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'm not really sure how the biggest barrier to entry is money... typically, if a card costs a lot of money it is due to its popularity as a tournament staple. In my experience, new players are not concerned with aquiring the latest tournament winning deck list - in fact, many of the cards that excite them, if they are in the deck building phase, are cards that would not appeal to a great many tournament players.
New players are those that are still learning the rules of the game - the ones that have to be reminded to draw a card at the beginning of their turn, or who forget to attack when you are tapped out and have no creatures in play. They are not particularly concerned with obtaining the most powerful cards, as they haven't even worked out which are the most or least powerful. They just want fun, interactive games where they feel like they have half a chance - which likely means NOT playing with tournament lists for either player.
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'm not really sure how the biggest barrier to entry is money... typically, if a card costs a lot of money it is due to its popularity as a tournament staple. In my experience, new players are not concerned with aquiring the latest tournament winning deck list - in fact, many of the cards that excite them, if they are in the deck building phase, are cards that would not appeal to a great many tournament players.
New players are those that are still learning the rules of the game - the ones that have to be reminded to draw a card at the beginning of their turn, or who forget to attack when you are tapped out and have no creatures in play. They are not particularly concerned with obtaining the most powerful cards, as they haven't even worked out which are the most or least powerful. They just want fun, interactive games where they feel like they have half a chance - which likely means NOT playing with tournament lists for either player.
I'm pretty sure youre wrong. Even if the barrier to entry isnt money, since magic has become a lot pricier last years, im very very close to stop with it at all. Since the invention of mythics, planeswalker (wich flavorwise suck like hell*) and their 'New World Order' magic is no longer affordable compared to my other gaming options. For example look at the BoaB collums, long age they were about casual play with a max price per deck of 30$, now these prices easy hits 100$. If budget decks are 100$ then price is going to be the most important factor to start/keep playing magic.
* The game says: Im a planeswalker and i battle other planeswalkers. Yet there are extremly powerfull planeswalkers (like Bolas ) i can fully control in this battle with other planeswalkers (my brother for example).
I'm not really sure how the biggest barrier to entry is money... typically, if a card costs a lot of money it is due to its popularity as a tournament staple. In my experience, new players are not concerned with aquiring the latest tournament winning deck list - in fact, many of the cards that excite them, if they are in the deck building phase, are cards that would not appeal to a great many tournament players.
If a new player wants to mix things up a bit, play with different people than his close friends, with whom he probably plays all the time, where does he go? Friday Night Magic. Which is dominated by netdeck copies of the tournament-winning decks. The new player loses game after game against these hundreds-of-dollars decks, and takes away a lesson: If you don't spend hundreds of dollars on this game to get, not even the best, but the PLAYAYBLE cards, you don't win, period.
What their "New World Order" does is place the majority of the Constructed power level in Rare and Mythic Rare, which limits the number of cards that see Constructed play, leading to fewer variety of competitive decks and thus more expensive competitive decks (as everyone is buying the same cards, pushing the demand much higher than the supply). It also means that decks that don't run these more expensive cards just plain can't compete, because the majority of affordable cards are now Limited junk. Sure, a newer player is expected to lose more often than he wins at first, but with such a sharp division in power level between the expensive decks and the budget decks, he won't just lose, he'll be crushed. And that is not fun.
Price is definitely a barrier to entry, just one that prevents new players from ever wanting to move up from casual play.
(Note to anyone whose first reaction to this is to post "You're wrong! Delver of Secrets is a common, and it's the best card in Standard right now!": I said the majority, not all. Obviously there are still some powerful cards in the lower rarities. The difference now is that there are fewer of them, and there tends to be a much wider gap between the commons and the mythics.)
Price is certainly not the biggest barrier for the majority of new players. I mean, the majority of established players are not interested in playing tournaments. The amount of new players that are competitive right away is similary small.
What confounds me most about the response to Avacyn Restored is the implicit notion that Dark Acension 2.0 would've been strictly better, somehow. Wouldn't you have the same complaints that Double-Faced Cards and Undying were gone after that set? Every set's mechanics have to end at some point. What leads you to believe three sets of those mechanics would be necessarily better than two? The fact is, if they continued every set's mechanics until we were completely satisfied, they'd be failing in their jobs - one of the most important principles in entertainment (and Magic is an entertainment medium) is to always leave your audience wanting more. The fact that you're complaining that there isn't more Innistrad mechanics is an indicator of overwhelming success.
Where did the notion that players are somehow entitled to three sets of every mechanic they like come from? If Innistrad/Dark Ascension and Acavyn Restored were individual blocks that took simply took place on the same plane, would you be this upset that the first one is only two sets? What about the first two sets made people feel they were entitled to a third? I thought Innistrad and Dark Ascension were pretty great as well, and I think it'd continue to be great if they made more of it; but that hardly justifies throwing a fit because it's over.
And as for the notion that they're just not connected enough, I don't see it. They included Wolves in most Werewolf tribal effects specifically because they knew this was coming. 'Flickering' interacts in an interesting way with both Undying and Double-Faced Cards, and is a major set theme. Conceptually, the human v. monsters fight has simply escalated - humans were always driven by the power of Avacyn and her angels, and it's been made clear all block that demons were the ultimate monsters of Innistrad. Angels v. Demons is the same premise as the rest of the block, just pushed to its logical extremes. I can see how one might argue that the story moved too fast, but the notion that it's as utterly senseless as has been implied is hard to buy...
I can see how one might argue that the story moved too fast, but the notion that it's as utterly senseless as has been implied is hard to buy...
Avacyn, before her imprisonment, had more humans on her side, fewer monsters to fight, and most of the demons sealed away. All she and humanity were managing was to coexist, neither winning nor losing against the monsters. Avacyn gets imprisoned. Humanity suffers severe losses, monters grow in number. Avacyn is freed, and with her every demon that had been sealed up from even before her imprisonment, yet somehow she has the power to start WINNING now. Plot hole.
Before, werewolves were an ever-present threat. Many of them wished they could be changed back to human, but they couldn't. Now, suddenly, Avacyn is able to grant that wish and turn almost every single werewolf in the world into a wolfir, when she obviously couldn't before. Plot hole.
Sorin, who previously created Avacyn, came to this world and found her missing. He was established as being here to search for her and restore her. He is never mentioned again. Dropped plot thread.
Griselbrand, Liliana's ultimate motivation for everything she's done up to this point, dies to her in seconds. Anticlimax.
Garruk, who's been hunting Liliana this whole time, that being his entire purpose for being here, fights her and gets nothing more than a glorified "He was strong, but she was stronger." Anticlimax.
The angels who went into hiding when Avacyn was imprisoned have all apparently been fighting the good fight all this time, since we were clearly told in the first AVR Planeswalker's Guide what each of the three groups were doing, with many of them having "redoubled their efforts since Avacyn's disappearance". Plot hole.
You may not agree that the set should have been a continuation of the themes. Fine, we each have our own opinions, and none are more valid than any other. However, there's no denying that the story is a senseless mess.
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'm not really sure how the biggest barrier to entry is money... typically, if a card costs a lot of money it is due to its popularity as a tournament staple. In my experience, new players are not concerned with aquiring the latest tournament winning deck list - in fact, many of the cards that excite them, if they are in the deck building phase, are cards that would not appeal to a great many tournament players.
New players are those that are still learning the rules of the game - the ones that have to be reminded to draw a card at the beginning of their turn, or who forget to attack when you are tapped out and have no creatures in play. They are not particularly concerned with obtaining the most powerful cards, as they haven't even worked out which are the most or least powerful. They just want fun, interactive games where they feel like they have half a chance - which likely means NOT playing with tournament lists for either player.
I think players would much rather lose because they were outsmarted because they didn't catch every trick and fully understand every interaction than to lose because they didn't spend enough money. New players are going to have their Pathbreaker Wurm and Howlgeist and Soul of the Harvest and lose because sorry, if you wanted to actually win games, you should've paid the extra $60 for a set of Primeval Titans. It's far easier for people to practice and get better than to get a tremendously higher amount of disposable income. Wizards has bought whole heartedly in to Rarity = Power, it became blatantly obvious the day Baneslayer Angel was printed and they have not dialed it back from that at all.
What confounds me most about the response to Avacyn Restored is the implicit notion that Dark Acension 2.0 would've been strictly better, somehow. Wouldn't you have the same complaints that Double-Faced Cards and Undying were gone after that set? Every set's mechanics have to end at some point. What leads you to believe three sets of those mechanics would be necessarily better than two? The fact is, if they continued every set's mechanics until we were completely satisfied, they'd be failing in their jobs - one of the most important principles in entertainment (and Magic is an entertainment medium) is to always leave your audience wanting more. The fact that you're complaining that there isn't more Innistrad mechanics is an indicator of overwhelming success.
Where did the notion that players are somehow entitled to three sets of every mechanic they like come from? If Innistrad/Dark Ascension and Acavyn Restored were individual blocks that took simply took place on the same plane, would you be this upset that the first one is only two sets? What about the first two sets made people feel they were entitled to a third? I thought Innistrad and Dark Ascension were pretty great as well, and I think it'd continue to be great if they made more of it; but that hardly justifies throwing a fit because it's over.
I'm disappointed because I grew up on three set blocks, and one of the best things for me was seeing how the third set would mix things up. The "third set complexity" problem Zac refers to was what made the third set typically fun and weird.
Now we only get two sets, and a lot of the mechanics end up feeling under-explored in the first two. Werewolves and Curses were the big ones in Innistrad; Curses never really got a push, and many of the werewolves in Innistrad/Dark Ascension were vanilla filler. If the removal of a connected third set leaves us with better first and second sets, why are we getting so many french vanilla and vanilla werewolves instead of more interesting stuff like Werewolf Ransacker ?
Big third set mechanics also tend to feel "weak" because they're only in one set; for example, Miracle is very limited for a signature set ability that got a new frame. There are no Miracle creatures, enchantments, artifacts, or planeswalkers. There are not many cards in the set that interact with Miracle (For example, changing the order of the top cards in your library). It feels like the mechanic needed more room to breathe.
And as for the notion that they're just not connected enough, I don't see it. They included Wolves in most Werewolf tribal effects specifically because they knew this was coming.
There are four new wolves in Avacyn Restored, only two of which are flavorfully Werewolves, and none of them are Red.
I saw better tribal continuation between Kamigawa and Ravnica, which were two different blocks.
'Flickering' interacts in an interesting way with both Undying and Double-Faced Cards, and is a major set theme.
The problem with the flickering effects is that they flicker your own creatures. This interacts positively with Undying, yes, but it interacts negatively with most transformers, the signature mechanic of Innistrad.
That's like printing a self-inflicted Tsabo's Decree after Lorwyn block.
Conceptually, the human v. monsters fight has simply escalated - humans were always driven by the power of Avacyn and her angels, and it's been made clear all block that demons were the ultimate monsters of Innistrad. Angels v. Demons is the same premise as the rest of the block, just pushed to its logical extremes. I can see how one might argue that the story moved too fast, but the notion that it's as utterly senseless as has been implied is hard to buy...
Compare to the Scars of Mirrodin block: Scars was primarily Mirran, with some Phyrexian, to represent Phyrexia being a growing threat. Besieged was 50/50, to represent how the two sides are now at all-out war. New Phyrexia was mostly Phyrexian, to represent their victory. There was a sense of progression in everything, including the mechanics. Infect progressed to all the colors from just being Black/Green.
Avacyn Restored lacks that sense of progression (Except in Undying, since it at least tested the boundaries of that mechanic with Treacherous Pit-Dweller). I mean, at least Rise of the Eldrazi's "big stuff" mechanics fit the land ramp of the previous two sets.
