Amalgam wrote: ↑4 years ago
drmarkb wrote: ↑4 years ago
Most of us do play other formats.
There are very few paper Modern players left, because there are very few people who enjoy pissing money away, which is what Modern is. It is like a boat, gives you the best two days of your life, the day you buy it and the day you sell the sod. Modern is the Mtg equivalent.
Modern has been good at times, for sure.
I don't know why a few posters keep mentioning it's just modern with an issue. Its every single format in the game right now due to wizards incompetence. Legacy and vintage are getting changed every 3 months just like modern, it's that bad right.
Magic in general is in a super rough spot right now both digital and paper. If wizards isnt careful with what corona is doing to the world currently, magic could blow up in their face.
Others and I have made this point before and it's critical we remember it. It is very easy, especially in this State of Modern thread, to claim this is a Modern-specific problem. We can complain about Modern's virtual/artificial rotations, bad design's impact on the format, repeated Modern bans, lack of communication around Modern, negative play patterns in Modern, and a variety of other Modern-only topics. All of this misses the big picture. These are game-wide, multi-format problems that have impacted basically all formats in the game. There are a few drivers at the core of these problems, but the biggest two I consistently see are a) untested/overpowered/overpushed design decisions that appear to put product sales before format/game health, and b) irregular/opaque/nonexistent communication around core issues by major Wizards figures. Every single constructed format in the game, even so-called community formats like Commander, are in varying degrees of jeopardy as a result of these issues. Whenever anyone suggests or outright says this is a Modern-only problem, they are letting Wizards off the hook for these game-wide, multi-format issues and tricking both themselves and anyone reading their content that this problem is isolated to one format. It's not. It is hitting every sector of Constructed Magic and will continue to hit every sector of Constructed Magic until addressed.
I think one reason people focus on Modern when discussing these issues, apart from the obvious like us being in the State of Modern thread, is that Modern has the most visible damage as a result of Wizards' game-wide problems. Other formats have a little extra insulation, either by virtue of their card pool, their community, or their format rules. For instance, Standard doesn't have to deal with the problem of artificial rotation because it's literally a rotating format. Legacy can absorb more ("MORE", but not all as we are learning) of the ridiculously pushed and overpowered cards because the base power level is higher. Commander can weather some of the external pressures due to unwritten social contracts within playgroups. Pioneer feels fine now because it is not in the competitive spotlight, has relatively low attendance, and is a newer format with a growing, less jaded community. All of this is in contrast to Modern, which feels like it is rotating when it shouldn't, doesn't have the card pool cushion of Legacy to absorb broken entrants, and can't default to social contracts in a hyper-competitive environment. It also has high iteration, is constantly in the competitive spotlight, and has a large, older, vocally disillusioned community. This makes Modern the perfect breeding ground for negative sentiment. But again,
these are not Modern-specific issues. We are just feeling them more right now but if this continues, every single format will suffer significant, potentially irreversible damage as a result of Wizards' bad design decisions and deafening silence on these major issues.
Until the community starts addressing the core issues, this problem will spread. This means calling out bad design/testing/development decisions, ESPECIALLY the glaring failures of Play Design that couldn't even prevent a series of bans in Standard. It also means blasting Wizards for failing to communicate about these issues in a timely manner, or at all. Wizards expects the game to thrive in a fast-paced social media world, but simultaneously won't engage a huge chunk of criticism and feedback on those social media platforms. These are the core issues we have to address. Modern's issues are almost entirely symptomatic of these broader problems, and until we start realizing that, we aren't going to fix anything.