in any ranked modes, winning is the point, so I feel like there isn’t really any room to complain about fast and efficient decks in ranked play.

I slightly disagree. I mean, mostly you’re obviously right; playing to win is foremost at home in ranked. But I think other legit points exist simultaneously.

I want interesting matches. I want the matchmaking to give me an opponent which is neither too hard nor too easy. That’s my main reason for playing ranked historic.

I want to test the deck I built, see how it fares against mature decks. I play unranked to check if I got the basics right (like land composition), and ranked to find out how viable certain ideas actually are in the current meta.

But sure, it is perfectly fine to play ranked to win (lol), and I don’t blame those who do. I just feel we can and should expect more challenge required and less luck. I lose so often with only having played 1 land, that’s just ridiculous. My deck has answers to all these threats, but asking wether I have the fitting solution against an unknown opponent in my first 8 cards puts a lot more weight on luck than on skill.

There’s another thought, not sure how to put it. Maybe it’s less about the individual match and more about different strategies competing in a shared environment. From that perspective, it’s perfectly fine to have deck A which wins versus B, but loses against C and D. Then, player skill sits at the judgement how much B we currently have, and what exactly A is. However, the current client heavily emphasizes looking at individual matches (that’s where you see that big VICTORY / DEFEATED), and I think you need 3rd party tools to get any information how good you’re doing against certain types of opponents.

< cash spending >

Aw, that sounds horrible! I had no idea, I don’t spend any money on this. WotC got enough from me back when I bought paper cards, and somehow I got along fine in Arena without money.

But I remember having a similar problem when we still played with paper cards. You’re forced to keep spending to keep playing with your friends, or drop out at some point. For inhouse paper, at least we could “print” proxies.

Would be nice if they considered how much each player has spent on their current deck for the matchmaking. Like high spenders have to face other high spenders, and budget players are grouped with themselves.

Though of course, in both cases, the economic incentive for WotC is to create unfair situations.

< play patterns >

I don’t know what words like Timeless, Standard or Pioneer mean, but yeah, seems we feel the same. Especially this sounds exactly like me: I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game.

Take Glissa Sunslayer for example, a black/green creature for 3 mana with first strike and death touch (which alone makes it one of the best blockers imo), it has 3 additional abilities from which you can choose one on impact. Like, what, why? This would be totally playable without these extra abilities. FS DT in itself is an extremely powerful combo, and I think there is currently no other card which has that out of the box. It can even create nasty combos by repeatedly resetting Sagas. Binding of the old Gods for example, destroy one permanent each round for the sole cost of dealing player damage. Though strangely, I don’t see it being played too often, so it seems to be fine.

I think the game would be more fun if the overall power level would be toned down a bit, but don’t expect that to happen.

Fun fact, I just conceded to a Peddler before my 2nd turn. I tried my luck a dozen times or so against that deck, which rarely succeeded and was never enjoyable. Yeah, skip.

< brawl unplayable >

Yes, Nadu is shameless. Though it has little impact on my matches, I rarely see it. I suffer much more from Persist Reanimators, and Goblin Bombardment with Ajani. Or this silly deck which mills itself, with creatures automagically returning to the battlefield.

Baral … can lead to hopeless situations, agreed. But I see Baral even less than Nadu. Could it be that counter decks came out of fashion, because aggro got too fast? Many players seem to play almost exclusively cards for 1 or max 2 mana.

Like I just lost after my first round to a Fireblade Charger with Sigarda’s Aid and a Colossus Hammer. Arena asked me afterwards wether I had fun. Mhm. Next match: Scholar of the Lost Trove gets Persist in round 3. Cool. After that: Elves swinging lethal in round 3.

Can you elaborate on Rusko, Clockmaker? Admittedly, I’ve been playing 2 or 3 Ruskos for a year or more. Before, I liked using Underrealm Lich with this frog monster which lets you draw a card whenever a land is put into your graveyard. I like recycling decks and fear Ashiok, guess I’m loss averse.

Imagine managing a popular game where tons of your playerbase hates aspects of it so much that they just concede to take a loss when they see a set of cards you design to be fun. This is the opposite of fun to me, and again I think it non-trivially contributes to negative player mental health.

Well put, I agree. I heard something when learning about game design: A mechanic, which gives something in your game a new ability, should be fun for the player using it, and for the players trying to counter it. Like maybe your warrior can raise his shield to block attacks, bot others have their abilities to penetrate shields, hit your feet or whatever. We should not just make the warrior invulnerable, with no counterplay possible. It might be fun for one player, but you want both to enjoy your game.

this mostly just seems like complaints about Magic itself

You’re right, I strayed from the title. Arena is where I experience MTG, I guess that’s how both got mashed together from my view.

What I still could have mentioned: Ropers, and generally unsportsmanlike behaviour. Like being a dick with emotes, being quick when you win but sluggish when you lose, abusing ‘Your Go’, spamming ‘Good Game’ when I still have or might draw a solution. I’ve also done all that, so I try not to judge too hard. Sometimes I think the whole experience is an exercise in emotion regulation.

decks that are too fast and decks that are too slow simultaneously

What I meant with fast: Decks which can kill in the first few rounds (regardless of how much time has passed

What I meant with slow: Players who physically take a long time to play (like roping on every step)

It can be both, which is the worst. Like a player scaling up his Scurry Oak in one of the first few turns to 100+ counters, while frequently taking breaks to clown around with emotes or whatever. I can’t really leave my desk, but also don’t want to surrender since I might draw a solution. Though this could be in 5 seconds or 10 minutes, who knows. Sometimes I feel this just isn’t worth my nerves and surrender anyway, even with a solution in hand.

I heard about the slow wildcard economy, so I guess you’re right. I have the opposite experience, but seen this point numerous times before; seems legit. I’ve been playing this game for many years (10?), sometimes almost all day. After some start phase, I could make whatever I needed from wildcards, without ever spending any real money. Currently, I have around 15 rare/mythic wildcards, which is a low count for me, since I just made another deck (with an accompanying post in this community). I guess it helps that I usually only play one deck, which rarely sees changes once it’s settled. Only vaguely I remember grinding for missing cards, an adventure which I did occasionally miss since then.

Seen the card many times, but never appreciated the art. So thanks for highlighting it.

Would be hell to see it as a meter-wide sprayed street art in a punky hood, or a dark club. 🤘😈

I also hate whenever it comes up in matches. I hate when red players make any move. It kind of burns.

Opponent played Ocelot Pride, which boosted my Doppelgang to the moon. Match ended in a draw, too many triggers to compute.

At this point, I could make infinite mana and infinite copies of any permanent on the battlefield, and create flash copies of any card in my graveyard, all at instant speed. Doppelgang on Nashi, Illusion Gadgeteer breaks the game.

Screenshot

One obvious problem would be that some cards are good no matter the cost. I’m going to reanimate an Emrakul even if the card costs 40 mana. Manaless dredge will still be manaless.

Excellent point. Yeah, some things exist which are already kind of broken and could be exploited further. Maybe more generally, MTG uses CMC to balance cards, but also many other aspects (comes into play tapped, draw a card/gain life on enter, …). So only changing mana cost affects the balancing of different cards differently.

Yes, Llanowar Elves. A silly result could be that people use equivalents (like Elvish Mystic) while the “original” is too expensive. But probably, all ramp cards would probably become more expensive as long as they do the job. Which makes ramp cards kind of pointless, as you point out.

Right, two good objections and a funny video. I like it, thanks.

I don’t see it yet, please help me out. Maybe it helps if you can find a specific example.

Can you describe a scenario how an asshole could game that system?

Generally I think MTG is probably the most capitalism-ruined game. It annoyed me much when starting to play as a teenager. Whenever a friend upgraded their deck, others were kind of forced to spend money as well. Because the rich guy had access to all the powerful cards (= relatively low mana cost for their effect / strong effect for their CMC). Isn’t that exactly what a balancing approach would alleviate? Everyone has access to all cards, and all cards receive a CMC which matches how much players value it.

You’re right, this would be very unpractical for analogue play. I thought it has to be digital. But then another person in this post pointed out that Penny Dreadful is a thing, which seems to work with printed cards, although it has it’s banlist change from season to season. Granted, checking what is banned/legal (and modifying your deck accordingly) is much simpler than checking each mana cost.

I’m not a fan of capitalism, it was just a metaphor to convey they mechanic. Now that I think closer about this, they even differ in that. I did not have “supply and demand” in mind, since the supply in a digital TCG is essentially infinite. It’s more about rating cards based on their popularity, whereas popular items in capitalism can be dirt cheap (e.g. tap water). One of the other major differences is that in capitalism, people can reinvest their capital to gain more capital. I don’t see how that could be a thing in ‘my’ idea. But the system would need some protection against deliberate manipulationg. Yet another person proposed a solution to this; only monitor tournament decks.

seasonal patches like a video game’s balance

That makes much more sense, yes.

Your other thoughts are also good and welcome. Yeah, tracking what cards tournament players include is probably sufficient!

Are you familiar with the MTGO format Penny Dreadful?

I was not, thanks! Haha, yes, that is a pretty good implementation of the core idea, with very little overhead. It was funny to read about the implications this can have on real world market prices.

Spending (the equivalent of) 0.942 of a mana on something isn’t functionally different in almost all cases from spending 1 mana on it.

You’re right, it does not work so well with the current mana system. Because you still bring whole numbers of lands into play. When those lands produce 1000 mana, you still have either 1000 or 2000 mana, so the 0s are mostly redundant. It would still make a difference for carts which have a significant margin (so that you can play 3 unpopular cards for the cost of 2 regular, or 2 popular for the cost of 3 regular). But for small changes, as you say, it wouldn’t functionally change much.

I like the fine granularity of the cost-balancing approach. Though the binary ban/legalize mechanic of Penny Dreadful might be accurate enough.

Update: Casting Doppelgang with Flash and Casualty 2 is fun :D

I removed [[Smogbelcher Chariot]] and [[Blooming Cactusfolk]], since they were too situational/slow. Still climbing the ladder …

Alright, thanks! I think I understand where you’re coming from, and can relate. I’m an ex-Christian, although I guess for ex-Muslims this process is a whole other beast.

And yes, I know exactly what you mean about culture and critique - as an leftwing, anti-theist leaning atheist, I often have to cringe about my peers. It feels like false romanticizing, like we did with native americans, or other falsly understood cultures. So many things which I despise in fascism are also present in strict Christianity and strict Islam. Although luckily, very few people take their religion seriously here. So our religious nutjobs are a fringe minority and can mostly be ignored.

Refugees welcome, but I hate it when they try to establish religio-fascist areas here, spewing hate and all their nonsense, occasionally killing someone. I mean, if you want to live like that, go back. If you like our way, be welcome.

Yeah, a sensitive topic which can easily trigger people. I try not to care about the boxes they try to put me in. And I absolutely love the freedom of speech we have here. I don’t want that be ruined by migrants who think they speak for Allah, nor by leftists who think every minority shares their values. Like I was one of them. In my youth, with coloured hair and ragged clothes, I was regularly beaten up by (almost exclusively) migrants. Created quite some cognitive dissonance, some effort to justify their deeds, like worse socioeconomic status blabla. Truth is, many people are quite “conservative”, naturally more so in less liberal countries of origin. And still, I vote and speak for open borders. Our society must find better ways than building walls. This issue is challenging European core values, with at least two ways to erode the values; we can lose them by allowing hostile subcultures to grow, or we can lose them by closing us off to the outside.

Good lord, 6 years. Poor Aisha. I guess my brain was happy to forget that detail.

So thanks again for this exchange. Stay safe.

Other person.

I think there are stories in the Quran or the other important texts (Hadid?) about their prophet marrying a 9yo. Although I’ve witnessed controversy around her exact age amongst people in /r/DebateReligion. Like some said it wasn’t too bad, she was almost 14 or so.

Now your turn, what do you think? And why did you want them not to google?

the design crime with Nadu was the fear of shipping a bad card after nerfing the card.

That’s an excellent point. Because, put that way, what’s so bad about shipping a bad card? People will read it once and never look at it again. Like most cards in a set. So what? On the other hand, making it too strong has grave consequences.

I think the feature creep is caused mostly by greed on both sides; company and players. Company wants to make more money, so needs incentive for players to keep buying. Players want ever stronger cards, and company delivers. Like you can’t make the new set weaker than the previous, because of sales.

“stop printing undercosted legends with as many abilities as you can jam into a text box”

So much this. So often I come across a card. Start to read. Nice! Continue reading. Whoa, nice! And then I’m only half through.

I then like to ask myself if this card would still be nice if it had less/weaker features. And then I’m shaking my head again, going AngryVideoGameNerd “What were they thinking!?”.

Examples:

• [The End]. Exiling any number of copies is strong on it’s own, doesn’t have to become cheaper at low life.
• [Ocelot Pride]. Not sure if it needs first strike. It definitely does not need the extra with the City’s Blessing.

I feel there are much better examples, but I wanted to stop thinking about it.

this just misses every one of the complaints for me. He’s basically saying “this is hard, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, trust us”

I don’t know what exactly these complaints are, but I also stumbled over this passage. Sure, making magic is hard and you cannot test everything in such a complex system.

It’s also clear that there has to be a last day for the changes, and thus some changes will be late. Although, I argue, if you keep making changes in the last 5 minutes, that probably hints at your testing period being too short.

It’s not a given that “we only have so much time”. It’s an economic decision made by management; how much they value testing. They surely try to strike a balance between testing enough and making the most profit. Which is the whole point of this comment.

Despite him claiming otherwise, of course a different, more qualtiy-focussed approach is possible. For example, one rather extreme version would be “we only release a set after we found nothing worth changing for 3 consecutive months in testing”, just to illustrate the range of possibilities. One can move fast and break things, or be very cautios but move slower.

Though I’d rather have a profit-oriented MTG with too little testing than a bankrupt; or no MTG at all, although that’s probably a false dichotomy.

Reading the article, it somehow baffled me how much work and thought they actually put into this. Like it mentions meetings, wow.

For many new cards, I get the feeling they really don’t mind making them too strong. Similar thoughts when I look at the fanbase.

I (also) enjoyed the game when playing a 3/3 bear on turn 3 was nice. Now you sort of have to expect an indestructible hexproof creature with maybe even more abilities, for 2 mana, to be deemed playable.

Rambling off, sorry thanks.

By which criterias/standards do they make these cards, and evaluate later wether they need to be banned or not?

My first two matches (historic ranked bo1) after the update resulted in a crash, before the match started. Later everything was fine.

Right. Also the speed of transition matters a lot.

Take any devastating effect that climate change might bring. Regions becoming uninhabitable, millions migrating, thousands of houses destroyed, crops failing, species going extinct.

For any of these effects, it helps a great deal if they can be delayed by years or hopefully decades. It gives everything more time to adapt. Like 10 million people migrating in 1 year puts a hell lot more stress on everybody involved (including the receiving countries) compared to 10 million migrating in 10 years.

Or your country might be blessed to deal with wildfires and floods one after the other, instead of both occuring simultaneously.

More time is worth more effort.

Yes, the R/W cats are overpowered. They even outclass RedDeckWins in their aggressiveness.

And single cards of the overpowered combo can be found in other decks, too. They just introduced a few too strong pieces with [[Ocelot Pride]], [[Guide of Souls]] and [[Ajani, Nacatl Pariah]]. Though [[Unstable Amulet]] and [[Amped Raptor]] are very often part of these decks, or played in other types, as they are also strong by themselves.

It’s really frustrating to play against these. For me, the biggest part of the frustration is the frequency at which these cards are encountered. It feels like 2 in 3 BO1 matches are one of those. Like everybody wants to play with the new big toys. Which is understandable, but the lack of diversity makes the game rather dull at the moment.

Recently, I watched a video about card balancing in trading card games (short version: It’s impossible). Guy talked about engines; multiple cards working together, and how to balance with those in mind. Conclusion was, it is okay to introduce those. Just make sure to make the individual cards slightly less efficient.

I think this is where WotC failed. They introduced a new engine (Ocelot generating tokens, Guide gaining energy from it, Amulet drawing cards with it, all without requiring mana apart from the initial, very low cost), which can easily kill an opponent in 3 or 4 turns. And the single cards by themselves are also so good that they are being included in many other decks.

Strong, versatile, very efficient. It surely is fun to play, even against once in a while, but they went over the top once again, which makes diversity suffer.