MTG Salvation

Quote from ChariSays »

Quote from DJK3654 »

Quote from ChariSays »

I don't think that they are abuaing their power.

Yes, certainly not in the sense you were describing

And if they were intentionally pushing toxic players out of their community, I wouldn't find that to be abuse. Not a very difficult concept, really. Which part are you unable to understand?

Abuse as in "use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse", yes I think it would be abusive. Moderating the community should be done through much better, more calculated means.

Yes, you have posted in this thread. My point stands. If anything, it is made stronger.

Good to know.

Moderating the community should be done in a better way than releasing a product that might offend a vocal minority within it? Do tell us how you think that is abusive.

Intentionally designing products specifically to try to exclude people you don't like is designing products with a bad effect, bad purpose, and not how products are supposed to be designed. Hence, as per the definition provided, that would be abusive use of product design.
Releasing products 'that might offend a vocal minority' is not, but that's not what you said and you know it.

I mean, yeah, it is good to know, as good to know as you stating that you've posted.

This is very circular. Do you have a point? Is there a different lingua franca we could be using to communicate this more accurately? I generally mostly know English, but I could try a different dialect of it.

Do *you* have a point?
I've made my argument/s about what I think of this product. If you'd like to respond to that, feel free. But gesturing vaguely at how you don't like other peoples' arguments is not going to be constructive. What am I supposed to say in response to "I have yet to see a reasonable criticism of this product that doesn't boil down to a slipepry slope fallacy, entitlement, or just plain emotional knee jerk foolishness"? Try to debate whether or not some of the criticisms I and other have made are reasonable? Why would I do all the work for you? I'll respond to your argument against my argument when you've actually made one.

Quote from ChariSays »

Quote from DJK3654 »

Quote from ChariSays »

Quote from DJK3654 »

So your answer to a certain amount of toxic attitudes within the community is for the company who controls the game to abuse their power by intentionally screwing with those players to try to essentially bully them out of participating in the game?
Yes, we're promoting a very healthy community here.

WotC as a for-profit company is incentivized to push the limits and see what it can get away in order to get the most money it can possibly get from players. If you don't have any interest in separating the reasonable criticisms (whether or not you fully agree with them) from the toxic attitudes and chalk it all up to the rather simplistic sense of 'entitlement', you're getting in the way of the pushback the community needs in order to keep the affordability of the game in line.

How is anyone at WotC or Hasbro "abusing their power" though? There is no intentionally screwing with or bullying players who are upset about literally anything. If they feel like enough is enough, they're free to quit. Whiners gonna whine.

So you don't think it would abusing WotC's power to intentionally push players out of the game because you don't think it would be possible to intentionally do that, the thing you wanted?
Interesting take.

Quote from ChariSays »

I have yet to see a reasonable criticism of this product that doesn't boil down to a slipepry slope fallacy, entitlement, or just plain emotional knee jerk foolishness. If you have such something that doesn't fall into one of those categories, why not post it in one of the 11 pages here, or the 900 threads on Reddit, or the 10,000 posts on Facebook or the...

I have posted in this thread.

I don't think that they are abuaing their power.

Yes, certainly not in the sense you were describing

And if they were intentionally pushing toxic players out of their community, I wouldn't find that to be abuse. Not a very difficult concept, really. Which part are you unable to understand?

Abuse as in "use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse", yes I think it would be abusive. Moderating the community should be done through much better, more calculated means.

Yes, you have posted in this thread. My point stands. If anything, it is made stronger.

Good to know.

Quote from ChariSays »

Quote from DJK3654 »

Quote from ChariSays »

I honestly hope this entire thing was constructed to push a certain entitled segment of the playerbase out of the game.

So your answer to a certain amount of toxic attitudes within the community is for the company who controls the game to abuse their power by intentionally screwing with those players to try to essentially bully them out of participating in the game?
Yes, we're promoting a very healthy community here.

WotC as a for-profit company is incentivized to push the limits and see what it can get away in order to get the most money it can possibly get from players. If you don't have any interest in separating the reasonable criticisms (whether or not you fully agree with them) from the toxic attitudes and chalk it all up to the rather simplistic sense of 'entitlement', you're getting in the way of the pushback the community needs in order to keep the affordability of the game in line.

How is anyone at WotC or Hasbro "abusing their power" though? There is no intentionally screwing with or bullying players who are upset about literally anything. If they feel like enough is enough, they're free to quit. Whiners gonna whine.

So you don't think it would abusing WotC's power to intentionally push players out of the game because you don't think it would be possible to intentionally do that, the thing you wanted?
Interesting take.

Quote from ChariSays »

I have yet to see a reasonable criticism of this product that doesn't boil down to a slipepry slope fallacy, entitlement, or just plain emotional knee jerk foolishness. If you have such something that doesn't fall into one of those categories, why not post it in one of the 11 pages here, or the 900 threads on Reddit, or the 10,000 posts on Facebook or the...

I have posted in this thread.

Quote from ChariSays »

I honestly hope this entire thing was constructed to push a certain entitled segment of the playerbase out of the game.

So your answer to a certain amount of toxic attitudes within the community is for the company who controls the game to abuse their power by intentionally screwing with those players to try to essentially bully them out of participating in the game?
Yes, we're promoting a very healthy community here.

WotC as a for-profit company is incentivized to push the limits and see what it can get away in order to get the most money it can possibly get from players. If you don't have any interest in separating the reasonable criticisms (whether or not you fully agree with them) from the toxic attitudes and chalk it all up to the rather simplistic sense of 'entitlement', you're getting in the way of the pushback the community needs in order to keep the affordability of the game in line.

Quote from Cranky »

Quote from ChariSays »

The conspiracies in this thread really take the crown

It really tells you something about where all the anger surrounding this product comes from and how valid it is :/

That's ridiculous. Not everyone who criticized this product is coming from the same place on it or has the exact same argument. I agree that talk of paying off the rules committee is dubious at best, but even the people doing that aren't necessarily wrong in their other points. That's basically just Poisoning the Well.

Alara, Dominaria and New Phyrexia/Mirrodin definitely seem the most likely returns.

Quote from Dale Dan Tony »

Not sure why the previews were pushed back... this feels like a possible passive aggressive rebuttal to the public outcry on the Walking Dead Secret Lair. Maybe it's a far-flung conspiracy, but why else would they have to move them? Some people enjoy the slower spoiler season, which I can see why, but this is the one product I was looking forward to seeing what they put in it. Due to this secret lair Walking Dead affecting Commander drastically, it feels like they wanted to just throw the previews back as backlash for our negative reviews.

Because they want previews to take place shortly before release to hype people up to buy?
Obviously.
That's why they do previews in the first place.

Quote from Dontrike »

Quote from DJK3654 »

I'm skeptical. This all feels too fast for them to go down the crossover train. I except we might see some more crossover stuff this year as WotC tests the waters, but not this much.
But hey, maybe?

I'd say this "testing the waters" is tantamount to just cannonball'ing off the high dive.

Certainly if all of this is true.

I wouldn't hold your breath for either Ripple or Recover.
Snow has a much more decent chance, but I wouldn't count your chickens before they hatch.

Without more detailed knowledge about the internal processes here, I think it's quite hard to say much about this.
I mean, sure. There's a pandemic. It tracks. Could they have handled this better somehow? I don't know. Maybe. Again, hard for us to say,

I'm skeptical. This all feels too fast for them to go down the crossover train. I expect we might see some more crossover stuff this year as WotC tests the waters, but not this much.
But hey, maybe?

Quote from Cranky »

I'm honestly trying to wrap my head around how anyone feels that the arguments against these are valid without being extremely immature:

1) These break immersion so they shouldn't exist: INVALID.
There are already tons of cards that do this. Additionally, who are you to say what can or can't exist in a game you didn't create? WotC can do whatever they want with their game, and there are plenty of people who think these are cool. Let other people enjoy things, you are not the center of the universe.

How are we or anyone supposed to decide what should and should not be in the game creatively if not by expressing our opinions about whether we want it in the game or not? It is worth everyone keeping in mind that there's always going to be parts of the game they don't like, but things can cross a line for people where they actively want it removed. People aren't forcing it to happen. They are expressing their preference.
WotC can do whatever they want with their game, but they aren't making for themselves. If WotC wants the community's support for their products they have to support the community at least a little in turn.

Quote from Cranky »

2) Slippery slope! They'll obviously print broken cards here eventually: INVALID.
They are VERY clearly aware of the need for limited availability cards to be incredibly safe. They learned their lesson from Nexus. These cards are terrible, and will break zero formats. Also, if these sell well (ie: they have incentive to make more) in spite of being this bad, they have LITERALLY zero reason to amp up the power level. The slippery slope argument is not only fallacious, but wildly illogical to boot.

Literally zero reason?
How about this: Broken/pushed cards sell.
Not literally zero reason then. Oops.

Broken cards are likely to happen by accident, as they have often happened. The number of card bannings we've seen haven't been something WotC wanted or planned, but rather something they allowed to happen by pushing the envelope in certain ways that have increased the chance of mistakes. Namely, WotC is incentivized to push hype chase cards that rake in big bucks and they have taken more risks with such cards.
Even if none of these WD cards are 'broken' as such, if they are sufficiently powerful to see widespread play, that's already kind of a problem. Because they are going to get expensive and hard to acquire fast.

Quote from Cranky »

3) Limited availability is bad! FOMO!: INVALID.
Every Magic product is limited availability. Some more than others. Secret Lairs especially. Is that ideal from a consumer standpoint? No, of course not.

I love it when people answer their own questions.
If something isn't good for consumers, shouldn't consumers be concerned a little?

Quote from Cranky »

Is it probably the most efficient way to meet demand without overprinting and thus wasting money on excess production? Absolutely, which is especially important for short-run products with higher print costs (you get discounts from printers for volume).

There was no great demand for something like Secret Lair before Secret Lair existed. WotC wasn't filling a hole, they were seizing an opportunity. If a product like this can't be produced within cost without limiting availability, maybe it shouldn't be made? And that's assuming that production costs for a more available Secret Lair would indeed be unreasonably burdensome, and not WotC just did it this way regardless because it made the most money for them. Which is a thing that for-profit companies have been known to do on occasion.

Quote from Cranky »

If you want this you'll buy it. If you don't want this you won't buy it. If you're indecisive and miss the (now generous) window, the secondary market exists and the price of singles in secret lairs has been pretty reasonable across the board outside of a rare few exceptions.

"If you don't like it, don't buy it" misses how much more power businesses have in the exchange than consumers. Especially with things like food and medicine, but even with entertainment media like this, people really want these products, but WotC doesn't give much of a ***** about one more customer's money among many. WotC can offer the product in a fashion that is far from ideal and people will still buy it, and it will often be worth it for those people, even, for that individual purchase. But people might still be getting ripped off, and meanwhile, people who don't like and don't buy can be ignored and pushed out of the game. And that's not even mentioning the way businesses can exploit people's vulnerabilities like addiction. This becomes especially problematic when it all combines to result in a shrinking focus on extracting as much easy money from heavily invested players who are willing to spend a lot over making the game broadly enjoyable and accessible.
The only way for consumers to realistically apply serious pressure to WotC over something they don't like is to organise as a community, help to encourage each other to resist the temptation to buy in, voice their specific concerns, and apply continued public pressure that makes the company look bad. You know, like they are doing.
It worked for SW Battlefront 2.

Quote from Cranky »

4) What happens if they somehow make a mistake and these become important game pieces!?: INVALID.
They already said they'd reprint them in in-universe form, and that they'd do it Godzilla-style so that there wouldn't be an 8x problem either. They're smart people, have some faith.

WotC's track record on reprinting cards to keep accessibility in check is spotty at best. This only amplifies an existing problem with accessibility, the defining problem of MtG for consumers, even.

Quote from Cranky »

5) International availability! Not everyone has equal access!: INVALID.
This is already an issue in Magic. This is nothing new. Countries with access to these might not have access to other things. That's the way the world works. Does it suck? Yes. Is it entirely reasonable given logistics? Absolutely. Will everyone who wants these be able to pick them up second hand? Definitely.

International availability for Secret Lair is worse than other products. They have been working to expand it over time, but it's still below usual. Everyone will theoretically be able to acquire these, but whether they will be to some extent prohibitively difficult to acquire for some people is another matter.

Quote from Cranky »

Honestly all of the screeching about this product is coming from the very worst parts of the community. The game is dead, WotC is evil, people who like these are wrong, yadda yadda ten-page hyperbole about how this is the worst thing to ever happen.

Have you been outside lately?

This isn't even the worst thing going on in Magic, let alone the world, and you're investing this much emotional energy into it? Literally my entire livelihood is tied to this game and I'm not upset about this, what's wrong with y'all? Let people like things.

There's has been a certain amount of overreaction from some people, but what do you expect? People have valid complaints with this product and they've been spelled out many times on this thread. Of course there's going to be some overreaction, just as some there will be some people who don't take it seriously enough. And even if someone is overreacting doesn't mean they're wrong about everything.

Sagas is a little bit ambitious considering how recently we saw them, but I fully expect some form of God card cycle after the last 2 Theros visits + Amonkhet establishing a strong expectation as such, and I have no doubt that after the Party theme from ZNR we will see cards from all four of those tribes prominently in the coming sets, and especially Warriors in Kaldheim and Wizards in Strixhaven.
I think the equipment part of ZNR and its connection warriors was partly setup for Kaldheim; I expect to see more in that space with this set.
I expect to see some combat related mechanics. Something related to fate maybe.

Quote from Rosy Dumplings »

Quote from Shadow345 »

I don't understand why people are so angry about some cards for a non-essential luxury product.

If you want them just buy them.

Right now, the biggest thing I'm angry about is that availability simply isn't widespread. There are a large number of places in the world where this either won't be shipped or where the shipping easily doubles the price... which is kind of a problem for a product that is legal in any format.

While functional reprints can be created in the future (unlike RL cards), the fact is that 1) Wizards will probably never reprint these exact cards again (doing so would likely require another payment to AMC and another contract) and 2) those functional reprints and these cards will not be mutually exclusive. Players in America will have a much better chance of having both Negan as their commander AND "Not-Negan" in their 99 to double the treasures provided while other players in other regions are far more likely to be stuck with just Not-Negan unless they pay out the nose... because they live in the wrong country.

Imagine if a card that wizards could never reprint was only released in Japan and was only printed in Japanese and was legal in one or more formats. Not a good feeling or a good look.

MaRo has already confirmed that if they did functional reprints it would work like the Godzilla promos and you wouldn't be able to play both. See just above in this thread.