Quote from Canadian Guy of WrathYou'd simply rather have to deal with people you agree with than be confronted by an opposing view you might not want to immediately dismiss because you might have a hard time understanding how someone might have a different opinion than yours
Considering dissension as a factor of appreciation of an opinion I'd say is rather vapid itself
I think what he means is that Valarin's opinion and criticisms have reasons behind them, where as the vast majority simply says 'You don't like it? Don't buy it. How dare you not appreciate what WotC has done?' which is neither constructive nor realistic.
The vast majority of the people on this forum who would argue against Valarin or other 'dissenters' act no more than strawman WotC fanboys at every supposed slight against the designs of WotC.
Like, for instance, I will say that enchantment artifacts are the absolute dumbest thing Wizards has ever done, the reason being, is that they could just be artifacts, and that they have absolutely no reason to also be enchantments. Artifacts literally do everything that enchantments do, except that they were traditionally colorless, and traditionally enchantments couldn't be creatures.
The average response to such a complaint is generally: 'This set wasn't designed for you!'
That's not a real argument. There's literally no point for anyone to waste the time to post it. They would have managed their time better by doing literally anything else.
So, reading someone's opinion who differs from the mold is much better than reading something like:
[NewSet]Vanilla Goblin: 2r (M) 3/2
"First!"
"Oh wow, so flavorful, a goblin too stupid to do anything!"
"Wow! This will be great in standard!"
"Standard? This is great in eternal formats!"
"Oh wow, I can't wait to get a playset of these!"
"[picture of fry 'take my money']"
"Wow, Can you say standard goblins? Because I can!"
"This card's going to be $60!"
"Wow, I can't believe this, I need this for EDH!"
So, when someone goes to the thread and tells them that the card is god awful, as it truly is, that's different than the norm. I feel bad for the people on this forum quite often, solely because of what their opinions are and the events that must have happened to cause them to be so. WotC is not theur friend, WotC is their drug dealer's drug dealer. WotC would shoot them if they tried to rat on it.
WotC does not get offended when we don't like cards, or sets. MaRo doesn't, either. MaRo just tells himself that he can't please everyone, looks at the sales figures for boxes of cards that NEED to be purchased to play a game, and tells himself that he did a good job. After 10 years of that, he just walks around with an air of self importance, and people would defend his smug ass to the death, a man who wouldn't piss on them to put the fire out.
Infraction issued for flaming. -Xen
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Power creep is a problem that can be addressed with a lot of levers. You can print answer cards that keep power creep in control. You can can level out the power creep by reprinting existing cards at existing power levels instead of replacing them with worse cards. You can change the balance of spells vs creatures to rebalance power between them. You can come up with new mechanics that invalidate older strategies, reducing power creep by making cards not as good as they used to be in a new environment.
Instead of looking at the problem in a nuanced way, MaRo and crew are taking a blunt object approach and just hitting everything with a hammer. "Lands are too good, print crap lands! Bolt is too good, make a new Searing Spear reprint! Games are too fast, add 3 to the mana cost of the sets new ability! By God, I will kill the power level of this game no matter how many times I need to bash it over the head and no matter how many garbage cards I need to put in the set! I am infallible!!"
All that ends up doing is turning players off, driving pack value into the ground (seriously, look at the rares in Theros, how many people are going to be happy spending $4 on a pack and opening any of the horrible rares in the set? Everytime someone hands over $4 and opens up a Domestication worth 25 cents, I literally see Magic dying a little bit right in front of me), and make Magic that much less exciting/enticing/interesting/enjoyable.
I'm not saying every new card needs to be the next TarmoJace, or every pack needs a $30 mythic in it, but there's a balance here, and WoTC is WAY to far on the side of printing garbage.
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All I ask is that you don't think I am complaining for complaining sakes. It's not that I dislike Magic, if I disliked Magic I wouldn't have put the time and energy into building cubes, building EDH decks, and playing as much as I do. I'm complaining because I see a bad job being done, when I know they can do better, because they have done better.
I'm not attacking people for liking Theros, people can like what they like. I see the game going down a pretty bad path, a path I have seen other games go down before the ultimately fail, and I'd much rather complain about Magic in the ridiculously vain hope it might make some difference then mourn Magic after it's been driven into the ground. All I ask is that you don't confuse passion for hatred. If I hated Magic, the last thing I would be doing is talking about it.
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You're right, let me correct myself. Magic isn't dying. Magic is changing in a way that is not sustainable for the continued health of the game. You can only put out so much junk before even the most die hard fan walks away.
"Hey Johnny, yeah, we're going to go ahead and give you a demotion and cut your salary by 50%. But don't worry, it's not bad, it's just that you had it too good before. Have a good weekend!"
That's what that argument sounds like. Bad cards aren't bad, because they cards we had before were too good? That's not how expectations and benchmarks work. Checklands have been pushed as the "default" level of effectiveness for rare dual lands for years and years now. Saying "Here's something way worse, and you should like it, cause you had it too good before" is insulting, and you don't grow a franchise by insulting the playerbase.
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LOL. I don't like Theros, e.g. I do not like anything in my existence. That's some pretty fancy deductive reasoning you got going on there. Is the new "Jump to Conclusions Mat: Extreme Edition" out already?
M13 wasn't terrible, I think it was worse than M12, but it had some decent cards that made Standard interesting. It also had some overpowered mistakes, but I'd gladly take those over unplayable junk anyday
The direction the playerbase is going is something I certainly won't miss either. The hopeless devotion of players these days to anything Wizards puts out is precisely why we have sets this bad. Theros is what you get when design and development basically have zero accountability.
A good example of this is Palladium Games, when Rifts came out it was a hit, so they started pumping out sourcebooks as fast as they could get them on the shelves. The first ones were good, and sold like hotcakes, then they started getting more lackluster, but people still bought them because "It was Rifts". Slowly but surely the quality of expansion books went down, the art got ridiculously worse, the game mechanics and world got even more bizzare, but books kept selling, because sycophants and apologists kept snapping them up. Eventually even they got fed up and left and the game pretty much impolded and fell to fairly dismal numbers.
You could also look to D&D 4.0 vs Pathfinder. Screw something up enough, and players will leave to play something better. Bad design and development can destroy ANY game. D&D was around for 30+ years before it was promptly ruined by WoTC and all the players ran gleefully into Paizo's waiting arms.
MaRo and crew are riding inertia. Duels of the Planeswalkers introduced a ton of new people to Magic, it's the "hit new thing" to them, so Wizards can keep pumping out garbage and watch it sell. there's no incentive to make good sets. The problem is, that's never sustainable. It creates a culture of laziness, no effort, riding the coattails of earlier success, and eventual stagnation and decline.
Is it possible they just chose the 100 worst cards in the set to spoiler first, and are saving all the, awesome, incredibly bombtastic, amazing, playable uncommon, rares, and mythics for last? Sure, I guess it's possible. Personally, I wouldn't bet on it.
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Of course there's something thy can do about it. Not move to the beta site and keep MTGS as is. It's completely in their control, and totally their decision to move to a site they know will be blocked. I agree that a technology solution is not feasible, however, not moving the site to one that is blocked by what appears to be a large number of firewalls is a decision they could easily make.
And IMHO getting annoyed at your users for complaining about not being able to get to your product is a pretty awful mentality for a company to have. It would be like Ford saying "Stop complaining your tires are blowing up and killing people, it's Firestones fault, there's nothing we can do about it! Gah, you are all so annoying!!"
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I don't see how anyone could think this set oozes with power. If the power level of Theros excites you, Zendikar would have given you a heart attack.
As for flavor, Magic players love to confuse cliche with flavor.
There is nothing in this set that appeals to any of the things that drew me to Magic in the first place. That's really it's ultimate failing. They ruined the aesthetics of the game when they changed the card frame, they ruined the design of cards when Limited became the #1 format they design for, they ruined the art when they made every single card look like a scene from the same picture, and now they ruined the last thing Magic had, a fair number of playable cards in a competitive environment. They have successfully reduced the game from an Erector Set (Sturdy, intricate, imaginative) to Lincoln Logs (less sturdy, less intricate, less flexible) to a "build by numbers" Lego set (put the blue plastic piece on the red plastic piece! Isn't this fun!?)
Unless Theros is just a single major misstep that they correct from, I'll likely end up parting ways from Magic. Fallen Empires and Homelands were enough for me to take a 6-7 year long break from the game, and M14 and Theros are much worse than those sets.
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Are you serious?
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/111/983/635201278140391580.jpg
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/111/986/635201278143487008.jpg
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/111/982/635201278139337067.png
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/112/45/635201278215798318.jpg
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/112/63/635201278237756173.png
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/112/117/635201278300620276.jpg
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/111/759/635201277861131765.jpg (OK, it's a bident, but still pretty spearlike)
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/111/929/635201278069424910.jpg (Spear sword)
There are more cards with spears in them than lightning in them!
It's absolutely true, the design skills of any number of posters in the CCCG forums on MTGS are better than any of the garbage cards MaRo has pumped out by a lightyear.
1
and you know that cause you visited or something?
It's make believe. Theros could have legions of flaming spear throwers just by saying they did. And spears were a pretty big weapon in Greek Mythology.
All printing Lightning Strike did is just put more junk cards in MTG. If you are going to have junk cards, at least reprint them so they don't multiply.
It would have been amazingly simply to differentiate this card is some interesting way. This is just pure lazy design. And there's just no need for it. Lightning Bolt doesn't break Legacy, it doesn't break Modern, it doesn't break Standard, it doesn't break limited. Making bad cards for no reaosn just makes Magic a worse, more boring, bland game.
Not only are spears common in greek mythology, we have multiple Theros cards with spears in the art. A spear of fire fits in just fine.
1
I was very unhappy with this, specifically because I was holding out for a Bolt reprint. If there was ever a set that had lightning bolt written all over it.
It was used, it was not popular. It's a terrible card, it's just the only option available.