Hearthstone has a daily cap to mitigate botting, albeit that is in the range of 30 wins/day rather than 10. Still, some kind of cap is even more important here considering that the games aren't even happening on their servers.
A welcoming LGS will go miles farther than a restructuring. If you have a good mix of friendly casuals who don't mind playing tier one decks, and friendly Spikes who don't mind playing sub optimal decks, most of which who will help out the new guys. That's a rare thing to find, but if an LGS encourages that type of environment, it should be able to grow. Ultimately, I think the system is ok, as always it comes down to where you are playing the game.
Surely we can do better than a system that needs "a rare thing" to happen for it to even work.
It's for a draft environment full of Modern staples. They always try to cast the biggest net possible too, so when the purpose of the set is to make a draft experience similar to Cubing, you need to have role players and interesting cards that aren't just the best cards they can make. But honestly, Niv-Mizzet is a house in draft and when passing packs there will be some people ignoring money cards to grab this guy instead.
Rare is where designers put things they don't want in draft.
An ever-increasing cardpool wouldn't necessarily be "magic online" because it wouldn't have to release nearly as many cards. It can take just the highlights from newer sets and mix them in with magic's huge library of older cards however they want, at a slower release schedule than paper. As grindable F2P it will almost certainly lack trading and probably tournaments as well.
If Origins goes in that direction, it could be seen as a tentative move into Hearthstone's turf. They can stick to a slower release schedule, simpler cards, lower monetary investment, flashier effects, accessible UI, etc., all things that have made HS (as well as the DotP series) vastly more successful than MTGO's aborted attempt to replicate paper. Then it can serve both as a gateway to the "real MTG" for people that want to take it either more "seriously" or at least socially, as well as an ongoing revenue stream from more casual or lapsed players, or just something people mess around with a bit on the weekdays while waiting for their weekly paper get-togethers.
Every major set has the job of attracting newcomers. Part of that job is to start them out with mostly crap cards that they can "level up" from as they acquire more uncommons/rares. There's also the skill "level up" as they start recognizing what good cards are vs. bad, and that's hard to do when all the cards are nearly as good.
Sets like MM are priced so they don't have the same constraint of serving new players. That pricing also helps them maintain baseline expectations about picking through packs of filler for the chase cards in standard expansions.
Its worth repeating that design starts with a fairly flat power structure, and development tunes these out into stronger and weaker cards based on where they think the fun in the set lies. Its quite intentional that most sets are full of "filler."
If "doubled resources" means "doubled budget", and its being spent on making things actually work instead of wasted on re-implementing questionable features, I'm not sure you could ask for anything better relative to the game's sorry history. Of course its no reason to believe someone with a terrible track record, but given their shaky credibility, it's pretty close to the best thing they could possibly say at this moment; far better than promising more things they can't deliver on any reasonable timetable as has been done so often in the past.
Except they didn't stop caring. MaRo has stated many times on his blog and other articles that Blood block forward was designed with two set blocks as the norm. And another emphasis JovianHomarid didn't point out was Sam Stoddard said block constructed as well as constructed. They always make sure the block plays well by itself, regardless of what came before in the previous block or what is coming in the next bock.
Maro as a designer (not developer) cares about "block" because its the best way to grok kitchen table casual opening some boosters and using the cards just because they are new, especially when you mix them with the cards/decks you made this way a few months ago. (Frankly this applies to a fair degree to FNMs as well.) They also spend time playing block formats (e.g. lorwyn-morningtide) that will never appear on the pro scene. This isn't the same as saying that development has invested its full resources in making sure these formats are finely balanced for a higher level of play. Its also not clear when they decided to can block tournaments vs. where they were in development, i.e. there may have been some lag that made Kahns block intended for pro play and the decision to remove support came after it was sent to the printers.
I feel its quite safe to speculate that we will never have a full set returning to Kamigawa. Returns are for popular sets and Kami is quite the opposite. Hell Tarkir is the first set since then that has even dared to incorporate significant aspects of asian cultures. I am hopeful we will see more of that in the future as Wizards finds the Market is quite open to such themes as long as they are part of a decent set, but it will probably be a while (to have time to guage Tarkir reaction) and they will forever want to keep it disassociated from poorly performing sets like Kami. Heck even the setting (never mjnd the set) was too authentic for a western audience according to MaRo, which is why Innistrad was sure to embrace modern pop horror as well as tradition.
I'm sure Wizards has something silly like "once you're a Planeswalker, you're immune to the effects of this kind of time travel" or such. That would explain why the changes only effect Tarkir, since normally PWs are the only one that could enter and leave the plane anyway.
Modern exists only because of the reserve list, the card faces were just an excuse to set a more grokkable cutoff. If Wizards wants Goyfs cheaper it will happen.
If the didn't have enemy duals, wedge and enemy two color would suffer in block since it would have less options while shard and allied would have more making it lop sided.
Block is practically a casual format at this point, and will be even moreso once they move to 2-set blocks. Plus much to MaRo's chagrin, dev has been pushing for lands based on what Standard needs rather than what makes sense for a set, and this will again be even moreso the case once core sets are gone. Like it or not, this kind of logic isn't that relevant anymore.
Surely we can do better than a system that needs "a rare thing" to happen for it to even work.
Rare is where designers put things they don't want in draft.
If Origins goes in that direction, it could be seen as a tentative move into Hearthstone's turf. They can stick to a slower release schedule, simpler cards, lower monetary investment, flashier effects, accessible UI, etc., all things that have made HS (as well as the DotP series) vastly more successful than MTGO's aborted attempt to replicate paper. Then it can serve both as a gateway to the "real MTG" for people that want to take it either more "seriously" or at least socially, as well as an ongoing revenue stream from more casual or lapsed players, or just something people mess around with a bit on the weekdays while waiting for their weekly paper get-togethers.
Once upon a time he did use such on the Kurds, but at the time of invasion he was mostly lacking them.
Sets like MM are priced so they don't have the same constraint of serving new players. That pricing also helps them maintain baseline expectations about picking through packs of filler for the chase cards in standard expansions.
Its worth repeating that design starts with a fairly flat power structure, and development tunes these out into stronger and weaker cards based on where they think the fun in the set lies. Its quite intentional that most sets are full of "filler."
You know what "F2P" means right? And that you can download software (sometimes free, even!) on dem consoles?
I mean, I'm sure it's still a money trap, but...
Maro as a designer (not developer) cares about "block" because its the best way to grok kitchen table casual opening some boosters and using the cards just because they are new, especially when you mix them with the cards/decks you made this way a few months ago. (Frankly this applies to a fair degree to FNMs as well.) They also spend time playing block formats (e.g. lorwyn-morningtide) that will never appear on the pro scene. This isn't the same as saying that development has invested its full resources in making sure these formats are finely balanced for a higher level of play. Its also not clear when they decided to can block tournaments vs. where they were in development, i.e. there may have been some lag that made Kahns block intended for pro play and the decision to remove support came after it was sent to the printers.
Block is practically a casual format at this point, and will be even moreso once they move to 2-set blocks. Plus much to MaRo's chagrin, dev has been pushing for lands based on what Standard needs rather than what makes sense for a set, and this will again be even moreso the case once core sets are gone. Like it or not, this kind of logic isn't that relevant anymore.