Mutate mechanic, Saga cards, tokens with mechanically meaning (Clue, Treasure, Shards, Gold, ...)
The game puts in mechanics that are not self-explaining at all and combining lots of them produces game states even in casual commander games that are just gross and perplexing.
The amount of doubled sided cards is annoying to play with an to know what both sides do is terrible in paper, putting the card out of a sleeve just to read it (long term that might be bad for the card in addition to the usual wear and tear).
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Just take a look at Kaldheim cards.
They are grossly wordy, as design just slam a lot of text on almost any card, and even makes them doubled sided, for even more text.
Sagas in Kaldheim have to much text, just reading them takes quite a while.
Simplicity is basically out the window and they go full on YuGiOh text boxes at some point.
Instead of changing design of a card to be more compact and elegant, they use keywords and bloat the games text (at this point you just have to know what a "treasure" is, if you happen to get a card that produces them).
Complexity creep is a very real thing and they desperately try to put something "crazy" in every set now (not just a mechanic, but they mess so much with the entire layout of the cards that a new player is just swimming against the current, cards all look different and with all the different art-layout versions they dont even look like the same card game).
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If you ever play in a game of EDH where everyone has different promo and art-versions of cards and different languages on the cards, it gets to a point, where playing the game is just struggling to identify what the cards actually do, and reading lots of text boxes.
And then theres the point of changing the rules to address design issues of card mechanics, so the cards text boxes keep changing, even a old card that gets reprinted over and over again has changing text boxes, creature types, and so on.
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All the design space WotC focuses on seems to extremely go along the digital aspect, as all the mechanics work better in digital, where there is no physical card and the mechanics play out automatically, see players dont really have to understand them and just see what happens.
If people resort back to paper play, these added issues might become much more visible to the players.
Well, I agree, FWIW. However, I think most of the players who are gonna agree are the older ones (like me, 51 and still tappin') who were around when MTG was a simpler game. To most MTG players this is just gonna come across like the "old man shaking his fist at the WotC cloud".
It's gonna happen. It's a product of evolution. All the "simple" cards have been done. If you're gonna make new cards, they are going to get more complex as the simple ideas get used up. Releasing new sets/cards every other week doesn't help.
Too much text? Well, throw up a modern set spoiler, then look at an older spoiler. Yes, we had plenty of wordy, confusing cards (the classic example- Ice Cauldron), but by-and-large it was simpler. Lots more words nowadays. MTG has gotten somewhat bloated and convoluted over the years. Again, the simple stuff has been done. They've done a fair job of keeping the text to a minimum, "streamlining" language/text, but sometimes take this idea too far. (latest pet peeve/annoyance- T: Add 1 green mana. TO WHAT??? My retirement portfolio? G'ma's chicken soup recipe? The toilet tank??? DUMB!) There are, thankfully, still some simple cards happening.
As far as alt versions of cards, I'm all good with it. I went through my "fancy version" stage. Playsets of foil textless Damnation, Wrath of God, Cryptic Command, all of that crap. Over it. Give me simple and original any day. Nowadays, I just like the fancy versions because they help keep the prices of basic versions lower. Usually.
It is what it is. If wordy, bloated, and six different versions of the same card in one set are what it takes to keep the game going, then so be it.
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The game puts in mechanics that are not self-explaining at all and combining lots of them produces game states even in casual commander games that are just gross and perplexing.
The amount of doubled sided cards is annoying to play with an to know what both sides do is terrible in paper, putting the card out of a sleeve just to read it (long term that might be bad for the card in addition to the usual wear and tear).
----
Just take a look at Kaldheim cards.
They are grossly wordy, as design just slam a lot of text on almost any card, and even makes them doubled sided, for even more text.
Sagas in Kaldheim have to much text, just reading them takes quite a while.
Simplicity is basically out the window and they go full on YuGiOh text boxes at some point.
Instead of changing design of a card to be more compact and elegant, they use keywords and bloat the games text (at this point you just have to know what a "treasure" is, if you happen to get a card that produces them).
Complexity creep is a very real thing and they desperately try to put something "crazy" in every set now (not just a mechanic, but they mess so much with the entire layout of the cards that a new player is just swimming against the current, cards all look different and with all the different art-layout versions they dont even look like the same card game).
----
If you ever play in a game of EDH where everyone has different promo and art-versions of cards and different languages on the cards, it gets to a point, where playing the game is just struggling to identify what the cards actually do, and reading lots of text boxes.
And then theres the point of changing the rules to address design issues of card mechanics, so the cards text boxes keep changing, even a old card that gets reprinted over and over again has changing text boxes, creature types, and so on.
----
All the design space WotC focuses on seems to extremely go along the digital aspect, as all the mechanics work better in digital, where there is no physical card and the mechanics play out automatically, see players dont really have to understand them and just see what happens.
If people resort back to paper play, these added issues might become much more visible to the players.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
It's gonna happen. It's a product of evolution. All the "simple" cards have been done. If you're gonna make new cards, they are going to get more complex as the simple ideas get used up. Releasing new sets/cards every other week doesn't help.
Too much text? Well, throw up a modern set spoiler, then look at an older spoiler. Yes, we had plenty of wordy, confusing cards (the classic example- Ice Cauldron), but by-and-large it was simpler. Lots more words nowadays. MTG has gotten somewhat bloated and convoluted over the years. Again, the simple stuff has been done. They've done a fair job of keeping the text to a minimum, "streamlining" language/text, but sometimes take this idea too far. (latest pet peeve/annoyance- T: Add 1 green mana. TO WHAT??? My retirement portfolio? G'ma's chicken soup recipe? The toilet tank??? DUMB!) There are, thankfully, still some simple cards happening.
As far as alt versions of cards, I'm all good with it. I went through my "fancy version" stage. Playsets of foil textless Damnation, Wrath of God, Cryptic Command, all of that crap. Over it. Give me simple and original any day. Nowadays, I just like the fancy versions because they help keep the prices of basic versions lower. Usually.
It is what it is. If wordy, bloated, and six different versions of the same card in one set are what it takes to keep the game going, then so be it.