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10 months ago ::
Aug 03, 2012 - 11:13AM
#1
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This thread is for discussion of this week's Making Magic, which goes live Monday morning on magicthegathering.com.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 05, 2012 - 9:21PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Jan 20, 2004
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A couple things in this article stand out to me as being not entirely accurate, or accurate but for the wrong reasons. People like to focus on the addition of new cards to a format, but the subtraction usually has a bigger impact. The reason is pretty straightforward. With addition, you can still rely on what you already know to base your understanding on. With subtraction, you often don't have that luxury.
Is this true? Would it be true if sets rotated out at the same speed they rotate in? Would it be true if rotation out and in were on a staggered schedule? In October, we lose an entire block, and add a new base set. Basically, we lose half of what we have, and then add on another third (roughly) to the half we have left. When you change the cardpool that drastically, your understanding of the format has to change. I feel as though, if the rotation schedule was tweaked (not that it should be, I'm simply speaking in hypotheticals) that the statement above might not be as true as it is.
Players tend to go through cycles with powerful cards. At first, they are excited about discovering how powerful they are. Then they love exploring how best to abuse them. Eventually, though, they grow tired of seeing the card again and again and having to deal with an environment always warped by the card. Rotation works well because usually at the point that the final stage sets in (not always, of course) the card tends to be close to rotation.
Is this always true? Has it always been historically true? With the exceptions of the last 5 years (Bitterblossom in Lorwyn, Bloodbraid in Alara, Jace in Zendikar, Swords in Scars, Delver/Snap in Innistrad), what cards have "warped" formats? This seems to be the fault of the current crop of R&D, not the fault of Standard as a format.
Interestingly, seventeen years later, Standard (we realized a few years later that "Type 2" was a poor name for our premier format) is by far, and I'm talking a huge margin, the most popular Constructed format to play Magic.
Is Standard popular because people like to play it, or because it's the format that most tournaments are held as? If, for example, WotC turned around tomorrow and said "Starting today, FNMs will be held as Block Constructed tournaments", would Standard still be the most popular Constructed format? If the answer to that is "no", I'm not sure you can call Standard the most "popular", only the most "played". Judging by personal anecdotal experience, I would venture to guess that, aside from the financial barrier to entry (which actually isn't that high anymore compared to Standard), Legacy is actually the most "popular" format (in that most players actually find enjoyment in playing Legacy).
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10 months ago ::
Aug 05, 2012 - 9:35PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Apr 23, 2010
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While I have never actually played in an fnm I do think Standard helps new players in the game. When I first started playing the game I made several standard decks. I didn't make them standard because of the smaller card pool, but because I didn't have access to older cards yet. As I got older cards I began to incorporate them into my deck, although a few decks still remained standard. I still have a few standard decks from years past. I don't play it much anymore because I mostly play edh now.
Every once in while I want to make a silly standard deck, it's never competitive. I get discouraged from making competitive standard decks because over a long time it's more expensive to make standard decks than it is for 1 vintage/legacy/modern deck. Since the format rotates so often spending $50+ for a good standard deck every 2 years doesn't seem worth it. My other problem is that I can be slow when building decks. When I build a standard deck and it gets midway done I may not finish it, because I feel it won't be in standard much longer. Depending on the standard, it can feel like there are few viable decks, like this one. It feels that sometimes there are only 3 or 4 "good" standard decks at any one time. In the more eternal formats there are seemingly endless viable decks that do all kinds of crazy things. Standard may not be my format, but I do realize its importance.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 05, 2012 - 10:04PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Oct 28, 2006
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Magic has had its share of player outrage. Both the Sixth Edition rules changes and the Magic 2010 rules changes caused a bit of an uproar. The announcement of the mythic rare rarity created a backlash. The changing of the card frames created more email than I thought possible. But all of these pale to the reaction to the announcement of the existence of Type 2. ("What do you mean I won't be able to play some of my cards?")
Obviously Mark's perspective would be different from my own, but that's not how I remember it. I remember a backlash not at T2's existence, but at it replacing type 1 at certain tournaments. That's a significant difference (as Ertai87 is also hinting at). On the scale of things, I think it enraged a smaller portion than Chronicles did. Bear in mind, we already had the concept of Standalone set play. People built Ice Age and then Ice Age/Alliances decks without the world ending. So there was nothing inherently scary about a new format. (Although each format does raise the difficulty of playing new people. "Do you have a Magic deck?" turned into "do you have a Magic deck in the same format as me?") Nice idea for a theme week, though. I imagine Flores will have some good history on it. (And perhaps BDM too.) "The Little Format that Could", though, is Booster Draft. It started as a jokey way to open packs and was even under-respected amongst Limited formats until players kept doing it and Wizards realized the profit potential of a format where cards were treated as disposable.
Free MTGO Tournaments you should be playing: Pauper (all commons) - Tuesday Nights, prizes by MTGOTraders Peasant (Pauper + 5 uncommons, with paper rarity) - Sunday Nights, prizes by MTGOTraders Silverblack (Modern-era Commons and Uncommons - Most Wednesday nights, prizes by MTGO Bazaar Heirloom ("Cheap" cards only, e.g. rares under 20 cents) - Sunday afternoons, sponsored by MTGOTraders Check the superbly-made Gatherling site for more. Other games you should try: Spectromancer - Online card game by Richard Garfield, available cheap on Steam. DC Universe Online - action-based MMO. Free to play. Surprised me how well designed it is. Simunomics - Free-to-play economy simulation game.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 05, 2012 - 10:06PM
#5
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Date Joined:
May 31, 2004
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"As you add cards to the system, we start having a problem. Only so many cards can matter for Constructed play. As I talked about in my article about why we design bad cards (" When Cards Go Bad"), some of the cards can't be good. In fact, a majority of the cards can't be good because the nature of the system only allows so many cards to rise to the top. Making a more powerful card doesn't change the number, it just pushes one of the Constructed-level cards off the list.Adding more cards to the mix through expansions doesn't change this number, so all you are doing is creating more unplayable cards, either by making them directly or by displacing previously playable cards with new ones." I don't think this is strictly true, a variety of synergies of overpowered former cards in older formats might mean that a greater variety of decks available, and thus a greater absolute number of playable cards. For example, my intuition is that Vintage, Legacy, and Modern metagames tend to have more viable decks than standard (though not all the time). Lack of variety is my biggest problem with Standard itself.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 05, 2012 - 10:30PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Mar 21, 2012
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I don't agree with Mark's conclusion that the number of good cards remains static and nothing can be done to increase them. Legacy proves that more good cards, a few systematic bannings, and a few controllers like Force of Will can create a diverse format. Is this always true? Has it always been historically true? With the exceptions of the last 5 years (Bitterblossom in Lorwyn, Bloodbraid in Alara, Jace in Zendikar, Swords in Scars, Delver/Snap in Innistrad), what cards have "warped" formats? This seems to be the fault of the current crop of R&D, not the fault of Standard as a format.
Umezawa's Jitte, Arcbound Ravager and Disciple of the Vault, Skull Clamp, Astral Slide, Psychatog, Flametongue Kavu, Rishadan Port, Lin-Sivvi, Defiant Hero, Urza block, Necropotence, Stasis. And I'm just thinking of the big ones.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 05, 2012 - 10:37PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Jun 29, 2004
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Standard is actually a fairly painful format to *come back* to if you take a year or two off.
I know from experience, my interest in MTG has gone up and down over the last few years due to varying reasons, and every time I try to come back and play anything in standard it's a pita to get ahold of cards from last years set (that you can't get in limited normally as everything is about the latest set/block). It's one thing that was definately made much worse by the change of core sets to be yearly and have only half reprints, half new cards/functional reprints.
I also have to agree with previous people that I'm not sure whether standard is the most popular format, or just the most played. To be honest it's been a long time since standard hasn't had one or two real groanworthy decks that people hate playing against (with the current one being delver, it's like the first miracle spell)
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10 months ago ::
Aug 06, 2012 - 12:54AM
#8
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While it's true that a larger card pool can lead to a more diverse format, that only goes so far. Even if there isn't a hard limit on just how diverse the metagame can get, there's got to be a point of diminishing returns. Legacy has more than sixty-five sets' worth of cards compared to Standard's eight--it's more than eight times the size of Standard. But does the Legacy environment really have more than eight times as many viable archetypes as Standard? In ten years, when Legacy has over a hundred sets, will it really have more than twelve times as many viable archetypes as Standard? It won't. It can't.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real.
--Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
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10 months ago ::
Aug 06, 2012 - 1:22AM
#9
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Date Joined:
Oct 11, 2007
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Is Standard popular because people like to play it, or because it's the format that most tournaments are held as? If, for example, WotC turned around tomorrow and said "Starting today, FNMs will be held as Block Constructed tournaments", would Standard still be the most popular Constructed format? If the answer to that is "no", I'm not sure you can call Standard the most "popular", only the most "played". Judging by personal anecdotal experience, I would venture to guess that, aside from the financial barrier to entry (which actually isn't that high anymore compared to Standard), Legacy is actually the most "popular" format (in that most players actually find enjoyment in playing Legacy).
Stores can run FNMs as Block. Nobody does, because people don't want to play Block.
Standard is certainly the most actually popular format. It's the most played Constructed format on MTGO, where events for every other format are just as easily available as Standard ones. It is certainly the most discussed format. Now, that all might come back to the fact that it's the most important competitive format, but it's a chicken-and-egg situation: Wizards will run more Standard GPs and make it a PTQ format more often because people want to play Standard, and people want to play Standard because there are so many events for it.
I like Standard, as a concept. I think it's a good thing that the "main" metagame is so radically different each year; it makes it more interesting to watch. Now, the last few Standard formats have been pretty lame, but that's not the fault of the concept. Modern is my favourite format but I don't at all mind the Standard is more popular.
blah blah metal lyrics
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10 months ago ::
Aug 06, 2012 - 1:45AM
#10
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Is this true? Would it be true if sets rotated out at the same speed they rotate in? Would it be true if rotation out and in were on a staggered schedule? In October, we lose an entire block, and add a new base set. Basically, we lose half of what we have, and then add on another third (roughly) to the half we have left. When you change the cardpool that drastically, your understanding of the format has to change. I feel as though, if the rotation schedule was tweaked (not that it should be, I'm simply speaking in hypotheticals) that the statement above might not be as true as it is.
Yes it is true. Take Delver for example. It took a few months for people to start realizing its potential. The impact of removing a card from your deck is felt immediately. The impact of a card you can possibly play is not so immediately. Thus, substraction always has a more radical impact than addition.
Judging by personal anecdotal experience, I would venture to guess that, aside from the financial barrier to entry (which actually isn't that high anymore compared to Standard), Legacy is actually the most "popular" format (in that most players actually find enjoyment in playing Legacy).
Anecdotal experience will always be skewed. The masses are always invisible for the more invested players.
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