Press F to pay respects to Modern

Maybe frontier? Isn't it popular in Asia since a lot of modern staples are hard to find in Chinese/Japanese/Korean?

>>52777409
>We heard you loud and clear
>So we're bringing back Draft!
Did they hear us though?

>We heard you loud and clear. You remembered Nationals as a multi-format celebration,
>multi format celebration
>2 formats lmao
what did they mean by this?

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>>52777409
>>We heard you loud and clear.
I love this. This is the same desperate "let us tell you what you REALLY want!" phraseology MaRo used when talking about the Gatewatch. "Oh, you WANT the Gatewatch, you totally love them! You just want them dialed back a notch!" Maybe they think if they repeat it enough it will become true. Sterling PR.

>>52777409
>people fell for the modern meme
>people give these jews money
>he doesn't actively harass and haze with his group all standard and modern babbies,
you faggots gonna get bullied, you all deserve this.

>>52777615
That MaRo needs to go.
Yes MaRo doesn't choose which formats are gonna be played in this shit, but he's 50% of the reason why Standard sucks and sales know we won't buy Standard shit unless they force us to if we want to compete in large tournaments.

>>52779185
this.

>>52779092
That's right.

Pauper should become Magic's main format.

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feels good only playing Kitchen table and EDH

Dude, chill out. Modern will be fine.

>>52779052
You're dumb. Go play Yu-Gi-Oh.

>>52779185
Development and Creative are the two real villains. The former are the ones supposedly responsible for the balancing the game, and the latter are the ones who've turned the game into Jacetice League: the Avengening. Maro is just the outwards face and as thus always defends every stupid decision the other retards at the company make.

>>52781772
If everyone else is to blame why is it the best sets don't have MaRo as lead of design but most worst offenders do?
He's the one that wants a game with no removal and the "pop culture experience". He clearly wishes he was back in Hollywood with his tribe.

>>52782044
Maro is the lead designer of like very big set these days, and he's on like every design team. And don't forget that he lead some of the best sets such as original Ravnica, Future Sight, Zendikar, and Innistrad and has been on several other teams that produced great sets such as Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, and Invasion.

>He's the one that wants a game with no removal
That's development.

>"pop culture experience"
He's definetly way into it, and he's certainly been pushing for making a movie based on the game for decades, but the ones ultimately responsible for this are Creative.

>He clearly wishes he was back in Hollywood with his tribe.
That is obvious.

>>52782215
>That's development.
Development wanted Liliana of the Veil and Damnation in Standard, Design and inbred playtesters said no because "black is tier one for the first time in 12 years, that cannot be allowed!".

>>52782292
You've got that completely backwards.

>>52779185
Design is doing a much better job than Development, especially over the last few years. MaRo fucked up BFZ big time but Design hasn't been the issue with any set after that, basically.

Honestly, though, reading between the lines, the biggest culprit is probably Corporate. The fucked-up rotation stinks of something that was imposed from above, and I get the sense it completely screwed up everything on Wizards' end - for instance, it's a lot of the reason there are so many Jacetice league walkers, because they were printing them under the assumption they'd be rotating much more frequently. Of course, that's not to say Development, and even MaRo, don't deserve a lot of blame themselves.

>>52782044
I am fairly certain MaRo is not the one who decided there should be no removal. That shit goes way deeper than MaRo. Don't attribute everything R&D does to MaRo just because he's the only person there who's remotely capable of and interested in communicating openly with the public.

>>52782292
LotV and Damnation in Standard would have been retarded as hell.

So is this game gonna be walls of creatures against other walls of creatures with nobody swinging because they would solve nothing and instead winning exclusively through planeswalkers from now on?

>>52782408
I don't think that's been an accurate stereotype of Standard for a while now

f

>>52780358
Go jump off a bridge

>draft
Sealed formats can go fuck themselves. Everything gets balanced around draft. Draft even gets exclusive sets now, while still fucking up rarities in the Masters sets and arguably causing everything in standard to be too weak because it has to be fair for people who play limited.

Christ.

>>52782502
>because it has to be fair for people who play limited.
Wrong, they do it because they want draft to be "open a mythic and you win" format. It's a shit design and it's hurting limited as well.

the majority of problems at wizard currently can be summed up as a bit of bad design philosophy and A LOT of problems with the time between development cycles and release

basically they get these new ideas, which isn't a bad thing, and then they want to try them
then when the ideas turn out to be shit we have to wait 2 years before they are fixed and by the time those bad decisions are fixed we have no idea if more mistakes were made along the way that will be need to fixed another 2 years in the future

they need some way of fixing the problems with their bad design decisions quickly that isn't just a banlist

that and they need to start bringing in playtesters for new sets that aren't incompetent kitchen table fucks because you can print dogshit and those players will still be happy no matter what

they need to bring in retired pros or pros that are looking to take a break form the circuit to playtest for around 2 years
they aim stricktly to break every new set and go through systematically with every card in the set and attempt to just destroy the standard environment as much as possible
then RnD and Development actually listen to these people as the ultimate authority on if a card is ok for the standard environment or not

so to shorten it up
WotC are incompetent on multiple fronts, 1. they are bad at their own game and cannot recognize powerful and bad cards and 2. they need to be faster to adapt to their own bad decisions in some way that isn't banning cards

this would help immensely

>>52782601
>they need to bring in retired pros or pros that are looking to take a break form the circuit to playtest for around 2 years
They already do that. Pretty much the entire Development team consists of retired pro players.

>>52779185
>>52782374

Putting Maro front and center for magic is SUCH a fucking brilliant move on WoTC's part.

>Give the community a front-figure who is high up in the company
>Divide decision-making internally so that if the playerbase is pissed off about something, even if they go to the front figure you put out there he will just be able to shrug and say "I don't have any control over that aspect of the game"
>Having no other avenue of complaint, the playerbase will shout at him anyway, thus making the loudest complainers seems rude and irrational

Fucking brilliant.

>>52782644

>Pretty much the entire Development team consists of retired pro players.

The people who playtest shouldn't be the same people who make the game you dum-dum.

>>52782644
but aparently they don't actually playtest what they develop
they leave that to the "future future team" which consists of a bunch of mentally challenged, overweight, pink hair dyed, numales and women

then they listen to these idiots on if a set is ok or not

so basically we have fucks like this >>52780358
actual chimps that only play complete casual formats and are a waste of atoms, fresh air, and water determining how we are going to play in a competitive environment

we NEED a team of players whoes only job is to be as hyper competitive Spike as possible and not give a shit about anything other than the competitive viability of a card
if the card doesn't rank above a certain competitive threshold from this team it is sent back to development to make the card better until we have a set of nothing but fun semi competitive playable cards

as a secondary objective the team should also go out of their way every few sets or so to shit on timmys just because timmy can blow me

>>52782683
>they leave that to the "future future team"
The playtesting team consists of developers, designers, and other staff members of the company that don't work directly on the game.

>>52782707
http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Future_Future_League

this team has been interviewed before and is made up of absolutely terrible, casual players

they are given the new set and they "attempt" to figure out the metagame but in reality they just make shitty casual decks and try to make sure draft is fun but could give less than a shit about constructed competitive formats

then RnD listens to them
it is things like this on top of the fact that we have no way to adjust these idiots decisions in a reasonable window

wotc should really have something akin to the core set made up of a bunch of powerful removal and answer cards but use it for internal purposes only most of the time. Then if Standard gets out of control they can selectively mark cards on that list that would help fix standard as legal for standard play
now rather than having to ban things we just make some cards that help kill stupid decks in the format legal and bam we have the ability to adapt much faster to development and design decisions without having to actually speed up the process

also stop listening to casual players about anything
take the video game approach and balance ar ound the top 5%-1% of players
fuck everyone else
if you suck you can git gud
if you kitchen table you will buy the shit they make no matter what
if you EDH you will buy the shit no matter what

Timmies and Johnnies are going to spend their money on a set no matter how terrible it is
Spike is the only one that is going to sit a format out if it sucks
and when Spike sits the format out Timmy and Johnny leave as well because there is no one to play against

so maybe instead of designing cards for Timmy and Johnny you should instead design the vast majority of cards exclusively for Spike

>>52782791
This, the vast majority of people plays competitively while Wizards thinks that the majority is casual players and childrens.

>>52782044
I enjoyed Theros. Even though he fucked up the last 2 sets in the block, the first set just makes me giddy.

Also, gods in Theros block seem better than Amonkhet's.

>>52782683

>if the card doesn't rank above a certain competitive threshold from this team it is sent back to development to make the card better until we have a set of nothing but fun semi competitive playable cards
>adding 1000~ competitively viable cards to the card pool every year

Not only is that fucking impossible, it would be a terrible, awful idea.

>>52782840

>the vast majority of people plays competitively

[citation needed]

>>52782791
>you should instead design the vast majority of cards exclusively for Spike
They already do.

>>52782873
it is very possible

you are probably misunderstanding what I said though

competitive viable in this case means competitively viable for Standard or for the set
the card could be awful from a modern or vintage or any other format standpoint but the card needs to have at least some kind of niche playability in standard or it is sent back
no more god awful cards that aren't even played in draft decks and are only there to fill packs with crap
even if the card is explictely in the set for the draft environment it had better be playable and functional at what it does and some deck is going to want it or need it

as it stands now though we get cards that serve absolutely no purpose and are sometimes even powercreeped by cards in the exact same set
this needs to stop

>>52782840
I don't know if that is true
in fact I kind of doubt it
I would bet the majority of players are casual

but as someone who has been playing games my whole life and I can tell you from experience that when the competitive scene leaves a game the game starts to die no matter how many casuals it had

the casual audience is fickle and will change their desires on a whim
that whim is usually driven by trend setters and competitive players
so when the comp players level the casuals leave with them
many businesses see that casuals make up the majority of the players and start to market to them when in reality they are only there because the competitive players and trend setters guided them there and keep them there
if you want to keep the casuals you absolutely have to keep the interest of the competitive players or you are digging your own shortsighted grave

>>52782895
I will cite pretty much every set released after M15 as a counter argument to this
if you are gonna tell me that Kaladesh, SOI, and this new set were designed pretty much exclusively for Spike and not for Timmy, Johnny, and EDH man you are just plain wrong

>>52782791
>this team has been interviewed before and is made up of absolutely terrible, casual players
You're getting things backwards again. The FFL playtests Standard and attempts to predict the metagame at the highest levels. Development uses these results to balance the cards in the set.

When Maro says, "our playtesters didn't get what the card did" or "our playtesters didn't understand the point of this mechanic" he's not talking about the FFL, but a group of WotC employees that technically work on entirely different games but playtest new MtG sets to help determine what new and casual players will think of the set.

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>>52780358

>Not Pauper & EDH master race

Kys you're self in irl my man.

>>52782976

>Pauper

Solved format/10

>>52782683
MTG isn't designed to be an ultra competitive game you halfwit. The casual formats is exactly what type of players they WANT buying and playing the game.

>>52782971
no I know what I am talking about
let me see if I can find some of the "competitive decks" that the FFL team built to playtest some of the recent sets

I think it is this article but it isn't loading for me
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/ffl-faq-2016-04-22
or
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/days-future-future-eldritch-moon-2016-08-26
basically when testing for Eldritch Moon they had some mono white crap that was completely unplayable from even a medium skilled players perspective and in their version of G/B delirium they weren't even playing Emrakul and instead we messing around with the crap commons and uncommon just because they had the keyword "Delirium" on them
then also made a bunch of god awful control decks if I remember that they really half assed but thought performed well because they were playing against horribly optimized casual garbage
the FFL literally doesn't understand their own game and are so horrible at the game that they miss things like Cat Combo that a pro player noticed after 15 min of the card being spoiled
they have around a whole year to work with these cards and the fact that they can't get things right is actually embarrassing
higher some higher quality players for your testing team ffs

>>52782644
From 15-20 years ago.
They need people who actually play Magic at a competitive level NOW.

>>52783052
You do realize that it will often look like decks used in the FFL are subpar simply because cards were different for most of the playtesting period, right?

>>52782683
>>52782791
>>52782840
>>52782926
this is a bunch of completely fucking insane bullshit with no relation to reality

Development is bad and the FFL is pretty obviously fucking up, but beyond that, this is the crazy goddamn shit

>>52783029
correct
but like I have stated before
casuals will play with the cards NO MATTER WHAT
and the only reason the casuals stick around and play formats is because the competitive players do as well
when the competitive players leave the casuals leave with them
so instead of being shortsighted and trying to market the majority of your product to people who change hobbies every few months maybe you should market to your core audience who are going to stick around only if you print things that keep them interested
because when they are interested and having fun they draw in more players and keep the casuals around

competitive players are the backbone of any game and should be the target audience even if they make up a minority of players because they are the ones that draw in new customers and keep old ones

they are the start of the chain not the weight at the end and I wouldn't want to flatten myself so best keep the chain happy

>>52783077
you do realize that they miss things that are so blatantly obvious that high caliber players catch them within the hour of the card being spoiled right?

FFL is playing the game for fun
they are making casual fun decks that they think are cool and then playteseting them against one another
they are taking broad strokes, thinking of archtypes and then trying to build decks with those themes and thinking they are doing a good job

they are not systematically going through every single card in the new set and doing everything they possibly can to break the card, like they should. If they did that then we probably wouldn't have such god awful formats dominated by poorly designed cards like Emrakul, or Gideon, or Copy Cat because they would have been caught within 20 min of the card rolling off of RnDs table

>>52782873
You don't need to keep making Doom Blade better. Just print Victim of Night with different limitations.
Instead of making better Elves, print Nantuko, Centaus, Satyrs and Dryads from time to time.
And yes, keep some essentials like Lightning Strike, Remove Soul and Rampanth Growth always in Standard.

That way you always get a good Standard but it's always different, Modern and Legacy don't get fucked because even when you can have 12 copies of a decent card it's better to make broader decks to face the continuously growing metagame, and Limited will feel fresh but always welcoming.
Only possible negative is Commander one day far in the future being 60 Watchwolfs vs 60 Mana Leaks.

>>52783122
>commander turns to shit because they print to many variants of a good card

we can only wish

>>52783080
it seems like you're basically just assuming that Magic works the same way as a MOBA or other vidya game

I don't think this is an accurate model for how Magic actually works and it's weird how insistent you are that it is. it's different in a bunch of ways.

>>52783029
Which is bad for business.
No game without a notable competitive scene stays fresh in people's minds.
It's why YGO!, Pokemon and Magic are popular but Netrunner and other LCGs arent.
It's why more people play Warhammer and Heroclix than Infinity or Malifaux despite being inferior games.
It's why everyone at the LGS has heard of Catan but Ticket to Ride draws blanks.

The game needs to appease competitive players because if they go away, the game's popularity and hype goes away.

>>52783115
>FFL is playing the game for fun
Dude, the articles you linked youself contradict you on this.

>they are not systematically going through every single card
There's a finite amount of time during which they can playtest, and a very finite amount of developers that can playtest. Not to mention that cards are constantly tweaked, changed, aqnd replaced in the FFL. There's simply no way they actually could do what you're suggesting.

>>52783163
Magic needs a competitive scene and it needs to appease competitive players, and it's not doing a good job of that right now

That does not mean that it needs to literally design every card around whether it's playable in standard

there is a huge excluded middle here

>>52783151
that is how games work on a near fundamental level
hell that is how mass appeal works on a fundamental level

Trend Setters like things before they become popular, they put money into said thing and it starts to gain momentum and appeal due to gaining money and a solid fanbase who spreads the word about said thing.
this attracts more and more people who are interested in the thing but are not as interested as the initial core audience

then this splits into one of two pretty repetitive scenarios
1. the things creators keep making their thing so that it appeals to the original demographic with maybe some things for the new people in order to draw in an even wider audience but always remembering to keep the core audience satisfied

or
2. they ditch the core audience recognizing them as a minority of their audience and instead attempt to appeal to the mass demographic and gain a massive following that is no longer reliant on the core audience

both of these routes can pay off but one is far easier to maintain than the other
with secnario 1. we can maintain a fairly large but not truly massive (billions of users) audience and can keep people interested since we keep our initial trend setters happy and they in turn keep people interested
you might lose some people over time but they will mostly be made up of that secondary audience that will be replaced since your core audience will continuously draw people in
scenario 2 plays off when you hit critical mass
when you can attract hundreds of millions of billions of people to your thing then it is self perpetuating and will remain popular simply because it is popular you don't need a core audience because everyone is now the core audience and if someone isn't using your thing they are now wierd and are actively encouraged by society to use your thing (facebook, Beyonce, Microsoft, smartphoes, ect...)

MTG is not a hundreds of millions//billions of people item
they should use scenario 1

>>52783206
that there's a core audience does not mean that the core audience is composed of people who play competitively and are mostly concerned with the competitive scene

also everything in this post is massively simplistic to the point of uselessness

>>52779185
Competetive players don't buy a lot of sealed product. Many would play with artless flavorless cards if it was the only option. His decisions are all to appeal to tabletop that actually buys sealed product.

>>52783228
it is over simplified yes but I only have 2000 characters
it is also fairly accurate to how things become popular in a very condensed version

MTGs core audience is the competitive scene
they are the ones that draw people in at FNM
they are the ones that encourage their friends to start
they are the ones that promote the game whenever they can

but they only do this when they believe the game is good and is satisfying them

casual players are part of that secondary audience
they joined because someone drew them into the game
they can turn into a member of the primary audience when they become obsessed with the game and want to take it to a higher level but many players don't do that and remain a member of the secondary audience forever
which is fine but wotc needs to realize that the only reason those people buy things from them is because at the core of the game is a playerbase that will be there to play and without that core, competitive, playerbase everyone else will shrivel off

>>52783255
>MTGs core audience is the competitive scene

source?

>they are the ones that encourage their friends to start

source?

>they are the ones that promote the game whenever they can

source?

>casual players are part of that secondary audience. they joined because someone drew them into the game. they can turn into a member of the primary audience when they become obsessed with the game and want to take it to a higher level but many players don't do that and remain a member of the secondary audience forever

source?

>>52783274
>source
the last 200 years of competitive, marketable, games
every major game that has been secucessful in the last 2 centuies of human existence has been able to identify their target demographic
and in case it wasn't obvious mtg wasn't proped up by people that wanted to play monopoly with their family
they were nerdy kids that wanted a hobby to play with their friends that has evolved over time into a global, competitive, phenomenon
the major tournaments, events, exhibitions, and themes of the game all revolve around the competitive aspect of it and glorify it
the whole of wotc, the playerbase, and the secondary market seems to understand that the game is meant to be enjoyed by competitive players
except the people that matter RnD and development

>>52783318
You write like a dyslectic 14-year old who has skimmed a few barely related Wikipedia articles and understood about half of what he just read.

You don't come across as particularly knowledgable or trustworthy, is what I'm saying.

>>52783352
sorry
I am writing from my bed and it is 3AM
if you want credentials I can tell you I work as a software developer who has made products that are used by millions of people worldwide
they are not games though
I am combining my experience from understanding basic marketing, content development, and gaming to form an argument

either way I am going to go to bed now
hope you have a good morning, night wherever you are

>>52783251
Starcitygames has to open aprox. 110 boosters for every Gideon the Spikes need. Cards don't materialize from nowhere.
Competitive players generate more sales for WotC than casual players because SCG, CFB, Troll & Toad, Card Kingdom, etc. BUY pallets of boxes. Wal Mart and Target are concessionaires, if the shit doesn't buy they shove it back to your storehouses where you have to pay to keep them rotting for eternity.

And Competitive players are also the ones who keep the lights on at the LGS, Timmy and friends may buy a shitload of Chimney Imps nobody else would ever touch, but the Spikes come in each friday to farm planeswalker points, pay tournament fees and a lot of them go as far as to buy new sleeves for every FNM. Not to mention they draft the most out of all players because they actually need to practice that shit to do well at PTs, GOs, Nationals, WMCs, etc.

"Competitive players don't spend money on the game" is fantasy spewed R&D because they don't want to design a competitive game. Sales numbers at stores speak a whole different story because Timmys sure as fuck didn't buy a million Devoted Druids at $5 each this weekend to test a new meme combo. Most Timmies don't even know there's a website where they can check spoilers in the first place.

>hours of devastation
>set symbol is literally Magic logo

what did they mean by this

Oh good. I can't wait for some cunt to windmill slam a damnation and go 3-0 live on twitch so everyone can see how fucking retarded foil mythic, mythic rare bullshit chase cards are in the current shit-tier power level that is mtg

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>>52782791
>If you kitchen table you will buy the shit they make no matter what
This is the most retarded thing I've seen on /tg/, ever.

People who have no understanding of Crisis phenomena should literally be executed for even looking at long-format stories in a critical light.

>>52783637
Damnation is Rare.

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>>52783318
>the last 200 years of competitive, marketable, games
>last 200 years

>>52783850
>what is football
>what is basketball

>inb4 sports
not an argument

>>52783850
Obvious typo. He meant 20 years.

>>52782976
I would believe that notail said that in a heartbeat

>>52784447

He did

>>52782791
kitchen table magic has no problem adapting to whatever they print as long as they print janky tribals and stupid do nothing enchantments, so they are never a problem neither something that really does need compromises.

>>52783456
I went to a Limited GP and I saw how many packs were opened and at the end of the event how many cards were just thrown in the garbage. Mountains. Everyone could have set Cubes easily.

I cannot imagine how much metal and paper goes to waste at big stores like SCG. Imagine, there's a box, which is wrapped in plastic, and the informational insert and six boxes in another box. And this has been going on for god knows how many years.

I know it's just a drop in the pond compared to the waste that comes out of a grocery store. But it still bothers me. I look at my small collection of useful shit and easily there is at least 20-times more useless shit produced to get me what I have. It's like cooking an entire chicken only to eat the skin and throwing away the rest.

God, could you imagine if collectable card games fell into the crosshairs of the environmentalists? It's bad enough that SJW have their disgusting hooks into the game.

>>52784258
Nigger, competitive football is newer than competitive card games and texas hold 'em is from the very end of the 1800's, there's no competitive game being played today that was played competitively 200 years ago.

>>52784539
it's even worse, Magic cards are shit for recycling because there's literally a plastic layer within them and the process for getting that shit out of your pulp wastes so much water you're better off not recycling them.

>>52783791
Invocations aren't.

>>52783415
This is cringes shit to read.

You're pretty cringey.

F

>>52784957
ACTUAL football has been played competitively for a good long time. Since at least the late 1800. They weren't necessarily any good, but they were playing at a club level.

>>52784978
I feel like the longer I play this game, the more reasons I find to be disappointed in it. Instead of doing regular Sealed they have to provide prerelease boxes with fucking dice and other useless shit like stickers and they're all thrown away by the end of the day.

Sometimes I look at other players and wonder how they can continue playing this game with a somewhat consistent level of enthusiasm and excitement. I really do wonder if they're just too stupid to see the problems or if they just don't care - they got theirs, nothing else matters.

Every time I see a card with Shrine in the name and it doesn't have the subtype Shrine from the Kamigawa Hondens I wonder why Wizards just doesn't care about giving people free value by putting a single word in the type line. Shrine of Burning Rage and Luxa River Shrine.

They'll do dumb shit like Cartouches which is just more parasitic horseshit to add to the pile of things we'll never see again.

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>>52777409
>allow every bloc under the sun
>unban goddamn everything
>keep on publishing broken cards
>enjoy the resulting chaos, and rake the money in

I mean, what could go wrong ?

>>52782533

THIS

Look at the new set. If you open the green god, what do you think the chances are that you'll have an opponent that can do something meaningful to answer it? They pretty much have to be playing White/Black Zombies and hope they got their "remove from game" Uncommon.

Mythics are fucking /busted/ for Limited. Mythics weren't designed to make Limited better, they were designed to make Limited worse, but trick dumbasses into buying more boxes to pull the mythics they need to be competitive in constructed.

>>52785304
Was there prize money? Cause if there wasn't the only "games" older than hold'em where people competed with structured rules for cash were shit like cockfighting, bullfighting and range shooting. Even fistcuffs doesn't really count because the fighters were a vehicle for money lenders and scam artists, they barely made money for themselves.

>>52785259
Damnation isn't an invocation.
Yet.

>>52783255
>>52783274
>>52783318
Their sales figures and research consistently and strongly indicate that the vast majority of their sales come from people who never go to fnm or even visit the website. Granted, these players buy less product, but there are so many more of them than active, enfranchised players. This is why so much of their effort is going into shit like the story spotlights (with the url being on those cards), and having a stable cast to latch on to.
Little simon and sarah buying six boosters from kmart and making up the rules while moving cards around a carpet are, unfortunately, who Hasbro's corporate division specialise in selling to and who WotC have to pay a lot of attention to.

>>52785350
Kill mtg as a whole? Not a huge loss by now honestly

>>52784447
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k6HDyUDhrY&feature=youtu.be&t=90

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>standard is the format!
>showcasing the most stale format
>promo card for participation is a card you can't play in standard

TL;DR: Support your local cubers!

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>>52786599
maybe they're hinting at a return to New Phyrexia? Right guys? Right?

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in all seriousness, how is the modern format holding up?

>>52787016
Poison will always be a mistake, sorry guy

>>52785597
There's no difference between that and pulling one of the few bomb rares in the pre-mythic days though. In fact, the main issue has nothing at all to do with the mythics themselves but the lack of answers to bombs in general at lower rarities. Removal at common is either far too situational or far too expensive, and the good removal spells at uncommon come at such a premium that you're lucky if you get even one.

>>52786255
Well, I mean, he does have a point.

>>52787060
It's in an overall pretty solid place right now, aside from the fact that the format has no good control decks.

>>52785350
>keep on publishing broken cards
They're only broken in standard where they lack answers.

>>52779052
>OP has nothing to do with the magic storyline
>Ha, so Modern is in a bad spot, huh? Kinda reminds me of the FUCKING JACETICE LEAGUE I SWEAR TO GOD
>BOLAS SHOULD KILL JACE AND SKULLFUCK CHANDRA ALREADY FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
fucking autists get everywhere

>>52782644
did you actually read the post dude?

>>52784539
Well as far as the card themselves are concerned they sell them in bulks of like 100 commons for 5$ and shit like that.

>>52782926
>when the competitive scene leaves a game the game starts to die no matter how many casuals it had

This happens all the time in games, for honor is dead in the water because ubi wouldn't listen. Hell they had to have a blackout day of no one playing to get the devs to even pull their heads out of their asses and even then shit is still fucked.

Remember pokemon go? the game that the casuals turned into a popular phenomena for all of about two months then they got bored and went back to crossing road?

Also the argument that competitive players spend less than casuals is stupid, when someone buys a box at your LGS who is it? Someone who has never played the game before or that guy who is in every friday? Who has fully sleeved decks, mtg themed mats and deck boxes with official spin down dice? Is it the guy who just started yesterday?

>>52793229
Yeah, that's how I feel. When your reasonable crack-addicts start leaving what the fuck have you done? There will always be the retards who spend money on the game no matter what Wizards does because they're just addicted to the point of uselessness - I mean they probably don't have the mental facilities to contribute positively to the community as well as someone who is grounded and wants to enjoy something and can identify bullshit for what it is.

I do feel that competitive players spend less in general but that's because we're not fucking stupid and won't buy any old piss-in-a-cup Wizards throws out to the masses. Or the fact that the community needs to be fucking babysat by a store to ensure drafts happen. I would happily buy one or two boxes of anything and sit down and draft regularly; but I won't, because Magic players are useless people and can't get fucking organized for shit. I can't tell you how often some filthy fucking casual just decides that he doesn't want to wake up and you got 7 people sitting at the store who can't draft.

The players have become cancer; we've always been cancer it's only now we're INCOMPETENT cancer.

Look at Amonkhet, just the most useless fucking shit ever. All they had to do was bring back Flashback and not print shit Cycling cards and have good Madness enablers. Pitching Flashback cards to Madness enablers? Would have been fucking great. But forget that, here's a big fat one-card-army card. Overextend! There's no downsides anymore because every good card shits out three or four cards in card advantage!

God please don't talk about For Honor. Just so disappointed.

>>52793229
right but games like For Honor and Pokemon go aren't marketed at a competitive audience
Pokemon go has no real "competitive" aspect and for honor was not made to be an esport

while people that buy whole Boxes may be majority competitive players who do you think are the ones buying a pack or two every time they stop in their local Wal-Mart or LGS? who are the ones buying the art books, collectors items, and other forms of merchandise that competitive players have no real interest in?

casuals make up a huge portion of the playerbase and consume goods at probably a higher rate than the core competitive audience, however, like I stated last night. Without that core audience the others will flake off to the next thing they find
as such it behooves wotc to keep competitive players interested even if they don't spend as much money as the casuals do

>>52793453

I've played magic for over 10 years and 5 of that in a very competitive manner, but I think I'm done with this game at this point. The level of incompetence WotC has displayed for many years has made me start hating the game. I haven't attended events outside my city in over a year and probably won't anymore. Justifying spending shitload of cash for trading cards with values jumping up and down and formats losing support so fast, is pretty hard. I just choose to buy videogames or other stuff now.

The thing they are doing with modern is absolutely retarded and fucking the playerbase in the ass. After they made standard so bad that no one wants to play it, they are now trying to revive it by making it the only competitive format that has pro level tournament support and overall forcing it down everyone's throat. In a few years all gps will be standard or limited if we go like this.

Then the fucking culture or community is becoming even worse than it ever has been. Sure nerds and autists have always existed in this community, but seriously I feel like the amount of mouth-breathers and internet warriors has risen to such a level, I'm embarrassed to be even associated being a magic player. Reading the mtg subreddit makes me want to gouge my eyes out in disgust, even if /TG/'s magic players are pretty retarded usually too it never goes to the same level.

Locally our magic scene is dying slowly and I really can't recommend anyone start playing magic without feeling like I'm trying to trick them. Go buy cards for 500 dollars to participate in our FNM's and maybe you can even go to a nearby gp trial or pptq? After spending so much, you probably need to learn to play to compete and usually if you aren't talented, you play like shit for so long that you'll be bored of your deck by the time you learn to play and need to invest in a new deck. And I know your cards retain some value, but I just can't justify anymore spending money on playing cards.

/Rant

Everybody should just play cube, it's the best format by far. You aren't beholden to any of wotc's design decisions. You get to fine tune the power level and archetypes of the metagame to exactly your liking.

And most importantly you get to be excited about new sets again because you don't have to worry about how lame standard is or how no modern playable cards are being printed or whatever, you just get to pick and choose those few gems that stand out to you and give them a spin in your cube

It's a big initial investment but you can spread that across a playgroup, and you never have to worry about buying an expensive deck only for it to be banned or for it to rotate.

Wizards should have stuck to the shorter standard duration to prevent format stagnation.
It just needed time for players to adjust.

It took them forever to improve the problems with standard and unfortunately they backtracked.
To me that's the real insanity afoot.

This naturally makes Modern more popular but leaves Standard a ruined shithole.
I don't even understand this meme of Standard being the most popular format.
Casuals play kitchen table with whatever collection they have, or Commander.
Competitive players play Modern, Legacy and Draft
Hardcore pro wannabe grinders are the only ones who bother with Standard.

The only reason they are doing Draft for Nationals is because it gets the majority of competitive players buying new product when they would otherwise not do so for Standard.

I wonder what they're going to do when tournament attendance slumps?
When are they going to get the message that Standard just plain sucks?

I mean for fuck's sake, I have TRIED to get local friends into Standard, but they refuse to sink the money required for decent decks when they could get better by spending a little more to get a Modern deck.
Casuals especially HATE the idea of standard - the idea of their project deck rotating out because they took a hiatus pisses them off.
The ONLY newer/casual players who play standard worth a fuck are those who treat it as an investment on the way into Modern once they do the mature nerdy thing and research what the best investment+gameplay opportunity progression is.

>>52794947
>I wonder what they're going to do when tournament attendance slumps?
It already has. Corporate is aware MaRo and Stoddard are incompetent shits, but even after the ultimatum to improve Standard or walk out, their "corrections" won't be showing up till after Ixalan block. So all Sales can do to sell this miserable sets, is giving us no other option than play Standard/Draft or not play competitively at all.

>>52782215
>And don't forget that he lead some of the best sets such as original Ravnica, Future Sight, Zendikar, and Innistrad

Ravnica and Innistrad, in particular, had Richard Garfield contribute a lot to the sets. So it's not just MaRo

That being said, Development and the Future Fag Fucker League are the real culprits for being complete morons

>>52795311
>Future Fag Fucker League
Is this a really creative name for the Jacetice League, or are you referring to some with even more faggotry hanging around WotC?

>>52795408
The "future future league" are the WotC playtesters.
You know, the fags that couldn't think of Copycat being a thing when Kiki-Flicker combos have been a thing for nearly 15 years.

>>52795453
I read somewhere that the Future Future League playtesters are entirely made up of the same people who design and develop the cards to begin with.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that just obviously retarded?
I get designers+developers wanting to trial the gameplay of the shit they are working on, but shouldn't that league be chiefly made up of Spike-Johnnies whose sole mission is to break the game?
And you would want these kinds of players testing cards they haven't been too close to, lest they pay too much respect to the design intention, right?

>>52795453
>WotC playtesters

I am convinced they are actually just have trained gorillas

You can't playtest magic and not understand that cycling is discarding

I'm still upset about Amonkhet with all the cards that say "cycle or discard"

It doesn't even matter if MaRo doesn't make any of the relevant decisions that are shitting the environment up. He should retire simply because he's been at magic R&D for well over 20 years now. Is there even anyone still around from his generation who still works on the game and isn't an artist?

MTG needs new blood and a fresh face and to break some of these stupid dogmatic truths they've established.

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>>52777409
>multi-format
>2

>>52795547
Ironically it works completely different than with board games.
Board game developers have to hire complete retards to playtest their games because when they playtest themselves they play it at top level and are blind to rules/grammar interpretations that may make new players play it wrong or "bug" the game.
Magic playtesters can't recognize babby's first combo after they've been printing it again and again for the past 15 years.

>>52795694
Coincidentally a couple members of the FFL have been around since Richard Garfield's first mockup.

Yes, WotC is ancient and inbred as fuck. No wonder they resent Microsoft Man with his dangerous new ideas about making the game faster and more fun to play and watch instead of 16 rhinos in each side of the table with each player at 100lp and unable to make any profitable play that isn't negated by the next rhino his opponet plays.

I need a thinking man's deck to build.

Please help

>>52798058
Burn.
Right now it's the brainiest, most mathematical Tier 1 deck to build in Modern.
Welcome to the kingdom of the blind.

>>52794385
I think Wizards needs to take a hard fucking look at their DCI numbers and realize that some of those attendance numbers don't look good. You see people who have solid fucking attendance doing 2+ events a month for years at a time and suddenly they fucking stop. No more prereleases, no more GPs, no more Game Days, no more PTQs - the last one they fucked with so hard I don't even know how it works anymore.

Sure, some of those people are complete morons who leave and come back. You see those people right here who didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing before they quit and now they're back only to do more fucking uselessness. Fuck those people, Wizards knows they exist and can be counted upon for quick cash but what happens if there's no fucking Magic to return to. What if the store is empty?

What if, god forbid, those people who were excited to show up for entire segments of their life every goddamn Friday through high school, college, and their first child actually mattered. Fuck them right?

I can't look someone in the eye and tell them to play Magic. I feel like I'm stealing money from them by telling them to play Magic, like I'm doing them a disservice too. Before people who made fun of Magic players were just ignorant and predjudiced - now they have a real good fucking reason like you say look at the Reddit. No joke, /tg/ is actually the BEST Magic can be; we're cancerous but we put value in being right, which is more than can be said about fucking Reddit who just wants to suck Wizard balls so they can get free shit in case they lose their collection.

One day I'm going to meet you anon. Or someone like you. And I'm going to say, "fuck Magic" and you or they will think back on this conversation.

>>52794947
The cost problem aside, the problem with Standard is you can't play a fucking traditional deck.

You can't play countermagic control, you can't play RDW, you can't play stompy, you can't play ramp, you can't even play MECHANICS because they've hobbled them so hard.

They've actually made the game such that Wrath of God (Fumigate?) is bad. The quintessential midrange card is actually unplayable. Why? Because nuking all creatures just isn't good enough value anymore.

Do you know what you get in Standard? You get fucking midrange. You get to drop a 4-mana Planeswalker and midrange them the fuck out with creatures that are more or less Bloodbraid Elf. You get to play fucking Jund but not only Jund, it's expensive Jund wherein the original Jund was a miserable pile of uncommons and commons with your choice of 5+ drop for flavor.

All they have to say, is very publicly, "look, you need to give us time; it's going to be challenging for the next year". I mean post that fucking everywhere not the one fucking spot you put it. Put it on Reddit, put it on MaRo's fucking twitter, put it on the mothership. Tell people the boat is getting rocked and shit won't change for a year. It's not fucking dishonest and it's not technically illegal from the perspective of a fiduciary responsibility.

People are going to be fucking pissed for a year and Wizards is going to refuse to acknowledge it. They're going to continue like nothing is wrong. There's a fucking tumor on your face an your doctor doesn't see it, your DOCTOR is too stupid to see there's an apple-sized lump on your neck so you're going to have to deal with it.

One year from now you will be able to look at a Magic player and if they're not new to the game, you will immediately be able to say they're idiots; blind, stupid, ignorant, and addicted idiots.

>>52795547
>shouldn't that league be chiefly made up of Spike-Johnnies whose sole mission is to break the game?
The Development team consists of nothing but.

>>52793453
>Pitching Flashback cards to Madness enablers?
We already did that in Odyssey block. Your ideas suck.

>>52798988
Except they're old ass Spike-Johnnies from Kamigawa times and it shows.
I took my old ODY-ONS zombie tribal to an FNM night for fun and the only deck that could beat it was Vehicles. THAT's the main problem with Standard, Gideon.dck is head and shoulders better than everything else and they refuse to do anything about it because "muh jacetice league mythics reeeeeeeeeee".

>>52796013
Source about everyone's beef with Microsoft Man? Not that I don't believe you, but I genuinely want to see them being passive aggressive with each other and I don't find it anywhere.

>>52799686
There isn't any. One anon claimed that all you had to do was listen to Maro's podcast and hear in his voice how he's terrified about losing his job now, but there's absolutely no difference in tone now than there was two years ago in it.

>>52799207
>and they refuse to do anything about it
No. They've already admitted that answers are too weak right now and threats are too good. They're doing work to fix it, but they work years in advance. If Development misses the most powerful deck in the format or doesn't realize the long term implications of a decision there's a two year gap between when we see it and when their fix can be implemented.

The decay started years ago when they started rotating out the meat and potatoes cards and mechanics in favor of pushing the "new hotness" IE mythic rare planeswalkers or w/e. Or with misguided claims about balance/color identity.

>>52798488
>I can't look someone in the eye and tell them to play Magic. I feel like I'm stealing money from them by telling them to play Magic, like I'm doing them a disservice too

I feel this way 100%. The sad thing is that I tried to get everyone to play magic and thought the game was the bees knees couple of years ago, but now it's just gone so far to shit and I don't think it will change.

>>52796013
>dangerous new ideas about making the game faster and more fun to play and watch instead of 16 rhinos in each side of the table with each player at 100lp and unable to make any profitable play that isn't negated by the next rhino his opponet plays
Today's standard is dominated by a t4 kill combo and a couple super aggro decks, but somehow is even more stale and less diverse than khans: the abzanening. Format speed isn't the issue.

>>52787160
Poison was always fine before Infect came about. Nothing wrong with Marsh Viper or Pit Scorpion, the idea of poison as a weak back-up wincon for g/b is great.

>>52777409
Reminder that they tried pulling this shit back in 2015 and it didn't get anywhere.
Modern isn't dying.

>>52795581

To be fair there are cards that cause you to discard without Cycling. Cathartic Reunion comes to mind as far as Standard is concerned.

>>52795581
Hey man, I'm actually happy about that one for pauper. Horror of the Broken Lands looks like a monster for Pauper tortured existence.

>>52804186
Then why say cycle or discard?

Just say discard.

>>52804573
I completely agree with you, and every time I have brought this up somebody replies with something like >>52804186 and it shows that the new wording is actually more ambiguous that just saying discard. It implies that there is some difference between discarding and cycling, when cycling is actually just another way to discard. But retards at wotc couldn't understand this even though in the cycling reminder text part of the cost is literally "discard this card". Now we are left with this ugly, unnecessarily verbose rules text that actually causes more confusion than it helps.

>>52804573
>>52805528
They did it this way because new players at focus group testing forgot cycling included discarding.
Also it's extra confusing since the rule that supports the wording is that which states 'cycling' is literally defined as discarding a card as a cost for the activation of a cycling ability. Yeah.
If cycling did mean 'discard for cost AND resolve the draw' then you would be triggering these abilities twice.
Yeah. Look it up. Comprehensive rules 702 or something.

>>52806319
>If cycling did mean 'discard for cost AND resolve the draw' then you would be triggering these abilities twice.

no, because these cards say cycle OR discard a card. Cycling is discarding. It's like if a creature had an ability that said, "when this creature dies or leaves the battlefield". That doesn't make any fucking sense, because dying is just another way of leaving the battlefield. You don't need to have both cases listed on the card if one is just a subset of the other. It creates confusion because now there is reason to believe that cycling is different than discarding, when its not. If anything, they should have just had these cards say "when you discard a card" and then have reminder text that says something along the lines of "(cycling is discarding a card)" if they really wanted to clear it up.

>>52806319
>They did it this way because new players at focus group testing forgot cycling included discarding.

Yes I understand, and I'm advocating for their genocide.

Dude, I'm a casual and edh player and it still pisses me off how bad standard is because it speaks to the design philosophy of the game as a whole. It's like not caring that the right foot has gangrene because you're the left foot.

>>52777448
Frontier seems more like a pauper or EDH format.
I doubt it would replace modern even if they were actually replacing modern

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>>52777409
>GP and Worlds cup/championship still supports modern
>MM17 released not too long ago
>No modern support in Nationals
>"WOW R.I.P MODERN BTFO XXDDDD"
This meme needs to stop. You guys are literally using autism to find patterns with this and extended. Thats the only argument you all have with this "modrn is ded" meme

>>52808212
>worlds
>modern
they changed that too a while back lmao

>>52806795
Where do I sign to buy some gas for that solution? Those people are the reason why I'll never see another time spiral.

>>52809553
Time Spiral was nice, but it was a mess.

>>52807542
I'd rather frontier replaced standard.
I think people would draft and play more sealed if they had a format where their cards could actually retain some level of value.
Because right now, when 99% of cards leave standard, they become coasters.

>>52810081
Non-rotating formats shouldn't be the main focus of the game
Bring back extended and make that the new standard

>>52811478
4-Year extended would be rather good. Then we'd be able to build either WotC approved memerange decks, WotC approved PW-decks, and still get enough redundant damage, draw and counter effects to build aggro and control.

Of course that's why it's not going to happen, countering Gideon is illegal.