What is Wrong with Effects that Become More Powerful in Games with More Players?
General forum
Posted on March 12, 2022, 10:34 a.m. by DemonDragonJ
Mark Rosewater has stated that the extort mechanic is problematic because it becomes more powerful in games with more players, and, while no employee of WotC has explicitly stated that this is the reason for which mass life drain spells no longer scale up with the number of players drained, I suspect that that is, indeed, the reason.
However, I fail to see why that is a problem, because, if a player has more opponents, it will only make sense for certain effects to increase in scale proportionally with the number of players. Compare Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath's first ability to that of Lampad of Death's Vigil; the former is superior to than the latter in every way, since the player can theoretically gain more life from it, whereas the latter is fixed in how much life it can grant. In a game with four, or even more, players, gaining 1 life is inconsequential, but gaining life equal to the total life lost will help a player remain competitive. The fact that WotC printed cards with the undaunted mechanic shows that they still do care about effects scaling with the number of players in the game, so I wonder why they are being selective about it.
What does everyone else say about this? What is wrong with effects that become more powerful in games with more players?
I mean, I think everyone's playgroup really shapes how we all view mechanics and things. You could have a deck that absolutely abuses extort, sure, and it could be good enough to feel OP at times, but in the grand scheme of the game, extort feels fairly decent-at-best. I mean, it's a good effect, it's like reusable a one mana Lightning Helix that you can only use in commander, which seems kinda fine : ) Is this really a problem in a world of infinite mana, 0 mana rocks, and even things like Duelist's Heritage which I love, but does also do like 20+ damage for 3 mana, and lets you double your opponent's combat damage at will.
Honestly, just my opinion, but I that maybe Mark Rosewater is just a magic player too, and we can all get a little frustrated when our friends make decks that are a little too strong. If any of us died to extort a bunch, we'd be like, right, this doesn't work the way it was meant to when it was printed, and that's a bugger. But throwing around the "problematic" in a format with Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle is silly a tid.
March 12, 2022 7:31 p.m.
I think R&D needs to do some more R&D'ing is all. Scaling cards are healthy for the format & they should keep doing it. Scaling cards often have a high demand to them that shows up as a hiked up $$ value. If a card speeds up the early game based on the amount of opponents, I see that as a good thing. I love Selvala's Stampede as an example of a fantastic scaling card & one of the few decent post-Cyclonic Rift responses in the game. I play a bunch of decks that actually become hamstrung with less opponents because I play the game with the social (multiplayer) aspect in mind & my brews reflect this. I think to a certain extent this is sometimes an attempt to separate formats as there is always this outcry about "made for EDH" cards when cards have scaling potential but are released in general WoTC products.
FormOverFunction says... #2
Regarding the question “why are they being selective about it?”: It sort of seems as though they are trending towards life gain either being tied to the damage a creature deals or being in increments of one. [30 minutes later] Okay. After typing and deleting a number of different hypotheses here, it dawned on me that this could very easily be something as simple as “this way is less confusing.” It would be, technically speaking, easier to say “everyone loses one and I gain one” than it would be to say “everyone lose one and I gain one... for each of those instances of life loss... which adds up to three.” I feel like it’s a stupider answer than the different ideas I had been typing and deleting, but man-oh-man it seems way more likely.
March 12, 2022 10:59 a.m.