It's not that you can't display a fundamental transformation without adding cards to a set. It's just that doing so makes it feel a lot more like an afterthought, rather than a wholly-realized evolution.
I assure you, Avacyn Restored feels more like an afterthought than any Magic set I've ever seen, both mechanically and story-wise. "Monsters vs. humans... scarier monsters vs. fewer humans... Oh look, now it's angels vs. demons". Changing the theme of a block like that is not a good thing, guys. Not to mention the fact that the story's such a mess that it feels like you slapped it together in ten minutes.
Yes, we need to debut more mechanics, but we get to eliminate most of the residue of the previous two sets.
That "residue" is what makes the third set feel like it belongs in the block at all. Also, eliminating it really upsets the people who liked that stuff.
Look, I like the fact that you're designing more cards than your baseline, but making the third set of a block nearly completely disconnected is not cool. If you want to make a two-set block and a separate one-set block, more power to you, but the way you're currently doing large-small-large is in some kind of limbo between a cohesive block and two separate blocks.
Taking Avacyn Restored for example: The only connection with the previous two sets is Undying and a handful of creatures that have a tribal creature type. That's not enough. It feels like you established a cool block with a cool theme, and then yanked the rug out from under your fans. "Are you enjoying this horror world block? Too bad, now you get angels."
The story is no better. I'm not saying a third-set-twist is impossible, but it has to be more complicated than a sudden Deus Ex Machina like Avacyn's return was. Had her return given humankind a fighting chance once more, allowing them to begin to turn the tides slowly back in their favor, that could have made an interesting plot event and a good third block. Instead, you simply use her return to sweep everything from the first two thirds of the story under the rug. That's lazy, shoddy work and does not make for an exciting tale.
So going forward, if you're going to make a Large-Small-Large structure, please make sure that A) the set still feels like it belongs in the block and fits in the established world; and B) the twist enhances the story rather than detracts from it.
I have to agree. According to the story, the Gryff are rare creatures that represent Acacyn... They appear as the logo for two sets...And we get only two cards? Same with the Wolfir. There is some story behind the DFC going away... But there are only two Wolfir in the set? and no explanation.
Looking at the preview cards, where is the other HALF of the set? The CARDS in this set don't resolve anything! Thematically it's just not a full set.
I think the point the dev team is trying to make is valid, but they are suffering some serious tunnel vision if this article represents their opinion. I think the real disconnect is between blocks 2 & 3 of the set. That always seems to be the weakest link. They need to focus on being able to draft 1, 1&2, 2&3, and 3. In this set, Avacyn is restored, which is the perfect situation to run around cleaning up monsters from the last set... But they wrote that out.
The big problem I see is having to have the second and third sets as a big release. In Scars it would have made sense to split the sets up into boosters so that drafting represented the flow of battle. Release 30 cards at a time so some weeks each side was winning more than the other. In the same way with Avacyn... Launch DA in two parts that get Worse and Worse... Then launch half AR At just the point the Helvault breaks... One Angel versus All the big nasty Demons! Then release a second wave where all the humans and Angels rally.
The biggest problem the third set (and second too) suffers from is that "bam" you're done problem. The story gets ran over by the full set coming out and players instantly zipping straight to the best cards.... Storytelling ( and game evolving) is pretty much over when the set hits the store. Leaving 4-5 months of ???? For the story and marketing team.
I appreciated where you came from even if I didn't agree until this article. WOTC rewrote draft and the definition of Magic cards for werewolves and now you claim they are too boring to support 3 sets? They were boring because you crammed them into red/green when that was too narrow. If you can't make DFCs interesting for all of 3 sets, you suck at your job. This is as big a lie as glossing over you all rubber stamped Snapcaster without knowing it interacted with mana leak. You like Big/small/big because it forces people to buy more cards not because you care about us. You are a scumbag mouthpeice and nothing you say I will ever take as serious again.
Wow... yes, Wizards has a long history of lying to their customers and screwing them over for money, because their business model is based upon short term gain rather than building a large, loyal fanbase through the development of an awesome game. Oh, wait, that's not true at all.
The rest of your post is filled with strawmanning and nonsensical statements. They never said anything about werewolves being too boring for three sets - as Maro said, they felt that a horror top-down design would only be rich enough for two sets. Could they have pushed it to three? I'm sure they could have. Would it have been fun? More than likely. Would it have been as rich and amazing as Innistrad and Dark Ascension? Highly unlikely.
As for your statement that big/small/big forces people to buy more cards... um, what? Where is your logic behind this? Are you going to claim that, because there are more cards, you need to buy more singles/boosters to get what you want? There are some amazingly huge issues with that logic - so much so that I can only gape in wonder, and will touch briefly upon some of the most obvious flaws. First and foremost, because we are drafting triple big set, we get more of those cards into circulation than if it were a small set, thus increasing the availability of those cards. Yes, the middle set is negatively affected, but it would be a big stretch to say that it is forcing people to buy more cards in any way. Looking at history, is there any indication that more cards printed causes players to buy more cards? Was this the case in Time Spiral? I would love to see data to back up your claims. Additionally, Wizards has drastically reduced the number of cards printed in recent years, and, even with these increased card amounts, are still far below former thresholds, so it makes little sense to complain about the slight increases in card printing...
Finally, I know this is the internet and thus filled with a rich history of insulting people from behind an anonymous screenname, but are you seriously calling one of the developers of this game you play a lying scumbag? Why do you even play Magic if you think so little of the company and people that create it? Is it not possibly to raise your concerns without resorting to such blatant rudeness?
The Big/small/Big model is all about selling cards because it compresses draft seasons. DKA had a short draft window so its supply of cards being opened is short. That happens with 3rd sets usually and puts pressure there before MXX is released, but it is one set that is compressed. Now we have a big set, which will be drafted 3x, has a window that starts to close when another big set, M13, comes out. That is three sets in a row with compressed releases. I was ready to quit this game during Lorwyn because they threw so much at me it felt like I wasn't able to tread water anymore. They pushed the limits of what made us sink. They changed it up and it was easier to stay afloat, but now they are back to testing how much they can throw at us until our heads go under. That is what they are doing, and this article is full of it otherwise.
As to saying Horror is too narrow to do 3 sets? Come on. They could do 2 blocks of this stuff. Cabin in the Woods had tons of cool stuff they didn't touch. I could do a block of vampires that are actually vampires. Most of this stuff is devils in vampire nobility clothing. People love this block because of what they wanted it to be more than what it was because this stuff is the richest flavor they have access to. Again, no one makes movies about Phyrexians. They make Cabin in the Woods. This article is spin trying to encourage us to keep going. They decided to use this model before they even knew their storyline as other posters pointed out. I am not buying the reasons here. People draft a lot and will be bored of our stuff if we don't? Adjust ways to draft as others have pointed out.
And I do think very little of the people currently making the game. Magic is great because everything has answers. Other games have come and gone where it was possible to build a deck that won't lose. That gets boring. I too was a noob and hated counterspells and discard and wraths, but then I learned they are what makes Magic worth playing. Unfortunately, the current crop of people at WOTC are making up new card types like planeswalkers that have to be countered to be answered evenly if they aren't discarded first, make hexproof that invalidates doom blades, and weakens answers in general. Then they tell me mana leak is really good because they have made it the only even answer to what they are doing. They are tying to go after new players that get frustrated at not easily winning at the expense of what keeps people coming back. The game isn't solvable. Or at least it shouldn't be. And they made miracle. I am indifferent to the mechanic, but the only answer to it is to literally counterspell it because discard is out of play on top decks.
You will not convince me it is easier to make 3 sets based on phyrexians and mirrans than it is to make 3 sets based on the most popular horror tribes in existance. One, werewolves, was introduced for the first time as more than an afterthought, with its own mechanic, and they couldn't fill 3 sets with it? Save huntsman, most don't see play unfortunately and they couldn't make a legendary one for the people that would otherwise play these things. As far as AVR, they could fill 3 sets with angels and demons. Yet another low hanging fruit of flavor far easier to harvest than mirrans v phyrexians. I can see that Eldrazi are a one set flavor problem, but angels and demons? Lord of the Pit and Serra Angel are two of the most iconic creatures in this game. If the flavor is the easy part, what else besides selling cards is this really about? I don't buy what Zac is selling in this article, and I may not buy what Zac is selling on game store shelves anymore.
It's no secret that Magic is doing well right now. We've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why that is.
You then happen to mention later...
Magic Online wasn't a thing [back in the day]... Magic Online means thousands upon thousands of users will have drafted the same format thirty or forty times.
You may have answered your own question. What's the profit margin on magic online?
I think the best suggestion in here so far has been to shift the draft formats to Large/Large/Large; SmallA/SmallA/Large; SmallB/SmallB/SmallA. If that's a problem with relative cardpool sizes...just make the large set a bit less so and the small sets a bit less so.
/shrug - it's nice when things get mixed around a bit, but when it happens TOO often, then it's just hohum whether it happens or not...
Everyone's coming up with ideas based on large sets vs small sets... why not break away from that binary dichotomy and meet in the middle?
Have three "medium-sized" sets in a row. Make all of them a bit smaller than a regular large set - just big enough to avoid the Coldsnap problem - and draft each of them as standalones. So Limited gets to focus on a completely different thing every three months, and Constructed gets to be where the cards from between the sets meet. New Phyrexia shows that WotC are fine with larger small sets, and Shards of Alara shows that they're fine with smaller large sets, so why not just meet in the middle?
Wow... yes, Wizards has a long history of lying to their customers and screwing them over for money, because their business model is based upon short term gain rather than building a large, loyal fanbase through the development of an awesome game. Oh, wait, that's not true at all.
Two words: Mythic Rare. Was anybody saying "I wish cards were harder to acquire and more expensive!" No, just an utterly transparent ploy to sell more packs. Even better (for WotC) is that they can aggressively push the power of them so that they become tournament staples and claim that they have to, because they're Mythic. They repeatedly claim they're "reducing the barrier to entry" when the biggest barrier to entry is money, not complexity.
I appreciated where you came from even if I didn't agree until this article. WOTC rewrote draft and the definition of Magic cards for werewolves and now you claim they are too boring to support 3 sets? They were boring because you crammed them into red/green when that was too narrow. If you can't make DFCs interesting for all of 3 sets, you suck at your job. This is as big a lie as glossing over you all rubber stamped Snapcaster without knowing it interacted with mana leak. You like Big/small/big because it forces people to buy more cards not because you care about us. You are a scumbag mouthpeice and nothing you say I will ever take as serious again.
Wow... yes, Wizards has a long history of lying to their customers and screwing them over for money, because their business model is based upon short term gain rather than building a large, loyal fanbase through the development of an awesome game. Oh, wait, that's not true at all.
The rest of your post is filled with strawmanning and nonsensical statements. They never said anything about werewolves being too boring for three sets - as Maro said, they felt that a horror top-down design would only be rich enough for two sets. Could they have pushed it to three? I'm sure they could have. Would it have been fun? More than likely. Would it have been as rich and amazing as Innistrad and Dark Ascension? Highly unlikely.
As for your statement that big/small/big forces people to buy more cards... um, what? Where is your logic behind this? Are you going to claim that, because there are more cards, you need to buy more singles/boosters to get what you want? There are some amazingly huge issues with that logic - so much so that I can only gape in wonder, and will touch briefly upon some of the most obvious flaws. First and foremost, because we are drafting triple big set, we get more of those cards into circulation than if it were a small set, thus increasing the availability of those cards. Yes, the middle set is negatively affected, but it would be a big stretch to say that it is forcing people to buy more cards in any way. Looking at history, is there any indication that more cards printed causes players to buy more cards? Was this the case in Time Spiral? I would love to see data to back up your claims. Additionally, Wizards has drastically reduced the number of cards printed in recent years, and, even with these increased card amounts, are still far below former thresholds, so it makes little sense to complain about the slight increases in card printing...
Finally, I know this is the internet and thus filled with a rich history of insulting people from behind an anonymous screenname, but are you seriously calling one of the developers of this game you play a lying scumbag? Why do you even play Magic if you think so little of the company and people that create it? Is it not possibly to raise your concerns without resorting to such blatant rudeness?
The Big/small/Big model is all about selling cards because it compresses draft seasons. DKA had a short draft window so its supply of cards being opened is short. That happens with 3rd sets usually and puts pressure there before MXX is released, but it is one set that is compressed. Now we have a big set, which will be drafted 3x, has a window that starts to close when another big set, M13, comes out. That is three sets in a row with compressed releases. I was ready to quit this game during Lorwyn because they threw so much at me it felt like I wasn't able to tread water anymore. They pushed the limits of what made us sink. They changed it up and it was easier to stay afloat, but now they are back to testing how much they can throw at us until our heads go under. That is what they are doing, and this article is full of it otherwise.
As to saying Horror is too narrow to do 3 sets? Come on. They could do 2 blocks of this stuff. Cabin in the Woods had tons of cool stuff they didn't touch. I could do a block of vampires that are actually vampires. Most of this stuff is devils in vampire nobility clothing. People love this block because of what they wanted it to be more than what it was because this stuff is the richest flavor they have access to. Again, no one makes movies about Phyrexians. They make Cabin in the Woods. This article is spin trying to encourage us to keep going. They decided to use this model before they even knew their storyline as other posters pointed out. I am not buying the reasons here. People draft a lot and will be bored of our stuff if we don't? Adjust ways to draft as others have pointed out.
And I do think very little of the people currently making the game. Magic is great because everything has answers. Other games have come and gone where it was possible to build a deck that won't lose. That gets boring. I too was a noob and hated counterspells and discard and wraths, but then I learned they are what makes Magic worth playing. Unfortunately, the current crop of people at WOTC are making up new card types like planeswalkers that have to be countered to be answered evenly if they aren't discarded first, make hexproof that invalidates doom blades, and weakens answers in general. Then they tell me mana leak is really good because they have made it the only even answer to what they are doing. They are tying to go after new players that get frustrated at not easily winning at the expense of what keeps people coming back. The game isn't solvable. Or at least it shouldn't be. And they made miracle. I am indifferent to the mechanic, but the only answer to it is to literally counterspell it because discard is out of play on top decks.
You will not convince me it is easier to make 3 sets based on phyrexians and mirrans than it is to make 3 sets based on the most popular horror tribes in existance. One, werewolves, was introduced for the first time as more than an afterthought, with its own mechanic, and they couldn't fill 3 sets with it? Save huntsman, most don't see play unfortunately and they couldn't make a legendary one for the people that would otherwise play these things. As far as AVR, they could fill 3 sets with angels and demons. Yet another low hanging fruit of flavor far easier to harvest than mirrans v phyrexians. I can see that Eldrazi are a one set flavor problem, but angels and demons? Lord of the Pit and Serra Angel are two of the most iconic creatures in this game. If the flavor is the easy part, what else besides selling cards is this really about? I don't buy what Zac is selling in this article, and I may not buy what Zac is selling on game store shelves anymore.
First, I would like to thank you for your less insulting tone - you do raise some interesting points, and far too often such things are lost beneath rudeness.
I understand your concern with the shortened draft window, but I don't really buy what you claim will result. Dark Ascension faces exactly the same problem that every other third set would face, so the real thing to consider is whether or not Avacyn Restored is worse off than a second set would normally be in a Large-Small-Small structure. Considering the second set would be opened as one booster pack per draft for approximately twice the length that Avacyn Restored will be opening 3 booster packs per draft means that we are opening approximately 2/3rds the number of packs of the second small set than a third large set via drafting. Now, working from a base line of 155 cards in a second set, this is approximately 63% the size of Avacyn Restored - so, really, the difference in terms of individual card availability should not be very large. Looking at RoE, I'm pretty sure it didn't have card availability issues, although I don't have specific data to back that up. Going back to Invasion and Oddysey block era, they had around 636 cards per block, compared to Innistrad's 676, with about 100 more cards in the core sets. So, excepting Scars and Shards block, I'm pretty sure this is some of the lowest numbers we have seen. I know Magic can be overwhelming in terms of cards to acquire, but I really don't think this is some sudden and huge increase.
Could they have done 3 sets of horror? Definitely. Could they have done two blocks? Certainly. Is it true that, by taking 3 sets worth of horror, taking the best 2 sets worth out of that, and releasing only two sets we get a stronger concentration of good design? I think so. If they are not short of block ideas, why not do the absolute best job they can on each idea? I would have liked to see three sets worth of Innistrad-style horror. And, admittedly, it is a bit disappointing to see that the decision to restrict it to two sets was made, in part, due to an apparent lack of confidence. However, I recongize the fact that I expect 3 sets of a Large-Small-Small variety only because that is basically all I have ever known in Magic, and it seems very natural and comfortable. Obviously it has been successful, but that fact alone does not mean that it is necessarily the best or only way to release sets, and I like that they are exploring other options. Rise of the Eldrazi was an incredible limited format, and I think that that was in part due to the fact that it could exist as its own draft entity and not have to worry about other sets entering the picture afterwards.
As you point out, there are other solutions to the issue of draft formats growing stale that work within a Large-Small-Small structure, many of which have been suggested on these boards. I certainly hope that Wizards considers these as things to try out, but I also do not think that these alternate solutions make the Large-Small-Large structure a bad solution. I think it would be good to work with both, and that it is largely a fear of change that makes us irrationally attached to the Large-Small-Small structure.
As for your comments about the current creators of the game - I do not pretend to be a design expert, but I think that we can extend your statement; Magic is not only great because everything has answers, but because different things can require different answers. You see things like planeswalkers and hexproof making counterspells more relevant (which is true), but I see it as also making creature combat more relevant, through attacking and blocking respectively. There is definitely a fine line to walk, and it is not an easy thing to do, but I think the game would be worse if targeted removal was an answer to every creature. Don't get me wrong, it is not as though R&D is without errors - in my personal opinion, Unblockable and Hexproof do not belong on the same card, particularly in a limited environment, which to me is one of the more egragrious errors made recently. However, it is true that Magic's popularity is at its height, not only in growing the player base, but also in retention and even the return of former players. That, combined with the fact that those at the top have been around for quite a long time and have yet to successfully kill Magic make me feel fairly confident in the direction that design and development are going. I don't really believe the are catering to new players at the expense of player retention - at least, that has not been my experience nor, from what I've heard, has that been represented via statistics. From my perspective, what keeps players coming back is the strategic depth that can be found in even the most innocuous situations; as a basic example, my friend who has been playing for less than a year realizing the different levels surrounding whether to attack with a 2/2 into a 4/4 when your opponent knows you have a good morbid creature in your deck, and how your decision may change depending on your evaluation of your opponent's play skill. Magic has not lost this strategic depth, and I find it difficult to believe that it ever will, even if R&D actively tried to stomp out everything that makes Magic fun.
Finally, in addition to striving to create a good game, Wizards does have to turn a profit and sell cards - if they don't manage to do that, they can't continue to put money towards creating a good game in the first place. I don't have particularly strong opinions on Mythic Rares one way or another - they've likely made my financial life easier, as I can more readily aquire the rares I need, and it is definitely exciting to open most mythics. On the other hand, one does run into the circumstances where it's frustrating to not be able to justify building the deck you want because of a mythic or two - so, I'm largely indifferent towards them. Thus, from my perspective, if they help Wizards financially and thus enable them to continue to create a game I love, they're alright by me.
