Nope. New Bolts most of which completely outclass the one true bolt to an almost laughable extent. If some those got printed there would be no point in using the original lightning bolt
That's under the sole assumption that every deck would always and only replace lightning bolt. The list definitely has some potential though, the problem is they made the spells more powerful rather than as powerful in different ways. But the truth is a burn deck would use a wide variety of burn spells including both lightning bolt and some less broken versions of these cards, and a jund or grixis control would continue to use the original in addition to other bolts, when other decks like nic fit or company would likely keep the original bolt, and some decks replacing bolt wouldn't be a bad thing as it would allow them to excel in their strategy more precisely anyway. I think a couple of the bolts from the list inherently relatively broken, but the rest have their own place. People do still play chain lightning and rift bolt despite that that lightning bolt is "better."
But, even despite all of what I just said, it is still certainly within the realm of possibility that WoTC could make the strength of their cards relative to something more powerful and let lightning bolt fade away when the next and all future blocks would come out. It is only that at this point in the game, it seems like a much bigger financial risk as those new cards would likely overshadow many older cards that seemed good, and WoTC has these unofficial contracts with players that they won't willfully tank the prices of the super expensive cards, not to mention they'd lose money from their economic shortage.
If you made a spell that said "R: deals 2 damage to target creature or player, each player may scry 1" or "RR: Deals 6 damage to target creature. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost," that's more reasonable. Some decks would prefer the 1-mana lightning bolt, some more focused decks would be willing to go to 2 red mana for the speed or control and deal with the life loss because they'd have either enough defense or speed. To be honest, the imagined RR spell here wouldn't be a bad answer to an eldrazi deck. You'd be able to get rid of a big creature that took you by surprise, but you'd still have to actually pay something for it, and it costs 2 mana instead of one, so a first turn chalice of the void wouldn't shut it down. As for the multi-target spells, we still easily have pyroclasm and arc trail which are sometimes mained or sideboarded as well, yet they're not banned.
If the baseline spells like terror, wrath of god and lightning bolt are to efficient any new version of them needs to do something rather shiny for the new cards to get a look in. It is far better to have a lower base line so variants don't have to be so rediculous yet still provide a reason to use them instead of the baseline version of the spell.
Again, this is an issue with constantly changing relative standards rather than keeping them the same. You don't have to make perpetually better and better cards, you can make cards that are, on the average, as effective but in different ways by choosing one relative standard, and in no way are we limited to talking about burn spells, this discussion can be moved to literally any possible strategy imaginable.
It is on an incredible level. You argue in favor of absolute standards, I argue in favor of relative standards. The reality is that I can be even more liberal to say that no card is op or broken if only so few people play it. Like I said, the issue isn't some petty and inaccurate assumption about absolute power level, it's the diversity of gameplay. People like to win, and they were winning with those broken cards right? So, why were some people unhappy? Because those cards were the only way to compete when people started using them, they overshadowed everything else, the game didn't become about adapting and thinking and being creative, it became about "who's the first person to get this broken card out..."
You misunderstand. My mention was that each deck would have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn
Oh no I understood just fine, and my statement still stands. If there's one strategy that's relatively that broken, then fix it by acknowledging the diversity of gameplay as a factor, you still arrive at my point which is that it still wouldn't have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn. Why, there'd have to be counterspells even more powerful than force of will that could break any alleged first-turn combo that you could imagine, which means no, decks would still be on equal footing throughout multiple turns, just as they are in today's decks despite the fact that some of them can still potentially win on turn 1 and some can't.
My point was that in that degenerate Standard, there actually were a good number of different decks (if it was just one, there wouldn't have needed to be as many bannings as there were). That doesn't change the problems.
But they didn't, not every card was relatively broken. There were some that were, and those cards overshadowed all other cards, forcing people to conform to only those cards to have a fair chance of winning, that's what the problem was. The same cards being used in slightly different decks still puts the emphasis just on those select few cards. If there's a problem with cards making broken combos, then like I said, that's an issue with diversity. Don't only make infinite turn draw 15 cards per turn combos and you won't have the urza problem, it's nothing more than a problem of diversity. Whether WoTC makes more cards as strong but in different ways or removes the cards that are broken to bring the remaining diverse culmination of cards closer to a similar power level, the end result is the same. You're never going to get around this, yet you refuse to acknowledge it no matter how many times I repeat it, it's simply pointless to attempt a reasonable discussion with you.
How does one do that if we're operating on the power level of things like Memory Jar? Because that's what you were saying, that Memory Jar and cards like it are only overpowered/broken if nothing else is at their power level. But how do you put everything else at that power level without making them too efficient?
Firstly, simply by testing testing them. Secondly, you're still making the careless assumption that everything has to be at jar's power level, when in fact I stated that it doesn't on multiple occasions.
Sure, okay, let's have a diversity of strategies that all have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn.
This clearly demonstrates you have no understanding of the issue at all. It is mathematically impossible for equal level decks to all have a 95% win rate. The only reason a deck could have a win rate that high is if it had exceptionally disproportionately powerful cards compared to the rest of the cards.
It wasn't just a few cards, though. There were a bunch of different cards that were powerful.
Uh, no, the majority of cards definitely for sure with 100% certainty were not as powerful as the broken cards from that block. You can easily confirm this by simply looking at the set, and also by the fact that a majority of cards from that set are not in fact banned.
So here you are, arguing that in a past that didn't exist, Dark Ritual wouldn't have been a problem. Guess what? I was referring to a past that did exist, to argue against the claim that Dark Ritual wasn't overpowered in its original environment.
So here you are, strawmanning instead of explaining the past. Guess what? I already explained it and its possible solutions. Whether or not you want to go into denial about it is up to you. Dark ritual itself wasn't broken, it was the broken cards DR was used for that were broken, that's why those cards were banned and not DR.
Oh please, the current Standard is not "diverse" when Metalworks combo is sitting on about 30% of the metagame.
Oh please, every deck snowballs to a time in the spotlight when it's played by some famous player or gets first place once. Doesn't change the fact that you can clearly see a wide variety of successful decks over the course of the last few blocks and all of standard in general.
You claim "How has it possibly not been shown already?" as if my very next paragraph that you neglected to quote didn't answer the question. Here you go again:
You claim it's answered as if that paragraph actually counts as any kind of answer. A card can only be banned if people play too much of it, and the fact that such cards got banned means people were a lot more than interested in playing them which supports my point that people did in fact want to play those tactics. However, a disproportionate number of successful high win-rate decks had *only* those select few, certain broken cards, which is how WoTC was able to tell there was a lack in diversity of the game, and only banned those cards *after* they became too popular and not before. You still haven't circumvented the fact that I can reference many powerful decks that have efficient game-ending tactics of a similar nature. But, those urza cards are banned because they're disproportionately more powerful than the majority of cards, shifting focus from a variety of strategies to only a few strategies utilizing those few cards, which as I said is an issue with diversity. People want to be able to build any deck they can imagine, they don't want to be forced to only buy certain cards to keep up with only certain specific strategies that overshadow everything else.
Natural Order is just a green version of Tinker, yet its legal and an elf deck could use it on turn 3 or even 2, and that's because it's really only an elf deck that can take proper advantage of it and it has to give up a lot of things like removal and counterspells or an army of +2/+2 to do it, not every deck is forced to run natural order to compete. WoTC chose one of a few options that I laid out where they decided to bring down the power level of allowed cards rather than raise everything else. When the game comes down to people only buying a few cards, Wizards loses money, they want a game that encourages many different cards in order to make money which in no way excludes many cards from being powerful and efficient.
Maybe that's what your claim of "the only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies" which doesn't really rebut the point because, even ignoring the fact there's definitely been more than one period where bannings were required (even if we don't count anything from before Legacy was split from Vintage), that's still not answering the point that the environment requires certain cards, a number of them from the Urza's Saga block (or from other sets that were simultaneously legal with Urza's Saga block) that you've claimed could have been okay if only everything else was on the same level as its problematic cards, to be banned. So the format you point to as proof is actually demonstrating the opposite, because even in that format Memory Jar (along with Tolarian Academy, Windfall, and others) has to be banned. The only actual problem with banned cards ever is that they soak up the attention of most of the other cards in competitive play, that's why they only ever get banned *after* they're released and not before.
It bears repeating, yet again, how little your arguments actually relate to my original points.
Still wrong. Not only do they not actually "have" to be banned, because WoTC could still chose to go in the other direction I described at any point in time, but a few cards ideally being banned so that the company is more likely to maintain profit doesn't in any way say that the environment requires certain cards, there's all kinds of new abilities released every single set, not of them are required for anything, they're simply a way to expand possible strategies as I was advocating. Memory jar being banned is just a relative problem. Relative to the cards already in the game and the cards they decided they wanted to print in the future, it seemed disproportionately powerful and was going to overshadow all those cards and a lot of previous cards, which didn't have to be the case obviously. Money is the issue, almost always. It seemed more of a risk to go in one direction than the other, so instead of shifting a lot of production to compensate for people choosing to fixate on a select few cards, they instead took the more efficient rout of banning then.
I mentioned Dark Ritual right there! What "dodge" existed?
So don't you dodge it this time. Your claim was that Memory Jar not seeing play in Legacy was somehow proof that it was A-OK in that environment
Uh, you chose to immediately fixate on memory jar when I in fact mentioned both cards at once, because you think it supports your argument which demonstrates a lack of integrity in your reasoning. Dark ritual being banned and jar not only shows what I said about cards being broken vs op among many cards. Dark ritual was strong in standard, but still in the culmination of cards like in Legacy, it wasn't the problem by a long shot, it was cards like necropotenence that were disproportionately strong, hence why they got banned but DR didn't and why most established decks don't actually use DR.
Sure, obviously not every card is going to be Lightning Bolt-esque. But you end up with a best in every category. So it's not possible, as you claimed, to have every single card be at the same power level. One could maybe do that if there was a small quantity of cards, but with hundreds of new cards each year that isn't possible.
It's possible if you simply diversify the strategies. No one advocates a game where one set contains 4 damage for one mana, thne 5 damage for one mana the next set, then 6 damage for 1 mana the set after that...which is an unlikely and undesired scenario you're referring to.
You're being completely silly here. People hated the format because it was way too high powered. No, it wasn't because they "couldn't afford it" or they "lost to it by surprise." People went into tournaments knowing about these decks, and that's exactly why people were losing interest, because it wasn't at all interesting to play in that kind of environment. You're engaging in this weird revisionist history that just makes you look silly.
Some people knew about the cards, not everyone played the deck that utilized them, but if the problem is environment, the issue is montonoy. So if the problem is power in only a few cards, then two exceptionally obvious solutions are simply to make every card as powerful or bring the broken cards down to a power of the rest of the cards.
And the original discussion of Dark Ritual was Standard, not Legacy. The claim was that it would be too powerful for Standard now but wasn't too powerful in its original environment, and I made the contention that, no, it was kind of too good even in its original environment.
And I made the contention that, no, if the efficiency of the cards was simply leveled, DR wouldn't have been considered op, which is true in any format. DR itself wasn't broken, it was the limited array of cards it was used for at the time. Again, the issue was monotony. One or two strategies become too powerful, so people get frustrated and bored. This only supports my points.
Again, no. All trying to make more cards at the same level of power as the game was during Urza's Saga would have just kept it needlessly degenerate because the game doesn't work properly on that level of power.
Unless you simply have a really wide variety of cards that are as effective, then using that card doesn't actually have an inherent advantage over all other decks. But, again, this is not mutually exclusive with my point because with broken cards banned, they can simply make relatively strong cards rather than the 90% of total crap cards they normally make. It is with no less than 100% certainty that they could make more than enough varieties of cards that are very strong, the only limit is literally imagination, and even that limit will be surpassed once the next generation of computers becomes ubiquitous.
No... that wasn't the only problem. The stuff was just plain too good and trying to put more "diversity" on that level of power wouldn't solve the problem.
Well except that it is actually a possible solution, it is only that there would be a period of time where a few sets made all older sets obsolete, except perhaps alpha, and it would then only be a matter of time before there was enough card diversity. But, it that still does not rule out my point that you don't have to make all cards relatively broken compared to current average cards anyway, they simply could have been made stronger than the average card now but not as strong as the broken cards then.
Although it's a bit amusing you say "you can easily see they are making a much greater effort to make diverse." In what way? By the fact Standard clearly isn't and hasn't been diverse for quite a while? Granted, you said "effort" rather than saying they actually did it, but even there I'm not sure how someone is supposed to "clearly see" that.
How about you go to the thread in the mtgsalvation forums and look at the established standard decks...and then read the wide variety of cards in current sets. They clearly avoided the mistakes of the darksteel block where everything revolved around affinity when they made another artifact block too. It's just as many as you'd get for a style of legacy deck.
How has it possibly not been shown already? Have you ever heard of sneak attack? Or show and tell? Or natural order? Or reanimate? Or even tendrils of agony and force of will and ad nauseam? Those are all exceptionally powerful cards that decide the fate of the game well beyond what an average card does, allowing players to win potentially as fast as turn 3, even faster if they're lucky. You can easily see from the history of established legacy decks that players have clearly demonstrated comfort and open advocacy of extremely efficient, game-ending tactics over the entire history of magic that can even rival cards that are banned. The only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies.
Case and point, players don't have a problem with relatively powerful cards as long as there's enough variety of them to compete with each other to avoid the situation of monotony that you reference. And that's because, as I already said, when there's a lot of "op" cards, no particular card is actually op. An elf deck might seem op to the bulk of 90% of cards that are crap, but when it's pitted against force of will and thoughtseize and pyroclasm, it struggles, it's not just an "I'm always going to win on turn 2" game anymore.
You can, literally, and very very very easily, which is exactly what writers get paid a salary to do. You think every single card WoTC comes up with is the only idea they ever had for that set? There's thousands of more ideas behind the scenes backlogged, but they choose the ones that are most likely to maximize their profit with the current state of the game.
When you have a Lightning Bolt, it isn't really possible to make all of the direct damage spells as good.
So don't make every single spell a direct damage spell that does exactly that thing...
Except it wouldn't because possessing it wouldn't give you an advantage. You don't seem to be grasping this concept of relativity. Op is only op relative to something less effective. If everyone card is efficient, then no one has any particular advantage.
Which then has the general problem that narrow hate cards do.
You're acting like all of this can be micromanaged but it's not really possible when there's so many cards.
If it wasn't possible then hate cards wouldn't already exist. There's still millions of strategies that can be imagined that have yet to be implemented in the game.
Except all the tournament players did know about them back then. People knowing something is broken doesn't somehow make it not broken.
They knew about after they suddenly lost to it by surprise...or were mad because they couldn't afford it like all the richest players could. If every had the same access to all of the same cards, then no one would have a particular advantage.
Few established Legacy decks use Memory Jar because the card is banned. As for Dark Ritual, yes, it's not as overpowered in Legacy, but we were talking largely about Standard (and to a lesser extent Expanded), were we not?
But not dark ritual, right? I don't see it on the banned list. For the most part, and it should exceptionally obvious by how I frequently say "all cards," I'm not talking about standard, I'm talking about legacy.
However, it is worth pointing out that the reason Dark Ritual is okay in Legacy is because they banned a bunch of the cards that it was particularly degenerate with, such as Necropotence or Yawgmoth's Bargain.
Necropotence would still be broken regardless of if dark ritual was banned or not.
Also, now you're changing your argument. Before you were claiming that every card could somehow be of about an equal power level. Now you're saying that an overpowered card isn't as overpowered if there are other such cards around, which is a quite different claim.
I've continuously made both statements and they're not mutually exclusive. It still stands that in the presence of many strong cards, no single card actually stands out as being powerful, they simply accomplish different specific strategies more efficiently than each other, but on the average still have a 50% win rate all against each other. For instance, you might think swords to plowshares is better than lightning bolt. However, if something is removed from the game, a card like tarmogoyf wouldn't be able to take advantage of it.
Or maybe because they just don't like what you end up with when you get the format's power level up that high. You've been making the contention that it was just prices that made people dislike Urza's Saga Standard, when it was the actual environment that was the problem.
If "environment" is the problem, then that's simply an issue of diversity, which is what I've already been advocating, of course along with the prices. I don't agree with their methodology that they only made a few cards ultra strong. They should have made many cards moderately strong or should have brought them down to a level of op. There could have been other cards that were as effective but gave players a different strategy, but, instead of leveling the playing field like I'd suggest, by printing something that was relatively op instead of broken among many other cards that are op in today's standards, then it wouldn't have been any problem at all.
Huh? I said that I thought Swords would be fine in Standard.
And that's fine that you think that, but it doesn't circumvent the fact that it's already been shown players are comfortable with and openly advocate a wide variety of cheap "win as fast as possible" strategies using all kinds of "op" cards. The only problem with the urza block was that there were only a limited number of ways to do that compared to today's culmination of strategies which would both force players to spend money to stay on a level playing field, even though there probably weren't enough printed, and the number of strategies wasn't diverse. But then again, that's just for standard, which today you can easily see they are making a much greater effort to make diverse.
At this point it really seems like it's you who's missing the point. The generalization of power is simply how effectively a card accomplishes a specific strategy. If something has really good unique synergy with a particular set of cards that allows certain cards to win the game and turn the tide, then it can still be just powerful a card as lightning bolt. It is only that you are confusing versatility for power. There are more kinds of decks that something like lightning bolt can pair with, but that doesn't mean the culmination of those decks are automatically guaranteed to be more likely to win over a deck that can effectively use exhume, and vice versa.
Dark Rit has never kept more new players away than in. It took six and a half years to ban the card in Extended because of Trix and Magic absolutely would not have grown within those six years if Ritual did what you said.
You have a valid point otherwise, but really.
Thats is true for back then, but i don´t remember people calling for banings back then like they do today. I don´t remember people crying over blue being too good like they do nowadays. And i don´t remember strategies cut out of the game because they are unfun.
The mentality of the people who play the game has changed drasticly, and that does affect new players coming in. I do believe something like Ritual would be seen way different today. Just look at modern: Seething song banned, rite of flame banned (ok, that one i understand), and still people talking about banning the 2 rituals that are left.
What I can't understand is why counterspell is banned but daze and force of will aren't. Otherwise, I'd say if those people who complained had the money for cards that were just as powerful, they wouldn't complain. New players are always going to complain when they come up against an experienced player, but that's only because they don't know 90% of cards are crap.
You can, literally, and very very very easily, which is exactly what writers get paid a salary to do. You think every single card WoTC comes up with is the only idea they ever had for that set? There's thousands of more ideas behind the scenes backlogged, but they choose the ones that are most likely to maximize their profit with the current state of the game.
And then what if every color had it's own dark ritual? It wouldn't be over powered then. Or, what if there were more ways to counter it? Like a leyline that said "players can only gain mana equal to the number of lands they control" in addition to something else useful.
No, I was saying that pointing to a bunch of cards from the Urza's Saga set was a weird place to try to say was a great time for Magic when it clearly wasn't.
But, it would only be a bad time for magic if the crazy combos took you by surprise. If everyone knew about them and had them, it wouldn't have been a big deal, which is a matter of marketing and information. Or alternatively, if the price was lower, anyone could easily buy the cards to compete.
Uh, no, they were kinda OP back in their original environment too. That's why they discontinued them (or in the case of Dark Ritual or Memory Jar, banned them outright).
I would say a card being overpowered for standard is somewhat different than a card being overpowered compared to every card. If they're really that over powered, how come so few established legacy decks use them? Unless uh, no, cards aren't overpowered when there's lots of other powerful cards to choose from.
No, all that'd do is create problematic degeneracy where all the decks are winning in the first few turns when you crank the power level up that high. Extended circa 2003 seems to be the kind of format that'd be the result of what you're advocating, where you technically had diversity of decks, but thanks to the high power level all of them are just based around doing stupid things on turn 2 or 3 which is why they had to go on a bit of a banning spree towards the end of the year.
All decks cannot possibly win in the first few turns, someone has to lose. Generally decks that try to win in the first few turns, when pitted against each other, struggle against each other or against control decks. An elf deck would definitely have trouble against a burn or delver deck. If everyone has an op deck, then everyone really just has an average deck. They're only op relatively to the bulk of crappy cards. The problem is the definition of op that you're using isn't actually op, it's broken.
And if you haven't noticed, winning as fast as possible isn't exactly uncommon, it's the goal of most decks. Openly, all the best players use all kinds of extreme or cheap and kniving tactics with things like reanimate or natural order or show and tell which only shows that players are comfortable with those strategies and openly advocate them when they actually have access to them. And yet, despite what you say, there's no deck that has a 100% win rate, because op isn't op when every opponent's deck is just as op. When everyone has "op" cards, it's about the player's skill and sideboarding. The only reason people complain is because the prices of cards limits their own access to those same kinds of strategies.
Op just means "ahead of current standards" but broken means "breaks the game," you refer to every card being broken, I simply refer to every card being op relative to an average card right now. Dark ritual is certainly more efficient than an average card, but it doesn't really break the game. Swords to plowshares or force of will are certainly better cards than the average card, but they don't break the game. Why? Because there's thousands of other op cards of diverse strategies that are just as powerful.
Also, the idea of "make everything as good as them and they'll be fine" is thwarted a bit when you consider the fact that some of those cards get better based on other cards being better, like Exhume.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, the specialization of strategies is exactly what people want. More cards developed means better chances of focusing on a specific strategy that people can imagine.
But the point of playing the game is to have fun, for entertainment, correct? If people enjoyed the game more with those cards, it would stand to reason that cards of a similar effectiveness should be printed. If the game is unhealthy, then inherently people wouldn't enjoy the game.
Again, your logic is flawed. In an earlier post you stated confidence in keeping power levels constant, but that task is far more difficult (and ineffective) than you describe. Power level is often difficult to measure in this game because the game can be played in so many different ways. How, specifically, would you design a set at the same power level while feeling unique?
Simply by using your brain to come up with an idea, and running simulations to make sure the win rate is on average 50% against a variety of decks.
What people want is power creep; consumers want to buy a new product because it is better than whatever came before.
Not necessarily because it's better overall, but simply because there is one aspect of it that is better for a specific strategy. If what you're saying was true, everyone would always have Progenitus out by turn 1 by this point in time. You might have one card that cost little mana with a power of 2 and has haste, or in turn there might be a big card for 5 mana that has 5 power and haste and trample. One card is meant for a quick burn deck, the other is meant more for mid range. They're both valid strategies, they're just different. There's an inconceivable number of combinations of mechanics and strategies and combos that a card could be advantageous for. The goal of printing new cards should be to introduce new strategies and cover the gaps or flaws of preexisting ones, which aren't mutually exclusive, and thus become closer to letting anyone make any deck they can imagine.
Your connection between enjoyment and a health is overly simplistic. Standard being unhealthy right now doesn't affect the enjoyment of modern players, who have a superbly healthy format right now. A bad limited format only bothers those who play draft or sealed. EDH communities self-police problems. Many people only play casual "kitchen table" Magic can have fun even if Wizards makes a mistake that turns every competitive format into a tire fire.
So what you're saying is the game can be "unhealthy" while players are still happily playing it, but if that's the case, there's no actual problem then. Healthy from the perspective of what WoTC might arbitrarily decide as probability of getting an op card is different than players actually enjoying the game by having he freedom to explore any strategy they want, relying on skill and creativity to win, instead of dreading it.
Nostalgia should never be used to inform current policies. Nothing good comes of it. Nostalgia is a seeping poison that corrupts the mind and muddles the senses. It's rarely accurate, and it frequently leaves out crucial details.
That's not necessarily true. If someone was nostalgic for something that means it provided some benefit to them over a long time. If someone was nostalgic for older cards, it would likely mean those older cards were more fun or there were more people playing with more fun decks that utilized those cards.
Sometime, but not always. The key pitfall of nostalgia is that everybody tends to notice external changes much more than internal ones. Comments on how much the game has changed are very common. Comments on how much individuals enjoy playing the game changed over time are much rarer, but they are equally, if not more, important as whatever changes the game sustained. Preference for one's early days playing the game are often entirely independent of how healthy the game actually was at that point in time. The not-always-true equivalency you stated hides serious negatives.
But the point of playing the game is to have fun, for entertainment, correct? If people enjoyed the game more with those cards, it would stand to reason that cards of a similar effectiveness should be printed. If the game is unhealthy, then inherently people wouldn't enjoy the game.
Nostalgia should never be used to inform current policies. Nothing good comes of it. Nostalgia is a seeping poison that corrupts the mind and muddles the senses. It's rarely accurate, and it frequently leaves out crucial details.
That's not necessarily true. If someone was nostalgic for something that means it provided some benefit to them over a long time. If someone was nostalgic for older cards, it would likely mean those older cards were more fun or there were more people playing with more fun decks that utilized those cards.
Because that wouldn't have been possible. You can't have every card be as efficient as those cards, unless you're committed to releasing only 10 cards a set.
Well except you can, you'd simply have to put the effort into just thinking of a different strategy or mechanic.
What does this have to do with my original point anyway?
Colt had a couple points or implications I agreed with, like that there are an increasing number of formats which favor only newer cards, despite the fact that the older cards were more "explosive" but could have continued to be printed as such without damaging the integrity of the game had they been printed with a high enough frequency and enough diversity.
Moreover, the current trends show that older cards tend to be more powerful, so a card like dark ritual would actually be pretty overpowered in a much more limited format like standard today where a lot of cards are less efficient, but you also indicated that you disliked the older sets because there were more op cards. However, those cards are only op relative to standard cards today, and furthermore, if op cards were more common, then they wouldn't actually be op, they would just be average.
The game used to be far more diverse, explosive, and interesting. Dark Ritual, Exhume, Memory Jar, Turnabout, Swords to Plowshares, and Lightning bolt were built to be high impact cards that could swing the tide of the game when used with creatures and other spells. Those certainly would break the game as it is now, but that's only because they tried to turn this game into an over complicated mid-ranged affair with walkers.
"Those certainly would break the game as it is now." That's ignoring the fact some of them broke the game as it was back then. Dark Ritual was eventually banned in Extended, and Memory Jar got banned pretty much everywhere. Weirdly, Memory Jar might actually be safer in Standard nowadays because the mana acceleration isn't as powerful and there isn't Megrim (or the better Megrim, Liliana's Caress) to combo with, but you throw out the name as if Memory Jar didn't break the game in its original environment.
And while Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares didn't break the game back then (then again, they wouldn't now either--heck, Bolt came back for two years in Standard), even back then they did recognize the fact the cards were a bit above the power level they'd normally want and discontinued them.
Exhume would be kinda crazy today, but that's largely because creatures are better than they used to be and has nothing whatsoever to do with planeswalkers. Turnabout would probably be perfectly fine as long as they didn't put something like High Tide in the same environment, which was the main reason that card was good back then.
Your statement gets even weirder when we consider the original environments some of those cards were printed in. Turnabout, Exhume, and Memory Jar were from the Urza's Saga block... is that really a time we're supposed to be nostalgic for? The time period where things were so utterly broken that, in the space of one year, they had to ban/restrict 10 cards in Standard, 10 cards in Extended, 7 cards in Block Constructed, and 23 cards in Vintage/Legacy?
There is one principal which would resolve all disputes related to this: if enough "op" cards are reprinted such that everyone has op cards, no one has op cards, because being op would simply be the new normal, there'd be nothing wrong with being nostalgic then.
I'm very confused about what you're talking about here. I think it's supposed to be the "if everything is overpowered, nothing is overpowered" as a defense to the problems of the Urza's Saga block, and that if everything else has been made more powerful, it would've balanced out. Two problems. First, that wasn't the case back then, so you're speaking of some hypothetical alternate past, which seems a lousy way to resolve a dispute; it's being nostalgic for a time that didn't exist. Second, introducing more overpowered cards wouldn't have fixed up the problems, because the only way to beat those degenerate decks was to be even more degenerate, so you'd basically end up with the exact same problems that they had before.
Every legacy player knows 90% of the cards in the game will never get played in a tournament-worthy deck in a million years anyway.
I have no idea what relevance this statement has.
In terms of all players that includes casual and short-term players who don't really care, that time didn't exist, but in terms of the official state of the game, in tournaments where players always only had the best cards among the players who decided the best strategies, it did exist. And again, variety over indefinite overpoweredness. They don't have to print things that are perpetually more powerful, they can simply print cards that are as effective but in different ways. The current trends were dictated more by economics though. Not every player was interested in investing the money or time to strategize and buy the best cards for their desired strategy, so the economics favored easier and less powerful cards as time went on, especially for younger people who continued to be a growing demographic. But, that's only because WoTC had started off with the trend that only a few cards were op among the bulk anyway. If by that point in the game, if every card was as efficient as lightning bolt or dark confidant, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
The game used to be far more diverse, explosive, and interesting. Dark Ritual, Exhume, Memory Jar, Turnabout, Swords to Plowshares, and Lightning bolt were built to be high impact cards that could swing the tide of the game when used with creatures and other spells. Those certainly would break the game as it is now, but that's only because they tried to turn this game into an over complicated mid-ranged affair with walkers.
"Those certainly would break the game as it is now." That's ignoring the fact some of them broke the game as it was back then. Dark Ritual was eventually banned in Extended, and Memory Jar got banned pretty much everywhere. Weirdly, Memory Jar might actually be safer in Standard nowadays because the mana acceleration isn't as powerful and there isn't Megrim (or the better Megrim, Liliana's Caress) to combo with, but you throw out the name as if Memory Jar didn't break the game in its original environment.
And while Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares didn't break the game back then (then again, they wouldn't now either--heck, Bolt came back for two years in Standard), even back then they did recognize the fact the cards were a bit above the power level they'd normally want and discontinued them.
Exhume would be kinda crazy today, but that's largely because creatures are better than they used to be and has nothing whatsoever to do with planeswalkers. Turnabout would probably be perfectly fine as long as they didn't put something like High Tide in the same environment, which was the main reason that card was good back then.
Your statement gets even weirder when we consider the original environments some of those cards were printed in. Turnabout, Exhume, and Memory Jar were from the Urza's Saga block... is that really a time we're supposed to be nostalgic for? The time period where things were so utterly broken that, in the space of one year, they had to ban/restrict 10 cards in Standard, 10 cards in Extended, 7 cards in Block Constructed, and 23 cards in Vintage/Legacy?
There is one principal which would resolve these disputes: if enough "op" cards are reprinted such that everyone has op cards, no one has op cards, because being op would simply be the new normal, there'd be nothing wrong with being nostalgic then. Those cards are only op relative to the bulk of crappy cards that are printed now, but the urza cards would only be average compared to the core cards from the alpha/beta editions. Every legacy player knows 90% of the cards in the game will never get played in a tournament-worthy deck in a million years anyway, so players really don't have anything against op combos unless they're on the losing side of them.
Then you get where Yu-Gi-Oh is right now, with having to print even more powerful cards every set to keep up with the crazy powerful cards they printed last set. Then ban the old stuff.
Some people don't like the wax and wane style of power creep/power seep in Magic. I prefer it over out of control power creep.
Or they don't "have" to print more op cards, they could just keep printing cards that are exactly as op but simply in different ways, offering more strategies and mechanics. I tend to favor this because it means usable cards compared to the whole of noteworthy cards would appear much more often, but with current trends, only the oldest cards are the most powerful and expensive which favors the much more limited and ironically more expensive standard format.
The game used to be far more diverse, explosive, and interesting. Dark Ritual, Exhume, Memory Jar, Turnabout, Swords to Plowshares, and Lightning bolt were built to be high impact cards that could swing the tide of the game when used with creatures and other spells. Those certainly would break the game as it is now, but that's only because they tried to turn this game into an over complicated mid-ranged affair with walkers.
"Those certainly would break the game as it is now." That's ignoring the fact some of them broke the game as it was back then. Dark Ritual was eventually banned in Extended, and Memory Jar got banned pretty much everywhere. Weirdly, Memory Jar might actually be safer in Standard nowadays because the mana acceleration isn't as powerful and there isn't Megrim (or the better Megrim, Liliana's Caress) to combo with, but you throw out the name as if Memory Jar didn't break the game in its original environment.
And while Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares didn't break the game back then (then again, they wouldn't now either--heck, Bolt came back for two years in Standard), even back then they did recognize the fact the cards were a bit above the power level they'd normally want and discontinued them.
Exhume would be kinda crazy today, but that's largely because creatures are better than they used to be and has nothing whatsoever to do with planeswalkers. Turnabout would probably be perfectly fine as long as they didn't put something like High Tide in the same environment, which was the main reason that card was good back then.
Your statement gets even weirder when we consider the original environments some of those cards were printed in. Turnabout, Exhume, and Memory Jar were from the Urza's Saga block... is that really a time we're supposed to be nostalgic for? The time period where things were so utterly broken that, in the space of one year, they had to ban/restrict 10 cards in Standard, 10 cards in Extended, 7 cards in Block Constructed, and 23 cards in Vintage/Legacy?
There is one principal which would resolve these disputes: if enough "op" cards are reprinted such that everyone has op cards, no one has op cards, because being op would simply be the new normal, there'd be nothing wrong with being nostalgic then. Those cards are only op relative to the bulk of crappy cards that are printed now, but the urza cards would only be average compared to the core cards from the alpha/beta editions. Every legacy player knows 90% of the cards in the game will never get played in a tournament-worthy deck in a million years anyway, so players really don't have anything against op combos until they're on the losing side of them.
I like how they use the word "generous" as if it actually applies, when the reality is WoTC has a monopoly on the card game industry that is measurably detrimental to the world economy. The game is simply a means of entertainment, these flimsy pieces of cardboard marginally cost like 4 cents to produce, maybe 10 before shipping in bulk, at most and shipping would probably boost it. WoTC could always print any and all artwork they want at any time they want, but instead of making the game about allowing people to build the creative decks they want, they made it solely about taking as much money from people as they can get away with. All someone needs to do is create a card game of similar to greater complexity with the same universally appealing style of artwork except sell the cards for $1-$2 a piece. Half the people who see it who are familiar with magic will resist, but gradually over time come over to it as friends or people they know choose it over the vastly more expensive magic, and the hardcore fans will fight for some sentimental integrity aspect for the game, but overall will gradually stop participating in the game altogether. Wizards will gradually and appropriately go bankrupt if they do not adapt by lowering their prices, then and people will get what they want. And if the new company does the same, old magic card concepts can be revived, it's not like someone removed them from the game. The only barrier of this is investment money, only a game designer or mathematician with a sufficiently large reputation would be able to garner the loans or investors to fund the $500,000-$1,500,000 or so startup costs that it would take to create a company that would start competing with WoTC, assuming that the company only starts locally. A kickstarter fund wouldn't work because publicly revealing the plans would allow WoTC to legally prepare much too well in advance to immediately sue the new company for alleged infringement on intellectual property rights and/or create counter marketing measures with their vast array of elite lawyers. At a certain point in the future though, it won't matter. WoTC will have grown too big and own too many different games and ideas, the only hope would be if the Federal Trade Commission stepped in after it could be shown WoTC is abusing its monopoly.
That's under the sole assumption that every deck would always and only replace lightning bolt. The list definitely has some potential though, the problem is they made the spells more powerful rather than as powerful in different ways. But the truth is a burn deck would use a wide variety of burn spells including both lightning bolt and some less broken versions of these cards, and a jund or grixis control would continue to use the original in addition to other bolts, when other decks like nic fit or company would likely keep the original bolt, and some decks replacing bolt wouldn't be a bad thing as it would allow them to excel in their strategy more precisely anyway. I think a couple of the bolts from the list inherently relatively broken, but the rest have their own place. People do still play chain lightning and rift bolt despite that that lightning bolt is "better."
But, even despite all of what I just said, it is still certainly within the realm of possibility that WoTC could make the strength of their cards relative to something more powerful and let lightning bolt fade away when the next and all future blocks would come out. It is only that at this point in the game, it seems like a much bigger financial risk as those new cards would likely overshadow many older cards that seemed good, and WoTC has these unofficial contracts with players that they won't willfully tank the prices of the super expensive cards, not to mention they'd lose money from their economic shortage.
If you made a spell that said "R: deals 2 damage to target creature or player, each player may scry 1" or "RR: Deals 6 damage to target creature. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost," that's more reasonable. Some decks would prefer the 1-mana lightning bolt, some more focused decks would be willing to go to 2 red mana for the speed or control and deal with the life loss because they'd have either enough defense or speed. To be honest, the imagined RR spell here wouldn't be a bad answer to an eldrazi deck. You'd be able to get rid of a big creature that took you by surprise, but you'd still have to actually pay something for it, and it costs 2 mana instead of one, so a first turn chalice of the void wouldn't shut it down. As for the multi-target spells, we still easily have pyroclasm and arc trail which are sometimes mained or sideboarded as well, yet they're not banned.
Again, this is an issue with constantly changing relative standards rather than keeping them the same. You don't have to make perpetually better and better cards, you can make cards that are, on the average, as effective but in different ways by choosing one relative standard, and in no way are we limited to talking about burn spells, this discussion can be moved to literally any possible strategy imaginable.
It is on an incredible level. You argue in favor of absolute standards, I argue in favor of relative standards. The reality is that I can be even more liberal to say that no card is op or broken if only so few people play it. Like I said, the issue isn't some petty and inaccurate assumption about absolute power level, it's the diversity of gameplay. People like to win, and they were winning with those broken cards right? So, why were some people unhappy? Because those cards were the only way to compete when people started using them, they overshadowed everything else, the game didn't become about adapting and thinking and being creative, it became about "who's the first person to get this broken card out..."
Oh no I understood just fine, and my statement still stands. If there's one strategy that's relatively that broken, then fix it by acknowledging the diversity of gameplay as a factor, you still arrive at my point which is that it still wouldn't have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn. Why, there'd have to be counterspells even more powerful than force of will that could break any alleged first-turn combo that you could imagine, which means no, decks would still be on equal footing throughout multiple turns, just as they are in today's decks despite the fact that some of them can still potentially win on turn 1 and some can't.
But they didn't, not every card was relatively broken. There were some that were, and those cards overshadowed all other cards, forcing people to conform to only those cards to have a fair chance of winning, that's what the problem was. The same cards being used in slightly different decks still puts the emphasis just on those select few cards. If there's a problem with cards making broken combos, then like I said, that's an issue with diversity. Don't only make infinite turn draw 15 cards per turn combos and you won't have the urza problem, it's nothing more than a problem of diversity. Whether WoTC makes more cards as strong but in different ways or removes the cards that are broken to bring the remaining diverse culmination of cards closer to a similar power level, the end result is the same. You're never going to get around this, yet you refuse to acknowledge it no matter how many times I repeat it, it's simply pointless to attempt a reasonable discussion with you.
Firstly, simply by testing testing them. Secondly, you're still making the careless assumption that everything has to be at jar's power level, when in fact I stated that it doesn't on multiple occasions.
This clearly demonstrates you have no understanding of the issue at all. It is mathematically impossible for equal level decks to all have a 95% win rate. The only reason a deck could have a win rate that high is if it had exceptionally disproportionately powerful cards compared to the rest of the cards.
Uh, no, the majority of cards definitely for sure with 100% certainty were not as powerful as the broken cards from that block. You can easily confirm this by simply looking at the set, and also by the fact that a majority of cards from that set are not in fact banned.
So here you are, strawmanning instead of explaining the past. Guess what? I already explained it and its possible solutions. Whether or not you want to go into denial about it is up to you. Dark ritual itself wasn't broken, it was the broken cards DR was used for that were broken, that's why those cards were banned and not DR.
Oh please, every deck snowballs to a time in the spotlight when it's played by some famous player or gets first place once. Doesn't change the fact that you can clearly see a wide variety of successful decks over the course of the last few blocks and all of standard in general.
You claim it's answered as if that paragraph actually counts as any kind of answer. A card can only be banned if people play too much of it, and the fact that such cards got banned means people were a lot more than interested in playing them which supports my point that people did in fact want to play those tactics. However, a disproportionate number of successful high win-rate decks had *only* those select few, certain broken cards, which is how WoTC was able to tell there was a lack in diversity of the game, and only banned those cards *after* they became too popular and not before. You still haven't circumvented the fact that I can reference many powerful decks that have efficient game-ending tactics of a similar nature. But, those urza cards are banned because they're disproportionately more powerful than the majority of cards, shifting focus from a variety of strategies to only a few strategies utilizing those few cards, which as I said is an issue with diversity. People want to be able to build any deck they can imagine, they don't want to be forced to only buy certain cards to keep up with only certain specific strategies that overshadow everything else.
Natural Order is just a green version of Tinker, yet its legal and an elf deck could use it on turn 3 or even 2, and that's because it's really only an elf deck that can take proper advantage of it and it has to give up a lot of things like removal and counterspells or an army of +2/+2 to do it, not every deck is forced to run natural order to compete. WoTC chose one of a few options that I laid out where they decided to bring down the power level of allowed cards rather than raise everything else. When the game comes down to people only buying a few cards, Wizards loses money, they want a game that encourages many different cards in order to make money which in no way excludes many cards from being powerful and efficient.
Still wrong. Not only do they not actually "have" to be banned, because WoTC could still chose to go in the other direction I described at any point in time, but a few cards ideally being banned so that the company is more likely to maintain profit doesn't in any way say that the environment requires certain cards, there's all kinds of new abilities released every single set, not of them are required for anything, they're simply a way to expand possible strategies as I was advocating. Memory jar being banned is just a relative problem. Relative to the cards already in the game and the cards they decided they wanted to print in the future, it seemed disproportionately powerful and was going to overshadow all those cards and a lot of previous cards, which didn't have to be the case obviously. Money is the issue, almost always. It seemed more of a risk to go in one direction than the other, so instead of shifting a lot of production to compensate for people choosing to fixate on a select few cards, they instead took the more efficient rout of banning then.
Uh, you chose to immediately fixate on memory jar when I in fact mentioned both cards at once, because you think it supports your argument which demonstrates a lack of integrity in your reasoning. Dark ritual being banned and jar not only shows what I said about cards being broken vs op among many cards. Dark ritual was strong in standard, but still in the culmination of cards like in Legacy, it wasn't the problem by a long shot, it was cards like necropotenence that were disproportionately strong, hence why they got banned but DR didn't and why most established decks don't actually use DR.
It's possible if you simply diversify the strategies. No one advocates a game where one set contains 4 damage for one mana, thne 5 damage for one mana the next set, then 6 damage for 1 mana the set after that...which is an unlikely and undesired scenario you're referring to.
So don't make them "too" efficient...
So make more than one strategy...
Some people knew about the cards, not everyone played the deck that utilized them, but if the problem is environment, the issue is montonoy. So if the problem is power in only a few cards, then two exceptionally obvious solutions are simply to make every card as powerful or bring the broken cards down to a power of the rest of the cards.
And I made the contention that, no, if the efficiency of the cards was simply leveled, DR wouldn't have been considered op, which is true in any format. DR itself wasn't broken, it was the limited array of cards it was used for at the time. Again, the issue was monotony. One or two strategies become too powerful, so people get frustrated and bored. This only supports my points.
Because you dodged the point about dark ritual...
Unless you simply have a really wide variety of cards that are as effective, then using that card doesn't actually have an inherent advantage over all other decks. But, again, this is not mutually exclusive with my point because with broken cards banned, they can simply make relatively strong cards rather than the 90% of total crap cards they normally make. It is with no less than 100% certainty that they could make more than enough varieties of cards that are very strong, the only limit is literally imagination, and even that limit will be surpassed once the next generation of computers becomes ubiquitous.
Well except that it is actually a possible solution, it is only that there would be a period of time where a few sets made all older sets obsolete, except perhaps alpha, and it would then only be a matter of time before there was enough card diversity. But, it that still does not rule out my point that you don't have to make all cards relatively broken compared to current average cards anyway, they simply could have been made stronger than the average card now but not as strong as the broken cards then.
How about you go to the thread in the mtgsalvation forums and look at the established standard decks...and then read the wide variety of cards in current sets. They clearly avoided the mistakes of the darksteel block where everything revolved around affinity when they made another artifact block too. It's just as many as you'd get for a style of legacy deck.
How has it possibly not been shown already? Have you ever heard of sneak attack? Or show and tell? Or natural order? Or reanimate? Or even tendrils of agony and force of will and ad nauseam? Those are all exceptionally powerful cards that decide the fate of the game well beyond what an average card does, allowing players to win potentially as fast as turn 3, even faster if they're lucky. You can easily see from the history of established legacy decks that players have clearly demonstrated comfort and open advocacy of extremely efficient, game-ending tactics over the entire history of magic that can even rival cards that are banned. The only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies.
Case and point, players don't have a problem with relatively powerful cards as long as there's enough variety of them to compete with each other to avoid the situation of monotony that you reference. And that's because, as I already said, when there's a lot of "op" cards, no particular card is actually op. An elf deck might seem op to the bulk of 90% of cards that are crap, but when it's pitted against force of will and thoughtseize and pyroclasm, it struggles, it's not just an "I'm always going to win on turn 2" game anymore.
So don't make every single spell a direct damage spell that does exactly that thing...
Except it wouldn't because possessing it wouldn't give you an advantage. You don't seem to be grasping this concept of relativity. Op is only op relative to something less effective. If everyone card is efficient, then no one has any particular advantage.
If it wasn't possible then hate cards wouldn't already exist. There's still millions of strategies that can be imagined that have yet to be implemented in the game.
They knew about after they suddenly lost to it by surprise...or were mad because they couldn't afford it like all the richest players could. If every had the same access to all of the same cards, then no one would have a particular advantage.
But not dark ritual, right? I don't see it on the banned list. For the most part, and it should exceptionally obvious by how I frequently say "all cards," I'm not talking about standard, I'm talking about legacy.
Necropotence would still be broken regardless of if dark ritual was banned or not.
I've continuously made both statements and they're not mutually exclusive. It still stands that in the presence of many strong cards, no single card actually stands out as being powerful, they simply accomplish different specific strategies more efficiently than each other, but on the average still have a 50% win rate all against each other. For instance, you might think swords to plowshares is better than lightning bolt. However, if something is removed from the game, a card like tarmogoyf wouldn't be able to take advantage of it.
If "environment" is the problem, then that's simply an issue of diversity, which is what I've already been advocating, of course along with the prices. I don't agree with their methodology that they only made a few cards ultra strong. They should have made many cards moderately strong or should have brought them down to a level of op. There could have been other cards that were as effective but gave players a different strategy, but, instead of leveling the playing field like I'd suggest, by printing something that was relatively op instead of broken among many other cards that are op in today's standards, then it wouldn't have been any problem at all.
And that's fine that you think that, but it doesn't circumvent the fact that it's already been shown players are comfortable with and openly advocate a wide variety of cheap "win as fast as possible" strategies using all kinds of "op" cards. The only problem with the urza block was that there were only a limited number of ways to do that compared to today's culmination of strategies which would both force players to spend money to stay on a level playing field, even though there probably weren't enough printed, and the number of strategies wasn't diverse. But then again, that's just for standard, which today you can easily see they are making a much greater effort to make diverse.
At this point it really seems like it's you who's missing the point. The generalization of power is simply how effectively a card accomplishes a specific strategy. If something has really good unique synergy with a particular set of cards that allows certain cards to win the game and turn the tide, then it can still be just powerful a card as lightning bolt. It is only that you are confusing versatility for power. There are more kinds of decks that something like lightning bolt can pair with, but that doesn't mean the culmination of those decks are automatically guaranteed to be more likely to win over a deck that can effectively use exhume, and vice versa.
What I can't understand is why counterspell is banned but daze and force of will aren't. Otherwise, I'd say if those people who complained had the money for cards that were just as powerful, they wouldn't complain. New players are always going to complain when they come up against an experienced player, but that's only because they don't know 90% of cards are crap.
You can, literally, and very very very easily, which is exactly what writers get paid a salary to do. You think every single card WoTC comes up with is the only idea they ever had for that set? There's thousands of more ideas behind the scenes backlogged, but they choose the ones that are most likely to maximize their profit with the current state of the game.
And then what if every color had it's own dark ritual? It wouldn't be over powered then. Or, what if there were more ways to counter it? Like a leyline that said "players can only gain mana equal to the number of lands they control" in addition to something else useful.
But, it would only be a bad time for magic if the crazy combos took you by surprise. If everyone knew about them and had them, it wouldn't have been a big deal, which is a matter of marketing and information. Or alternatively, if the price was lower, anyone could easily buy the cards to compete.
I would say a card being overpowered for standard is somewhat different than a card being overpowered compared to every card. If they're really that over powered, how come so few established legacy decks use them? Unless uh, no, cards aren't overpowered when there's lots of other powerful cards to choose from.
All decks cannot possibly win in the first few turns, someone has to lose. Generally decks that try to win in the first few turns, when pitted against each other, struggle against each other or against control decks. An elf deck would definitely have trouble against a burn or delver deck. If everyone has an op deck, then everyone really just has an average deck. They're only op relatively to the bulk of crappy cards. The problem is the definition of op that you're using isn't actually op, it's broken.
And if you haven't noticed, winning as fast as possible isn't exactly uncommon, it's the goal of most decks. Openly, all the best players use all kinds of extreme or cheap and kniving tactics with things like reanimate or natural order or show and tell which only shows that players are comfortable with those strategies and openly advocate them when they actually have access to them. And yet, despite what you say, there's no deck that has a 100% win rate, because op isn't op when every opponent's deck is just as op. When everyone has "op" cards, it's about the player's skill and sideboarding. The only reason people complain is because the prices of cards limits their own access to those same kinds of strategies.
Op just means "ahead of current standards" but broken means "breaks the game," you refer to every card being broken, I simply refer to every card being op relative to an average card right now. Dark ritual is certainly more efficient than an average card, but it doesn't really break the game. Swords to plowshares or force of will are certainly better cards than the average card, but they don't break the game. Why? Because there's thousands of other op cards of diverse strategies that are just as powerful.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, the specialization of strategies is exactly what people want. More cards developed means better chances of focusing on a specific strategy that people can imagine.
Simply by using your brain to come up with an idea, and running simulations to make sure the win rate is on average 50% against a variety of decks.
Not necessarily because it's better overall, but simply because there is one aspect of it that is better for a specific strategy. If what you're saying was true, everyone would always have Progenitus out by turn 1 by this point in time. You might have one card that cost little mana with a power of 2 and has haste, or in turn there might be a big card for 5 mana that has 5 power and haste and trample. One card is meant for a quick burn deck, the other is meant more for mid range. They're both valid strategies, they're just different. There's an inconceivable number of combinations of mechanics and strategies and combos that a card could be advantageous for. The goal of printing new cards should be to introduce new strategies and cover the gaps or flaws of preexisting ones, which aren't mutually exclusive, and thus become closer to letting anyone make any deck they can imagine.
So what you're saying is the game can be "unhealthy" while players are still happily playing it, but if that's the case, there's no actual problem then. Healthy from the perspective of what WoTC might arbitrarily decide as probability of getting an op card is different than players actually enjoying the game by having he freedom to explore any strategy they want, relying on skill and creativity to win, instead of dreading it.
But the point of playing the game is to have fun, for entertainment, correct? If people enjoyed the game more with those cards, it would stand to reason that cards of a similar effectiveness should be printed. If the game is unhealthy, then inherently people wouldn't enjoy the game.
That's not necessarily true. If someone was nostalgic for something that means it provided some benefit to them over a long time. If someone was nostalgic for older cards, it would likely mean those older cards were more fun or there were more people playing with more fun decks that utilized those cards.
Well except you can, you'd simply have to put the effort into just thinking of a different strategy or mechanic.
Colt had a couple points or implications I agreed with, like that there are an increasing number of formats which favor only newer cards, despite the fact that the older cards were more "explosive" but could have continued to be printed as such without damaging the integrity of the game had they been printed with a high enough frequency and enough diversity.
Moreover, the current trends show that older cards tend to be more powerful, so a card like dark ritual would actually be pretty overpowered in a much more limited format like standard today where a lot of cards are less efficient, but you also indicated that you disliked the older sets because there were more op cards. However, those cards are only op relative to standard cards today, and furthermore, if op cards were more common, then they wouldn't actually be op, they would just be average.
In terms of all players that includes casual and short-term players who don't really care, that time didn't exist, but in terms of the official state of the game, in tournaments where players always only had the best cards among the players who decided the best strategies, it did exist. And again, variety over indefinite overpoweredness. They don't have to print things that are perpetually more powerful, they can simply print cards that are as effective but in different ways. The current trends were dictated more by economics though. Not every player was interested in investing the money or time to strategize and buy the best cards for their desired strategy, so the economics favored easier and less powerful cards as time went on, especially for younger people who continued to be a growing demographic. But, that's only because WoTC had started off with the trend that only a few cards were op among the bulk anyway. If by that point in the game, if every card was as efficient as lightning bolt or dark confidant, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Or they don't "have" to print more op cards, they could just keep printing cards that are exactly as op but simply in different ways, offering more strategies and mechanics. I tend to favor this because it means usable cards compared to the whole of noteworthy cards would appear much more often, but with current trends, only the oldest cards are the most powerful and expensive which favors the much more limited and ironically more expensive standard format.
There is one principal which would resolve these disputes: if enough "op" cards are reprinted such that everyone has op cards, no one has op cards, because being op would simply be the new normal, there'd be nothing wrong with being nostalgic then. Those cards are only op relative to the bulk of crappy cards that are printed now, but the urza cards would only be average compared to the core cards from the alpha/beta editions. Every legacy player knows 90% of the cards in the game will never get played in a tournament-worthy deck in a million years anyway, so players really don't have anything against op combos until they're on the losing side of them.