I don't like where card design is going
General forum
Posted on Jan. 21, 2020, 10:24 p.m. by Magnanimous
Skip to second large paragraph for thoughts on how to change card design.
I find myself losing interest in the game because the part of it I liked most, diving deep into card databases to search for weird interactions or old cards that combo with new ones, is disappearing. Deckbuilding seems to be very simple and just pairing the best threats with the best answers and the best fixing. I think instead of increasing the power level outright, WotC has slowly pushed cards so everything is at the same power level. Tarmogoyf is sometimes, but not always, better than Gurmag Angler, Path to Exile is sometimes better than Fatal Push, and so on. Turns are more explosive and longer, games seem to be effectively won or lost in the first three turns of the game, and every individual card matters less. Also, genuinely good and interesting cards like Dimir Charm become bulk junk because efficiency is literally all that matters and there are too many efficient cards out there (no one's running Dimir Charm in Pioneer as Fatal Push 5-6). Even the Against the Odds series is just one somewhat janky card that's fit in with 10 tutors and 20 support card. There's no incentive to truly build around a card or innovate anymore.
I'd really like it if WotC made the game more about resources than the kind of rock paper scissors with threats and answers that I see now. My suggestions are to: 1) Put fewer lines of text on most cards to make the few engines and mana sinks that do exist in any one format more powerful individually, but more fragile because the deck relies on them more. 2) Aim for shorter turns and more turns per game (so, players would have to pick and choose how to spend their turn interacting instead of being able to do everything at once). So fewer explosive "I win" turns and more tight, down to the wire, will I draw a removal spell, threat, engine, etc. in time games that rely on an efficient use of resources. This would come in the form of higher activation costs, fewer activated abilities, fewer draw cards (every color but white has tons of options now), and weaken count to 20 aggro so those decks become more D&T than Burn.
Do you prefer newer card design to older card design? Is there a difference? Is how decks are built changing?
Magnanimous says... #3
xtechnetia Thank you for the comments! I think there's a bigger problem with planeswalkers than just the asymmetry and resilience though. I think the problem with both Veil of Summer and planeswalkers is card advantage. The cost to casting them (and putting them in your deck) is just the mana cost, not the cost of using a card or of protecting them. They hit play, do a thing and then need to be answered or they'll gain card advantage and win the game on their own. Bolting the T1 mana dork is bad for the ramp player, Dreadboring the T3 walker is fine for both sides: a planeswalker for a powerful answer and some Food or a Beast Within is not the same as Bolting a Bird or Goyf.
January 22, 2020 7:34 a.m.
I do not agree with most, if not all of the points expressed here - modern card design is miles better than older card design. The modern card design is at the top shelf of card design philosophies, always pushing design space boundaries. People get disproportinately flustered by the few cards that push the design envolope too far and point to them as the problems of current design, while completely ignoring all the other 99.9% of cards.
WOTC outputs around 1250 new cards per year (4 setsx250 cards + some extra products). If your examples of bad card design extend to Oko, Teferi, Narset and Veil, that is a failure rate of 0.375%, which is pretty much fine.
In brief, you are making something an issue that really is not, in the grand scheme of things.
I have exactly one complaint of current Magic and that is that cards have too many variants (extended art, constellation art, borderless, alternate art, collector's edition...) and a lot of standard playable cards are found outside of standard sets (Brawl products, planeswalker decks, game night...) - there is too much noise around every set. That is more a marketing issue, but the game design in Magic is still solid.
January 22, 2020 8:58 a.m.
Magnanimous says... #5
Boza So first, I'd like you to look at my proposed changes to the game in the last large paragraph of the original prompt and give your thoughts on those.
What I was trying to get at in my original post is that the current principles of card design make playing certain (in my opinion boring and linear) cards like Questing Beast and Once Upon a Time the best option while excellently thought out and potentially fun mechanics like Outlast (do I make my creature better in the future or do I get in for damage now?) get squeezed out by the linear decks that slam Siege Rhino and swing. I think that linear decks have a place in the meta, but the best decks should be high skill decks with lots of decisions and not "this card is good, so I'll play it and if they have a counter/removal I can play my higher costed better card next turn".
Yes, individual cards look more interesting, but the game as a whole is suffering because of it. Good card design and pushing the boundaries should be measured by how fun and interesting the mechanics are and not how much they impact eternal formats.
January 22, 2020 9:32 a.m.
Magnanimous says... #6
Boza you mentioned a failure rate of 0.375%. 1) Those are example cards and other examples include all 3 mana walkers in War of the Spark and many other cards. 2) I know you understand that it matters how much a card impacts a format, that is if 99% of decks contain one of 6 cards (.05%), then those cards matter a whole lot more than the junk commons.
January 22, 2020 9:38 a.m.
@Boza: Unfortunately, despite the low failure rate it is something that needs to be called it because it's not self contained. If the only place these failures showed up was in a single environment, one that given enough time would go away, then these things can be overlooked. The problem is, these hyper-efficient cards continue to exist in most formats. They never go away so they continue to warp the format until something even more pushed knocks them out or they get banned.
I think there is a lot of truth in xtechnetia's comment. The most troubling points for me are the "maindeckable good" answers that come out every set and the excessive catering to the "this type of card is unfun" group. One of the greatest draws of Magic for me is the sideboard and how the game gives me a chance to tweak my deck on the fly against any other deck I'm facing, and these hyper efficient cards make that less of a necessity because there is no drawback to running any of these answers mainboard because they just do so much. I am a firm believer that just as there should be a place to put creatures down and turn them sideways, there also needs to be a place for "unfun" interaction. Making less of it or making it worse is only harming the longevity of the game.
@TypicalTimmy: I see this comment relatively often, but I think it's unfounded. If you want to play a game with a bunch of jank from your collection, the kitchen table is exactly where you and your friends can make and play these kinds of decks. The comments about negative people in LGS's is more indicative of the people at that particular store than Wizard's card design policy. That kind of behavior should never be tolerated and should immediately be brought up to the owner of that LGS. Assholes exist every, and unfortunately part of playing a social game is dealing with them sometimes. Wizards has literally no control over the people that play their game, so pointing the finger at them isn't particularly fair. Lastly, I don't think being upset with players who value winning more than you is fair. You both have two different sets of values for the game and neither is more valid than the other. What that means for you though, if you don't care about keeping a deck that can be competitively viable, is that you're going to lose often to people who prioritize remaining competitive. At that point the onus is on you to either improve your deck, find another person/group to play with who's values better align to your own, or lose. I think asking the Magic community as a whole to want to win less isn't exactly realistic.
January 22, 2020 9:44 a.m.
Magnanimous says... #8
I want to clear up the idea of "failure rate".
Wizards puts tons of thought and effort into making the stars of the show good. They also pump out cards they know are unplayable in constructed with almost no thought.
FAILURE RATE MEANS NOTHING
Also, as an aside. Yes, blaming players isn't helpful, whatever. But also just let TypicalTimmy vent, this is the place for that kind of thing anyway.
January 22, 2020 10:06 a.m.
Colonel_Kink says... #9
i like new cards being strong. it enables the possibility of format change in modern legacy and vintage.
January 22, 2020 10:10 a.m.
Magnanimous, to answer in order:
- Here are all the three mana planeswalkers in the game. Of those, the cards that made any splash are Dack (only in Vintage), Veil Lili (way before war of the spark), Last Hope Lili, Narset, Oko, Saheeli (only with Felidar Guardian), and Teferi. Of those 14 3 mana walkers in WAR set, only 2 made any splash, even in standard, while the rest are nowhere to be heard. Nobody is complaining on the powerlevel of Gideon Blackblade, a three mana mythic with 4 abilities that sees 0 play in standard. So, yes, it is quite about a couple of cards misjudged - if teferi or narset cost 1 more mana, they would be next to unplayable - and if you tweak a design by one mana and it takes it there, that is more of an issue of balance than bad design. Or compare Oko and The Royal Scions - two 3 mana planeswalkers with similar designs, one is broken, the other is non-existant in standard.
Balancing and design are two very different things.
- Questing beast - you cannot both complain that Questing Beast is the best option and say planeswalkers "hit play, do a thing and then need to be answered or they'll gain card advantage and win the game on their own". Wizards print a direct answer to planeswalkers (2 if you count Murderous Rider) in the set following the most "broken" walkers and people still find a way to complain that the answer is too good.
On your suggestions:
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Put fewer lines of text on most cards - makes no sense, as there is no correlation between text lenght and what the card does. Ice Cauldron is the most wordy card in magic, but it is also one of the most useless. Vindicate has 3 words, but has a lot of utility.
-
Aim for shorter turns and more turns per game - this is related to deck archetypes and deck construction, rather than card design.
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So fewer explosive "I win" turns and more tight, down to the wire, will I draw a removal spell, threat, engine, etc. in time games that rely on an efficient use of resources. - so make the game a topdecking war of explosive moments? Not a good idea.
My advice - use the existing cards to curate an environment you enjoy to play or play in formats where more archetypes are viable. Modern and Pauper are viable formats with a "plateau" of top tier decks, while Cube is a great way to curate an environment that you enjoy.
TLDR: None of the issues you raise are caused by design, but by balancing.
January 22, 2020 10:19 a.m. Edited.
I second Boza's post. Most of the cards that are released are perfectly fine, with a lot of playable cards that are some variation on another that has been done before. We are in an era where we usually get at least one alternate win condition per set (a huge boon for us jank lovers). We are in an era where there are a whole bunch of formats being supported, including the casual-based singleton format that is Commander (singleton means you're forced to play some cards that might not otherwise see play).
Sure, there are broken cards, but broken cards are good for the long-term health of the game. Broken cards allow Wizards to push boundaries, seeing what works and what doesn't.
Veil of Summer provides us a good case-study in the importance of trying new things, particularly since Wizards has given us a good deal of information about how and why it was designed.
To start, xtechnetia suggested (the very sentence after critiquing Veil) that other colors should have access to things like Counterspells. While partially true, it is important to remember the Color Pie is what makes this game great--you can't just slap a counterspell into Green and call it a day. Veil of Summer is a Green-pie-appropriate counter, and an important experiment in the viability of non-Blue pseudo-counters.
Now, I am sure by this point someone is already gearing up to talk about how obviously busted Veil of Summer is and try to argue that R&D was clearly out of their minds. One slight problem--that someone is wrong. As R&D has been kind enough to explain to us, it not obviously busted at the time of its conception and playtesting.
Magic 2011 and Magic 2012 both saw printings of Autumn's Veil, the card that inspired Veil of Summer. If anyone bothered to read the ban announcement, they'd know that R&D was well aware of the fact that Autumn's Veil was a flop, seeing very little play during its standard environment. They took a card that was a failure and pushed it some, trying to make a viable sideboard option for Green decks.
Frankly, I'd say that experiment was a success. Sure, it was too powerful for Standard (banned) and Pioneer (banned)--in both formats you could mainboard Veil, which sort of defeats the point of a card designed to be sideboarded.
But those are not Magic's only formats. In Modern and Legacy Veil fills the slot it was intended to--it's not in the top mainboard cards, but sits as one of the most common sideboard options (it's a bit lower-ranked in Vintage, though still in the top 25 sideboard cards).
To apply our case study to a more general application:
Wizards' pushing boundaries in Standard allows them to print cards that shake up Modern (which, barring Modern Horizons, counts on Standard for new cards), Commander, Legacy, and Vintage (which get some additional assistance in terms of supplemental sets). Sure, sometimes those cards are too powerful for Pioneer and Standard, but that's what bannings are for.
And yes, they do sometimes push it to far. Sometimes their mistakes result less in the Veil of Summers (i.e. cards too strong for Standard but useful for older formats) and more in the Okos (a card banned in three formats rather swiftly, and currently sitting as the most played non-land permanent in Legacy).
Even when they fail, that provides Wizards important data--they can use the lessons they learned to create something more appropriate.
Ultimately, I'd rather they at least make an effort to try something new. That is, after all, what keeps this game fun.
January 22, 2020 11:07 a.m. Edited.
- "They hit play, do a thing and then need to be answered or they'll gain card advantage and win the game on their own." - Wizards has printed in the last year Murderous Rider, Plaguebearer, Questing Beast, Cavalier of Flame, Dreadhorde Butcher and Eidolon of Obstruction in the last year alone as great answers to planeswalkers that prevents them from gaining further advantage aside from their first activation or ETB effect, whilst creating advantage for you. These are available in all colors but blue, which in turn has gotten the most powerful planeswalkers in the last year, so things seem pretty balanced on that front.
"FAILURE RATE MEANS NOTHING" - i forgot to comment on this one, even though it is all caps. If you make an omelette and get an eggshell piece in it (break egg on flat surface, rather than edge to avoid that), do you yeet the whole omelette out the window, or simply remove the eggshell and go on? Or be a rebel and enjoy the omelette regardless?
Honestly, you cannot make a new design omelette without breaking a few eggs, which can result in eggshells.
January 22, 2020 11:40 a.m.
Flooremoji says... #13
I believe that design is getting better overall -rather than worse- with more interesting cards in most sets. Oko was obviously a mistake, but that dosen't mean that fun and interesting cards weren't printed in ELD. It's cards like oko that can give a set a bad rap for being overpowered just because that card can single-handedly dominate the meta. Because of Oko Veil of Summer actually was better than it should have been, because the best ways to get rid of Oko were black and everyone simply was playing Oko/and or anwsers to Oko. I don't think magic is changing as much as you think it is: New powerful cards are made, (along with mistakes) so people play answers and others have counter-answers. Eventually the decks will get dilluted enough that they will stop finding more counter answers. I like Veil of Summer, because without it, discard is so incredibly hard to stop. It basically can't be interacted with aside from the cheapest of counters. Its a fine line, too easy/too hard, but not every deck can play green so I think that even if it's leaning towards too easy, thats better than too hard.
January 22, 2020 2:21 p.m.
Daveslab2022 says... #14
I got halfway through your analysis and realized it’s off. You think Dimir Charm is a “genuinely good” card. And that’s just patently false. Even back in RTR standard, people didn’t play the card.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/2ck30y/how_good_is_dimir_charm_in_the_current_standard/
This is the response from people during standard where Dimir Charm was legal. Sure, Dimir charm is INTERESTING, but it’s not good. And that’s where your analysis falls flat.
January 23, 2020 9:50 a.m.
Daveslab2022 says... #15
To actually answer your post however, no, I LOVE the way they are designing cards. Oko was a huge mistake. Veil of Summer was a huge mistake. But a lot of the cards they’ve been printing have just been unique, not overpowered cards. I love the new titans, i like static abilities on planeswalkers, even if T3f3ri is annoying. I like that red gets interesting card advantage spells like Experimental Frenzy and Light Up the Stage now.
Also, I’m very confused. In the early paragraph you complain that “path and fatal push” are essentially the same thing, but then complain about how games aren’t decided by a well timed removal spell (which I 100% disagree with by the way).
You said that turns are a lot more explosive now, which is also not true. At least not for competitive magic. I do find that decks are often built the same way. Control decks are all counter/draw/removal and one-two threats. Midrange decks look to trade resources 1-1 while maintaining a board presence and slowly beating you with incremental card advantage. Aggro decks look to kill you as fast as possible. Not every aggro deck is burn, actually mono black sees significantly more play than mono red in Pioneer.
If you are talking about EDH, then I’m sorry but that’s pretty much what the format is designed for. Playing janky decks that do whatever they want, with huge swingy turns.
You also have to realize that they have to print new mana engines, new combo pieces, etc.. this gives newer players access to cool combo pieces via boosters, and allows them to find their own unique interactions at the kitchen table games they start with.
I’m sorry you don’t like the designs that WOTC is utilizing, but I think they are fresh and unique.
January 23, 2020 10:02 a.m.
Nerdytimesorwhatever says... #16
I used to be a control player. Now I just watch the card design crush the communities I used to be a part of. "Uncounterable" is ridiculously overpowered as of late, things dont even cost more mana than their older counterparts, but are uncounterable. Look at Niv Mizzet Parun. Sure, hes color restricted to half red and half blue pips, but thats an uncounterable creature who in the process of you attempting to remove it, will draw the caster tons of cards, and deal a shitload of damage to you or your board. Its inconsistent.
January 24, 2020 1:38 p.m.
As an unabashed Niv-Mizzet, Parun fanboy, I can tell you that the times I was able to have Niv out, and then combo a shitload of damage off my opponent trying to remove him were great. However, way more often than not, I would cast Niv and he would see immediate removal with me tapped out so i was drawing a card and pinging one damage before death. Honestly, Niv is not the problem card that Carnage Tyrant was. Every deck required playing Detection Tower just for the inevitability you were seeing that stupid dinosaur.
xtechnetia says... #2
https://articles.starcitygames.com/premium/synergy-vs-protect-the-queen/
This has been a trend for a long time.
However, I think recent card design (from War of the Spark onwards) has exacerbated the issue to the point where a lot more people are sitting up to take notice, and the effects are being felt from Standard to Vintage. My thoughts for why:
January 22, 2020 12:26 a.m.