules to prevent this, but especially right now, they dont care at all).
----
Anyway, people love the game, and nostalgia keeps you playing (as you can very well just choose to ignore all new cards, and cherry pick only the few you like, what a lot of people do, especially Commander players that very rarely add new cards to their existing decks).
And different people expect different directions and will absolutely tell if things get worse for them and their players (visible by the amount of LGS dying, not just because of the pandemic, but because of how WotC is treating them, theres a reason WotC is opting for big stores like Walmart and retail sellers like Amazon, they want to reach as many players as possible, and sell them the most expensive products possible).
Bunch of areas dont even have a LGS anywhere in reach, so they dont even have the option to play in paper outside of their own kitchen table.
So its a culture that is dying here, artificially as WotC is bleeding them out (so as of right now, WotC is sucking money out of plenty of LGS stores, when they are gone, the future might look different, as the vast amount of monetary value of magic cards is in the hand of nostalgia players and collectable stores).
If you enjoy that direction the game is going, wonderful.
You can also enjoy the game and still point out if something is arguably going wrong, the entire point of having a discussion in the first place (its not 100% hate or 100% agreeing, its plenty in between).
And its always healthy to hear other opinions from time to time, so you dont suffocate in a bubble, and their opinion is not a personal attack against anybody, you can disagree and still go on with your life.
Magic was a good game as you had to track the game state with your mind, understand whats going on, and know the rules to execute.
NOW in digital you need to barely know anything, it displays you all the things and you can just "fk it" and attack and see what happens.
The game dumbed down drastically.
These cards are designed to further push digital, as the playerbase itself is also effected by this (so they are catered to with digital).
A lot of people here embrace paper for the mental capabilities you need to play the game, thats the fun part after all, otherwise you would just play a video game in the first place.
----
The card designs here "can" be changed to reflect a paper variation that works.
Instead of marking a specific card, you can just name the cards name (which does effect all copies) , so thats the normal paper way to easily mark a card, the name is known at all times, anything else you need to "target" it, put a counter on it and the like.
Some mechanics that have no clear visual representation already break this (Monstrosity and such) , thats bad, but it still works out most of the time as its not overly many and complex (and basically always coupled with +1/+1 counters as a reminder).
Permanent effects are covered by Emblems better than just existing (but thats also just a piece of paper or a token with text, its not "actually" a game piece).
----
If anything these cards are basically "silver-bordered" , as they are not legal in any paper format.
If they would be, you would need some kind of official app to execute them, which is plain annoying, and for others you cannot play them at all.
For silver-bordered cards they had the idea to have blank text boxes on cards to write stuff in, or make permanent markers for a draft, like they did with draft-only cards.
Such effects are "ok" , but in the end its artificial stuff that deludes the game as a "card game" and requires digital software to play the game at all.
Gimmick mechanics like Dungeon and variations of dice and all of that rip Magic of what made it a great card game.
You really just had to bring your deck of cards and you are ready to play.
Today you need Dungeon cards, plenty of counters, tokens, maybe energy-counter dice, treasure tokens, and all other nonsense that adds trash to the game (ever experienced the amount of paper pieces in a casual game ? When people just rip little pieces of a paper, its a lot of trash thats left on the table).
The game is a CARD game, and it got out of hand quite drastically and keeps getting worse in that aspect.
Are you seriously saying that cards are horribly designed because they don't work in a context they weren't designed to work in? Might as well say Commander's Sphere is horribly designed because it doesn't work in standard. And all silver border cards are horribly designed for the same reason. It's madness. Sometimes things are made that were designed for someone other than you. Deal with it.
Yes specific commander effects are bad designs.
Its way better if you have card designs that work in general, without context of like "draft only" , "commander only" , "digital only".
To give you an example:
Fixed Sphere 3
Artifact T: Add one mana of any color of a color identity of a face up card you own.
Sacrifice this: Draw a card.
This way it works with mechanics that make the card revealed and not specific to the commander.
Coupling a card to a specific context is parasitic and simply inferior to doing the same design in a slightly different version that works without the parasitic context.
These are simply horrible designed cards, as the mechanics dont work in paper (but they could be changed to work in paper, slightly different).
Make it "name a card" and do it for all copies of the card as well, actually stronger, but does the same.
The planeswalker with the "offers" is just a way to hide text on a card ... the same crap they pulled with the Dungeon cards, quite literally even, this could have a reminder card like the Dungeons with all the offers writen on them, if they have to do it that way.
The better way is to design a card that actually fits its text on the card (and if you cant, its a horrific bad design for a CARD game).
Seems you have a specific picture in your mind, but sorry thats not me.
Might lead to some enlightening revelations, if you know them well enough that they trust you.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Regular intelligence clearly suffices to play, to play well, it does not (like it or not, its what it is).
But there was a reason that magic was played a lot by students , and now its increasingly casual, there are simply more casual gamers, especially in todays times (Entertainment, video games, its not fringe, its as mainstream as it gets).
And to make money is a twofold. You can make a good product and sell it as the quality is high (thats not the case for Magic, simply look at curling foils).
Or you make a product for the casual and appeal to the addictive nature of the buyer (As magic boosters are quite literally MicroTransactions and LootBoxes).
Plenty of people that are addicted to gambling, catering to that crowd isnt making a good product, its selling to addicted people (questionable business practice, but it brings in big money, if anything politics has to make rules to prevent this, but especially right now, they dont care at all).
----
Anyway, people love the game, and nostalgia keeps you playing (as you can very well just choose to ignore all new cards, and cherry pick only the few you like, what a lot of people do, especially Commander players that very rarely add new cards to their existing decks).
And different people expect different directions and will absolutely tell if things get worse for them and their players (visible by the amount of LGS dying, not just because of the pandemic, but because of how WotC is treating them, theres a reason WotC is opting for big stores like Walmart and retail sellers like Amazon, they want to reach as many players as possible, and sell them the most expensive products possible).
Bunch of areas dont even have a LGS anywhere in reach, so they dont even have the option to play in paper outside of their own kitchen table.
So its a culture that is dying here, artificially as WotC is bleeding them out (so as of right now, WotC is sucking money out of plenty of LGS stores, when they are gone, the future might look different, as the vast amount of monetary value of magic cards is in the hand of nostalgia players and collectable stores).
If you enjoy that direction the game is going, wonderful.
You can also enjoy the game and still point out if something is arguably going wrong, the entire point of having a discussion in the first place (its not 100% hate or 100% agreeing, its plenty in between).
And its always healthy to hear other opinions from time to time, so you dont suffocate in a bubble, and their opinion is not a personal attack against anybody, you can disagree and still go on with your life.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
NOW in digital you need to barely know anything, it displays you all the things and you can just "fk it" and attack and see what happens.
The game dumbed down drastically.
These cards are designed to further push digital, as the playerbase itself is also effected by this (so they are catered to with digital).
A lot of people here embrace paper for the mental capabilities you need to play the game, thats the fun part after all, otherwise you would just play a video game in the first place.
----
The card designs here "can" be changed to reflect a paper variation that works.
Instead of marking a specific card, you can just name the cards name (which does effect all copies) , so thats the normal paper way to easily mark a card, the name is known at all times, anything else you need to "target" it, put a counter on it and the like.
Some mechanics that have no clear visual representation already break this (Monstrosity and such) , thats bad, but it still works out most of the time as its not overly many and complex (and basically always coupled with +1/+1 counters as a reminder).
Permanent effects are covered by Emblems better than just existing (but thats also just a piece of paper or a token with text, its not "actually" a game piece).
----
If anything these cards are basically "silver-bordered" , as they are not legal in any paper format.
If they would be, you would need some kind of official app to execute them, which is plain annoying, and for others you cannot play them at all.
For silver-bordered cards they had the idea to have blank text boxes on cards to write stuff in, or make permanent markers for a draft, like they did with draft-only cards.
Such effects are "ok" , but in the end its artificial stuff that deludes the game as a "card game" and requires digital software to play the game at all.
Gimmick mechanics like Dungeon and variations of dice and all of that rip Magic of what made it a great card game.
You really just had to bring your deck of cards and you are ready to play.
Today you need Dungeon cards, plenty of counters, tokens, maybe energy-counter dice, treasure tokens, and all other nonsense that adds trash to the game (ever experienced the amount of paper pieces in a casual game ? When people just rip little pieces of a paper, its a lot of trash thats left on the table).
The game is a CARD game, and it got out of hand quite drastically and keeps getting worse in that aspect.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Yes specific commander effects are bad designs.
Its way better if you have card designs that work in general, without context of like "draft only" , "commander only" , "digital only".
To give you an example:
Fixed Sphere 3
Artifact
T: Add one mana of any color of a color identity of a face up card you own.
Sacrifice this: Draw a card.
This way it works with mechanics that make the card revealed and not specific to the commander.
Coupling a card to a specific context is parasitic and simply inferior to doing the same design in a slightly different version that works without the parasitic context.
Its not rocket science.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Make it "name a card" and do it for all copies of the card as well, actually stronger, but does the same.
The planeswalker with the "offers" is just a way to hide text on a card ... the same crap they pulled with the Dungeon cards, quite literally even, this could have a reminder card like the Dungeons with all the offers writen on them, if they have to do it that way.
The better way is to design a card that actually fits its text on the card (and if you cant, its a horrific bad design for a CARD game).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮