A Serious Man
Member
Tremendous.
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Magic: the Gathering |OT10| Aether Revolt - That shit that make your Soul Burn slow
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Tremendous.
Yes, this is exactly developments responsibility. It's literally one of their principle roles. It's not even anything to do with FFL - this is a very basic two card combo that was spotted within minutes of the spoilers being released.
I'm willing to be the reason was that the cat was changed late in the process from artifact & creature to permanent.
FreedomFrisbee
Member
Amonkhet should be unchangeable at this point. They were able to make changes last september when they changed standard. They should now have shipped off things to start the printing process, set comes out in 3 months. Both MM3 and Amonkhet should be printing right now.
SigmasonicX
Member
Felidar Guardian is AFAIK literally the only creature that ETB flickers a planeswalker, and while they are likely to print more creature copying, they are unlikely to print another flicker card like that in Standard. If they ban part of the combo, it will be that.
Yes it is. The buck stops with you.
FFL has apparently been a big pile of nothing re: catching stuff for a while now.
Infinite Stars
Member
Considering FFL's pisspoor job at actually guessing how strong something is in recent Metagames(Fetches+Santa's, Spell Queller, Reflector Mage, CoCo*, Flayer, Emrakul, Avacyn,and Copter) the only real line of defense seems to be the set designers.
* I've said CoCo is fair in the past, but it's fairness is inversely proportional to the amount of midrange shitfest the format is. Going CoCo and finding 2 dorks is a feels bad, but they got rid of Dorks so don't worry about that.
* I've said CoCo is fair in the past, but it's fairness is inversely proportional to the amount of midrange shitfest the format is. Going CoCo and finding 2 dorks is a feels bad, but they got rid of Dorks so don't worry about that.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
hahaha
charlequin
Banned
Yes, what will definitely produce better future standard environments is just not having a Development team.
The thing about these problems is that they're systemic. You can fire people all you want but the newbs you hire to replace them will go on and make the exact same mistakes. The actual solution is concrete changes in the design and development process, the same way they did after Urza's and Mirrodin. As challenging as it is to get right, they probably need to give in and create some sort of external testing program with pro players -- which is gonna in turn require a lot of careful thought about the PT structure, the POTY race, and Worlds qualification as all these things currently incentivize players not to skip a season.
The other alternative is that they just need to seriously reduce their lead time. Currently they lock a set something like six months before it actually hits people's hands; compare this to digital games where they can be tweaking stuff just weeks before. If every set can go out the door with at least the initial reaction to the previous set already known before it's locked down, adjusting the meta to the problems people have in practice becomes a lot easier.
This list kind of conflates a few different kinds of issues. Flayer and Avacyn are just strong cards that shoulder over alternatives, but neither's innately problematic or really an issue because of some specific card synergy. Copter is overpushed because it's part of a new mechanic whose real power takes time to be apparent, just like we saw the first time out with equipment. Spell Queller and Reflector Mage are knock-on effects of their miss with CoCo, which is a pretty classical FFL screwup (nobody participating thought to sit down and target this card as an engine, so they never got the full picture of how good it is.) Fetches is a result of playing with fire by printing fetchable duals, combined with the innate mechanical bias FFL-style playtest leagues will have towards shittier builds of decks the more colors they have.
This isn't to say that any of these aren't dev's responsibility, mind, but if it was actually a problem of just "oh they just missed stuff because they DUMB" it would be a lot easier to fix.
Joe Molotov
Member
Just ban all cards and focus efforts on Magic the Gathering 2. They'll get it right next time.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Unban dread return
Yes, what will definitely produce better future standard environments is just not having a Development team.
The thing about these problems is that they're systemic. You can fire people all you want but the newbs you hire to replace them will go on and make the exact same mistakes. The actual solution is concrete changes in the design and development process, the same way they did after Urza's and Mirrodin. As challenging as it is to get right, they probably need to give in and create some sort of external testing program with pro players -- which is gonna in turn require a lot of careful thought about the PT structure, the POTY race, and Worlds qualification as all these things currently incentivize players not to skip a season.
The other alternative is that they just need to seriously reduce their lead time. Currently they lock a set something like six months before it actually hits people's hands; compare this to digital games where they can be tweaking stuff just weeks before. If every set can go out the door with at least the initial reaction to the previous set already known before it's locked down, adjusting the meta to the problems people have in practice becomes a lot easier.
I wasn't seriously indicating that they should just not have a development team but it's pretty clear that the current group/implementation is not working in the way it should. I completely agree with your proposed solutions though.
Lead time is definitely an issue though, and one of the downsides for having a physical card game. It would never happen but what if Magic sets came out digitally first and then released in paper?
firing the whole development team seems like a gross overreaction. firing anyone seems like a gross overreaction. they've taken the game in a direction that people aren't enjoying and they've made a couple of high-profile mistakes in quick succession, but neither of those things mean that they are a) incapable of taking the game in a direction that people would enjoy if they listen to feedback and b) get a much better and more rigorous testing environment so that the mistakes happens with much lower regularity.
neither of these things seem like things that are fixed by firing people, rather, things that are fixed by a change of direction and changes to development structure.
neither of these things seem like things that are fixed by firing people, rather, things that are fixed by a change of direction and changes to development structure.
Most likely because it's an emergency unplanned post that isn't part of their normal website update schedule.
charlequin
Banned
In fairness, at a lot of organizations these things get fixed by firing people because those people are management types who are resistant to necessary changes. I don't think we're at that point at (analog) WotC though.
charlequin
Banned
that WOULD be shitty, and someone SHOULD be fired
LOL that would be jus trolling at this point.
charlequin
Banned
We'll see what actually ends up happening, but in the Mirrodin era they learned how bad an idea it was to just poke at the edges of a Standard format in need of bannings and then make people wait another three months, so I'm gonna guess now that once they realized they had to tear off the Band-Aid they decided to throw a few more things in the pot.
Likely because we're seeing a ban from an unreleased set, something that hasn't happened since Memory Jar.
charlequin
Banned
Every time people immediately freak out about a new card that's good enough to play in Vintage a puppy is set on fire.
Infinite Stars
Member
Ban all the things in standard.
Marvel, Emrakul, Gideon, Copter, Felidar.
Announce on an unrelated note that Standard is going back to 18 months.
Edit: Also, I'm fully expecting them to go ham on nuking Dredge in Modern. 5/6 Sideboard cards needed for Dredge alone+ the way it pushed out Abzan Company/Any other graveyard deck has to be on their radar. Something like "All Dredge Above 4 is banned".
Do we have the complete decklists for the Planeswalker decks yet? Felidar seems like the kind of card that can easily be put in the Ajani one, and god, PLEASE have them make another dumb exception like they did with Stoneforge.
I'd just ban Amalgam tbh
Joe Molotov
Member
Or they wanted to do it this week because next Monday is a holiday.
I want to see this happen.
Infinite Stars
Member
I could understand just banning Amalgam, but I don't think it's a good idea.
We know that Amonkhet is likely to have a Graveyard theme, and we know from previous bannings (Pod) that WotC has no problem nuking a card if they know it's going to end up being a pain in the ass later. Much in the way that Pod is an issue with creatures with ETB effects, Dredge will always be an issue in formats if they continue to print creatures with Graveyard Synergy. I think you just rip Dredge out of the format, admit that unbanning GG Troll was a mistake.
As it is, Dredge is the only deck in Modern(minus maybe Cheerios/Grishoalbrand, but both tend to be inconsistent) that effectively can see upwards of a 40% of its deck by the end of Turn 2.(Keep 7, Neonate, Discard Troll, Dredge 6, Cathartic Reunion pitching Two Dredgers, most likely finding a third somewhere). That's at least 13 by turn 1's end, with anywhere from 19 to 37 by turn 2.
shrapnelmagnet
Member
Yeah, I'm having a blast lol. Glued to this thread waiting to see what happens.
The announcement was scheduled for next monday (Jan 16th), but I can't imagine them not doing it all at once.
Memory Jar, back in Urza's block. Only time its happened that I can recall.
Infinite Stars
Member
Well, at least this ban doesn't directly involve artifacts? They're learning?
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
It's 1 hour from now right?
There's a chance that Aetherworks Marvel could be banned, right?
Joe Molotov
Member
Surprise, it was a Bone Saw ban all along! They accidentally printed some equipment and they were like "shit, gotta fix that".
@the bolded: We do?
I don't think there were any bans during Antiquites block
charlequin
Banned
This will be the second pre-emptive ban of a card in Standard as soon as it would be legal, though Memory Jar will remain for now the only ban done completely off-cycle.
Probably not as its primary theme, but Egypt block would be as much of a failure without a graveyard subtheme as Theros would have been without a Legend subtheme. Rosewater's also hinted at something that would suggest there will be more graveyard hate in Standard down the line.
I don't think there were any bans during Antiquites block
Not a block!
Etrian Oddity
Member
They still shit the bed with AER by not including an Energy-for-Mana trade card.
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