They were only reprinted once...I mean, just because they are efficient for their cost, I don't think they deserve as much hate as they get from standard players.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
When does lightning bolt kill Emrakul? When your opponent's at three.
They were only reprinted once...I mean, just because they are efficient for their cost, I don't think they deserve as much hate as they get from standard players.
One printing was one too many. They weren't necessarily broken, they just warped standard in a bad way.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern (I collect the format):
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron WDeath and Taxes WSoul Sisters RWG Pod Combo URSplinter Twin URStorm RBurn
They were only reprinted once...I mean, just because they are efficient for their cost, I don't think they deserve as much hate as they get from standard players.
Like I said most over-printed cycle ever. Despite my lack of trusting a word that falls out of MaRo's mouth, I do believe it when he said reprinting them was a mistake. It was a mistake. A lot of people I know have quit because of the Titans getting reprinted. Some came back for INN, but then left again or just stuck to money drafting. Some guys I know haven't touched Standard since Valakut was a deck, and they do not intend to until the Titans go away.
I'll never touch Standard again. 2 years of dealing with this Titan or that Titan is enough. It's boring, lame and repetitive. A game for fun shouldn't cost $300 every year and play almost exactly the same as the year before. If that is the direction WOTC is going to take this game, they are going to start losing a lot of customers. My honest opinion is that Maro needs to go. A very large portion of the problems that we players have experienced with particular cards can be traced back to him.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy Decks
~~~~~~~~~
Too many to list efficiently. Find me online with the same SN if you want to play, or message me here to set up a time to play.
Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
^^ This true, Valakut was pretty broken with P. Titan though.
Like I said most over-printed cycle ever. Despite my lack of trusting a word that falls out of MaRo's mouth, I do believe it when he said reprinting them was a mistake. It was a mistake. A lot of people I know have quit because of the Titans getting reprinted. Some came back for INN, but then left again or just stuck to money drafting. Some guys I know haven't touched Standard since Valakut was a deck, and they do not intend to until the Titans go away.
I'll never touch Standard again. 2 years of dealing with this Titan or that Titan is enough. It's boring, lame and repetitive. A game for fun shouldn't cost $300 every year and play almost exactly the same as the year before. If that is the direction WOTC is going to take this game, they are going to start losing a lot of customers. My honest opinion is that Maro needs to go. A very large portion of the problems that we players have experienced with particular cards can be traced back to him.
Maro is at the heart of it, but the truth is its all of WOTC after Hasbro took over. They are building the game to appeal to the lowest common denominator now (so that they can make more money). Isn't profit motive wonderful?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern (I collect the format):
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron WDeath and Taxes WSoul Sisters RWG Pod Combo URSplinter Twin URStorm RBurn
Maro is at the heart of it, but the truth is its all of WOTC after Hasbro took over. They are building the game to appeal to the lowest common denominator now (so that they can make more money). Isn't profit motive wonderful?
Yup, Maro's only doing his job. You normally hear wotc always talk about how the majority of players feel about the direction magic's heading in, not really their own. From a business standpoint, Hasbro sees yugioh as competition and wants to draw that audience towards Magic, and I can't really blame them either. I just hate it when they whine about cards like "mana leak" as being overpowered when they're far from it.
On topic: Titans were reprinted one-too many times, the vehement backlash from a ton of players after m12 made wotc admit and own up to this. Some people (including me) want different finishers for each standard, but with the titans, you don't even have to think! Most fortunately for us in modern, we only have to deal with these guys 8% of the time rather than 80% of the time.
Well, with some of the cheap removal in this format, they really aren't an issue to deal with. You can play them in a control deck, but that's just the thing: there isn't really any tier 1 control decks that run finishers like that. Prime time will obviously be in any form of ramp deck, but there isn't really any powerhouse ramp decks unless you consider tron ramp.
Maro is at the heart of it, but the truth is its all of WOTC after Hasbro took over. They are building the game to appeal to the lowest common denominator now (so that they can make more money). Isn't profit motive wonderful?
That's not how business works. Hasbro has controlling interest and can vote on projected sales, but it has very little control out of what Maro pumps out. I think it's embarassing for the community that so many actually think a CFO or ECEO from Hasbro goes around and gives a say on card design. That notion is so patently ridiculous for a community that likes to claim it's own intellectualism. Maro is the problem, because he insists on eliminating design elements from the game that were the actual game from the very beginning.
The profit motive works just fine. After all, without the profit motive you would not have a game to talk about here. You would not have a "here" to talk about that same game, and it's very likely you'd still be living in mud hut in some country where your ancestors came from.
The profit motive works just fine. After all, without the profit motive you would not have a game to talk about here. You would not have a "here" to talk about that same game, and it's very likely you'd still be living in mud hut in some country where your ancestors came from.
lol.
Profit is undoubtedly the intention of any company, regardless of whatever other intentions they might have. Luckily, WotC I think has good intentions outside of making money. They do try to please as many players as they can, they don't just single out a target audience like big gaming industries have. Though they obviously tend to please the biggest crowd first, I think wizards has done a fair job of keeping in tact the competitive aspect and appealing to older players who prefer more variety in this game.
I wish I could say the same for some of my favorite video games super smash brothers and halo, namely *smh*. When you play the newer games in these series you can tell that they have almost intentionally taken out competitiveness and variety to merely appeal to the masses. Microsoft is even pooping out another halo game after Bungie denied to make any more, turning the beloved halo series into a wretched, ugly cash cow.
Well, I'm clearly getting off track, so I'll just stop myself now before I rant for too long.
Profit is undoubtedly the intention of any company, regardless of whatever other intentions they might have. Luckily, WotC I think has good intentions outside of making money. They do try to please as many players as they can, they don't just single out a target audience like big gaming industries have. Though they obviously tend to please the biggest crowd first, I think wizards has done a fair job of keeping in tact the competitive aspect and appealing to older players who prefer more variety in this game.
I wish I could say the same for some of my favorite video games super smash brothers and halo, namely *smh*. When you play the newer games in these series you can tell that they have almost intentionally taken out competitiveness and variety to merely appeal to the masses. Microsoft is even pooping out another halo game after Bungie denied to make any more, turning the beloved halo series into a wretched, ugly cash cow.
Well, I'm clearly getting off track, so I'll just stop myself now before I rant for too long.
Profit is the only reason these companies make any effort to please any group. This idea that these corporations care about the costumers past the exchange of currency is just fantasy. If a large group of competitive players complain, then obviously they will change something, because that is a large percentage of their revenue.
This is not me attacking anyone here, so I hope no one feels like it is. This merely me pointing out how ridiculous the idea is that Hasbro has control over the cards that get released. Hasbro only has say over how the money is allocated. The right's to MTG still belong to WOTC. Hasbro has influence over who hold's the Managerial positions and where the revenues are directed and that's about it.
All of these ridiculously bad cards and broken mechanics can be focused on the Head of the Design department. That same design head who happened to be taking a greater role in the design of Magic when some of the most ridiculously bad and then ridiculously broken stuff came about. When he took over as the Head we had two insanely broken sets come out in row. The man doesn't know what he is doing even after so many years of doing it, he still can not properly evaluate a card within a given card pool.
Either way, the Titans are not playable in Modern, and I'm glad.
I also think, that WotC is a trustworthy company. I don't like some decisions, but all in all I'm pleased with MTG.
And to be fair, Super Smash Brothers was never really competitive and Halo 1 and 2 weren't balanced like tactical shooter.
>super smash brothers was not competitive
>halo 1 and 2 weren't balanced
I'm not gonna lie, I raged a bit when I read this.
Both games were on the MLG circuit. maybe not SSB, but melee sure was, and the only reason it isn't still now is because of brawl, and brawl is a terrible game competitively. Halo was, and still is, the flagship game of MLG. Reach isn't as good as halo 1 or 2 (because it's not as balanced) but they were still much better games competitively. Don't get me wrong, other FPS games are great competitively too (I was a big fan of cs 1.6), but I was just using halo as an example of what a company could do with their sacred franchise, as opposed to what wizards has done.
I would write more about it, but this isn't the place to do so, being a magic forum and all.
That's not how business works. Hasbro has controlling interest and can vote on projected sales, but it has very little control out of what Maro pumps out. I think it's embarassing for the community that so many actually think a CFO or ECEO from Hasbro goes around and gives a say on card design. That notion is so patently ridiculous
Yes, the claim that a Hasbro Exec is sitting commenting on cards is ridiculous.
But it is not at all ridiculous, or even unlikely, that when Hasbro bought out WotC that they spoke with the WotC management team. I would wager that the main thrust of their comments were
"You have good products, but we want you to focus on expanding your consumer base. Certainly try to keep your product identity, but steer in the direction that's going to get more people buying your product. Here are a few contacts for some good companies to run focus groups."
As for Maro's fitness to continue, I think you are missing a major point. He is a DESIGNER, not a DEVELOPER. Frankly, any card that gets through the set that warps standard is development's fault, not design. A designer's job is to push boundaries and try to do the things that straddle the line between fun and warping. It's development's job to sand those ideas down into cards that aren't warping.
They have rules for development, and time and again the cards that end up warping the environment, they confess that they tweaked them last minute to make them better, often directly contradicting their design rules.
That's not to say Maro doesn't have some blame, R&D is a team, not a single person. And each member that was working on a product shares some blame for not speaking up as the voice of reason when these "we have to do something last minute" situations come up.
But we can't put all the blame on Maro. Just because he is the most open with the community does not mean that on any particular project he has all that much more sway than anyone else. Yes, he is the lead of the design team. But there is also a lead to the development team. And then there is also the lead designer of that set, and the lead developer of that set. Thats a lot of people with extra sway.Maro doesn't just over rule all of those.
He's not a saint, and I'm sure plenty of mistakes are on his head. But he is far from solely responsible.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I support WotC's goal of shaping Modern in favor of diversity.
I ran a thought experiment on my blog Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
That's not how business works. Hasbro has controlling interest and can vote on projected sales, but it has very little control out of what Maro pumps out. I think it's embarassing for the community that so many actually think a CFO or ECEO from Hasbro goes around and gives a say on card design. That notion is so patently ridiculous for a community that likes to claim it's own intellectualism. Maro is the problem, because he insists on eliminating design elements from the game that were the actual game from the very beginning.
The profit motive works just fine. After all, without the profit motive you would not have a game to talk about here. You would not have a "here" to talk about that same game, and it's very likely you'd still be living in mud hut in some country where your ancestors came from.
Lawls at reading comprehension fail and putting words in my mouth. No where did I say executives ever had a hand in designing cards.
This idea that profit motive is the saving grace of humanity is really funny, there are tons of things that were made life better that happened without the profit motive. Ofcourse profit motive leads to good things. No one debates that. But its also lead to bad things. If you think a profit motive has nothing to do with the shift in design, well then there is nothing that can be said to you and you are outside the realm of common sense.
But it is not at all ridiculous, or even unlikely, that when Hasbro bought out WotC that they spoke with the WotC management team. I would wager that the main thrust of their comments were
"You have good products, but we want you to focus on expanding your consumer base. Certainly try to keep your product identity, but steer in the direction that's going to get more people buying your product. Here are a few contacts for some good companies to run focus groups."
Most over-printed cycle ever.
~~~~~~~~~
Too many to list efficiently. Find me online with the same SN if you want to play, or message me here to set up a time to play.
Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
They were only reprinted once...I mean, just because they are efficient for their cost, I don't think they deserve as much hate as they get from standard players.
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron
WDeath and Taxes
WSoul Sisters
RWG Pod Combo
URSplinter Twin
URStorm
RBurn
Like I said most over-printed cycle ever. Despite my lack of trusting a word that falls out of MaRo's mouth, I do believe it when he said reprinting them was a mistake. It was a mistake. A lot of people I know have quit because of the Titans getting reprinted. Some came back for INN, but then left again or just stuck to money drafting. Some guys I know haven't touched Standard since Valakut was a deck, and they do not intend to until the Titans go away.
I'll never touch Standard again. 2 years of dealing with this Titan or that Titan is enough. It's boring, lame and repetitive. A game for fun shouldn't cost $300 every year and play almost exactly the same as the year before. If that is the direction WOTC is going to take this game, they are going to start losing a lot of customers. My honest opinion is that Maro needs to go. A very large portion of the problems that we players have experienced with particular cards can be traced back to him.
~~~~~~~~~
Too many to list efficiently. Find me online with the same SN if you want to play, or message me here to set up a time to play.
Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron
WDeath and Taxes
WSoul Sisters
RWG Pod Combo
URSplinter Twin
URStorm
RBurn
Yup, Maro's only doing his job. You normally hear wotc always talk about how the majority of players feel about the direction magic's heading in, not really their own. From a business standpoint, Hasbro sees yugioh as competition and wants to draw that audience towards Magic, and I can't really blame them either. I just hate it when they whine about cards like "mana leak" as being overpowered when they're far from it.
On topic: Titans were reprinted one-too many times, the vehement backlash from a ton of players after m12 made wotc admit and own up to this. Some people (including me) want different finishers for each standard, but with the titans, you don't even have to think! Most fortunately for us in modern, we only have to deal with these guys 8% of the time rather than 80% of the time.
Modern: Twin URW Wilted Abzan WBG
Legacy: Stax WWW Maverick WBG
Cockatrice ID: Voltigasm
Standard is for those that embrace the changes and wish to play the game of big creature slinging.
At least Magic has multiple formats as opposed to yugioh that just has advanced, as unfun as it may be.
Well, with some of the cheap removal in this format, they really aren't an issue to deal with. You can play them in a control deck, but that's just the thing: there isn't really any tier 1 control decks that run finishers like that. Prime time will obviously be in any form of ramp deck, but there isn't really any powerhouse ramp decks unless you consider tron ramp.
Modern Junk Primer
Legacy ANT Primer
L1 Judge
That's not how business works. Hasbro has controlling interest and can vote on projected sales, but it has very little control out of what Maro pumps out. I think it's embarassing for the community that so many actually think a CFO or ECEO from Hasbro goes around and gives a say on card design. That notion is so patently ridiculous for a community that likes to claim it's own intellectualism. Maro is the problem, because he insists on eliminating design elements from the game that were the actual game from the very beginning.
The profit motive works just fine. After all, without the profit motive you would not have a game to talk about here. You would not have a "here" to talk about that same game, and it's very likely you'd still be living in mud hut in some country where your ancestors came from.
~~~~~~~~~
Too many to list efficiently. Find me online with the same SN if you want to play, or message me here to set up a time to play.
Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
lol.
Profit is undoubtedly the intention of any company, regardless of whatever other intentions they might have. Luckily, WotC I think has good intentions outside of making money. They do try to please as many players as they can, they don't just single out a target audience like big gaming industries have. Though they obviously tend to please the biggest crowd first, I think wizards has done a fair job of keeping in tact the competitive aspect and appealing to older players who prefer more variety in this game.
I wish I could say the same for some of my favorite video games super smash brothers and halo, namely *smh*. When you play the newer games in these series you can tell that they have almost intentionally taken out competitiveness and variety to merely appeal to the masses. Microsoft is even pooping out another halo game after Bungie denied to make any more, turning the beloved halo series into a wretched, ugly cash cow.
Well, I'm clearly getting off track, so I'll just stop myself now before I rant for too long.
Modern Junk Primer
Legacy ANT Primer
L1 Judge
Profit is the only reason these companies make any effort to please any group. This idea that these corporations care about the costumers past the exchange of currency is just fantasy. If a large group of competitive players complain, then obviously they will change something, because that is a large percentage of their revenue.
This is not me attacking anyone here, so I hope no one feels like it is. This merely me pointing out how ridiculous the idea is that Hasbro has control over the cards that get released. Hasbro only has say over how the money is allocated. The right's to MTG still belong to WOTC. Hasbro has influence over who hold's the Managerial positions and where the revenues are directed and that's about it.
All of these ridiculously bad cards and broken mechanics can be focused on the Head of the Design department. That same design head who happened to be taking a greater role in the design of Magic when some of the most ridiculously bad and then ridiculously broken stuff came about. When he took over as the Head we had two insanely broken sets come out in row. The man doesn't know what he is doing even after so many years of doing it, he still can not properly evaluate a card within a given card pool.
Either way, the Titans are not playable in Modern, and I'm glad.
~~~~~~~~~
Too many to list efficiently. Find me online with the same SN if you want to play, or message me here to set up a time to play.
Modern
~~~~~~~~~
Whatever pile of 75 I throw together the night before without testing. Usually: :symb::symu::symg:
>super smash brothers was not competitive
>halo 1 and 2 weren't balanced
I'm not gonna lie, I raged a bit when I read this.
Both games were on the MLG circuit. maybe not SSB, but melee sure was, and the only reason it isn't still now is because of brawl, and brawl is a terrible game competitively. Halo was, and still is, the flagship game of MLG. Reach isn't as good as halo 1 or 2 (because it's not as balanced) but they were still much better games competitively. Don't get me wrong, other FPS games are great competitively too (I was a big fan of cs 1.6), but I was just using halo as an example of what a company could do with their sacred franchise, as opposed to what wizards has done.
I would write more about it, but this isn't the place to do so, being a magic forum and all.
Modern Junk Primer
Legacy ANT Primer
L1 Judge
Yes, the claim that a Hasbro Exec is sitting commenting on cards is ridiculous.
But it is not at all ridiculous, or even unlikely, that when Hasbro bought out WotC that they spoke with the WotC management team. I would wager that the main thrust of their comments were
"You have good products, but we want you to focus on expanding your consumer base. Certainly try to keep your product identity, but steer in the direction that's going to get more people buying your product. Here are a few contacts for some good companies to run focus groups."
As for Maro's fitness to continue, I think you are missing a major point. He is a DESIGNER, not a DEVELOPER. Frankly, any card that gets through the set that warps standard is development's fault, not design. A designer's job is to push boundaries and try to do the things that straddle the line between fun and warping. It's development's job to sand those ideas down into cards that aren't warping.
They have rules for development, and time and again the cards that end up warping the environment, they confess that they tweaked them last minute to make them better, often directly contradicting their design rules.
That's not to say Maro doesn't have some blame, R&D is a team, not a single person. And each member that was working on a product shares some blame for not speaking up as the voice of reason when these "we have to do something last minute" situations come up.
But we can't put all the blame on Maro. Just because he is the most open with the community does not mean that on any particular project he has all that much more sway than anyone else. Yes, he is the lead of the design team. But there is also a lead to the development team. And then there is also the lead designer of that set, and the lead developer of that set. Thats a lot of people with extra sway.Maro doesn't just over rule all of those.
He's not a saint, and I'm sure plenty of mistakes are on his head. But he is far from solely responsible.
I ran a thought experiment on my blog
Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
Lawls at reading comprehension fail and putting words in my mouth. No where did I say executives ever had a hand in designing cards.
This idea that profit motive is the saving grace of humanity is really funny, there are tons of things that were made life better that happened without the profit motive. Ofcourse profit motive leads to good things. No one debates that. But its also lead to bad things. If you think a profit motive has nothing to do with the shift in design, well then there is nothing that can be said to you and you are outside the realm of common sense.
Basicly this...
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron
WDeath and Taxes
WSoul Sisters
RWG Pod Combo
URSplinter Twin
URStorm
RBurn