I like when WotC steps out of the comfort zone, first war of the spark and now Ikoria are sets that are quite different to others,s tand out because of the mechanics and the limited formats will be fun and different.
IMHo Eldraine and Theros were quite powerful sets for standard, so it is nice to take a break from that kind of Magic design and see what happens when they go all in a "timmy" set with big creatures and over the top mechanics. Next set is Zendikar so I bet that would be more like normal sets.
Right, because Zendikar was calm and normal and not disruptive at all either other times we went there?
What was happening on the west coast in 2015-2017 that War of the Spark through this giant kiaju-turd of a set were the results? Did some awesome creative project steal away all the talent, was there something in the water?.....It wasn't even cannabis, that was legal in 2012.
My local shops have canceled ALL events and discontinued free play. Yours will do the same soon too. Not to do this is irresponsible, and goes against a lot of the stipulations being set by governments.
Think bigger than your own selfish need to always be seeing new product. Magic is a social game even when individual players arent.
Any delays to spoilers right now are fine.
Classic REEEEEEEE comment. Everyone except fanboys is entitled. Poor wotc right?
Idk what this has to do with the spoilers. Idk why i can't know commander decks' colors, or maybe the main commanders, because my LSG is closed. I don't know why have to wait until the 10-17 of april to know the damn decks' colors, mechanics or commanders. I can understand waiting to spoil the whole list, but why drop nothing? Oh yeah, so leaks will happen like with C19. Dumb wotc.
Why they can't put something out this week or the next one? Maybe just a couple of arts and hints?
Why is it that the people making luminary quotes like "REEEEEE" accusing others of poor reactions are often also the ones who seem to have the most unusual reactions?
Is there some kind of asynchronous mediated environment variant of Dunning-Krueger at work?
One of thinking why would they avoid printing shocks in standard
They pretty much pioneer legal
But we really want shock reprints because those are the best options for non basics with the basic types just give us something like that tango/bicycle dual lands then we’re in business
But that's the problem.
There should not be non-basics with basic types. Either that or searchers/fetchers/count-ers should only count/fetch basics of their types.
Then fetches would a) not be so expensive they warp the game and b) be standard printable. I guess a new cycle with new names would work...
In part. But I also don’t like that it appears to be a plane of essentially Simic creations. I prefer more recognizable creatures. I also can’t stand Viven Reid. Let alone my harsher analysis of sets that follow Theros.
It’s a good thing though. Not every set is for everyone and I’m looking forward to Zendikar and Commander products instead. So it’s not wallet fatigue for me.
Frankly, the only set that really interests me this year (besides Theros) is Commander Legends. Ikoria leaves me wholly indifferent and about Zendikar III, I am just curious how they are gonna manage to make it interesting.
Zendikar 1 looked interesting before the eldrazi were spoiled. After, well....
So far it looks like "Ikoria: We're out of Ideas, so here's a Placeholder Set!"
Which is understandable every once in a while but it comes hard on the heels of "Theros: We Didn't like our First Ideas, but we Shipped Anyway", which came right after "Ravnica: The Story Diverged from Play Design, but You Knew How It Would End Anyway", the third expansion in the "Ravnica: Why are We Here Again, Oh Yeah, Bolas has been Kicking Around For A Decade And We Kinda Forgot What To Do With Him" blocks.
A company generally uses excellent product to distract during a transition to a higher concentration on its RoI. It looks like they're missing half of that formula...
Do you have any proof for this or just speaking out your ass?
Proof? What could possibly constitute proof in this case, other than a video MaRo and Elon Musk both blazed and MaRo saying "Hey man, I'm about to sell them another placeholder set, man!"
I said so far it looks like. And it does to me.
Of course I'm talking out my ass.
But my ass is quite old. It has seen sh** like this before.
(I assume you weren't talking about the ROI bit...because that's just basic and obvious)
So far it looks like "Ikoria: We're out of Ideas, so here's a Placeholder Set!"
Which is understandable every once in a while but it comes hard on the heels of "Theros: We Didn't like our First Ideas, but we Shipped Anyway", which came right after "Ravnica: The Story Diverged from Play Design, but You Knew How It Would End Anyway", the third expansion in the "Ravnica: Why are We Here Again, Oh Yeah, Bolas has been Kicking Around For A Decade And We Kinda Forgot What To Do With Him" blocks.
A company generally uses excellent product to distract during a transition to a higher concentration on its RoI. It looks like they're missing half of that formula...
I sell product to people that make responsible decisions.
Not everyone has to be shady and piss on customers to make a living.
Selling candy flavored vape to children is a shady business practice. This is basic marketing, and adults with a paycheck and a degree of restraint should know better.
Lots of condescension here, most of it unnecessary.
As a professor at a business college, OnlyOne has a greater portion of correctness.
It is not basic marketing to use predatory business practices, and blind flash sales certainly are. It is not that good products sell on their own and bad products require predatory practices. Good and bad products benefit from predatory practices. Which is why there is a place, even in capitalist economic systems, for regulation. Companies who use practices like this invite their customers to leave, or failing that, for the industry to be regulated. It is then up to the business to decide if the profits gained by the predatory practices (certainty) are worth the (probability-based) risk of loss of customer loss and regulation imposition.
However, MaRo continues to be....a piece of work.
customer says: Why do you sell apples? Selling apples has negative consequences.
MaRo says: Don't ask the question in a rude manner. You don't know how apples work. Selling apples requires we do it this way. We sell other fruit too.
Response: yeah...but you (MaRo) didn't answer the question. You stated that you know that selling apples in the way you do has the negative consequences that the customer stated. And you're defending selling apples, tacitly acknowledging the harm and claiming to care about the factor you're harming. The customer knew this would be your dismissive response...that is why they were rude in the first place.
Edit: FYI, I bought one Secret Lair. I plan to ignore all of them outside a very narrow preference set. They are with certainty problematic, but simultaneously not a tremendous level of bad business practices over what they were already doing. That Secret Lair also constitutes the only money I've directly given to WotC for magic cards since 2007 other than about 2 prereleases a year, because I don't like their business practices. So...nuance.
I hope we are also getting regular Grecian landscape basic lands though
One basic per type in a "large" set would be a bit sparse. Probably some normal landscapes and these in the uncommon slot like the Hour of Devastation full-arts.
I feel like this is confirmation that the higher ups at WotC had no faith in this set's ability to sell based off of a combination of its themes, setting and lack of a Jacetice League member, so they relied on the tried and true method of adding a couple pushed cards to the set to ensure it sold well. Play Design had been doing such a great job, this is really the only reason I can think of for why this set has experienced so many problems.
I mean everyone immediately knew Oko was going to be oppressively good. There is no way Play Design missed that, or let it slip through the cracks.
I haven't been following the tournament play as well, but I understand the issue is using Oko to turn things into Elks? So Play Design tested the ability on their own creatures, but players use it how?
He can turn the food token into an elk too, so he keeps making 3/3 creatures every other turn.
Also he can exchange the food token for a small creature that the opponent has, so he controls the board by himself.
Glad I don't have any since the price will go down to about $20-$25 now, same for once upon a time.
I traded mine into the lgs last weekend for $17 which was a good move since now it'll be close to that price.
Note also that he is creating permanents on your side and neutering the opponent's threats, and it is all plus actions for him.
As Altair mentioned, there is no way that testing just missed how oppressive Oko was, and how good free spells are. Those two cards are featured on more marketing art than any others for the set. They're showcase parts of the product.
It is past time to stop presuming mistakes. WotC intended for these pushed cards to drive sales, and then to ban them after they had done. It is time to presume this kind of bait-and-switch intent as their business model.
MaRo ponders..."can I poop in a mylar baggie and expect people to buy it? I think I can..."
MaRo designs Standard sets, he doesn't sell anything
I think you missed the point. As far as I can tell, the statement Elostirion(again) made indicates that s/he thinks MaRo is lying about the product's true name.
@foam_dome: Only technically. MaRo is a salesperson first and a designer second. Just read anything he writes to see that. Or at least every part of MaRo that customers see is that way.
@Lectrys You're closer, but not in the gold. This is my fault though. I think a lot more than I write usually, especially on message boards, because I'm trying not to be pedantic and boring but to quickly stab at the heart of the topic and get back to my work. I presume most people are happy to either get my message or let it blow by them with all the other stuff on the interwebs they dont already agree with. But if someone takes the interest to respond, especially with curiosity, then I'm happy to elaborate.
We the Magic customers, are fairly notorious for studying MTG product releases. We're actually held up as the gold standard for other gaming genres as examples of informed customers, if you want to know. We reverse engineer printer collation logistics and distribution patterns and calculate ROI on an unopened pack of whatever the new set is before it hits the shelves to determine how much, if any, to buy of it. We're all kinds of awesome that way.
Sometimes it sucks though, because that sucks the fun out of some things. Magic is a game which changes so frequently because at any given instant, it has a limited shelf life. Any given Standard metagame for example, has 1-3 top tier decks, and 5-7 decks which would be fun to play with and play against if you didnt know that everyone (or most everyone) was going to bring a top tier deck. The more analysis we do hastens the consolidation of the metagame away from containing 6-10 decks toward containing 1-3 decks. Its gotten so bad that the first tournament in the Standard which is only a week old skipped straight to the 1-3 stage, with 67% of the field being Golos, 20% being Oko (a meta-response to Golos) and about 10% everything else. Even pre-releases are massively meta'd, with most players knowing all the cards and the likely selection sets for a 'good' sealed pool or expectations for draft.
Our type of awesome can suck some of the fun away.
Now we have a product that we get to know nothing about. It could seem to be a nice counter/response to this trend. Curate a tournament environment that WotC believes will be viable, but the players dont get to hyperanalyze. It could allow more of the metagaming to take place alongside the actual gaming. It could lower the barrier to fun by taking away the requirement to study hard, and spend money in just the right places before playing. Grumpy old farts like me chould love this.
But details matter. Delivery matters. Did MaRo, consummate sales-pitch-artist that he is, take the time to say any of this? One sentence would be enough. No. What's the price of the product? Closer to a premium product than a commodity-draft product. That suggests to me that this is not a product intended to do the positive things I've written above. It suggests to me that this is yet another cash grab, and when the rest of marketing campaign for this product comes out, I'll think that its just as half-baked as most of the rest of what they've done since about 2004.
So with your telepathic powers in play, the statement that Elostirion(again) made indicates that he is merely bu++hur+ that a product he could have really enjoyed, which might have shown that WotC noticed and seeks to mitigate a drain on the fun is instead, not that thing.
Indeed. I thought in Amonkhet there would have been a "Snakes on a Plane" card.
Right, because Zendikar was calm and normal and not disruptive at all either other times we went there?
What was happening on the west coast in 2015-2017 that War of the Spark through this giant kiaju-turd of a set were the results? Did some awesome creative project steal away all the talent, was there something in the water?.....It wasn't even cannabis, that was legal in 2012.
Why is it that the people making luminary quotes like "REEEEEE" accusing others of poor reactions are often also the ones who seem to have the most unusual reactions?
Is there some kind of asynchronous mediated environment variant of Dunning-Krueger at work?
But that's the problem.
There should not be non-basics with basic types. Either that or searchers/fetchers/count-ers should only count/fetch basics of their types.
Then fetches would a) not be so expensive they warp the game and b) be standard printable. I guess a new cycle with new names would work...
Zendikar 1 looked interesting before the eldrazi were spoiled. After, well....
So it is _possible_ to not eff it up...
But Adventure needs to become evergreen like, 3 months ago.
Proof? What could possibly constitute proof in this case, other than a video MaRo and Elon Musk both blazed and MaRo saying "Hey man, I'm about to sell them another placeholder set, man!"
I said so far it looks like. And it does to me.
Of course I'm talking out my ass.
But my ass is quite old. It has seen sh** like this before.
(I assume you weren't talking about the ROI bit...because that's just basic and obvious)
Which is understandable every once in a while but it comes hard on the heels of "Theros: We Didn't like our First Ideas, but we Shipped Anyway", which came right after "Ravnica: The Story Diverged from Play Design, but You Knew How It Would End Anyway", the third expansion in the "Ravnica: Why are We Here Again, Oh Yeah, Bolas has been Kicking Around For A Decade And We Kinda Forgot What To Do With Him" blocks.
A company generally uses excellent product to distract during a transition to a higher concentration on its RoI. It looks like they're missing half of that formula...
Lots of condescension here, most of it unnecessary.
As a professor at a business college, OnlyOne has a greater portion of correctness.
It is not basic marketing to use predatory business practices, and blind flash sales certainly are. It is not that good products sell on their own and bad products require predatory practices. Good and bad products benefit from predatory practices. Which is why there is a place, even in capitalist economic systems, for regulation. Companies who use practices like this invite their customers to leave, or failing that, for the industry to be regulated. It is then up to the business to decide if the profits gained by the predatory practices (certainty) are worth the (probability-based) risk of loss of customer loss and regulation imposition.
However, MaRo continues to be....a piece of work.
customer says: Why do you sell apples? Selling apples has negative consequences.
MaRo says: Don't ask the question in a rude manner. You don't know how apples work. Selling apples requires we do it this way. We sell other fruit too.
Response: yeah...but you (MaRo) didn't answer the question. You stated that you know that selling apples in the way you do has the negative consequences that the customer stated. And you're defending selling apples, tacitly acknowledging the harm and claiming to care about the factor you're harming. The customer knew this would be your dismissive response...that is why they were rude in the first place.
Edit: FYI, I bought one Secret Lair. I plan to ignore all of them outside a very narrow preference set. They are with certainty problematic, but simultaneously not a tremendous level of bad business practices over what they were already doing. That Secret Lair also constitutes the only money I've directly given to WotC for magic cards since 2007 other than about 2 prereleases a year, because I don't like their business practices. So...nuance.
One basic per type in a "large" set would be a bit sparse. Probably some normal landscapes and these in the uncommon slot like the Hour of Devastation full-arts.
What was that large power ranger talking "aboat"?
That was far too grammatical.
<clears throat/>
Yeahhuh. Them's from Kylem
Note also that he is creating permanents on your side and neutering the opponent's threats, and it is all plus actions for him.
As Altair mentioned, there is no way that testing just missed how oppressive Oko was, and how good free spells are. Those two cards are featured on more marketing art than any others for the set. They're showcase parts of the product.
It is past time to stop presuming mistakes. WotC intended for these pushed cards to drive sales, and then to ban them after they had done. It is time to presume this kind of bait-and-switch intent as their business model.
Caveat emptor.
@foam_dome: Only technically. MaRo is a salesperson first and a designer second. Just read anything he writes to see that. Or at least every part of MaRo that customers see is that way.
@Lectrys You're closer, but not in the gold. This is my fault though. I think a lot more than I write usually, especially on message boards, because I'm trying not to be pedantic and boring but to quickly stab at the heart of the topic and get back to my work. I presume most people are happy to either get my message or let it blow by them with all the other stuff on the interwebs they dont already agree with. But if someone takes the interest to respond, especially with curiosity, then I'm happy to elaborate.
We the Magic customers, are fairly notorious for studying MTG product releases. We're actually held up as the gold standard for other gaming genres as examples of informed customers, if you want to know. We reverse engineer printer collation logistics and distribution patterns and calculate ROI on an unopened pack of whatever the new set is before it hits the shelves to determine how much, if any, to buy of it. We're all kinds of awesome that way.
Sometimes it sucks though, because that sucks the fun out of some things. Magic is a game which changes so frequently because at any given instant, it has a limited shelf life. Any given Standard metagame for example, has 1-3 top tier decks, and 5-7 decks which would be fun to play with and play against if you didnt know that everyone (or most everyone) was going to bring a top tier deck. The more analysis we do hastens the consolidation of the metagame away from containing 6-10 decks toward containing 1-3 decks. Its gotten so bad that the first tournament in the Standard which is only a week old skipped straight to the 1-3 stage, with 67% of the field being Golos, 20% being Oko (a meta-response to Golos) and about 10% everything else. Even pre-releases are massively meta'd, with most players knowing all the cards and the likely selection sets for a 'good' sealed pool or expectations for draft.
Our type of awesome can suck some of the fun away.
Now we have a product that we get to know nothing about. It could seem to be a nice counter/response to this trend. Curate a tournament environment that WotC believes will be viable, but the players dont get to hyperanalyze. It could allow more of the metagaming to take place alongside the actual gaming. It could lower the barrier to fun by taking away the requirement to study hard, and spend money in just the right places before playing. Grumpy old farts like me chould love this.
But details matter. Delivery matters. Did MaRo, consummate sales-pitch-artist that he is, take the time to say any of this? One sentence would be enough. No. What's the price of the product? Closer to a premium product than a commodity-draft product. That suggests to me that this is not a product intended to do the positive things I've written above. It suggests to me that this is yet another cash grab, and when the rest of marketing campaign for this product comes out, I'll think that its just as half-baked as most of the rest of what they've done since about 2004.
So with your telepathic powers in play, the statement that Elostirion(again) made indicates that he is merely bu++hur+ that a product he could have really enjoyed, which might have shown that WotC noticed and seeks to mitigate a drain on the fun is instead, not that thing.