[Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 07/13/2020)

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
No, I play modern all day long. No modern, no magic to me. I am not the only one, so be carefully with modern killing so fast, only because of a Pioneer hype at this moment
I'm not saying there aren't people who don't love Modern. I'm saying for many, and probably most, Modern's main appeal isn't in its cardpool. It's the diversity and stability of a nonrotating format. Pioneer also has those traits so all those players will just go to whatever Wizards supports more. I'm also saying anything on Arena is where you want to make your bets. If Pioneer is the end goal of Arena, and Wizards is silent on Modern in Arena, then Pioneer is clearly where you want to place your bets.
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Post by Mtgthewary » 4 years ago

I knew so many people with foil modern decks everywhere, they will go nowhere. They will stay in modern + begin with Pioneer. But Noone of them will sell their decks, only ones which they don't played long time. Last fnm I was on a store with 15 people and 5 of them was fully foiled, they will stay sure in modern

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Post by Bearscape » 4 years ago

Historic coming to Arena is a matter of years so I don't worry about that.

And by the time that happens, I've probably migrated largely to Pioneer myself. I'll miss cards like Snapcaster Mage and Cryptic Command, but just by the natural progression of eternal formats Modern just gradually becomes more and more unfair and the amount of decks that create miserable gameplay just gradually becomes larger and larger, even disregarding outliers like Hogaak and Eldrazi Winter.

I doubt I'll ever drop Modern entirely, and I'll gladly see it turn into what Legacy was to Modern beforehand. But this weekend I'm already looking forward more towards Pioneer on Saturday than Modern at FNM.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
I knew so many people with foil modern decks everywhere, they will go nowhere. They will stay in modern + begin with Pioneer. But Noone of them will sell their decks, only ones which they don't played long time. Last fnm I was on a store with 15 people and 5 of them was fully foiled, they will stay sure in modern
I have 3 fully foiled out Modern decks (Esper control, Twin Moons [Blood Moon, Chalice, Bridge, etc.] and Eldrazi & Taxes) and I am looking forward to playing in Pioneer. My main deck is Esper and, yes, I lose access to Cryptic and Snapcaster which sucks, but I have been tired of Modern for quite some time now.

Pioneer looks like a breath of fresh air, at least right now. I have no doubt that, as time goes on, it will become stale just as Modern did, but it at least gives me a format to use some of those cards in since I wasn't really playing Modern anymore anyway.

While I understand that being invested in Modern, both with time and cards, makes it tough to walk away, but it isn't a universal truth that having a foiled deck, or any amount of money in cards, will keep people in Modern.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

I plan on slowly selling off superfluous Modern staples over the next few months. I might keep some core stuff "just in case" stuff, and a pile to bring to FNM, but it's fairly clear that Modern is not a priority to Wizards. Not in terms of support or quality, only in getting our money. I've already been slowly transitioning into MTGO, and it looks like that will be the primary way to play Modern. But it looks like there's no down side to downsizing paper to just Commander.

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Post by Mtgthewary » 4 years ago

Guys, it is the same modern 2 months ago. Pioneer has even half of same pool of modern. In 6 months people sucked playing Pioneer too and they realize this is our game, no matter if Pioneer, modern or legacy. I don't understand why some less time ago people talked about the most loved and played format modern... And now a new one comes with 50% of same cards and all think modern is garbage. Is this not hyperbolik?

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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

*******IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER*********
WOTC is still making alot of money from modern. Modern horizons was a huge financial success. WOTC supports multiple formats to varying degrees with eternal masters, modern masters, commander decks, and of coarse new sets for standard. They even make fun sets for no format at all like the un-sets and archenemy and such.
****************************************************************

I believe modern with survive with a smaller % of the market share and that is fine. These are early days, certainly to early for dooms day predictions IMO, and everyone should not be exceedingly worried for modern yet. It may get there, but this is too early.

Separate note, whirza may need a ban but I'm not sure which card they would hit.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
Guys, it is the same modern 2 months ago. Pioneer has even half of same pool of modern. In 6 months people sucked playing Pioneer too and they realize this is our game, no matter if Pioneer, modern or legacy. I don't understand why some less time ago people talked about the most loved and played format modern... And now a new one comes with 50% of same cards and all think modern is garbage. Is this not hyperbolik?
The main take away from my perspective is that Modern's success as of late was derived from Modern winning people's interest by default, not by merit. When people got tired of repeated terrible Standard environments they looked for a change, Modern was the most accessible. When tournament organizers saw that attendance for their tournaments under Standard/Limited was awful, Modern was the best alternative they had access to. If you wanted to play a higher powered format compared to Standard but were priced out of Legacy or did not have a local Legacy scene to even play with, Modern was the answer.

What I am trying to say is that Modern simply occupied the right space at the right time and had a convenient number of stars align to give it it's powerful position. Now with Pioneer existing, Modern no longer holds the monopoly in terms of a high powered, tournament supported, and accessible format. Not to mention the fact that if Wotc actually makes a commitment to curate the format to ensure the level of degeneracy does not reach anything near Modern levels, it will be much more likely to have broad market appeal.

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Post by Mtgthewary » 4 years ago

How it can't be same degenerate soon, if cards like oko and once upon and green leyline.... Are printed? It feels like a joke to me when powerlevel rise 100% and same time people think Pioneer will be fair and they don't make mistakes like in modern. This format will not survive half of time modern survived

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
How it can't be same degenerate soon, if cards like oko and once upon and green leyline.... Are printed? It feels like a joke to me when powerlevel rise 100% and same time people think Pioneer will be fair and they don't make mistakes like in modern. This format will not survive half of time modern survived
It absolutely will probably be a wreck at the start, but as Wotc reveals more facets of it's banning philosophy when it comes to Pioneer, there is a potential to clear out a lot of the degenerate decks, a potential that does not exist in Modern at this point, we all know Wotc is not going to clear house in Modern to make it more palatable, its too late, and the existing degenerate decks represent future avenues for monetization via reprints even if they plan to put Modern on the back burner. They won't give that up for no reason.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
Guys, it is the same modern 2 months ago.
Which, in my opinion, has been a dumpster fire for at least the past year and a half. The doomsaying is because change is *NOT* coming. That, and competitive focus will be aimed at Pioneer while Modern will be slowly ignored until it falls into the irrelevance that Legacy has held for the last several years. So what's the point to remaining heavily invested in a format with zero financial stability and a dying level of support?

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

metalmusic_4 wrote:
4 years ago
*******IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER*********
WOTC is still making alot of money from modern. Modern horizons was a huge financial success. WOTC supports multiple formats to varying degrees with eternal masters, modern masters, commander decks, and of coarse new sets for standard. They even make fun sets for no format at all like the un-sets and archenemy and such.
****************************************************************

I believe modern with survive with a smaller % of the market share and that is fine. These are early days, certainly to early for dooms day predictions IMO, and everyone should not be exceedingly worried for modern yet. It may get there, but this is too early.
this is what I believe as well.

well, not much more to say.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Just because WOTC wants your money doesn't mean they care about supporting a format.

I'll reiterate most of what has already been said about the doomsaying: Modern is not a format that all players play because they love it. Many just tolerate it because Legacy is too expensive and Standard rotates. With Pioneer being the future of competitive Magic and Modern slipping more and more into degenerate nonsense, it's a wonder anyone not playing some fast linear deck stays at all.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

I'm going to restate CFP's, mine, and other's observations in a different way. This is not doomsaying. Wizards has been extremely clear about the future of Magic arcing towards Arena. Wizards has also said Modern is not coming to Arena, and that Pioneer is, in fact, coming to Arena. They have even laid out a committed, albeit rudimentary, roadmap to move Historic to Pioneer over the long term. Plus they have added significant paper support for Pioneer in the next year. It should be abundantly clear this is the long term future of nonrotating formats. Modern will not vanish overnight but it will continue to erode as Wizards invests more and more into Pioneer. That's not doomsaying. That's reading a clear trajectory to corroborating actions.
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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Just because WOTC wants your money doesn't mean they care about supporting a format.
I think this is something that is going to take people a while to figure out. There is a fundamental difference between monetizing a format and actually supporting it. It is kind of rich how Wotc will put out a set like Ultimate Masters, and in part talk about how you can get great cards for your Legacy or Vintage decks, while at the same time not having any intention of supporting those formats whatsoever with actual events.

Compare and contrast with say, Commander and its night and day, although Commander is not a tournament format, they get fully preconstructed, non-randomized product lines every year on the dot without question. The only time Modern ever got that treatment was ONE Modern event deck which was unceremoniously discontinued. Every "support" product Modern has ever received since that point has been compromised or watered down by having limited components which people for some reason supported because they would say dumb stuff like "They need to put the Modern cards in booster packs so that us limited players will open them so that we can put those cards into circulation." Such a bizarre trend in spite of the fact that Commander never has to put up with that kind of treatment.

Really when you think about how lack luster and compromised the "Modern" themed products have been over the years, its kind of a miracle Modern even got as big as it did in the first place. I guess it just goes to show how pissed off people were with Standard and such.

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Post by Arkmer » 4 years ago

Does anyone think that MH1's success will actually lead to PH1?

I'm almost certain we either get a Pioneer Horizons equivalent and it's legal in Modern to "support Modern", or we get MH2 and it reprints and unbans Twin. That's about all I can see that would get people like CF and idSurge to jump back into Modern, even if only for a little bit.

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Post by Mtgthewary » 4 years ago

OK, it seems most people believe wotc changes banning Philosophie in Pioneer, but not modern. Why you all believe this? And what this means? More bannings? Less bannings? If you think more bannings in Pioneer is good, are you all sure this is the way we should go in yugioh magic? I believe if this is one of the main reasons why Pioneer is better, I think we are soon in trouble.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

Arkmer wrote:
4 years ago
Does anyone think that MH1's success will actually lead to PH1?
This seems like a "when" and not an "if." MH1 was too successful to be limited to Modern. If Pioneer takes off in the future like Modern has in the past, and we have plenty of reasons to believe it will, then PH1 will absolutely be a future product. I suspect Wizards will take some lessons from MH1 and avoid a few of their mistakes in that set, but it will still be highly profitable even with a few missteps.
I'm almost certain we either get a Pioneer Horizons equivalent and it's legal in Modern to "support Modern", or we get MH2 and it reprints and unbans Twin. That's about all I can see that would get people like CF and idSurge to jump back into Modern, even if only for a little bit.
I don't think Wizards is interested in retaining the CFPs and idSs of the world to return to Modern. Wizards just wants those players playing Magic regularly on some platform where they are spending money. If that's Commander, that's great. If that's Pioneer, that's great. The problem is that Modern doesn't have the same clear identity niche as Commander or Legacy/Vintage. That just makes it a nonrotating format like any other. This means the CFPs and idSs will generally just move to whatever gets the most local and global support. Once that swings to Pioneer in a bigger way, and believe me it will given its huge part of Arena's long-term plan, Modern will be in trouble.
Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
OK, it seems most people believe wotc changes banning Philosophie in Pioneer, but not modern. Why you all believe this? And what this means? More bannings? Less bannings? If you think more bannings in Pioneer is good, are you all sure this is the way we should go in yugioh magic? I believe if this is one of the main reasons why Pioneer is better, I think we are soon in trouble.
I don't know how many bannings are needed. I just dramatically prefer Wizards' method of banning from the ground up based on highly iterated MTGO datasets than the way they did it with Modern's initial banlist. I'm pretty confident most players don't want a ton of bans. They just want the broken stuff banned before the big 2020 paper rollout.

Again, there's no distinct advantage/disadvantage of Pioneer over Modern right now. Both formats have the same problems of proactive threats being significantly better than reactive answers. Both formats suffer from a disastrous Wizards policy of removing generic answers because some misleading surveys told them that people don't like their big stuff countered/killed/discarded/etc. by 1-2 mana spells. The result is 11+ bans in Standard over 2 years. But Pioneer is the nonrotating format Wizards is making part of its multi-million dollar new platform, MTG Arena. It is unleashing a torrent of Pioneer support even before it's a "real" format. Even ignoring all other hype about the format, this strongly suggests Pioneer (not Modern) will be the nonrotating format of our future. That promise of support is honestly the only thing Pioneer will have going for it over Modern. Well, that and Pioneer not having Modern's toxic, hyperbolic, memey baggage that is rampant across online venues.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Arkmer wrote:
4 years ago
Does anyone think that MH1's success will actually lead to PH1?

I'm almost certain we either get a Pioneer Horizons equivalent and it's legal in Modern to "support Modern", or we get MH2 and it reprints and unbans Twin. That's about all I can see that would get people like CF and idSurge to jump back into Modern, even if only for a little bit.
It wouldn't be enough. You need (as mentioned over the last few pages by a few) to decimate Moderns top end. The looting ban was the most important thing wizards has done to a ban list in years.

The only question is how far they take the Pioneer ban list. They will not do what it would take to remove the unseemly and poor play elements from Modern, returning Twin would not save it.

Arena getting Pioneer IS the death knell. Just a matter of time.
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

Noticed that this thread and the pioneer thread are both talking about bans. I guess the hammer really is the go to solution for a lot of things.
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Post by Ym1r » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
Noticed that this thread and the pioneer thread are both talking about bans. I guess the hammer really is the go to solution for a lot of things.
Well, if there are the same people talking in both threads about largely the same topic then it is expected. Truth be told, we haven't seen much discussion in anything else BESIDES ban/unban discussions and format bashing/praising. For a while now, it seems to me, that decks don't matter anymore.

This, imho, has started already from spring and WAR. There is not general discussion about decks, and people are not interested in developing new decks and discussing said decks, People are interested in what should be banned, either based on the flavor of each month, or based on actual problems like Hogaak. Either way, both in the old MTGS forum and here, the proportion of messages and activity happening in this one thread compared to literally every single other thread in the Modern subforum is insane. Adding to this that it is literally the same 8-10 people constantly going over the same points, and you get a situation where there is nothing more to discuss besides banning.

Not blaming the people participating here, I am obviously one of them, but I think it is important to reflect a bit on the trajectory of the discussion we are having. As in, why people want to discuss primarily why [insert good/broken card here] needs to be banned and not "I am playing X/Y/Z deck, what do I need to be [insert good/broken card here]?" Maybe there is no way, and then we can talk about bannings etc, but I think this intermediate step of exploring each deck's potential first in a given metagame is important to have, and currently it doesn't exist. Neither for Modern nor for Pioneer. For all the Elkfest that standard is right now, at least people have tried to figure out how to beat it (albeit not particularly successfully).
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Post by robertleva » 4 years ago

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned in this thread already but Pioneer is getting Arena support. That alone will make Pioneer the go to format for non-rotating formats.
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

Ym1r wrote:
4 years ago
The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
Noticed that this thread and the pioneer thread are both talking about bans. I guess the hammer really is the go to solution for a lot of things.
Well, if there are the same people talking in both threads about largely the same topic then it is expected. Truth be told, we haven't seen much discussion in anything else BESIDES ban/unban discussions and format bashing/praising. For a while now, it seems to me, that decks don't matter anymore.

Adding to this that it is literally the same 8-10 people constantly going over the same points, and you get a situation where there is nothing more to discuss besides banning.
Hmm, decks do matter to me. Besides this thread, I hang out at the nexus modern Esper Draw Go thread to read posts and tourney reports there, to help make improvements to my deck. Learned some things.

Well, our population here is just 8-10 people indeed but this thread is the only modern discussion thread that I can access, as the mtgs state of modern thread has become dead as a doornail with 0 posts for weeks.

Maybe we can have more things to discuss when a new set comes out.
And hopefully, things will become better for modern next year.
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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 4 years ago

Discussion is based around bans and unbans because right now all eyes are on a shiny new format. A format that WoTC is actively regulating via banlist updates.

Initially, I was highly skeptical about Pioneer succeeding. I thought it would end up just like what Modern is now, a bunch of fatigued, enfranchised players finally playing in an 'acceptable' format after a horrible year. And we only really have that because of heavy-handed bannings.

And for many of us, we're seeing for the 1st time active banlist management. We see with Pioneer that WoTC is willing to swiftly remove decks that are far ahead of the chasing pack and we see how Pioneer is benefiting from it. Yes, the bannings will slow down but I'm fairly confident that by the turn of the year, Pioneer will be a fun, fair and varied format. And if nothing drastic happens, Modern will still just be 'acceptable'.

Modern was and maybe still is the most popular constructed format. But if we want this format to survive and still be popular, 'acceptable' is not good enough, not when Pioneer is vastly more accessible and looks to be more enjoyable. Why would anyone pay top dollar to play an 'acceptable' format when they can pay less to play a fun format?

So yes, why not use bans/unbans more aggressively to regulate Modern?

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Post by iTaLenTZ » 4 years ago

True-Name Nemesis wrote:
4 years ago
So yes, why not use bans/unbans more aggressively to regulate Modern?
Because they need at least 1 format where overpushed, broken mechanics and mistakes are legal to sell packs and justify bans for Standard and Pioneer. Legacy and Vintage aren't big enough so Modern will pay the price for Pioneer becoming a fun and interactive format. Meanwhile Modern is the dumpyard for toxic degenerated non-interactive linear decks. Today I was going to sell my Snapcasters, Cavern of Souls, LotV and Goyfs and I am in shock by how much they have tanked in a matter of weeks since Pioneer was announced. Not sure if they will bounce back a bit or if the sky is falling.

For example it took 2-3 years to ban Loothing. Maybe I am too cynical but I believe there won't be any attempts the next 6 months to fix Modern. They deliberately want Modern to fail so people have more incentives to play Pioneer, their next cashcow. They need to push Pioneer as the new-to-go format so Modern being in a terrible state helps a lot to lure people in. They simply never cared about Modern in the first place, only about the Modern's players wallets. There won't be a Modern Horizons 2 because by the next year the format is dead. All due to mismanagement and lack of care by R&D.

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