[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

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Yatsufusa
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Post by Yatsufusa » 3 years ago

Disclaimer: These are all personal opinions formed after over years of observation. Some may have observed things I missed out and vice versa and that's before it goes through my opinion bias translator.

Something about the entirely of MTG has shifted and the same factors that affected MTG itself are affecting Nexus (be it via the game itself or not). The major one is the entire change in demographic of "gamers", something I already took note during the announcement and pre-beta era of MTG Arena. We never got the direct verbal/written confirmation but the measures to "change" MTG to appeal to the next generation of gamers who were brought up mostly by technology were pretty obvious with Arena and how it affected MTG design. A decade ago you tried pitching the idea of Modal DFCs and MaRo might have just thrown in out the window. A lot of "complicated" measures of the past were relaxed because Arena "enabled" it. Just from Ikoria, companions and Mutate might have been similarly thrown out the window, but Arena automating a lot of the process made them look more attractive they're willing to say "Oh well, guess paper players just gotta memorize more" instead of "No, we can't do this, it will shun new players" a decade ago. In fact if they don't do this, MTGA would seem less attractive to the other OCGs out there.

I remembered the doomsaying when Arena debuted, "everyone" claiming WotC will abandon paper (and the fierce counterarguments), but typical behavioral reward from the internet looks towards the extremes, but if muted it down, it does alter the landscape of the game to a degree. Paper will "suffer" (not die as the extremes will have you believe), because WotC now has to appeal to two demographics and notably the Arena demographic is the one easier to attract new players with because it employs technologies current and upcoming generations of new players are used to, while paper players generally will "dwindle" in new numbers (yes we're the "boomers" now) because there are less "kids" brought into gaming the same way the paper players were (and while sunk cost fallacy doesn't really hit as hard as we have a Secondary market, it still exists as a hook of retainment by itself).

So that's a lot of observation/"speculative history" from my side concerning the game, but what does it got to do with Primers (or Nexus as a whole)? Especially when you can't even EDH in Arena? It's not so much Arena itself (I was using Arena as an easy way to separate the newer generation), but this newer generation is also entering the paper game (and EDH by extension), or to be more accurate pretty much most new player entering the paper game/format still retains the same type of grew-up-gaming-culture as those who play Arena (exclusively). There's barely any actually new players whose grew up with only the experience as those who joined the game in 90s or early 00s and if you extract out those who adapted to the "newer" gaming culture because they play other games as well, there's even less.

Darn it, I'm still beating around the bush, the main point is the newer generations (inclusive of those of the older generation that adapted) aren't used to forum formats. It's not their default method of taking information. I'm not saying any side is bad (in fact we can go in a detailed explanation of the flaws of every type of presentation, but I'm not doing that here, being ranty enough already), but crudely put, just the fact "times have changed, old folks".

Let me take a step back and compile everything into a larger picture we try to see. Think about it, in recent years there has been an explosion of new cards and new Commanders, we clearly can't catch up with all of them. There was a time where there was only a few Commanders with no decklists thread (and someone would fill it in), then we over-saturated to the point it became common where sets have half their Legendaries with no talk on completely. Even in EDH toolbox websites where you only dump decklists it saturated to a point some only have a couple of lists as a formality.

Likewise the cardpool swelled up and the market fluctuates in hundred different more points than it did a decade ago because there are so many cards. For a primer to keep track of everything for a budget/expensive variant is asking a singular person to keep track of that market like a EDH toolbox website, it's just not feasible. I know it's not a mandatory requirement here, but my actual point is that with hundreds of different price points of alternatives to keep track of, it just means at any given time a deck/primer can be considered too costly to some people or "too cheap" (in the sense stars aligned and the better alternative dropped so much in price the guide looks like it was just "bad" guide for recommending the "worse" version of a deck). This problem only gets worse as the game gets larger since we encompass pretty much the whole cardpool.

In terms of cardpool, that's why a lot of modern mediums just simply cut back to "remember to include ramp, draw, removal, synergy" with a few recommendations from mostly accessible cards from the point of publishing. Those mediums will looks equally outdated another decade down the road, we're way past the point of being able to analyze every single card for every single archetype. With WotC pursuing the format as hard as they are with "Flavor of the Month" Commanders, even entire decks/archetypes are subject to this.

Another notable thing about modern mediums is that a lot of them are also jobs/career-streamlined. Sure, even in the old days writing for games in forums for free could lead you into a publication route, but modern-day already took the initiative to just monetize the medium, so the writing becomes the job instead of being application experience for one. Sure, it has a failure rate as well, but the point is it's still a route made possible because the newer generation enabled it to be so.

Okay great, now I feel like I swerved off-topic minorly in several directions while making myself sound like an ungrateful person. For the record I fully appreciate the time and effort you folks put into trying to maintain the website (which I admittedly do not even have the time to visit myself, when I'm busy I don't even care about the entirely of MTG even my own decks, so...), but I'm just giving out my opinions on what I've seen the "fansite meta" for hobbies of all kinds (not just MTG) evolve over the years and to put it in a crude manner that I must, the "fansite with a forum supported by people donating their time as much as they can" formula isn't exactly doing so hot in an era where people are utilizing all the fundraising tools, equipment and top social media sites on top of their time they can to potentially make it their career.

It's a bit uncomfortable to hypocritically point out/suggest that to revitalize the place there must be someone to put in the effort in the direction the newer generation of media has already flocked to while not being that person (or even worse, someone who barely shows up here nowadays and is part of the natural decay of traffic), but I just had to say it. As said, I'm not ungrateful for the effort put in, but the reality does show it is an outdated direction with diminishing returns of effort as time passes.

I'm not saying I expect Nexus to drop their lives just to go down this route, I'm crudely pointing out there's an entire industry of people doing way more than that and competition is so tight over there that we shouldn't feel so bad that we're doing abysmally (I get more Nexus of Fate results from MTG Nexus in Youtube, so I think we can concisely conclude we're doing worse than a singular powerful card over there). Yes, we're also doing worse than MTGS in their heyday, but the heyday era of our type of knowledge medium is also over already, so there's no actual real comparison.

Part of me wanted to just not post this upon typo review because even I felt so bad for expressing my honest, rather negative opinion, but I also feel like I must let it out and I really like the mature atmosphere of this place that can take it (if I tried this tone on any topic on Reddit I would be Nexus'ed to another Fate), which explains why I do revisit here on the occasions I do.

Great now I just made another grandfather forum post, some habits just don't die do they.
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Post by darrenhabib » 3 years ago

Yatsufusa wrote:
3 years ago
Part of me wanted to just not post this upon typo review because even I felt so bad for expressing my honest, rather negative opinion, but I also feel like I must let it out and I really like the mature atmosphere of this place that can take it (if I tried this tone on any topic on Reddit I would be Nexus'ed to another Fate), which explains why I do revisit here on the occasions I do.
You did the right thing posting, there are some very valid points about shifting trends and the fact that when competing for peoples time there is a savvy market who spend money on this type of thing.

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Post by tstorm823 » 3 years ago

Yatsufusa wrote:
3 years ago
but the reality does show it is an outdated direction with diminishing returns of effort as time passes.
This is the only part of your whole post I really disagree with. Your idea of outdated isn't really applicable to a hobby.

There was a scene in Top Gear at some point where they visit Jay Leno's garage (if my memory serves me, not that the details are really important), and he's got something electric and they get talking about the inevitable death of gas engines, and Leno's response is that the invention of cars was actually really good for horses. His point being, there may be a lot fewer people riding horses these days, but there's always going to be a community of those who do and they show a lot more love for the horses than when it was the only mode of transportation.

There was a time when a forum like this was essentially a required medium for engagement in the Magic community, and you are exactly right that those days are gone in favor of different medias. But that doesn't mean we've got diminishing returns. That means the people who are left are the ones who really want to be here. It's not the same community as before, that doesn't mean the community we have can't grow.
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 3 years ago

Your observations are valid. The current trend in digital media is quickly shifting bite-size content and on to the next thing. However, I don't necessarily think that's good for deck discussion - it implants more of an idea of a deck's existence, some rudimentary idea of construction, and then off you go! You can often get a similar level of insight from hitting up EDHREC.

One of the site's primer authors recently created Moxfield versions of his decks. Compare his Nexus write-up to the current Moxfield one. I feel the Nexus one teaches you a lot more, it goes into specifics on how to run the deck in various situations, its assorted trickery, specific card scenarios. The Moxfield one hits on a number of the important points, but strips out a lot of the detail. Call me an old-fashioned horse lover, but I feel better equipped to tackle the world after making my way through the Nexus version :P

I do think there's some potential to make the primer structure be snappier. As mentioned earlier, the strategy is the bridge between the uninitiated and the dedicated, yet the card options appear (spoilered) before it. So a simple reordering where the strategy comes before card option discussion may already do something for a post's pacing. The snappiness of an introduction is a different manner, but maybe something can be done here too. Think a lot of this boils down to the writer - check out how Rorseph's Thassa write-up starts. Sucks you right in.

A huge strength of the primer is the constant stewardship. Most other deck content is a blip in time - the person makes an article, a YouTube video, and that's that. The primer is ever-evolving, maintained from set to set, from tweak to tweak, and offers an up-to-date take on the legend. Also, one person tends to have fewer primers than content creators have videos/articles/what have you. When you've got to churn out a thing every N days, you're just not granted the level of thought-out construction a well-loved EDH deck picks up with time. Assuming any third-party plugging happens to drum up engagement, that needs to be a focal point, that this is an ever-evolving build that will do its best to keep up with the available options and do its thing.
 
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Post by Dragonlover » 3 years ago

So I think part of it is that the younger folks have always had the internet, so they don't actually appreciate just how mindblowing it is to be able to Google things. I used to run an LGS and I asked my 40K crowd if they used the internet for their hobby. The universal response was 'I look at stuff on the GW website, what do you mean?'. Then there's me, who has had an account on most of the 40K forums, here, Salvation, the original WotC boards and god knows where else because I was 14 in the late 90's and gods if I'd had then what I had now my hobby would have been incredibly enriched.

On primers specifically: I wrote the Golos one cause people kept asking questions both on here and IRL, so since I was going into a certain level of detail anyway I figured stuff it, I'll make it all fancy and then put it in one place. I also advocate for the card-by-card, if for no other reason than it made me consider for myself why a card was in there and was the answer 'because it did what I needed and happened to be next to me'. I'll also reiterate my earlier point for anyone looking at it thinking 'Christ that's a lot of work': do it in bits. Copy paste the template into the Testing Zone, copy paste/write up your decklist first, cause that's an easy starting point. Then hop around. Sketch out the intro, then while you're doing that you might get fired up about some of the key cards, so get that written down. Leave it for a few days cause you can't be bothered to type, then spend four hours on it over the weekend. If you already have a thread for the deck, post in there saying that you're turning it into a primer, what do folks think needs to go in?

Just remember Rome wasn't built in a day. I started writing it September 15th 2019, got approved October 7th 2019 after two submissions that needed some extensive rewrites/reformats and one that was just some tidying up that I'd missed like not tagging cards. Just get the words down, everything will flow from there. Also I'm always happy to cast my eye over stuff for proofreading and the like, just drop me a PM.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

I just wanted to comment on the fact that people say they get little feedback on primers.

I think the generation of message board users has largely reached the age where we have other responsibilities, and have less time for being on the internet.

Ten years ago, I would read every interesting deckbuilding article. I would have loved the primers. But now, I have no time. I come here mainly to discuss bigger concepts than actual specific decks. I just don't have the time to read a detailed primer, and even less time to think about it and comment (unless I just comment something like 'wow, this is amazing').

If the younger Magic players don't go on Message boards, then what can you do.

Maybe post Primers as youtube videos? Can we make an MTGNexus Youtube Channel where everyone can submit video primers of their decks?
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
3 years ago
Maybe post Primers as youtube videos?
My god that is one of my least favorite things about the internet these days :( Everyone has to make everything a video. I can digest text about 100x faster than a video and I can do it while I'm listening to something else. Text is where it's at for complex content in my opinion.

But man people expect it and it's so tedious :(

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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
Dunharrow wrote:
3 years ago
Maybe post Primers as youtube videos?
My god that is one of my least favorite things about the internet these days :( Everyone has to make everything a video. I can digest text about 100x faster than a video and I can do it while I'm listening to something else. Text is where it's at for complex content in my opinion.

But man people expect it and it's so tedious :(
Hard agree. As much as I do like YouTube content for laughs and discourse, there's no comparison to written content for deck construction. Deck techs on YouTube are pretty average at best, there's very little depth. Its just the way that medium is, short hype videos to grab attention momentarily rather than going deep on content.
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Post by tstorm823 » 3 years ago

toctheyounger wrote:
3 years ago
Hard agree. As much as I do like YouTube content for laughs and discourse, there's no comparison to written content for deck construction. Deck techs on YouTube are pretty average at best, there's very little depth. Its just the way that medium is, short hype videos to grab attention momentarily rather than going deep on content.
Make a four hour deck tech, just make sure to title it "Top 10 Anime Betrayals in EDH" to get people's attention.
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Post by SocorroTortoise » 3 years ago

I've watched occasional legacy leagues on youtube, but that's about the extent of my MtG content consumption on the platform. I have zero interest in watching someone spend 20 minutes showing me roughly the same thing I could get from a decklist in 30 seconds.

On the broader primer discussion, the thing that I like about them (despite not actively participating in any of this recently, including my own thread) are that they provide a place for a community of people interested in the deck/archetype to have a conversation with an archive. The first can be covered by something like discord, though it's harder for people to stumble into those conversations, but losing the easily accessible record of the discussion is a negative when it comes to building out MtG decks.
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Post by tstorm823 » 3 years ago

I don't know if this is a unique experience, my particular mark on the M:tG community is likely to attract a unique crowd, but for every person that comes to my thread, there's another sending me a private message about the deck. I always answer them there in private, but tell them they should comment in the thread next time, cause there's a whole bunch of people who'd be glad to have them in the conversation.
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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

tstorm823 wrote:
3 years ago
I don't know if this is a unique experience, my particular mark on the M:tG community is likely to attract a unique crowd, but for every person that comes to my thread, there's another sending me a private message about the deck. I always answer them there in private, but tell them they should comment in the thread next time, cause there's a whole bunch of people who'd be glad to have them in the conversation.
While I haven't had quite the same PM activity, there has still been some for my Varina thread, and plenty of folks chiming in to share their thanks for the thread. It's actually pretty humbling, I didn't expect anything like the sort of popularity the primer has had. At one point someone reaching out to me via PM eventually resulted in their own primer, too, which is pretty cool.

That's not me tooting my own horn either, I firmly believe a huge part of what makes a primer great is the ongoing back and forth mulling over options, budgets, strategies, combos and so forth in the conversation that follows, and I approach my threads this way - I'm not the font all knowledge regarding my decks, I just provide a place to discuss them and go through the minutiae. So as much as its nice that people have reached out, it's the feedback that makes it a special thing, not anything in particular that I've done. And while my Bruna primer doesn't have the same sort of attention, its again the discourse between the few bold enough to proclaim themselves mono-white mages in the comments section that makes it so great.
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Post by darrenhabib » 3 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
3 years ago
Maybe post Primers as youtube videos? Can we make an MTGNexus Youtube Channel where everyone can submit video primers of their decks?
The problem with videos of decks is that they become outdated very quickly. I was compiling a list of videos for budget lists and figured out they have a very short shelf life once I reviewed the content.
The other thing I find with videos of decks is that you want to be able to skim to get a general idea, but of course you can't do that with video easily.
Basically it has proven to be a terrible medium for this type of thing. They just have a very short expiry date.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

darrenhabib wrote:
3 years ago
Dunharrow wrote:
3 years ago
Maybe post Primers as youtube videos? Can we make an MTGNexus Youtube Channel where everyone can submit video primers of their decks?
The problem with videos of decks is that they become outdated very quickly. I was compiling a list of videos for budget lists and figured out they have a very short shelf life once I reviewed the content.
The other thing I find with videos of decks is that you want to be able to skim to get a general idea, but of course you can't do that with video easily.
Basically it has proven to be a terrible medium for this type of thing. They just have a very short expiry date.
I made the suggestion with a bit of sarcasm. I really don't like the idea of everything being in a video. I saw last night that there is a youtube channel (there are probably many) where the guy explains things like "Everything that happened to Aragorn before Lord of the Rings"... and I just got annoyed to see it in my recommended videos. While I love Lord of the Rings, I have read all the books and don't need to watch a video to get the info. I didn't watch any of the content, but the titles of the videos indicated that the videos are largely there to summarize info that's already out there. Nothing original.

So when I made my suggestion, I said it thinking:

1. There are books. Some people don't want to spend time reading them.
2. There are numerous wikis and summaries on the internet that can help you understand the story without reading the book.
3. Oh look, even reading wiki articles is too tedious. Let's just have someone read the wikis to you on Youtube.

So ya, let's not post primers on youtube. It is not a good place for a conversation or to make updates. I just wish younger people were more into reading and writing rather than watching endless videos.

Annoys me that a video deck tech gets thousands of views while people who write up their decklists get no feedback.
But it is also the reality of the world.
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

I think a heavily pictoral digest form that works more like a flat slide deck would be more useful than videos, so it could still be skimmed but doesn't require pausing and memorizing time slots to relisten to stuff or skip ahead.

I've often wanted to put together a really visual version of the Ephara primer since there are so many potential visuals, like:
* recruiter and spellseeker chains
* combo maps (e.g. 2 of category A, 1 of category B, and 1 of category C)
* opening hands
* sample board states
* groups of card themes (e.g. blink, lifegain, artifact synergy, etc.)
* Fun smart-art type stuff illustrating strengths and weaknesses and so on in a visual way

Problem for me is that making nice looking graphics is really tedious and not really my skillset.

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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
Problem for me is that making nice looking graphics is really tedious and not really my skillset.
Seems like something you'd want to talk to darren about, a lot of his primers have some exquisite visual elements and infographics.
Dunharrow wrote:
3 years ago
Annoys me that a video deck tech gets thousands of views while people who write up their decklists get no feedback.
But it is also the reality of the world.
Yeah, it's a bummer. Honestly, kids these days have zero concentration, so a clickbaity deck tech vid is what they're after. No reading, very little concentration, just grab the cards, stick the basic shell together and press go.

Does anyone remember when people read as their primary source of information? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

I will say, there are some great MtG youtubers out there. The Prof is just an amazing person, PleasantKenobi is the most hilarious MtG content creator there is, OneMoreMana are cool, but mostly the content of theirs I watch is more mtg community/reprint fetchlands you cowards/you have a youtube channel? related than anything. There's also the Command Zone, but honestly, I find most of their takes on card inclusions to be fairly warped. Josh and Jimmy can clearly afford whatever they want to play, so they kind of get pretty ivory tower about whether cards are good or bad. Their gameplay vids are top notch though.
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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

toctheyounger wrote:
3 years ago
I will say, there are some great MtG youtubers out there. The Prof is just an amazing person, PleasantKenobi is the most hilarious MtG content creator there is, OneMoreMana are cool, but mostly the content of theirs I watch is more mtg community/reprint fetchlands you cowards/you have a youtube channel? related than anything. There's also the Command Zone, but honestly, I find most of their takes on card inclusions to be fairly warped. Josh and Jimmy can clearly afford whatever they want to play, so they kind of get pretty ivory tower about whether cards are good or bad. Their gameplay vids are top notch though.
I don't watch many videos anymore, but I do watch Command Clash (MtGGoldfish). the main reason is because they are funny. they aren't supposed to be, but the dynamic between the players is always hilarious.
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Post by Guardman » 3 years ago

bobthefunny wrote:
3 years ago
I'm curious as to how you'd feel about some of the earliest primers. Nemata was probably within the first handful of official primers:
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the ... mana-flare
I do want to read it, just to see for myself, but I don't know when I will have time to sit down and do that. If I forget (I've seen me do it before), don't be afraid to ping me. I will say that during my brief look over, it did seem more in line on what I think a primer should be (other than the individual card section of course [side note - We really need the :teach: smilie from Sally. It would've been perfect here.]).

As for lack of posters, while not in the commander forum, I did try to increase the number of people who post and discuss in the draft forum from just me... But it had almost no impact. I even recorded and narrated one of my drafts and put it on youtube and made a thread about it, but nobody commented. So I feel this is more of a sitewide issue than just Commander.
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And don't even get me started on the Historic forum, that is just me motleyslayer talking to each other every few weeks.

Also, in a similar vein, it is funny how different topics work better in different formats. For example, I feel deck techs work better as text and are awkward as videos. On the other hand, I feel drafting works better via video, discussing draft picks in real time, instead of just theoretical draft picks.

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Post by Hermes_ » 3 years ago

I showed this cartoon to my SiL and said i'm not allowed to teach thm how to play :(
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Post by lyonhaert » 3 years ago

Well... the viewpoints I've read in this thread recently certainly change how I can approach my primer for Chainer. I'd already been thinking of trying something more loose/dynamic/abstracted about card choices rather than what I'd been working on before. Thanks y'all.
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

I think @Guardman made me realize something about primers: I don't read them. I skim them. It's like the joke/meme about recipes that start with stuff like "I first discovered my love of shrimp when I was backpacking through Europe for a fortnight in 2003." Get to the point already! If I'm in a primer thread, it's because I'm already interested in the commander. I've always believed that the key to good communication is brevity.*

Let's not forget that if we're going by the definition of 'primer,' it should be an informative jumping off point and not an exhaustive treatise. Again, going back to Guardman's post, I think many card decisions and deck ideas can be fleshed out in conversation. I don't mean to be contrarian, nor do I seek to solely dictate what goes into primers. I submit, though, that there is such a thing as too much content, and I don't want to have find the information I seek by digging through every superfluous thought the author has.

Now that I think about it, I don't think the write-up I have/had in mind for Goreclaw would make it past the committee; it may not be long enough.

P.S. I'm pretty sure it was me that kicked off this discussion about primers, and I'm sorry to the off-topic regulars from whom the thread was taken.

*ever since I heard it on a sitcom in the 90s.
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 3 years ago

This discussion is super helpful to us, and led to the reevaluation of some aspects of the primers that we took for granted. For example, I previously defended the card option discussion as a great place for the nitty-gritty, but I then took a look at my Daxos write-up and realised that most of the important stuff was important enough to make it over to the strategy section. And the strategy section may have some meat on its bones, but it's nowhere near the slog of the card options. So there's a sweet spot somewhere in there, balancing between creation/reading effort and information conveyed. Just need to find it.

We've been taking the feedback on board and working on some streamlining behind the scenes.
 
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Dunharrow
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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

There is definitely something to be said for being concise. I remember in high school, the hardest book report I had to write had a max of 400 words. Writing 1000 words is easy. Keeping it concise, so that every word pulls its weight, is a real difficulty.

That being said, most people use the spoiler tag to hide the extra stuff, which I appreciate.
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Post by tstorm823 » 3 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
3 years ago
There is definitely something to be said for being concise. I remember in high school, the hardest book report I had to write had a max of 400 words. Writing 1000 words is easy. Keeping it concise, so that every word pulls its weight, is a real difficulty.

That being said, most people use the spoiler tag to hide the extra stuff, which I appreciate.
Personally, I think 20,659 words might be a little sparse. I'll have to add a few more this weekend.
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

Rumpy5897 wrote:
3 years ago
We've been taking the feedback on board and working on some streamlining behind the scenes.
This is one of the reasons I love this place. This is a topic that I didn't feel was something that was up for debate; it felt like a sacrosanct element of deck discussion. I'm very glad that we have an open and objective sounding board here. I've really enjoyed this discussion. Thank you all.
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