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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 2:15AM
#21
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I was appalled by this article. The gall of saying that the addition of a new higher rarity was to simplify the game for beginners is just ridiculous. You want people to buy more packs. I don't blame you for that because Magic is a business first and foremost. So you make a new rarity that requires people to buy X number of packs to find rather than just 1, then you make all of those cards so strong that you can't compete without them. Brilliant really when you think about it. But saying that you are doing it for us is insulting.
What really happens in these circumstances? A new player finds it easier to begin playing. He starts throwing together his Riot Devils and Walking Corpses into a deck with perhaps a handful of rares. Then he brings his deck that he's extremely proud of to FNM and sits down against a real deck that costs 500 bucks to build and gets blown out. Now he's faced with something much harder than a complexity barrier to entry - he is faced with a financial barrier. Lucky for him, the entire game is pretty simple to understand. The oversimplification of recent sets means that he can take a netdeck and play it without knowing much about the rules or practicing his lines of play. Suddenly he is a great player in his own eyes because he is winning - but only if he can afford it. Most players get to that point where they realize how much it costs and go back to playing World of Warcraft.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 2:31AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Oct 16, 2007
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This article makes me happy - it's the first acknowledgement I've seen that strategic complexity need not be nerfed.
And given that Innistrad is the most recent set I've seen and it plays well there is reason to be optimistic. :-)
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 3:15AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Dec 27, 2005
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[...]
I'm sorry, but how exactly do you reconcile what you just said with...well...the last six years of Magic?  Almost everything you just said is the opposite of what they've been doing.
I'll get to the meat of my post, which was the third paragraph.
1. "Unfun" mechanics: Maro stated in an article talking about "fun" that mechanics that players have no control over are not fun. He gave examples of cards by Mark Globus that referenced bad things happening if an opponent did something. Well, I have little to no control over when a player has two spells to play in one turn. I actually agree with the decision to introduce a mechanic like this, as little to no control is a horror trope, but it isn't fun, according to Maro.
Now, allow me to be bold for a moment and put linear design into this category of unfun. Cards that scale in power according to the number of [insert cardtype] you control are not fun, as you have no control over how many you draw in a given game nor how many your opponent can remove from play before you get to critical mass. Linear design will be around because it allows new players to build decks, but one of the first things that noobs learn is the inherent unreliability of said cards. Cards with power levels that the player has no control over are not fun.
2. Everyone knows that mythic rarity drives up the price of a card. I feel bad for players who are trying to build a deck that requires access to Mythic rares. I understand that one of the challenges of the game is to build with what you have, and I recognize that. I also recognize that they want new players to open packs and hopefully sell their chase Mythic. However, it just increases the dollar cost entry for players who want to have the Tier 1 decks with the chase Mythics.
3. Limited. I have more fun in a game of Limited where I am making real decisions as opposed to just playing on auto-pilot. I have less fun in a game where there are triggered abilities all over the place (Lorwyn, Zendikar, Alara). I less fun in a tournament where there is a dominant archetype and no viable alternative (Zendikar, Scars). I have more fun in a tournament where I am drafting strategic synergies as opposed to just taking the best cards (Eldrazi).
I want to believe that R&D actually has the imagination to achieve this game's potential of vivid environments and a variety of fun strategies that emerge from those environments. To see that they are being conservative about what will emerge from their environments "because complexity is bad" makes me sad.
What I think is really happening that is driving the success is the de-emphasizing of competitive play. A competitive environment is rarely an acquisition tool, as losers go away feeling like, well, losers. Products such as Duels of the Planeswalkers are what I think is driving acquisition because they introduce the game at a pace that players are comfortable with. (I was actually acquired into Magic via the Shandalar game, so excuse me for being a bit biased there).
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 3:35AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Apr 11, 2009
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I was appalled by this article. The gall of saying that the addition of a new higher rarity was to simplify the game for beginners is just ridiculous. You want people to buy more packs. I don't blame you for that because Magic is a business first and foremost. So you make a new rarity that requires people to buy X number of packs to find rather than just 1, then you make all of those cards so strong that you can't compete without them. Brilliant really when you think about it. But saying that you are doing it for us is insulting.
What really happens in these circumstances? A new player finds it easier to begin playing. He starts throwing together his Riot Devils and Walking Corpses into a deck with perhaps a handful of rares. Then he brings his deck that he's extremely proud of to FNM and sits down against a real deck that costs 500 bucks to build and gets blown out. Now he's faced with something much harder than a complexity barrier to entry - he is faced with a financial barrier. Lucky for him, the entire game is pretty simple to understand. The oversimplification of recent sets means that he can take a netdeck and play it without knowing much about the rules or practicing his lines of play. Suddenly he is a great player in his own eyes because he is winning - but only if he can afford it. Most players get to that point where they realize how much it costs and go back to playing World of Warcraft.
When I started playing Magic (around Lorwyn/Morningtide) this barrier to entry was the one I hit. I immediately saw costs of getting a tournament level deck ready and I promptly gave up on trying to actually get into that area of play.
When tournament decks are running 4-12 Mythics each, a player low on purchasing power simply cannot compete.
This is only because "complexity" = "power". Compare Baneslayer to Serra Angel and anything else of comparable mana cost and function for proof.
Sadly, the only sealed product I really purchase anymore now are Duel Decks to play among friends (and even those are horribly unbalanced at times) and not much else. I recently purchased Duels of the Planeswalkers because all my friends with whom I played have all given up on the game long ago.
So yes, I gave up on tournament Magic long ago and I'm slowly leaving the paper game all together. When "he with the most money wins" is the rule 9 out of 10 times, I really see no point in trying to compete.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 4:14AM
#25
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I think that "barrier to entry" is a good concept, but perhaps more complex than a graph with two lines... Wasn't that the whole idea behind Portal? I know we've seen columns before that discuss how useful/good a card seems depends upon how experienced the player is.
I began playing Magic with Planechase, and I enjoyed it, it capturred my imagination and I'm a regular player now. I've got standard decks and decks beyond standard, and recently tried out MTGO. One of the things that suprised me about online Magic was the low price barrier. I've been able to throw together a cool merfolk deck that I enjoy playing, and that wins fairly often from just the beginner pack and free cards from bots! More of my friends have began playing recently, so trading has become a real option, and I've pulled together a sweet standard werewolf deck. I've bought 14 packs of Innistrad to bring me a more-solid-than-event-deck deck... I'm wondering where this high price point that everyone is bemoaning? On top of that we've got DOTP to provide a wide variety of cards that might be otherwise hard to find...
Of course maybe Nanaimo is just weird and everyone else who plays at FNM everywhere else all play Inkmoth-Wolf-Run.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 5:49AM
#26
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Complexity creep occurs when you do things that deviate from the baseline. The notion that suspend is paying time instead of mana tends to work fine. Burying haste inside reminder text for an ability that also appears on sorceries where it is irrelevent adds the most complexity. Players expect their creatures to have summoning sickness. Either putting haste next to flying or changing supend 4 to suspend 3 on errant ephemeron would have reduced the complexity those cards added to the game.
Planeswalkers also add tons of complexity. They are walls of text, look like creatures, but are supposed to be players. Time and again, these cards trip up new players the most. You can't do anything to fix this, but here's where NWO falls apart. New players get into the game by buying preconstructed products. They usually feature foil planeswalkers on the front of them. New players are being lured into the game by shiny versions of the most complex cards possible.
Your other big problem is that the gap between the baseline has taken a large, non-linear jump by EDH becoming very popular among the non-competitive crowd. That format is a lot more complex than playing normal, 60 card multiplayer. And again, Garruk is in a Commander precon, so new players are interacting with those things very early-even in their own decks.
Since you've given us a thought experiment to play decks with common cards, here's one for you. Buy a commander precon, go find a pickup game, and try to put yourself in the shoes of someone new to the game.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 6:04AM
#27
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Date Joined:
May 15, 2006
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I was appalled by this article. The gall of saying that the addition of a new higher rarity was to simplify the game for beginners is just ridiculous. You want people to buy more packs. I don't blame you for that because Magic is a business first and foremost. So you make a new rarity that requires people to buy X number of packs to find rather than just 1, then you make all of those cards so strong that you can't compete without them. Brilliant really when you think about it. But saying that you are doing it for us is insulting.
You... You do realize he hasn't said anything about mythic in this article, right? Not one thing.
(As a quick look at Gatherer can confirm, with the exception of planeswalkers, the average mythic is no more or less complex than the average rare.)
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 6:14AM
#28
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Date Joined:
May 15, 2006
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This is only because "complexity" = "power". Compare Baneslayer to Serra Angel and anything else of comparable mana cost and function for proof.
Funny you should say that. Baneslayer Angel  is a great example of a card that is simple yet powerful. Its rules text is nothing but static, evergreen keywords. It's not a mythic because of its complexity but because of its power level.
People, even if WotC decided to spread complexity evenly at every rarity, competitive Magic would still be expensive because WotC also puts a good number of key tournament cards at rare or mythic regardless of complexity, to keep Limited balanced and to sell packs.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 6:41AM
#29
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Date Joined:
Sep 16, 2003
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Is there such a craving for new abilities then? I really couldn't care less if they recombined old abilities. There are so much to go around. If they see adding new abilities as an unquestionable must, I think they have yet to really grasp the problem of the increasing complexity gap (or dead weight rules baggage as one might call it)
Also, I didn't know that more complexity in the rare spot was a new thing. In fact, I think I recall a very similar article like this from way back when.
I do agree that the game can in fact be more interesting with less complex cards. The base rules are so interesting that anything that disrupts those rules (complex cards) can take from the fun of the base rules.
When I read about the bookkeeping thing all I could think about was the conga line of defenders. If clarity is your purpose you shouldve sticked to DotS or think of something better than what we have now. (But that discussion has been done to death)
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1 year ago ::
Dec 05, 2011 - 6:46AM
#30
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Date Joined:
Nov 18, 2003
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To everyone worried about the game being dumbed down: don't forget, this wasn't some kind of announcement of future changes, this order was adopted six years ago. If you are still here playing and if you enjoyed the last several blocks, your worries are pretty much unfounded.
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